Reformation Anglican Worship (The Reformation Anglicanism Essential Library, Volume 4) E-Book

Michael Jensen

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: The Reformation Anglicanism Essential Library
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Uncover the Deep Roots of the Reformation in Anglican Worship Conceived under the conviction that the future of the global Anglican Communion hinges on a clear, welldefined, and theologically rich vision, the Reformation Anglicanism Essential Library was created to serve as a go-to resource aimed at helping clergy and educated laity grasp the coherence of the Reformation Anglican tradition. In this addition to the Reformation Anglicanism Essential Library, Anglican scholar Michael P. Jensen showcases how the reading and preaching of the Scriptures, the sacraments, prayer, and singing inform not only Anglican worship, but worship as it is prescribed in the Bible.

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“This book will help Anglicans around the world better understand and appreciate our Reformation heritage, its foundations in Holy Scripture, and its relevance for churches today. More than that, it will help us ground our worship, corporate or otherwise, in the gracious gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Andrew Cheah, Dean, St Mary’s Cathedral, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

“Reformation Anglican Worship is one of the most important books written in the last century and should be a prominent feature on every Anglican bookshelf. It abounds with quotable, concise, and meaningful insights that extend from Cyril of Alexandria to J. C. Ryle, giving the reader confidence to unravel the knotty problems that have intimidated many.”

Henry L. Thompson III, Dean, President, and Associate Professor of Liturgical Studies, Trinity School for Ministry

“Liturgical worship has become the focus of much controversy as different provinces of the Anglican Communion have followed divergent paths. This book situates Anglican devotion in Holy Scripture and emphasizes the importance of both preaching and sacramental practice. A clarion call to a renewed way of thinking about these key subjects, it is faithful to the tradition without being hidebound to antiquarianism. Pastors, students, and liturgists will all benefit.”

Gerald Bray, Research Professor of Divinity, History, and Doctrine, Beeson Divinity School

“This fresh expression of Anglican spirituality roots our lives and our worship in the Scriptures, reminding us that the biblical narrative is preeminent in forming our worshipful and lived responses to God’s grace.”

Todd Hunter, Bishop, The Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others

“Michael Jensen offers a new generation of Anglicans a refreshing opportunity to investigate and appreciate the Book of Common Prayer and its biblical roots. Cranmer’s liturgies enable the grace of the gospel to be heard and gratitude to be expressed with repentance, faith, dedication, service, and praise. Jensen happily combines biblical, theological, historical, and liturgical insights to reveal the ongoing potential of this Reformation standard for edifying churches and promoting God-honoring worship today.”

David Peterson, Emeritus Faculty Member, Moore College

“A clear understanding of Cranmer’s prayer book—its background, content, meaning, and purpose—is essential if we are to continue in harmony as Anglican Christians. My wish is that every Anglican bishop, clergy, and layperson would read this excellent book.”

John W. Yates II, Founding Pastor, The Falls Church Anglican, Falls Church, Virginia

“Michael Jensen not only gives us the historical and theological understanding of worship but also applies the principles to Anglican worship today. This is an essential book for Anglicans and all who are interested in learning the roots of Reformation Anglican worship.”

Samy Fawzy Shehata, Bishop Coadjutor, Diocese of Egypt

“Jensen emphasizes the priority of grace in Christian worship. Because we experience God’s abundant grace in forgiveness and healing, we can respond to him with gratitude, both personally and corporately. This results in fresh grace received for living the Christian life. The centrality of God’s word, preached and taught, is everywhere in this book, but the author does not neglect the sacraments as channels of grace and means of receiving Christ. Jensen has given us a stimulating book for considering afresh the issues raised during the English Reformation and their impact on corporate worship.”

Michael Nazir-Ali, Director, Oxford Centre for Training, Research, Advocacy and Dialogue

“I am thrilled with this clear, concise statement of the Reformation Anglican view of worship in language that is generous and accessible. Michael Jensen makes it clear that the Anglican Reformers simply wanted the prayer book to be God-centered, Christ-centered, and Bible-centered. I hope and expect that this volume will receive a wide readership.”

Grant LeMarquand, Professor of Mission and Emeritus Professor of Biblical Studies, Trinity School for Ministry; Former Bishop for the Horn of Africa

“Michael Jensen’s contribution to the Reformation Anglicanism Essential Library brings into sharp focus the grace-filled gospel center of historic Anglican worship and makes a spirited case for the place and purpose of preaching, prayer, song, and sacrament in the contemporary Christian gathering.”

Kanishka Raffel, Dean of Sydney, Australia

Reformation Anglican Worship

The Reformation Anglicanism Essential Library

Edited by Ashley Null and John W. Yates III

Volume 1: Reformation Anglicanism: A Vision for Today’s Global Communion, edited by Ashley Null and John W. Yates III

Volume 4: Reformation Anglican Worship: Experiencing Grace, Expressing Gratitude, by Michael P. Jensen

The Reformation Anglicanism Essential Library

Volume 4

Reformation Anglican Worship

Experiencing Grace, Expressing Gratitude

Michael P. Jensen

Reformation Anglican Worship: Experiencing Grace, Expressing Gratitude

Copyright © 2021 by Michael P. Jensen

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Samuel Miller

First printing 2021

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4335-7297-5 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-7300-2 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-7298-2 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-7299-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Jensen, Michael P. (Michael Peter), 1970– author.

Title: Reformation Anglican worship : experiencing grace, expressing gratitude / Michael P. Jensen

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, 2021. | Series: The Reformation Anglicanism essential library ; volume 4 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020038979 (print) | LCCN 2020038980 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433572975 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781433572982 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433572999 (mobipocket) | ISBN 9781433573002 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Public worship—Anglican Communion—History.

Classification: LCC BX5141 .J46 2021 (print) | LCC BX5141 (ebook) | DDC 264/.03009—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038979

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020038980

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2021-04-16 04:28:40 PM

For my sons

Contents

Introduction

 1  The Heart of Christian Worship

 2  Worship in the English Reformation

 3  Reading and Preaching the Scriptures

 4  The Gospel Signs: The Sacraments

 5  Prayers of Grace

 6  Music: The Word in Song

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

General Index

Scripture Index

Introduction

Yet because there is no remedy, but that of necessity there must be some rules: therefore certain rules are here set forth, which as they be few in number; so they be plain and easy to be understood. So yet here you have an order for prayer (as touching the reading of holy scripture) much agreeable to the mind and purpose of the old fathers, and a great deal more profitable and commodious, than that which of late was used. It is more profitable, because here are left out many things, whereof some be untrue, some uncertain, some vain and superstitious: and is ordained nothing to be read, but the very pure word of God, the holy scriptures, or that which is evidently grounded upon the same; and that in such a language and order, as is most easy and plain for the understanding, both of the readers and hearers.

Thomas Cranmer, preface to the 1549 Book of Common Prayer1

Uncommon Anglican Worship

On February 20, 1547, the nine-year-old Edward VI was crowned in Westminster Abbey. His archbishop, Thomas Cranmer, is reputed to have charged him with these words: “Your majesty is God’s vicegerent, and Christ’s vicar within your own dominions, and to see, with your predecessor Josiah, God truly worshiped, and idolatry destroyed; the tyranny of the bishops of Rome banished from your subjects, and images removed.”2

What Cranmer wanted to see in a Reformed Church of England—which he would institute over the next half-decade, with the king’s help—was nothing less than a revolution in worship. Cranmer could have used these words before Henry VIII, for under the old king the idolatry of the saints’ shrines had ended as the shrines were torn down. But now Cranmer was free to give his words a clearly Protestant meaning by applying them to the Mass, something that Henry would never have allowed. The evangelical gospel was a severe condemnation of the practices of medieval Catholicism and the theology of worship that it implied. The need for new forms of worship was urgent because the stakes were so high in Cranmer’s mind: if the people were going to worship God rightly, then the unbiblical, distracting, and frankly idolatrous practices of the previous era needed to be repudiated and replaced with preaching and praying as means of fostering belief. Nothing less than individual salvation was in the balance.

What ensued was a complete renovation in the idea of worship along the lines of the Reformation gospel. In evangelical terms, worship was not the people offering something to God so that he would bless them but a means of preaching the gospel itself. Worship meant God giving to the people, and not the other way around. Liturgy was to be focused not on the work of the people but on their reception of the benefits of salvation. First in 1549 and then again in 1552, Cranmer gave the English people a pattern of worship that enshrined the priority of God’s grace and gave voice to the people’s response of gratitude in words they could understand. In these two editions of the Book of Common Prayer, Cranmer ensured that the word of God would not be silent among the people of God. He presented to people the true character of God, the almighty and everlasting God “whose property is always to have mercy,” that they might worship him as he truly is.3 And he ensured that the death of Christ for sin was at the center of an Anglican piety.

The forms of worship created by Cranmer have become for many Anglicans the distinctive mark of their church. For some people, to say ”Anglican” or “not Anglican” means something about the form of worship that is being used in a particular congregation. And yet, some four and a half centuries after Cranmer, the reality is that the churches of the worldwide Anglican Communion are not as united in their habits of corporate worship as one might think. Happily, most, if not all, provinces have authorized significant revisions of the Book of Common Prayer, updating and translating the language as necessary.

Some liberty has been allowed—or taken—to experiment for the sake of reaching the lost, such that traditional forms of worship exist side by side with highly informal gatherings. As a matter of fact, Cranmer had already imagined a time when a diversity of forms of worship would be needed for cultural and evangelistic reasons. It is worth examining Article 34 at this point:

XXXIV. Of the Traditions of the Church.

It is not necessary that traditions and ceremonies be in all places one, or utterly like, for at all times they have been diverse, and may be changed according to the diversity of countries, times, and men’s manners, so that nothing be ordained against God’s Word. Whosoever through his private judgment, willingly and purposely doth openly break the traditions and ceremonies of the Church, which be not repugnant to the Word of God, and be ordained and approved by common authority, ought to be rebuked openly, (that others may fear to do the like) as he that offendeth against the common order of the Church, and hurteth the authority of the Magistrate, and woundeth the consciences of the weak brethren.

Every particular or national Church hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish, ceremonies or rites of the Church ordained only by man’s authority, so that all things be done to edifying.4

The principles for instituting ceremonies and rites for each new era and place take into account “the diversity of countries, times, and men’s manners,” so long as what is ordained by each church is “done to edifying” and is not simply a matter of the exercise of whim. The test is whether a particular form agrees with God’s word or not, and whether the principle of order is upheld or upset by what is done as churches gather. In other words, there was, to the Reformers’ way of thinking about it, a need for flexibility and even pragmatism about forms of worship—so long as the theological principles were not cast aside, and as long as any new form served the mission of the church to proclaim the gospel.

This is a matter of much greater concern in the churches of the Anglican Communion today. The current diversity of forms of worship represents not simply the practical needs of the gospel in each place but frequently a different theology of worship altogether. Without knowledge of the theological principles of Anglican worship, we are simply not able to discriminate between forms of worship that cloud or even dishonor God and forms of worship that proclaim his truth. Instead, we simply do what is right in our own eyes. In their various ways, the Anglo-Catholic movement, the charismatic movement, and Reformed evangelicals have pursued their own theological convictions about Christian worship above and beyond the words on the pages of the prayer book and into territory highly disputed by the other groups within Anglicanism. What are we to make of this diversity, and how can we evaluate it?

If the stakes are as high as Cranmer set them in his charge to the young king, this cannot be a matter of simple indifference. That does not mean that intolerance and inflexibility ought to be the aim. But it does mean that we need to recollect what Cranmer and the other Reformers were trying to do when they prepared the Book of Common Prayer and commanded its use in the churches. Furthermore, it does mean that we need to seek out once more a proper scriptural and theological account of worship so that “nothing be ordained against God’s Word.”

That is the principle task of what follows in the book before you. My objective is to uncover the roots of the Reformation theology and practice of worship. But I am doing this not because I think it is simply a matter of historical interest. Nor am I interested in playing that old Anglican game—namely, the search for the allegedly most authentic reset point for Anglicanism—or to establish such a thing as “Anglican identity,” which would be by extension a kind of imperial claim over other accounts of Anglican identity. While it is obviously my conviction that the theological commitments of Cranmer and the other English Reformers had, and still have, seminal significance for Anglicans and that the theology of this period has often been disregarded in a more than cavalier fashion (historical pun intended!), I am more interested in whether these theological convictions continue to be sound ones for today. That, it seems to me, is truest to the spirit of the Reformers, and indeed to orthodox Christian faith—that nothing be “repugnant to the Word of God.”

That was crucial for Cranmer as a liturgist. He was a genuinely theological liturgist, seeking to enshrine a particular gospel by means of his revision of English worship. If vagueness or ambiguity is a feature of the Book of Common Prayer, such that different parties have simultaneously claimed to find their own theological convictions expressed therein, then that is not Cranmer’s intention. Cranmer was clear about what he was repudiating, as his charge to King Edward demonstrates. He also clearly was intending the Book of Common Prayer, the Articles of Religion (in his time, forty-two), and the Book of Homilies to be a complementary set, mutually informing one another. The origins of the distinctive Anglican worship—for which it is best known—lie in a clear step away from the worship of the medieval Catholic Church and the theological convictions that it represented. As Howe and Pascoe write:

If any Anglican prayer book is read in the light of the Articles, the thoroughly unique and Protestant nature of Anglicanism becomes obvious. Without this interpretative framework, prayer books can be seen as deliberately ambiguous at times. This is part of the genius of Anglican worship. Elizabeth made certain that the sharp lines drawn in the area of doctrine were blurred in the area of worship to accommodate as many people as possible. Sadly, in our day, the widespread neglect of the Articles has permitted such a diversity in the interpretation of the same liturgy that the worldwide Anglican Church has been thrown into much unnecessary and destructive confusion.5

In relatively recent times, the Latin slogan lex orandi, lex credendi (literally “the law of prayer is the law of belief,” but usually understood as “praying shapes believing” or “praying determines belief”) has been used to suggest that doctrine is subordinate to liturgy. Hence, The Book of Alternative Servicesof the Anglican Church of Canada (1985) says:

It is precisely the intimate relationship of gospel, liturgy, and service that stands behind the theological principle lex orandi: lex credendi, i.e., the law of prayer is the law of belief. This principle, particularly treasured by Anglicans, means that theology as the statement of the Church’s belief is drawn from the liturgy, i.e., from the point at which the gospel and the challenge of Christian life meet in prayer. The development of theology is not a legislative process which is imposed on liturgy; liturgy is a reflective process in which theology may be discovered.6

A number of things ought to be said about this principle, not least that its alleged origins in the ancient church are certainly questionable. It was introduced into Anglicanism in the twentieth century, having been coined in the late nineteenth century by a French Roman Catholic monk named Prosper Gueranger (1805–1875). But even so, the principle is usually taken to mean (as it is in The Book of Alternative Services) that doctrine is derived from worship, and not the other way around; and that, as a result, theology is a groping to describe the inexpressible experience of worship: it is “a reflective process in which theology may be discovered.” That is both a mistranslation of the Latin and a poor description of the Reformation Anglicanism of Thomas Cranmer. The Latin phrase is of course reversible, such that “the law of belief is the law of prayer.” Cranmer was clearly in possession of a set of theological convictions that he hoped to express through his liturgy. He knew what he was—and wasn’t—inviting English churchgoers to believe as they worshiped. After all, the first major liturgical change that Cranmer instituted under Edward VI had been the preaching of the doctrinal homilies in the middle of the Latin Mass.

Perhaps this might be thought a somewhat distastefully combative start to the book. Don’t we live a world away from those old controversies? Do we twenty-first-century Anglicans not recoil from the violent outcomes of the disagreements of the sixteenth century? Certainly we do. But this does not excuse the theological fuzziness that besets contemporary Anglicanism. I would regard the liturgical confusion of our present time as a distinct echo of the controversies of the sixteenth century. Different styles of worship amount to nothing at all, as Cranmer knew. In which case, let as many liturgical flowers bloom as can be planted. But a different theology of worship is indicative of a different view of how people come to know God—how they get saved and how they live before him, in other words. That is something worth caring about if we are to be authentically Christian.

In this book, therefore, I will be less concerned to outline my preferences for a particular style of church meeting than to explore the theological convictions that made the Anglicanism of the Reformation what it was and is today—and what it could be in the future.

What Is Worship?

But what is worship, in any case? At one level, people are generally sure that this English word means “what goes on in a church meeting.” We ask, “Where do you worship,” and expect the answer to be something like “St Botolph’s, at 10 a.m.” A more specific usage equates congregational singing with worship, such that there are “worship pastors” and “worship leaders” (who are usually musicians) and “worship albums.” These uses of the word reflect its dictionary definitions, which describe worship as the reverence offered to a divine power and the acts in which such reverence is expressed.7

But these common uses of the word worship are slightly misleading. For one thing, it is certainly the case that worship can be carried out by individuals who are not participating in a meeting in a church building. A believer can feed on Christ through his word, as Cranmer puts it, at any time or place.8 For another, what constitutes an act or an expression of worship is actually broader than the common usage indicates. Both Testaments of the Bible push the people of God to regard worship not simply as religious activity but as a form of life. The Old Testament in particular is vigorous in its condemnation of false worship and worship corrupted by evil behavior. This is a point on which the English Reformers would absolutely insist in their theological thinking about worship.

It may also be dangerously misleading if, by using the word worship, we imply (even accidently) that it is by our offerings of worship that we make ourselves acceptable to God. The Reformation insight was that this notion of worship was based on a horrifying self-delusion; for fallen human beings are, on their own merits, incapable of giving true worship to the one being who is worthy of that adoration. True worship is, in fact, opened up for Christian believers only by Jesus Christ’s worship of the Father. For Christians, then, worship engages with God only as a response to the prior grace he shows us in Jesus Christ.

Nevertheless, as you can see from the table of contents of this book, I have accepted the common definition of worship as indicating what Christian believers do when they gather. The important thing for us, as it was for Cranmer, is whether or not this activity known as worship is understood biblically. I will be asking, if the Reformation formularies of the Church of England, along with the intentions of the evangelical Reformers, are taken seriously, then what do we learn about the biblical theology and practice of the gathered worship of the congregation? But I will be seeking to place this concept of corporate worship within the wider sense of worship that a properly Christian theology of worship demands.

The first two chapters of this book are an exposition of the Reformation Anglican understanding of worship, which of course stems from the Reformation Anglican understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The insistence of the Reformers on new forms of worship was not incidental or simply an updating of what had gone before. It represented a transformation of the previous habits of worship in light of a recovered theological understanding of salvation itself. For the English Reformers in Henrician and Edwardian England, human sin was far more intractable, and God’s grace far more extraordinary, than they had previously understood it to be. They wanted people to know and express this as they worshiped. Salvation was no longer thought to be mediated through the sacraments and servants of the church but was through the gospel of the crucified Christ revealed in the pages of Scripture.

That commitment to the authoritative voice of the Bible gives shape to this book. Thus, in chapter 1, I seek to lay out the kind of theology of worship that undergirded the Reformation by starting with Scripture itself. Since my purpose here is not simply antiquarian, it is vital to revisit the biblical sources of evangelical worship. Chapter 2 is an account of that journey in the sixteenth century, beginning with Thomas Cranmer and his prayer books. I will show that the theology—and yes, what we might call the “spirituality,” or the “piety”—of receiving grace with gratitude is the basis for a distinctive approach to worship. There is, as Charles Hefling has written, “not much question where on the larger theological map the book [Book of Common Prayer] belongs. It was put there by its principal writer, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who deliberately fashioned the prayer book services so as to take one side rather than another in the theological controversies of his day.”9

The opening two chapters are then expanded as I investigate the various activities of the gathered church and how they spring from, or ought to spring from, an evangelical account of worship. We begin, in chapter 3, with preaching and the word, noting that Cranmer enshrined a very prominent place for the preaching and reading of Scripture in the vernacular in the English church. This was a result of his central theological conviction that, as Paul says, “faith comes from hearing” (Rom. 10:17). For Cranmer, the written word of God was the instrument by which believers were told, turned, and tethered (as Ashley Null explains).10

Chapter 4 addresses itself to the controversial matter of the sacraments. Without question, the sacraments had a cherished place within the theology of Reformation Anglicanism while providing the focus for some of its most deadly disagreements, even among the Reformers. The meaning and nature of baptism and the Lord’s Supper have been contested by Anglicans ever since. However, the Reformation formularies (like Cranmer himself) were quite clear about what the sacraments were not. A Reformation Anglican view of the sacraments is distinctly Reformed without lapsing into mere memorialism. The chapter then addresses the place of the sacraments for Reformation Anglicanism today.

In the fifth chapter, I address the subject of prayer. That Cranmer called his book the Book of Common Prayer and not the Book of Common Worship should not escape our notice. The very structure of the prayers written for the prayer book and for its successors frames the congregation in its relationship to God. More recent liturgies have not simply modernized the language of prayer but frequently changed the nature of our address to God—which is as serious a theological development as can be imagined. A change in the names for God can in fact reveal a change in the identity of God—by which we may again note that a completely different doctrine of God is at play.

Lastly, in chapter 6, I discuss the place and purpose of music in worship and as worship. Corporate worship within Christianity is always marked by singing. Today, of course, there are massive controversies over the role and place of music, and the charismatic movement has led to a new emphasis on contemporary and more popular forms of music. There were no less intense discussions about the place of music in the sixteenth century, with the cathedral choirs surviving the attempts of more radical elements to dismantle them. The arguments about musical style are a distraction from the principles outlined in the Reformation, in which the word of God must be served by musical forms and not made subservient to it. The chapter contains a challenge to churches everywhere to make use of music in line with these principles.

The Reformers of the sixteenth century were convinced that the right pattern of corporate worship was essential for the spiritual health of the people of God, and even for the evangelization of the nation. We need not imagine that anything has changed on that score. My prayer is that the churches that share an Anglican heritage might be led by those who have considered carefully the theological convictions of that heritage in the light of Scripture, those who lead God’s people in the exclusive and fervent worship of the Father in the name of Jesus Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit. May this book be of use in achieving that glorious end.

1. Quoted in Joseph Ketley, ed., Two Liturgies . . . of Edward VI (Cambridge: Parker Society, 1844), 18–19.

2. Henry Jenkyns, ed., The Remains of Thomas Cranmer, 4 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1833), 2:119.

3. Ketley, Two Liturgies, 92, 278.

4. Charles Hardwick, A History of the Articles of Religion (Cambridge: Deighton Bell, 1859), 319 (all quotations from this source have modernized spelling).

5. John W. Howe and Samuel C. Pascoe, Our Anglican Heritage: Can an Ancient Church Be a Church of the Future?, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2010), loc. 780 of 4959, Kindle.

6. The Book of Alternative Services of the Anglican Church of Canada (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 1985), 10.

7. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines worship as “homage or reverence paid to a deity, esp. in a formal service.” A secondary meaning is “adoration or devotion comparable to religious homage shown towards a person or principle,” as in “the worship of wealth.” Concise Oxford Dictionary, ed. R. E. Allen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 1414.

8. Jenkyns, Remains of Cranmer, 3:319–20.

9. Charles C. Hefling, “Introduction: Anglicans and Common Prayer,” in The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer: A Worldwide Survey, ed. Charles C. Hefling and Cynthia L. Shattuck (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 3.

10. Dr. Null commonly uses these verbal adjectives about Cranmer’s understanding of Scripture when he gives lectures to churches.

Chapter 1

The Heart of Christian Worship

. . . the Church being both a society and a society supernatural, although as it is a society it have the self-same original grounds which other politic societies have, namely, the natural inclination which all men have unto sociable life, and consent to some certain bond of association, which bond is the law that appointeth what kind of order they shall be associated in: yet unto the Church as it is a society supernatural this is peculiar, that part of the bond of their association which belong to the Church of God, must be a law supernatural, which God himself hath revealed concerning that kind of worship which his people shall do unto him. The substance of the service of God therefore, so far-forth as it hath in it anything more than the law of reason doth teach, may not be invented of men, as it is amongst the Heathens, but must be received from God himself, as always it hath been in the Church, saving only when the Church hath been forgetful of her duty.

Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity1

In chapter 2, I will sketch out the formation of a distinctively Reformed pattern of worship in sixteenth-century England. However, this pattern was not pulled out of thin air. It was derived from a rereading, in the original languages, of the true source of Christian faith: the Holy Scriptures. Hence, my first task is to outline in this chapter a biblical and theological rationale for Christian worship. Biblical faith is not, as we shall see, romantic about the human religious spirit. On the contrary, human beings face something of a crisis of worship. On the one hand, we are made for worship, but, on the other, we are predisposed to worship gods of our own making. In the Old Testament, we are taught that the holy God demands exclusivity in worship. He commands how his name should be honored and provides the means by which he can be rightly worshiped. But the tragic history of Israel prepares the field for the appearance of the one who will, on behalf of all humankind, truly worship: Jesus Christ, Son of David by lineage and declared “Son of God” by the Spirit. Christian worship therefore needs to be understood in the light of Jesus’s worship. That necessarily leads us to think about Christian worship in the light of the doctrine of the Trinity—not simply that it is worship of the triune God but also that worship of the triune God has a distinct shape which is a critique of alternative forms of worship. This Trinitarian worship, as we shall see, has implications for Christian mission and for a Christian view of politics.

The Problem of Worship

If worship is the English term we use to describe the ways in which human beings seek to engage with God,2 then one rather disturbing feature of the Old Testament witness is its blistering attacks on some worship and worshipers. There is no hallowing of the human religious spirit. False or corrupt or heartless worship is as great an evil as the Old Testament writers can imagine. Listen to Deuteronomy 29:16–20:

You know how we lived in the land of Egypt, and how we came through the midst of the nations through which you passed. And you have seen their detestable things, their idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold, which were among them. Beware lest there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the Lord our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, “I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.” This will lead to the sweeping away of moist and dry alike. The Lord will not be willing to forgive him, but rather the anger of the Lord and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and the curses written in this book will settle upon him, and the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven.

Secular and biblical anthropologies seem to agree that human beings are predisposed to worship.3 They are by orientation likely to seek a transcendent other or others to whom to express adoration. If we are to believe some paleoanthropologists, even the Neanderthals had some form of religious practices. From the biblical perspective, the story of the original couple in Eden depicts them as walking in the state of complete communion with God for which they were created. Their terrible lapse resulted in the permanent compromise of that fellowship with God but did not remove their desire for it. From the point of view of the Old Testament Wisdom Literature, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (Eccles. 3:11). Most poignantly, Paul outlines the human predicament in Romans 1:20–21:

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Paul, who observed the blind religiosity of the Athenians in Acts 17, here explains that there is a kind of suppressed natural knowledge of God given to humankind. It amounts to a willful unknowing, a refusal to acknowledge what instinctively they know to be the case. Human beings are persistently religious; they seek to worship whenever they can.

Yet, according to the Old Testament, it is possible to worship a false god. “The nations” give devotion to gods like Baal or Asherah or Dagon—gods who did not create the heavens and the earth and are not worthy of worship. The famous challenge between Elijah and the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel, recorded in 1 Kings 18, is a pointed satire against the worship of a false god. The prophets of Baal dance and sing and even cut themselves in order to get the attention of Baal, but to no avail. Likewise, the statue of the Philistine deity Dagon falls flat on its face in a gesture of worship before the ark of the covenant in 1 Samuel 5. Worship of these deities is not simply wrong. It is foolish, since they are so obviously powerless.

In particular, the Old Testament reserves its greatest hostility for the practice of idolatry. Idol worship is ludicrous because the idol is impotent. In Isaiah 40–66, among the great declarations of the saving intentions of YHWH,4 we read a fierce indictment of the practice of idolatry:

To whom then will you liken God,

or what likeness compare with him?

An idol! A craftsman casts it,

and a goldsmith overlays it with gold

and casts for it silver chains.

He who is too impoverished for an offering