NB - a train of thought. I will deny all if pressed.
1. I don't much like it when singing is called 'worship' in church circles, since this reduces the concept of worship to JUST this, and is suggestive of a theology of worship by which we seek to impress God by our devotion. That and the music and words of 'Here I am to worship' make me want to gag they are so banal.
2. BUT - the word 'worship', which is an English term note, in its usual dictionary definition sense means 'to pay homage to'. This reflects the Greek and Hebrew terms which both indicate a physical gesture of submission (bowing or prostrating oneself) and also (as a metaphor) the behaviours and acts and the attitudes which are in line with the physical gestures.
3. Undoubtedly, a biblical theology of worship ought to include the observation that true worship includes not simply the words of adoration or the ritual acts commanded by God, but also the righteous life that is in line with this. However, the English word 'worship' has been stretched to include ' latreuein' (usually translated 'service'), which confuses the concept rather.
4. This is especially evident in the lynchpin verse in Rom 12:1-2, where the concept of service is mentioned but not 'worship' in the homage sense. So to say that this verse represents a shift from worship as homage to worship as service (as if one obviated the other) is, well, shifty.
5. The 'Sydney' view of worship contains two insights. One is that a) worship is not what we do for God, but what God enables us to do in response to his mighty saving acts. The other is that b) worship ought to be all of life, but most especially our behaviours, and not at all what we do in church. Well, of course we do worship in church, but that's not why we meet and we should reject the language of worship to describe our meeting together and the things we do in it.
6. In many cases, the two insights become confused, or perhaps b) is insisted upon in order to protect a). Yet the simple case is that worship is the best English word to translate the 'homage' concept, and is confusing when it is used to translate the 'service' concept, and is just plain wrong when the homage concept is all but rejected in favour of the service concept of worship. The best English word to describe the activity that the psalms commend and that we find on the lips of Jesus and the apostles and in the book of Revelation is 'worship': they say and sing adoration to God, paying homage to him - which of course is empty if it is not accompanied by a life to match.
7. Insight a) is a genuine biblical and theological insight about the nature of our engagement with God. But insight b) is far more shaky, and is really only a pragmatic choice about the use of an English word.
8. A good deal is lost by not continuing to call what we do in church and as we come before God 'worship' - we lose the sense that finding words to praise God is an extraordinary and beautiful thing which is, because of the work of Jesus, pleases him. If we understand worship properly, we need not worry about calling our singing praises to God 'worship', since that is what it actually is.
4 comments:
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
You can't imagine how distressing it was to hear "singing isn't worship"
and that we worship God in all of our lives ... but mustn't do this in church when we joined our church in Bathurst 4 years ago.
I've got no problem with anything you've written, but I think that Jo Average Churchgoer, if asked what worship is, would immediately get a mental picture of a 'worship leader' with their hands in the air in a faux-humble self exaltation pose saying pretty much empty stuff about God. I think this is about the opposite of worshiping the God who emptied himself.
Of course church is worship - it isn't all there is to be said about worship - but it is worship. But 'homage' is not the idea that most people have when they think of church.
(And of course the picture I've painted above is not very generous. Sorry.)
Thank you Michael,
You have put into words the nuance I have been grasping for (esp at #6) in regards to worship as service not cancelling out worship as homage.
I have been using a marriage analogy to try to distinguish the difference between worship on Sunday and Worship in life as to not cancel each one out.
Thanks for all this, Michael.
With respect to your points 3. and 4., most of the occurrences of latreuein/service in the LXX and in the NT use the word about the temple service, not about the service of others. I suggest that the significance of Rom 12:1-2 (and the parallel Hebrews 12:28) is that it expresses a shift from worship as temple ritual (the need for which has been fulfilled by Christ's death) to worship as life actions - giving all of ourselves to God.
I also suggest that a careful study of the use of the various worship words in the Bible supports the view that 'worship' is essentially actions (I agree with your point 2.), whereas 'praise' is essentially words.
It is hard to challenge the view that all this discussion is about the choice of a word (thus in your point 7.). However, many important theological debates down the centuries have been about the choice of a word.
An important part of my concern is that we should not use the same word that our Bibles use to refer to the OT cult to describe or define the activity of our gatherings, just as we should not use 'temple' for our church buildings and 'priest' for our pastors. With the fulfilment of the temple worship in Christ, the NT authors consciously gave temple language a new application. A careful study of the worship words in the NT shows that the NT authors:
1. consistently chose whole-of-life in-the-world living as the domain for their re-application of the temple worship language, and
2. never chose to apply worship language to what we Christians are doing in our gatherings.
If we choose, for whatever reason, to apply worship language to our gatherings (or even, for that matter, to 'praise', as in your point 8.), how can we recognise and respect what the NT authors did?
You may or may not include me as a 'Sydney' person, but I don't agree with everything that some other 'Sydney' people have written on this subject.
With respect to your point 5.a), I wouldn't express it as you have, but one of my concerns is that we should not think that the stuff we do in church (especially our singing etc) can be a means by which we access God. But there are many whose words convey that idea.
With respect to your 5.b), I have sought (elsewhere) to demonstrate that the NT authors never apply 'worship' language to "what we do in church", and I suggest we should acknowledge this, and if we are then going to apply this language in this context, we should seek to justify this novelty. It seems to me that you are seeking to justify the use of the language in this way, but I haven't seen you acknowledge that it is, from a perspective of how the Bible expresses things, a novelty).
Post a Comment