Hi Jonathan,

In order to keep this as concise as possible, I wonder if I could collapse both of our arguments into the tightest form. Your position on dancing, which is where this whole thing started, is:

1. In order for a practice to be suitable for gathered church meetings, it needs to be authorised by Jesus or the apostles for use in corporate worship.
2. Dancing is not explicitly authorised by Jesus or the apostles for use in corporate worship.
3. Therefore dancing is not suitable for gathered church meetings.

Is that fair? Admittedly, you insist that we shouldn’t presume continuity or discontinuity, but immediately after saying that you write, “I don’t assume any OT polity or practice binds me or doesn’t bind me until Jesus or the apostles tell me it binds me.” Unless I’m missing something, that principle amounts to #1: if the apostles don’t mention it, we assume it no longer stands for us, rather than that it does.

Mine, on the other hand, is:

1. In order for a practice to be suitable for gathered church meetings, it needs to be authorised in Scripture for use in corporate worship.
2. If a corporate worship practice is authorised in the Old Testament, we should assume that it is authorised in the New, unless it is specifically abrogated by Jesus or the apostles.
3. Dancing is authorised in the Old Testament, and is not abrogated in the New.
4. Therefore dancing is suitable for gathered church meetings.

The difference between our positions, then, is entirely hermeneutical. It is over whether, if a corporate worship practice is authorised in the OT and not mentioned in the NT, we should assume it continues (me) or does not continue (you). Right?

So here’s three quick arguments for assuming continuity, rather than discontinuity.

(i) The ecclesiological argument: if we assume discontinuity, then we end up seeing Israel less as an olive tree that we’ve been grafted into, and more as a potato tuber that has put out its runners, started something new, and faded into the background. Assuming discontinuity makes grafting, “all Israel”, “a Jew inwardly”, “you are Abraham’s seed” and the rest much harder to make sense of.

(ii) The theological argument: continuity involves the assumption that since the same God is God of both testaments, and since his word still stands and is intended to be read in Christian meetings, none of his commands to his people can be set aside unless Jesus or the apostles clearly say so (which, to take your examples, they clearly do when it comes to animal sacrifices, killing God’s enemies with swords, entering God’s presence, and so on. Nazirite vows are not commanded to all God’s people even in Numbers, of course.)

(iii) The historical argument: early Christian congregations seem to have based their patterns of worship on the synagogue with modifications, rather than inventing a completely new way of doings things, and the fact that the apostles were so influenced by temple worship gives us an idea as to why. Put more crisply: if the apostles are used to going to the temple and dancing in celebration, and then they are baptised in the Spirit at Pentecost, and they carry on meeting both publicly and in homes, then at what point do we imagine practices like dancing fizzling out, or being suddenly prohibited? And, given that there is nothing ethnically specific about the practice (as there is with food laws, Sabbath, circumcision, animal sacrifices etc), why?

As such, I think the case for assuming continuity is stronger than for assuming discontinuity. You’re talking about the difference between a high school and a university—although incidentally, when overseen by one headmaster, junior schools and senior schools here in the UK do operate with common rules and codes unless they’re abrogated!—and I think we’re talking about the difference between being at my parents for Christmas before and after I’ve left home, and I think that for ecclesiological, theological and historical reasons. (Also dancing is great fun, and encourages diversity, and discourages prissiness, and cultivates joy, and expresses worship, and involves children, and communicates happiness to visitors, and other side benefits like that.)

So you should be dancing. Yeah.

AJ