When was the first appearance of the strict regulative principle? And what does this tell us about certain deep affinities between certain streams of the Reformed faith and the streams of other communions?
I have before charged that some of the pietists in the Reformed world are completely at odds with their own heritage. And when they encounter living, breathing examples of men in line with their Reformed fathers, they bring them up on charges, saying that they have departed from orthodoxy. But they are the ones who departed. Thus they build the tombs of the prophets, and name their seminaries and churches after men they do not care to understand.
In short, I am saying that many of our staunch Reformed brethren are actually anabaptists in Puritan face paint.
This is why the first appearance of the strict regulative principle (“that which is not commanded is forbidden”) as opposed to the Reformed regulative principle (“worship must be according to Scripture”) is quite instructive.
The anabaptist Conrad Grebel was writing to the radical Thomas Muntzer in September of 1524. He praised a number of things that Muntzer was saying, but he had this criticism, that Muntzer allowed singing in worship. And here comes the origin of a whole lot of trouble in the sectarian world of our reformational backwaters. “Whatever we are not taught by clear passage or examples must be regarded as forbidden, just as if it were written: ‘This do not; sing not.'”
The Auburn Avenue Hubbub (AAH) is happening because we have not yet resolved the boundary lines between the magisterial reformation and the radical reformation. And some folks who live near the border don’t know what country they are in. Think of it as kind of an ecclesiastical Alsace Lorraine.