Defining Congregational Worship
The polemic surely has a clear-cut definition of congregational worship for music to be so abstractly removed from it a priori. If this definition is tested lexically against scripture, however, we find that it cannot stand, and the premise defeated.
Whale believed that “worship is the only sufficient evidence of living religion” and Luther famously said habere deum est colere deum, or “to believe in God is to go down on your knees.” For such bold assertions to be true we need to be careful and specific with our definition of worship. This, however, is an immensely complex task.
Although many tidy characterisations of biblical worship exist, lexical studies into worship offer increasingly complex and amoeba-like …show more content…
For this study, we will broadly bring Peterson ad Underhill together and take worship as the right and obedient response of the creature to the creature, paying homage him as king, rendering service to him as God and expressing this through participatory ritual actions. Because we are talking Christian worship, we will also assume Christocentricsm to be a defining feature of it’s content.
We are focusing worship in this study to what happens within the regular gathering of believers. This worship will include the open participation in of cultic ritual actions such as sacraments, prayer and the public reading of scripture.
Define ‘Essential’?
White states that “learning how to worship is an essential part of becoming a Christian,” but which parts of the essential activity are effectively essential in themselves is more contentious.
There are two potential ways of understanding the word ‘essential’:
Something would cease to exist in it’s true and proper form if an ‘essential’ piece was missing. A heart is essential to a heathy, living human body, for instance.
Something would work in a less than ideal way if an an ‘essential’ piece was missing. Wheels are essential to a car but it would arguably still move, albeit in a less-than-ideal fashion, if one of them was
The polemic surely has a clear-cut definition of congregational worship for music to be so abstractly removed from it a priori. If this definition is tested lexically against scripture, however, we find that it cannot stand, and the premise defeated.
Whale believed that “worship is the only sufficient evidence of living religion” and Luther famously said habere deum est colere deum, or “to believe in God is to go down on your knees.” For such bold assertions to be true we need to be careful and specific with our definition of worship. This, however, is an immensely complex task.
Although many tidy characterisations of biblical worship exist, lexical studies into worship offer increasingly complex and amoeba-like …show more content…
For this study, we will broadly bring Peterson ad Underhill together and take worship as the right and obedient response of the creature to the creature, paying homage him as king, rendering service to him as God and expressing this through participatory ritual actions. Because we are talking Christian worship, we will also assume Christocentricsm to be a defining feature of it’s content.
We are focusing worship in this study to what happens within the regular gathering of believers. This worship will include the open participation in of cultic ritual actions such as sacraments, prayer and the public reading of scripture.
Define ‘Essential’?
White states that “learning how to worship is an essential part of becoming a Christian,” but which parts of the essential activity are effectively essential in themselves is more contentious.
There are two potential ways of understanding the word ‘essential’:
Something would cease to exist in it’s true and proper form if an ‘essential’ piece was missing. A heart is essential to a heathy, living human body, for instance.
Something would work in a less than ideal way if an an ‘essential’ piece was missing. Wheels are essential to a car but it would arguably still move, albeit in a less-than-ideal fashion, if one of them was