A Response to “Pagan Christianity?”
2.3 The regulative principle of worship
The regulative principle of worship is, stated simply, the principle that God alone has the right to regulate our worship, by his word.[1] In worship, we (1) must do whatever God commands, (2) must not do what he forbids, and (3) cannot add anything to worship that God does not command. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith states this principle this way: “But the acceptable way of worshipping the true God, is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imagination and devices of men, nor the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representations, or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scriptures.”[2] This is a distinctive teaching of the Reformed branch of the Reformation. Other Reformation church bodies, such as the Lutherans and the Anglicans, prefer to follow what is known as the normative principle of worship. This is the approach that considers that anything not expressly forbidden in Scripture may be permissible in worship and therefore involves a denial of the third point of the regulative principle given above.[3]
I affirm the regulative principle, but in the interests of brevity, I will not defend this concept here.[4] From the outset, I was expecting Viola and Barna to be making an argument from a simplistic interpretation of the regulative principle, but in fact they explicitly deny the principle altogether.[5] In this way, I am actually far more rigorous, in principle, than they are about not allowing unbiblical practices into Christian worship. But if that’s true, am I contradicting myself? Haven’t I already admitted the possibility that some traditional practices, that do not originate in Scripture, may be acceptable? We need to understand that the term practice is ambiguous. When we say that that we must not worship in “any way not prescribed” in Scripture, we are referring specifically to commanded elements of worship, not just any practice, broadly defined. The elements of worship are those fundamental building blocks of Christian worship, which have explicit basis in Holy Scripture. These elements include prayer, scripture reading, singing, preaching, and the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s supper.[6] The regulative principle means I cannot add to these practices with something like ceremonial wood chopping, or ritual snake charming, or anything else. God will not accept such things as worship, regardless of whether I personally judge them to be worshipful or not. But we also recognise that in all that God commands us to do in worship, he has not given us exhaustive directions as to how those things are to be done. These are called the circumstances of worship.[7] For example, we are instructed to read the scriptures publicly in worship (1 Timothy 4:13), but we are not told when to do so, or for how long, or in what language, etc. Thus, we have a certain limited freedom to use our own Scripture-informed judgement to decide how the prescribed elements of worship are to be carried out. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith recognises this reality, saying, “…there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and government of the church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed.”[8]
The distinction between elements and circumstances in worship is crucial for thinking clearly about the arguments made by Viola and Barna in their book. When they claim that some practice in the church is unbiblical or “pagan”, are they talking about elements of worship or circumstances? If they are only talking about circumstances of worship (on which God gives us no command), then telling us that our practice is not found in the Bible or developed at some point in the history of the church is entirely irrelevant. If they want to demonstrate that we are wrong, a more subtle form of argument would be needed. They would have to demonstrate a clear conflict with broader biblical principles, or the “general rules of the Word” as the Confession says. Consider this example: a church decides to conduct their service entirely in the Latin language. That would be perfectly acceptable in itself, but if few in the congregation could understand Latin, then we would note a conflict with Paul’s general admonition to “Let all things be done for building up” (1 Corinthians 14:26). There might also be gradations in the level of conflict that we see. Some matters may simply to be inappropriate or imprudent, but not actually sinful (e.g., setting the Sunday church gathering for 5 am). In deciding the circumstances of our worship, I think is often wise to follow church tradition. Those are the ways that generations of Christians have found suitable to carry out the prescribed elements of worship. This is illustrated beautifully by the example we discussed earlier, of our Lord’s participation in the tradition of synagogue worship on the Sabbath. The elements of worship conducted in the synagogue (e.g., assembling on the Sabbath, prayer, reading and exposition of the Scriptures) all have solid Scriptural warrant, but the circumstances (e.g., meeting in a building, the specific order of service, etc.) were obviously not. If someone were to legalistically insist that specific circumstances of worship should be found in the Bible only, they would have to condemn the Lord himself![9] We need not follow them into that folly.
[1] A good introductory article is found here: Thomas, D.W.H. (2022). What Is the Regulative Principle of Worship? Tabletalk.https://tabletalkmagazine.com/article/2022/12/the-regulative-principle-of-worship/
[2] Quoted from the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, 22.1.
[3] This means that the Anglican and Lutheran traditions felt free to retain more of Medieval church practice than the Reformed churches would have been comfortable with.
[4] For a biblical explanation of the regulative principle, listen to this teaching from CRBC on Sermon Audio: https://www.sermonaudio.com/solo/crbcaustralia/sermons/921221956421578/
[5] See Pagan Christianity?, Introduction, Kindle location 420.
[6] See, for example: Acts 2:42; 1 Timothy 2:1, 4:13; Ephesians 5:19; Matthew 28:19; Luke 22:19.
[7] See Clark, R.S. (2013). On Elements and Circumstances. The Heidelblog. https://heidelblog.net/2013/05/on-elements-and-circumstances/
[8] Quoted from the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, 1.6.
[9] Viola and Barna actually come close to doing exactly that, when in a footnote they call synagogue architecture “pagan”. See footnote 8 in Chapter 3 of Pagan Christianity? We might ask: if Jesus, by his free participation in synagogue worship, indicated his indifference to the use of “pagan” architecture for the Jews, why would that be a problem for Christians, when it comes to church architecture?
Next Section: 2.4 The distinction between description and prescription
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