The Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries would gravitate around matters of worship. This fact is often missed, since we rightly devote so much attention to doctrinal matters like the five solas. But the Reformation was felt and fought in the domain of weekly worship. Its retrieval of biblical doctrine eventuated in a reformation of Lord’s Day liturgy, which focused on bringing the proclamation of the Word of God back to its rightful, central place in weekly worship. And with the Word elevated to center stage, every other liturgical transformation flowed as a direct consequence.
In our age, when many are burnt out on secularism, materialism, and the disenchantment of modernity, not a few “seekers” are desperate for stability, tradition, and ritual. In their book, Why Do Protestants Convert, Brad Littlejohn and Chris Castelo respond to the small but growing trend of (mostly evangelical) Protestants converting to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Among the top reasons for these conversions, Littlejohn and Castelo identify the longing for reverence and appropriate solemnity in sacred worship. In the estimation of some who “swim the Tiber,” evangelical worship is too shallow and irreverent. Evangelical pastors would do well to identify what truth there is in this critique. If we’re honest, the cliché that evangelical worship is glib and vacuous became a cliché for a reason.
The Christianity we are a part of did not originate yesterday, and it is right for us to make that fact explicit and even felt with our practices. On the other hand, this search for historical continuity can get out of hand fast. While the evangelical pastor would do well to retrieve a sense of continuity with the past, he finds himself in a conundrum: Which liturgical tradition is the right one, and how should we weigh the importance of any given act in the corporate worship service?
It is precisely at this point that the evangelical Protestant pastor should be liberated and unembarrassed by his own tradition: sola Scriptura is the guiding light.
Scripture and Sufficiency
While the Protestant Reformers retrieved and championed the doctrine of sola Scriptura, they most certainly did not invent it. Augustine, for example, noted how even creeds and councils could err, while Scripture cannot. Aquinas, also, arguably defends something very much like sola Scriptura in his refusal to attribute inerrancy and infallibility to anything besides Holy Scripture. This, at the very least, means that letting sola Scriptura inform our corporate worship is no deviation from Christian tradition. Such “informing” might look like adopting a principle that was demonstrated by 16th-century continental Reformers like John Calvin and later refined and elaborated on by the English Puritans of the 17th century—the Regulative Principle of Worship. There are many ways this principle has been articulated, and even its strictest adherents (the Puritans) did not apply it in a monolithic manner. Often, this principle is cast in its negative dimension (i.e., what it forbids in Christian worship), but I want to accentuate its positive dimension, that is, Holy Scripture tells us what God expects of us in our worship.
The Regulative Principle is the idea that our corporate worship should be regulated by the Word of God. Underneath the Regulative Principle is the conviction that God has never left His people without instruction for how they ought to worship Him. The people of God have never had to guess what God wants in worship.
When it comes to the New Testament church, God’s Word commands Christians to (1) read the Scriptures publicly (1 Tim. 4:13), (2) teach/preach the Scriptures (1 Tim. 4:13; 2 Tim. 4:1–2), (3) pray (1 Tim. 2:1; Acts 2:42; 4:23–31), (4) sing (Col. 3:12–17), and (5) practice the ordinances of baptism and communion (Matt. 28:19; Acts 2:38; 1 Cor. 11:23–34). The Regulative Principle is the commitment to build the corporate worship service around—and chiefly around—those five elements. This rationale assumes that if God desired for our corporate worship to include anything else, He would have said as much in His Word. Theologically, the Regulative Principle follows directly from Christ’s lordship of His Church (He sets the agenda), and the sufficiency of Scripture (the Word of God is capable to do the work of God among the people of God; an innovative posture implies that we could improve upon what God has expressly told us to do).
The Evergreen Relevance of the Regulative Principle
So what does this mean for the local church’s weekly worship? It means we need not reinvent the wheel. This Regulative Principle, as a direct application of sola Scriptura, is incredibly liberating. We do not have to be novel or inventive in our corporate worship. We do not have to guess what kind of activities will “resonate” or “be effective” for Christian discipleship or evangelism.
Additionally, the Regulative Principle strikes an important chord in the heart of pastoral ministry. A local church’s pastors bind the consciences of her members to practice whatever a local church does in worship. This is no small thing. When a church gathers, she gathers as a single body to worship her King. The church that includes an element in its corporate worship that is not expressed in Scripture requires something of all who are present; the conscientious member who objects cannot simply opt out on the personal level. He is there as a participant of what the church is doing. The pastors have essentially already declared, “This is our corporate expression of worship.” This is a weighty reality, so the Regulative Principle is a way of protecting not only the theological integrity of a church’s worship but also the consciences of a church’s members and pastors.
Because the Regulative Principle is just that—a principle—its application need not look uniform in every instance. Not every church who adheres to this principle will look and feel the same, though the central activities Holy Scripture prescribes in Christian worship will necessarily be there. Nevertheless, a local church must structure its worship and choose its songs and determine how it will administer its ordinances somehow. The Regulative Principle leaves plenty of room for freedom on these matters, even while naturally providing useful considerations on them. For example, since the Regulative Principle is concerned with safeguarding biblical worship, a church that adheres to the Regulative Principle should naturally be concerned with singing Scripture. This might look like singing the psalms directly or it might look like singing theologically rich songs that reflect biblical doctrine explicitly (as opposed to singing theologically ambiguous songs that could be taken to mean any number of things).
Letting the Regulative Principle inform the worship service might also look like trying to shape the worship service to reflect the gospel story—the heartbeat of the Bible—itself. In other words, in addition to speaking about the gospel, a church that adheres to the Regulative Principle might also feel compelled to lead its congregants to rehearse the gospel story. This might look like the call to worship (corresponding with the reality of God in His glorious splendor, who exists independent of creation), followed eventually by a corporate confession of sin (corresponding to the fall of man), followed by an assurance of pardon (corresponding to the grace of God in Christ to redeem us), followed eventually by a sermon (corresponding with Christ’s continual teaching ministry from on high as the church pilgrims toward our Promised Land), and at some point observing Communion (which, among other things, calls our attention to our heavenly hope and the great wedding feast of the Lamb).
Conclusion
When we look through the history of the Church, these five activities (reading Scripture, teaching Scripture, praying, singing, and observing the ordinances) stand out as constants. While the Church has occasionally—and even grievously—added to or obscured these central pillars of Christian worship, they tie together the doxological practices of the great, sprawling body of Christ. Therefore, as pastors consider how they might learn from the Church’s history in the practice of Christian worship, they ought not forget that God has given us everything we need in His inspired Word. The best and most important way to ensure that our worship is both pleasing to God and continuous with the Church’s worship down through the ages is by heeding Holy Scripture. God wants us to worship Him with reverence and awe by reading His Word, sitting under the proclamation of His Word, praying to Him according to this Word, singing back to Him the truths of His Word, and obeying and displaying His Word by celebrating baptism and the Lord’s Supper. If these prescribed expressions of worship are reverently observed in a local church, that church thereby does well.
There are no shortcuts to Christian discipleship or silver bullets to transformation. These are the ordinary means of grace with which Christ has entrusted us. Let us accept them with gratitude.
Let us trust that our Lord will bless their exercise according to His good pleasure.
SAMUEL G. PARKISON |Professor of Theological Studies, Gulf Theological Seminary
