Category Archive: Theology – Liturgical
Leithart on Worship
Excellent! Peter Leithart has started posting his Sunday School class lectures on worship on his blog. Here‘s the first one. I wish I could be there to hear them.
Garver on Regeneration
I know others have already pointed this out, but Joel Garver‘s recent essay “On Regeneration, Baptism, and the Reformed Tradition” looks like a very helpful survey of Reformed views on … well, regeneration and baptism and the relationship between them.
Wright on the Gospel
The whole Christian gospel could be summed up in this point: that when the living God looks at us, at every baptized and believing Christian, he says to us what he said to Jesus on that day. He sees us, not as we are in ourselves, but as we are in Jesus Christ. It sometimes seems impossible, especially to people who have never had this kind of support from their earthly parents, but it’s true: God looks at us, and says, “You are my dear, dear child; I’m delighted with you.” Try reading that sentence slowly, with your own name at the start, and reflect quietly on God saying that to you, both at your baptism and every day since.
It is true for one simple but very profound reason: Jesus is the Messiah, and the Messiah represents his people. What is true of him is true of them. The word “Messiah” means “the anointed one”; and this story tells how Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit, marked out as God’s son. The Messiah is called “God’s son” in a few biblical passages, including the one that the heavenly voice seems to be echoing here (Psalm 2.7). Though the early Christians realized quite quickly that Jesus was God’s son in an even deeper sense, they clung on to his messiahship for dear life. It was because Jesus was and is Messiah that God said to them, as he does to us today, what he said to Jesus at his baptism. — N. T. Wright, Mark for Everyone, pp. 4-5.
Justification and Sacramental Efficacy
Peter Leithart has a very interesting recent blog entry on “Justification and Sacramental Theology.” Here’s part of it to whet your appetite:
Far from being a threat to justification by faith, I am becoming more and more convinced that a strong view of sacramental efficacy is necessary to maintain justification by faith. Can justification by faith survive the evacuation of the sacraments? The last few hundred years gives us little reason to think it likely.
Of course, it’s only a short blog entry and that whets my appetite for more from Leithart on the sacraments.
Baptism and the Sunday Service
Recently, I was asked why we perform baptisms in connection with the call to worship. In many Reformed churches, baptisms take place after the sermon. Perhaps that’s because baptism is a sacrament and the sacraments go with the Word and so people conclude that both baptism and the Lord’s Supper fit best after the Word has been preached.
But the Word is not present only when Scripture is read and preached. The whole service is permeated by the Word, from the call to worship to the benediction at the end of the service. Thus, the close link between baptism and the Word does not determine where in the service baptism fits best.
While we think of both baptism and the Lord’s Supper as “sacraments,” we must be careful not to allow that way of describing them to blur the distinctions between them.
In the Old Covenant, Israel shared a meal with God — the peace offering — only after she offered a sin offering (which emphasized cleansing from sin) and an ascension or burnt offering (which emphasized consecration to God).
So, too, in the New Covenant, we eat the Lord’s Supper only after the Lord has called us to Himself, cleansed us from our sins, and re-consecrated us to Himself by His Word so that we can present ourselves and our offerings as acceptable sacrifices to Him. That’s why the Lord’s Supper follows the sermon, the congregational prayer, and the offering.
The Lord’s Supper is communion with Christ and it’s the climax of the service. But baptism isn’t the climax. Baptism has to do with beginnings.
The Sunday service is the assembly of the church, the body of Christ, and baptism is how we enter the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13; cf. Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 74). In the whole service, we come to God in union with Christ. But how are we united to Christ? Paul says we are baptized into Christ Jesus (Rom. 6:3; Gal. 3:27).
God calls us to worship. But how can we draw near to Him with boldness? How can new converts come into His presence to worship? How can our little children come?
Hebrews 10 tells us: We enter boldly by Jesus’ blood (v. 19) and through His flesh (v. 20). He’s our High Priest (v. 21). And therefore, “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”
As the Old Covenant priests drew near to God after being washed, as unclean Israelites drew near after being washed, so do we. First comes God’s call. Then comes washing. Then comes our bold approach to God.
Baptism, therefore, fits best as part of God’s call to worship so that, having been washed with pure water, our new members may respond to that call and draw near to God, in union with Christ and with us as His body, to share together in the Lord’s service of covenant renewal.
“No Thanks. We Ate Last Week.”
Several times in the years I’ve been a pastor, I’ve encountered a strange and disturbing phenomenon.
Visitors arrive at the church on a Sunday when we’re having the Lord’s Supper (which so far has never been weekly in the congregations I’ve served). When someone mentions to them that we’ll be partaking of the Supper and that as Christians they’re welcome to partake with us, they decline. The reason? They had the Lord’s Supper last Sunday. And so, while the rest of the congregation eats and drinks, they sit there and wait for the Supper to be over.
It’s hard for me to express how strange I find that behaviour.
Imagine inviting someone into your house. While he’s there, you invite him to stay for lunch. “No thanks,” he says. “I’d really rather not eat with you today. I ate at your place a week ago and I don’t want to do that again for a while.”
Wouldn’t you be upset? Wouldn’t you think his response was more than bit rude? And is it any different when Christ’s guests refuse to eat at His Table because, after all, they ate there last week and would rather not do so too often?
Given that eating the bread together forms us into one body, isn’t a refusal to participate tantamount to a refusal to be one body with the congregation you’re visiting?
Given that the Lord’s Supper memorializes Christ, isn’t a refusal to eat and drink a refusal to proclaim His death? Isn’t that a sin?
Given that when we eat and drink we’re nourished by Christ’s body and blood, wouldn’t you want to partake of the Supper as often as you could? Can you ever be so full of that Supper that you don’t need it again for a while? Can you ever be so full that it would be bad for you to partake again? Can you ever be so full that it wouldn’t be rude for you to tell Christ you don’t want to eat at His Table today?
Underlying this behaviour, it seems to me, is a very strange view of the Supper. But what exactly is that view? And how should it be addressed, especially when you’re dealing with visitors and not with church members who can be taught from week to week?
Hoeksema on Communion
Tim pointed out this quotation a while ago, but I thought it worth repeating here. It’s by Herman Hoeksema, who was involved in the formation of the Protestant Reformed Churches. The volume in which this quotation appears was originally published in 1951.
I often wonder whether the practice of our churches not to administer the Lord’s Supper to children before they have reached the age of adolescence is not an error. Surely, long before they reach this age, they are able to discern the Lord’s body. There is, it seems to me, not sufficient reason to withhold from them this sacrament, by which they are nourished with the body and blood of Christ and in which they commemorate Christ’s death, until they have finished the course of catechetical instruction that is required in our churches and are capable of making a complete confession of faith. — Herman Hoeksema, The Triple Knowledge: An Exposition of the Heidelberg Catechism (Grand Rapids: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 1971), 2:561.
“Please Me, O Lord”
In a recent issue of Touchstone, S. M. Hutchens comments on some trends in modern evangelical worship (“Please Me, O Lord“).
Torture and Eucharist
In the entry before last, I mentioned William Cavanaugh’s Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ. I read the book a couple of weeks ago and enjoyed it very much, if “enjoyed” can possibly be the right term for a book on torture.
Torture and Eucharist is based on Cavanaugh’s doctoral dissertation (written under the direction of Stanley Hauerwas). It focuses on what happened in Chile — and in particular, what happened to the church in Chile — during Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973-1990). Under Pinochet’s regime, the enemies of the state — or suspected enemies or potential enemies or, for that matter, people who were not (yet) enemies — were frequently “disappeared” and tortured by agents of the state. Gradually, the church in Chile learned to respond to the state’s oppression.
Cavanaugh begins with a helpful, though deeply disturbing, discussion of torture. Torture, he says, is just as much an attack on social bodies as it is on individual, physical bodies. When you are in pain, you are isolated from others. You cannot focus on past allegiances or future plans; your whole world shrinks to your body and its suffering. As used in Chile, torture is a tool designed to create individuals, to separate people from their attachments to other social bodies, including the church, so that there are only individuals under the power of the state. Torture is a form of discipline, training people to become disciples of the state, actors following the script the state writes.
At first, however, the church in Chile was not able to respond adequately to Pinochet’s oppression. Cavanaugh provides a trenchant analysis of the “New Christendom” ecclesiology promoted by men such as Jacques Maritain, which is still widespread in the Roman Catholic church today (see John Kerry’s comments below) and which seems remarkably similar to what I’ve heard Presbyterians speak of as “the spirituality of the church.”
According to this view, the church deals with man’s soul, with man’s inward, spiritual life. The church may attempt to persuade men of certain moral positions and to shape their consciences, but it has no coercive power and certainly may not get involved in politics. Politics has to do with the temporal, not the eternal. It is physical, not spiritual. It is external, not internal. It isn’t the church’s area of competence. The church should leave that realm to the experts and focus instead on its own carefully circumscribed role, namely, the care of the soul.
As Cavanaugh explains, however, adopting that view entails handing people’s bodies over to the state. “New Christendom” ecclesiology crippled the church in Chile so that she was unable to resist the state’s oppression — and all the more so because the oppressors themselves, including Pinochet and many, if not all, of the torturers, were themselves Roman Catholics. As one bishop said, “To resist an atheist dictatorship is easy; what’s difficult is to resist a Catholic dictatorship” (cited on p. 80).
As the oppression intensified, however, the church continued to care for the suffering people of Chile and drew on itself the wrath of the oppressors for doing so. Over the years, the church began to respond, first by discussions with the leaders of Chile and then more strongly, through public protest and, most importantly, through ecclesiastical discipline.
The church began to develop a new ecclesiology, centred on the Eucharist, by which the church is united into a social body, a body which is necessarily political and which is concerned not only with souls but with bodies. Eventually, the church began to excommunicate torturers, policing its own bounds, declaring publicly who is and who is not a member of its body. And as it declared some outside the body, it also intensified its bonds with those inside the body. The Eucharist created solidarity, and that solidarity enabled Chilean Christians to resist the state’s attacks. The church’s discipline, forming people into disciples of Christ united to each other, enabled her to stand up to the state’s discipline.
That’s a fairly superficial summary of Cavanaugh’s book, however, and does not do it justice. I recommend the book highly. Cavanaugh writes well and the book is quite understandable. It is also extremely thought-provoking.
At the same time, I was left with some questions. I’m not sure what role, if any, Cavanaugh would assign to the state. Many times, he talks about what “the state” does or wants to do, and I’m not always sure if he thinks this is necessarily true of all states or not. At times, Cavanaugh (and similar writers) make me wonder what role they think there should be for civil government. Of course, that’s part of the reason Peter Leithart wrote “For Constantine” in Against Christianity.
Cavanaugh strongly dislikes “Constantinianism” and “Christendom” and wants to maintain that the church isn’t an alternate polis. But, as Leithart and others have pointed out, that is exactly what the church is (though not exactly in the sense Cavanaugh has in mind).
In Philippians 3, for instance, Paul says that the church’s “commonwealth” (politeuma) is in heaven. The church is a colony of heaven. It is a city within the city, a colony within the (Roman) colony of Philippi, with a calling to colonize its surroundings, advancing faith in the gospel, which is the good news that Jesus (not Caesar) is the true Lord and Saviour.
I appreciated much of Cavanaugh’s discussion of the Eucharist. I have to admit, though, that I can’t make head or tail out of some of the things he says. For instance, “the earthly Eucharist is the eternal action in time of Jesus Christ” (p. 223). I don’t have a clue what “eternal action in time” means, but it seems vaguely Platonic. So, for that matter, does Cavanaugh’s discussion of secular vs. Eucharistic time, in which he says that “secular” time is linear and Eucharistic time is … well, I don’t know, but not linear somehow, because it entails past, present, and future all at once. Perhaps it’s just because I’m new to this sort of Eucharistic theology, but I found this approach hard to grasp.
I am also not convinced by Cavanaugh’s claim that the church doesn’t excommunicate but merely recognizes that someone is self-condemned and has put himself outside the church by his actions. That approach seems weak. Indeed, it seems to me to smack of some of the same kind of gnosticism Cavanaugh is striking at throughout the book, because it implies that the church merely recognizes what people themselves have done; she doesn’t have the power to effect something by excommunication. But Paul speaks of the church’s discipline as actually doing something, changing someone’s status, putting someone outside (1 Cor. 5).
On the whole, though, I found Torture and Eucharist very profitable, not only for its analysis of what happened in Chile, but also for its analysis of torture as a disciplining anti-liturgy and of the Eucharist as a counter-politics whereby we become more and more the body of Christ, a body which must be guarded by excommunication. Again, in spite of my questions and reservations at a number of points, I highly recommend this book.
Marriage Annulment?
Mark Horne raises a few questions about the status of his marriage, and indirectly makes some telling points about the efficacy of ceremonies and rituals.
The Congregation’s Amen
The last question in the Heidelberg Catechism, which ends the Catechism’s treatment of the Lord’s Prayer, deals with the significance of the word Amen. As I was preparing for my afternoon sermon in connection with that question, I remembered something I had read back in seminary.
Here are some snippets from Dr. K. Deddens’ book on the liturgy, Where Everything Points to Him. Deddens was the Professor of Diaconology and Ecclesiology at the Theological College of the Canadian Reformed Churches.
Deddens surveys the use of the word in Num. 5:11-31; Deut. 27:11-26; Neh. 5:13; and 1 Kings 1:36 and writes:
It is important for us to note that the amen does not serve to confirm what the speaker has himself said; rather, it confirms the word of someone else. And it is not uttered by the one who has made the statement in question but by someone who has heard it (p. 155).
Deddens then looks at the Amen as a response to praise:
We also find an Amen at the end of the doxology which closes off the books or sections within the book of Psalms (see Ps. 14:41; 72:19; 89:53; and 106:48). Moreover, Psalm 150 can be regarded as an Amen ending the entire book of Psalms with its five parts. When the praise of the LORD is being sung, the “Amen” can be expected from His congregation by way of response (p. 155).
Next Deddens examines the New Testament use of the word:
In I Corinthians 14:16 it is spoken by the hearers in the congregation: “If you bless with the spirit, how can any one in the position of an outsider say the ‘Amen’ to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying?” II Corinthians 1:20 also speaks of the congregation’s Amen and says that it is only possible through Christ. And in Revelation 5:14, this word is mentioned as a liturgical response in worship that takes place in heaven (p. 156).In the second place, the word “Amen” is used in the New Testament after prayers, and especially after doxologies (see, for example, Rom. 1:25; 9:5; 11:36; 16:27; Gal. 1:5; Eph. 3:21; Phil. :20; I Tim. 1:17; 6:16; II Tim. 4:18; Heb. 13:21; 1 Pet. 4:11; 5:11; Jude vs. 5; Rev. 1:6; 7:12). The author uses it to indicate that when the congregation hears the praise of God read aloud, she ought to respond with an Amen (p. 157).
Deddens then presents how the word was used in church history:
It is clear from the Old and New Testaments, then, that the Amen was spoken by the congregation as a liturgical word. We also find it being used in this way during the first centuries of the Christian church.Justin Martyr, writing in the second century, tells us that the congregation expressed her agreement at the end of the communion liturgy by way of an Amen. In the Byzantine liturgy and also the liturgy of Jerusalem the people answered with an Amen when the words instituting the Lord’s Supper were read, and the same practice was to be found in North Africa during the time of Augustine (end of the fourth century and beginning of the fifth). The Amen was also used as an expression of agreement after prayers, Scripture reading and sermons. In his commentary on the letter to the Galatians, Jerome, who also lived at about this time, tells us that the Amen resounded through the basilica like a thunderclap!
It is regrettable that the use of the word “Amen” by the congregation came to an end in later centuries. The word as such could still be heard in worship services, but it no longer came from everyone’s mouth; it was only the priest who used this word, and when he did so, it was not by way of acclamation. Moreover, he would usually utter this word in a soft tone of voice.
Just as the congregation had become silent when her songs were taken away, so the same thing happened with her “Amen.” The congregation no longer responded to the Scripture reading, the sermon and the prayers; the priest was the one who uttered the Amen. Only the acts of the priest had value; all that was left for the congregation to do was to listen, and perhaps to add her silent Amen to what she heard (pp. 158-159).
Deddens closes with some recommendations:
A number of leaders in the Reformed community have argued that we should not restrict the Amen to the pulpit but should give it back to the congregation, to be used in connection with praise, prayer, preaching, and the blessing…. In ancient times it was the congregation that spoke or sang the Amen and then she did not need a song to do so by way of paraphrase. A song made up of repeated Amens would be better! And there are other possibilities that could be considered; we should always be open to something new when it comes to forms.But what is needed first of all is reflection on this matter, and a communal conviction that the responsive character of the Amen needs to come to the fore in our worship services, which means that the Amen must come from the mouth not of the minister but of the hearers…. If we would move in such a direction, we would promote the congregation’s activity in worship as she seeks to serve the LORD in a covenantal way! (pp. 159-160).
It is odd, isn’t it, that in so many Reformed churches the congregation is silent, except for singing, while the minister does all the speaking. I’ve been in Reformed churches where the minister alone recites the creed. But, as Deddens insists, that’s not the Reformed way at all. It was the Reformers who insisted on congregational participation. As James Jordan writes:
… the Reformers wanted participation in worship from the whole priesthood of believers. They wrote dialogue liturgies in which the people had many things to say and sing. They had their congregations singing, for instance, the creeds, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer. Soon, however, the strength of the Medieval devotional tradition reasserted itself — the “low mass” tradition in which the people only sat and watched and listened, while the minister did everything. This Medieval tradition was the essence of the Puritan view of worship. In worship, the Puritans departed from the desires of the Protestant Reformers. — The Sociology of the Church, p. 29.
Alas, now we have a situation where in many (thankfully, not all) Reformed churches the minister says and does almost everything and the people stay silent — and where people actually think that this is Reformed worship and that the use of regular, memorized liturgical responses is kinda almost Roman Catholic. But … who is closer to the Reformers’ view of worship? A Reformed congregation where only the minister speaks? Or an active, responsive “high liturgy” church?
And then factor in the ancient principle Lex orandi, lex credendi: the law of prayer (worship) is the law of belief. How do these two forms of worship shape our doctrines, not to mention our practice outside of church? I grant that you can go through the motions when it comes to liturgical responses, but you can certainly go through the motions when it comes to sitting silently, too — and probably far more easily, since so little is demanded of you.
But I wonder: What view of God fits with the minister doing everything and the congregation little or nothing? What view of the church? What view of our responsibility? What view of the covenant?
And now we’re back to Deddens’ concern: The Bible teaches that our relationship with God is mutual and that worship is covenantal fellowship with God. That mutual covenantal fellowship demands dialogue. If the congregation stays silent, she is not just un-Reformed; she is unresponsive, and we are not allowed to be unresponsive to God.
Chesterton on Ritual
Here’s a snippet from one of Chesterton’s essays, which seems to me to be as applicable to the church and her worship as it is to the rest of life:
I made some observations a week or two ago about the desirability of some gorgeousness and pageantry in the opening of Parliament. I am pleased to find that there was plenty of it. But as some friendly philosophers have differed from me upon this point of the desirability of grandiose ritual, I can illustrate my sense of its human necessity by a very topical parallel.
Compare, for instance, the ceremony of the King opening Parliament with the ceremony surrounding Miss Roosevelt’s marriage. There you have conditions in which originally ceremonial has been abolished. Theoretically, the President’s daughter is nobody; theoretically, there is no pageantry surrounding her. Actually, there is an enormous pageantry surrounding her; only it is a vulgar pageantry.
Human nature demands ritual everywhere. Abolish your ritual, and you get an inferior ritual. Destroy your impressive ceremony, and all you get in return is an unimpressive ceremony. King Edward has borne in front of him a Sword of State. The Sword of State is useless as a sword, but as a symbol it is simple, poetical, and popular. The American bride was presented with an enormous rifle in solid gold. It was useless as a gun, and as a symbol it was not simple or poetical or anything else; it was a symbol of nothing except blank bathos and bad taste.
Do not let us talk of getting rid of symbolism: it is impossible to get rid of symbolism — but you can get rid of good symbolism if you like. — G. K. Chesterton, “Importance of Ritual and Symbolism,” The Illustrated London News, March 10, 1906.