Category: Shock and Awe

Laud's Last Laugh

Published on by D. G. Hart17 Comments

Arbp LaudOr how Purbyteritans (because it’s silly to distinguish between Presbyterians and Puritans) learned to love the Prayer Book

Archbishiop Laud was of course the Church of England official who opposed Puritanism and sought to enforce high church ways on Protestants in England and Scotland. He was sufficiently scary to prompt Puritans to head for Massachusetts Bay and to lose his head when the Puritans who remained in England achieved victory over the Stuart Monarchy and initiated their topsy-turvy experiment with republicanism.

Laud, thus, stands for the state-church policy of ramming liturgical practices down the throats of low and medium-church pastors. Because he leaned toward Roman Catholicism, he gets no sympathy from oldlife.

But few seem to notice the irony that contemporary low-church Calvinist worship is indelibly stamped with the Prayer Book that Purbyteritans opposed as a breach of liberty of conscience. In view here is the practice of putting the long pastoral prayer in the first half of the worship service, with the sermon taking up the second half, plus a short prayer, hymn, and the benediction (or prayer of blessing for the really low church Calvinists). Hughes Oliphant Old has long contended that this arrangement simply follows the Prayer Book’s order for morning prayers with a sermon tacked on.

It has no inherent defect except that putting the long prayer in the first half of the service, instead of placing it as the pastoral prayer after the sermon, has several disadvantages. One, it departs from the liturgies (dare I use the term?) of most Reformed churches if Peter Wallace’s work is accurate. In other words, most of the Reformers placed the long prayer after the sermon and used it as a vehicle to pray for the congregation in the light of the text just preached.

Another disadvantage is that it lets the congregation speak its longest words to God before he gets to give his lengthiest words to the congregation in the sermon. I don’t know why Christians would need to speak longer before God does, but the logic of the dialogical principle would suggest that God’s longest words should go first.

The final disadvantage is that if the long prayer went after the sermon, then the preacher could apply the points of the sermon to the congregation and larger church in the form of prayer instead of having to end the sermon not with indicatives but imperatives.

This is yet another irony of Purbyteritan fear of liturgy.

The Regulative Principle and the Transformation of Culture

Published on by D. G. Hart22 Comments

1566_Dutch_Calvinist_IconoclasmOn balance, Reformed Protestants were no more responsible for the glories of the modern world (e.g., science, capitalism, education, liberal democracy) than were other western Christians. That is at least the conclusion of Phillip Benedict in his remarkable social history of Calvinism, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed. But Benedict does detect a level of activism among the Reformed that differentiated it from Lutherans. And the difference has a lot to do with the Reformed’s zeal for church polity and liturgical reform. Benedict writes:

It remains the case that at certain critical moments Lutheran church leaders held back from establishing churches under the cross or from defending such churches by force when the Reformed plunged ahead and did so – most notably in the Low Countries in 1566, where the Lutheran refusal to oppose the duly constituted authorities contributed to the Reformed church’s assumption of leadership in the movement of resistance to Habsbourg rule. . . . Surveying the entire period of 1517-1700, one cannot avoid concluding the Reformed embraced and acted upon such views more than any other confessional group. This is not because of any enduringly distinctive features of Reformed thinking about political obligation. It stems instead from two other foundational stone of Reformed theology: its profound hostility to idolatrous forms of worship and its conviction that certain kinds of church institutions derived from scriptural authority. The former drove Reformed believers to separate themselves from the church of Rome in situations in which other evangelicals were prone to compromise, and thus to find themselves especially often on a footing of threatened minority impelled to fight for its ability to worship as it pleased. The latter [church government] sparked movements of resistance to perceived threats to the purity of the proper church order.

This is a key difference between paleo- and neo-Calvinists (not to mention other Presbyterian transformers of cutlure). In the case of old Calvinism, the aim was to reform the church, which in turn led to various forms of political resistance and activism in order to worship God truly. In the case of new Calvinism, distinct marks of Reformed worship and polity are sacrificed in order to work with other Christians for the sake of a righteous and just society.

So if neo-Calvinists really want to enlist the support of paleos for the sake of transforming society, they’ll need to clean up their liturgy and bone up their ecclesiology. Please no Fosdickian responses of “what incredible folly.”

Why Gentlemen Often Prefer Barth

Published on by D. G. Hart6 Comments

bartReformed Protestants are not supposed to believe in coincidence. So when on the same day email brings reflections on worship and they sound such different notes, am I allowed to attribute this to providence?

First came a message from the good folks at Christianity Today with a link to an interview with Bryan Chapell, the president of Covenant Seminary, on his new book about worship, Christ-Centered Worship: Letting the Gospel Shape Our Practice. The odd aspect of the interview was that making worship Christ-centered seemed to be an excuse for making it less theocentric. Of course, one of the hallmarks of Reformed worship was the centrality and transcendence of God, an impulse that cut down on any gimmicks in the service. But in response to a question about the antagonisms driving the worship wars, Chapell responded:

Most worship wars are driven by personal preferences regarding style of music or variance from traditional practices (whether the deacons should wear suits, the doxology should be sung after the offering, or drums are allowed anywhere). These preferences are largely formed by what people grew accustomed to in their early Christian experience. Understanding the history of those practices, and the gospel-goal of the worship service, should make everyone more open to varieties of style and more committed to the mission of worship.

If church leaders try to establish a style of worship based upon their preferences or based upon satisfying congregants’ competing preferences, then the church will inevitably be torn apart by the politics of preference. But if the leadership is asking the missional questions of “Who is here?” and “Who should be here?” in determining worship styles and practices, then the mission of the church will enable those leaders to unite around gospel goals that are more defensible and uniting than anyone’s personal preference. These gospel goals will never undermine the gospel contours of the worship service, but rather will ask how each gospel aspect can be expressed in ways that best minister to those present and those being reached for Christ’s glory.

Reformed Protestants did not used to ask who’s here at worship committee meetings because they knew right off the bat that God is present in worship and the service is first and foremost for him.

The second piece of email relevant to this question of theocentric worship came from Jim Goodloe, the executive director of the Foundation for Reformed Theology. It contained a quotation from Karl Barth on church architecture and its importance for embodying the convictions that pastors and church members bring to worship. Barth wrote:

What should be placed at the center? In my opinion, a simple wooden table slightly elevated, but distinctly different from an “altar.” This would seem to me to be the ideal solution. This table, provided with a movable lectern, should serve at the appropriate time as pulpit, communion table, and baptismal font. (Under whatever form it may be, the separation of the pulpit, the communion table, and the baptismal font only serves to distract attention and create confusion; it is not justified theologically.)

With regard to accessories more or less necessary and which one must mention, the organ and the choir do not have to be within sight of the congregation.

Images and symbols do not have any place in a Protestant church building. (They also only distract attention and create confusion. Not only the congregation gathered for worship, in the strict sense of the word—that is to say, for prayer, preaching, baptism, and Holy Communion, but also and above all the congregation busy in everyday life represents the person and work of Jesus Christ. No image and no symbol can play this role.)

The style, size, and color of doors, walls, and windows, like those of the pews, can and should contribute to the concentration of those who participate in worship, and should direct them toward the message and the devotion which unite them, without necessary recourse to strange ornamentations no matter how “dignified” and “beautiful” they may be.

Granted, comparing these quotations may not be fair to either Chapell or Barth. They were responding to different questions. But what is striking is how much Barth sounds like older sources in the Reformed tradition, while contemporary proponents of Protestant sound more like a Hybels or Warren than even Barth.

The Federal Vision and the Decalogue

Published on by D. G. Hart8 Comments

I was under the impression that covenant faithfulness was a big part of Federal Vision teaching.

I also thought that Old Testament law was a big part of being covenantally faithful.

So what’s up with this (not a song making fun of Samson but going to see a comic on a Lord’s Day evening)?

In case folks think Old Lifers are humorless, the song is not without its amusement.

Presbyterians and Puritans Apart?

Published on by D. G. Hart33 Comments

Some say it is nonsense to posit any difference between Puritans and Presbyterians. Others put it more delicately and argue for essential agreement among British Calvinists. The URC pastor, Mike Brown, has given some attention to this subject through the lens of Calvin and Owen on worship. He writes with some surprise that “the likes of Horton Davies and J. I. Packer . . . see a gap between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (at least) on worship practices. The piece of evidence that stands out is that John Calvin used and advocated a liturgy. John Owen opposed liturgies. To bring the Presbyterians into the debate, John Knox developed a liturgy for the kirk that became part of the early Presbyterian experience.

But Brown is unconvinced. He sees essential agreement:

Where one witnesses obvious discontinuity between the Continental Reformer and the English Puritan is in the use of liturgies. For Calvin, the liturgies he put to use in Strasbourg and Geneva displayed his understanding of a worship service that was spiritual, simple and in complete accordance with what Scripture alone prescribed. On the other hand, Owen clearly reveled great disdain for liturgies. In his Discourse Concerning Liturgies, Owen made many statements that suggest he believed liturgies somehow quenched the Spirit and obscured the simplicity of worship. Understood in its context, however, Owen’s Discourse is a polemic primarily against the imposition of liturgies. While Calvin knew well the difficulties of having a Protestant state make certain impositions upon the order of worship (such as the Genevan city council denying him his request for weekly communion), he never faced the type of situation which Owen and his fellow Nonconformists faced in England during the 1660s. This must be taken into consideration when evaluating any discontinuities between Calvin and Owen and their theologies of worship. Both Calvin and Owen were men of their times. Yet, both of these towering figures in the Reformed tradition firmly and unwaveringly believed that worship must be biblical, spiritual, and simple.

One question that lurks behind assessments like this is whether Puritans like Owen opposed all liturgy all the time, or simply the liturgy coming down from on high in the Church of England. Sure, most state-imposed measures are unwelcome, but Owen seems to go beyond this when he argues that liturgies restrain the free operation of the spirit.

This leads to an additional question, which concerns the way that Puritanism and Presbyterianism played out in the United States. New England was more receptive to revivalism than were the most Scottish segments of the Presbyterian Church (the Old Side and the Old School). This raises the further question, again for some unthinkable, whether Puritanism encouraged enthusiasm and spontaneity in ways that Old World Presbyterians regarded as a threat to confessional subscription and church polity. After all, if you can accept the word of others for creed and church order, why not in the prayers and forms of worship. (And, by the way, the Westminster Standards reveal much more detail on the interiority of Christian devotion — i.e. the ordo salutis — that The Three Forms of Unity or the Scottish Confession of Faith.)

One way to illustrate that these intuitions as more realistic than hypothetical is to remember that Presbyterianism started out in Scotland with liturgies (from Knox) and that arguably the greatest Puritan theologian, John Owen, wrote an essay against liturgy.

It may not prove the point about differences between Puritanism and Presbyterianism. But the different ways that those traditions played out in the United States do make you wonder.

The Unconverted Calvin, Part Two

Published on by D. G. Hart5 Comments

From the NTJ, October 2000 (concluded)

Whatever the merits of Bouwsma’s historical scholarship, his point about Calvin’s conversion or, better, evolution should not come as a shock to those who claim to follow in the French Reformer’s spiritual footsteps. That it does amaze is testimony to the way that pietistic influences have eaten away Presbyterian and Reformed brain cells. Once upon a time the Calvinistic branch of Protestantism was not so gullible when it came to the gushes of emotion that are supposed to count for the work of the Spirit among revivalistically inclined Protestants. For most Presbyterians, affirmative answers to questions commonly asked at a public affirmation of faith were a sufficient gauge to a man or woman’s standing before God. But these more formal and objective measures of Christian zeal began to look bland once the converts of the revivals of the First Great Awakening began to tell about the ways in which they had been slain by the Holy Ghost (as if they had, to borrow Luther’s phrase, swallowed him, “feathers and all”). At that point, the great and ongoing struggle between dying to sin and living to righteousness was reduced to a moment, a crisis, a specific time when the convert experienced Gawdah. And ever since the eighteenth century when Presbyterians began to look for signs of grace where no one had looked before, they not only started to insist on the kind of conversion narratives that make Calvin look like a non-evangelical, but they also introduced an element into their religious sensibility that would prove to be destructive of Reformed piety and worship. They began to insist upon experiences and encounters and restrictions and insights that their theology could not deliver. (This explains, by the way, the great disparity between the biblical and theological disciplines in Reformed theological education and the area of study misnamed as practical theology. Prospective pastors learn for two-thirds of their classes that it is God who saves his people and then are told that to be successful in the ministry they need to be enthusiastic, warm and caring. Go figure.) Continue reading “The Unconverted Calvin, Part Two” →

The Great Debate Concluded

Published on by D. G. Hart2 Comments

(Reprinted from NTJ, April 1997)

From: Glenn Morangie

To: T. Glen Livet

Date: 9/23/96 5:03pm

Subject: Re: Psalmody -Reply -Reply -Reply -Reply

Glen,

I have been so long in responding because they actually want me to do work here. Go figure.

I also couldn’t help but revel in your remark that I was “right on target.” Letting that go on the superhighway for two or so weeks was about as much delight as I have had in a long time. Yes, I do lead a sheltered life.

Finally, you didn’t write anything with which I disagree. I believe we have come to about as good a resolution as possible — which is, I think, 1) that the case for exclusive psalmody is not tight, 2) that the direction of redemptive history indicates that other songs reflecting later acts of God are worthwhile, if not necessary, 3) but that the theological insights which informed the case for psalms are pretty good, and 4) that our tradition was appropriately suspicious of hymns. Continue reading “The Great Debate Concluded” →

The Great Debate: Psalms vs. Hymns IV

Published on by D. G. Hart12 Comments

(Reprinted from NTJ, April 1997)

From: Glenn Morangie
To:T. Glen Livet
Date: 9/4/96 10:46am
Subject: Re: Psalmody -Reply -Reply -Reply

Glen,
Wow, such a sensitive guy to issue such a long and personal response. I must have struck a nerve or you must be convicted by the power of the word. (Or could it be that I am just brilliant?)

Please be advised, however, that I did not say that you were guilty of not taking the other side seriously. I actually complimented you as one of the few hymn-singers who could make an intelligent argument and also respect the motives of the other side, while also recognizing the position psalmody has had in the tradition. But chances are you didn’t read my exemption of you because of the medium. Unless something is on the page we don’t read it as carefully. The tv screen and the never-never land of the Net must explain your taking offense. I am sorry if I gave any. But don’t be so sensitive. Continue reading “The Great Debate: Psalms vs. Hymns IV” →

Lent is Like Spring Training

Published on by D. G. Hart3 Comments

With friends of the church calendar like this, who needs Presbyterian critics?

Craig Higgins, a PCA pastor in Westchester, NY, wrote over at PCA Conversations (how did we miss this?) a couple of posts about the value of observing Lent. In the first, he gave two main reasons. The second was that Lent is part of the traditional wisdom of the church, “a tradition the church has observed for centuries.” He adds, “we dishonor our spiritual ancestors when we casually disregard their wisdom.”

That raises an interesting question: were indulgences part of “the church’s” wisdom? How about monasticism, clerical celibacy, prayers to Mary? To paraphrase Alasdair McIntyre, just which church are we talking about, and whose wisdom? And what of the particular wisdom of the Presbyterians who repudiated the observance of the church calendar?  Are the Westminster Divines chopped liver?

Higgins’ other reason, his first, is that Lent is like Spring Training for baseball players. “Just as a baseball player may work at staying in shape year round but still give special attention to conditioning before the start of spring training, so we may find great spiritual benefits in setting aside a few weeks to give special attention to the state of our souls.”

Does this mean that coming out of Lent, just as pitchers are generally ahead of the hitters (you wouldn’t know this from following the 2009 Phillies), are some Christians more sanctified than others?

It is a curious defense of Lent, one that spawned surprisingly little conversation at a site dedicated to PCA Conversations.  It is also a post that would be a lot easier to take if sanctifying the Lord’s Day were as much a part of Reformed piety as Lent.  In fact, if Lent is useful, as Higgins argues, for taking stock of our lives, an annual “spiritual” exam, wouldn’t the practice of weekly ordering our lives to set aside Sunday for worship and rest be more effective (not to mention the sort of self-examination that goes with partaking of the Lord’s Supper, or the daily help of “improving our baptism”)?  Come to think of it, maybe Reformed piety does not need the lift of the church calendar, which was sort of the point in one of the Reformation’s many reforms.

The Great Debate: Psalms vs. Hymns III

Published on by D. G. Hart9 Comments

(From NTJ Jan 1997 and April 1997)

From: Glenn Morangie
To: T. Glen Livet
Date: 9/3/96 3:21pm
Subject: Psalmody -Reply -Reply

Glen,

Are you a ninny or what? How can you say that Reformed worship is not centered on the Word and then in the next sentence write, “God speaks to us and we speak to him.” That sounds to me like words are pretty central, and that it is God’s word at the center, both in calling us to his presence, and in guiding what words we say to him. Just a nitpick.

The example of preaching does not entirely settle the issue of non-inspired words in worship. If the Second Helvetic confession is right and the sermon, even from an unregenerate man, is the word of God, then there is something going on in preaching that is different from the words that non-ordained people speak. It certainly is not inspired in the sense of canonical revelation. But it is more on that order than the poem some proto-Unitarian wrote in the 18th century. Preaching and praying, then, are of a different order than poetry. Granted they are all words. But preaching and praying done by one of God’s appointed undershepherds causes something different to happen. God has promised to bless them in a way that he has also promised to bless his inspired word. But I don’t see any promise attached to the hymns the church may produce. Continue reading “The Great Debate: Psalms vs. Hymns III” →