In my previous article, I outlined three different Reformed approaches to the regulative principle of worship (RPW). Having described those different views, I now turn to evaluate the merits of these three hermeneutical approaches to understanding and applying biblical norms for worship.
The first model, the praxis-oriented RPW, has the merit of focusing attention on God’s commands regarding worship. It rightly aims to honor God’s supreme authority to define true worship and to guard the church against abuses that arise when churches lose sight of foundational practices that God explicitly requires and promises to use as his primary means of grace.
However, while this view is often right in what it affirms, it is often wrong in what it denies. First, the praxis-oriented RPW seems to read the New Testament (NT) in an inappropriately narrow and legalistic fashion. The NT was not written to be a complete manual of liturgics. While the NT does contain scattered references to worship, there is no NT equivalent of the book of Leviticus or other passages in the Mosaic Law whose primary purpose is to offer precise instructions for the practices of worship. If none of the NT books were written to be an exhaustive liturgical manual for Christian worship, then it seems wrong to read and apply the NT in this restrictive fashion.
Second, this approach is not only overly restrictive in its use of the NT but it also functionally excludes most of the Old Testament (OT) in its method of theologizing about worship. While proponents of the Puritan, praxis-oriented RPW have often cited OT warnings against deviating from God’s commands in order to establish this hermeneutical norm itself, they also frequently argue that features of worship in the OT such as the use of musical instruments, visual symbols, a liturgical calendar, or ministerial vestments, are no longer permissible for Christian worship simply because they are not explicitly commanded in the NT. This is an unusual exception to Reformed hermeneutics, which typically emphasizes covenantal continuity in every other area of theology such as systematics, polity, and ethics. Moreover, the Reformed confessions apply theological principles from the OT practices of circumcision and Passover to Christian sacramental theology, and thus it seems oddly inconsistent to prohibit applications derived from other dimensions of the OT liturgical system. A consistent Reformed liturgical theology ought to be a matter of wisdom that results from reflection upon all that God has revealed to us in Scripture about corporate worship in light of the person and work of Christ.
The praxis-oriented RPW is also at odds with the way that people within the Bible make decisions about worship.[1] King David incorporated singing accompanied by musical instruments into the public worship of Israel despite the lack of any explicit commands to do so in the Scriptures available to him or in any direct revelation that he had received from God. The Jews later established an annual celebration of Purim to commemorate their deliverance under Queen Esther (Esth. 9:26-32) without any basis in the Law of Moses or other prophetic revelation. Jesus himself worshiped and taught at synagogues for whose existence and practices there are no clear biblical commands at all, and he attended in the worship of synagogues and attended the Temple during the extra-biblical Feast of Dedication (i.e., Hannukah; John 10:22).
Finally, a praxis-oriented RPW was not the hermeneutical position of the early Reformed churches, and its implementation in history has always been contested and inconsistent. The first generations of Reformed churches justified practices in worship by appealing to more general biblical principles beyond explicit biblical commands.[2] Furthermore, early Reformed churches widely employed practices that later Puritans and their liturgical successors prohibited as violations of their concept of the RPW, such as ministerial robes, written prayers, and a church calendar.[3] Later adherents of this principle have also differed in their applications. Proponents now accept practices such as choirs, musical instruments, and celebrations of Christmas and Easter that prior generations rejected on the basis of the RPW principle. For all these reasons, we need a more theologically oriented regulative principle rather than one that would limit legitimate liturgical practices solely to those explicitly attested in the NT.
The second model, a patristic-ecumenical model, is a superior approach because it does not limit Christian liturgy with such unnecessarily narrow and impractical hermeneutics. Adherents of the second view rightly recognize that in matters that the NT does not directly address, the church can apply general theological principles to develop its practices of worship. The patristic-ecumenical model provides the church with freedom to develop liturgical forms that express biblical commands and principles in new ways that are informed by the historic development of doctrine and the increasing cultural diversity of churches around the globe.
However, some applications of the patristic-ecumenical model could potentially become too open ended. While proponents of this model typically root their practices quite firmly in liturgies from the early church, unnecessary or even harmful innovations could result from a hermeneutical principle that is only grounded in small number of general NT texts. If a practice is justified simply because it embodies a theological truth, there is practically no limit to the invention of liturgical acts that could enter into the worship of the church. Applications of the patristic-ecumenical model are typically conservative in maintaining a strong emphasis on the central biblical actions of word, prayer, offering, and sacrament. This conservative restraint results from valuing historical roots and ecumenical universality of Christian worship, but churches seeking the strongest possible biblical foundations for their theology of worship are rightly concerned by a model grounded in an extra-biblical liturgical framework that is often only loosely connected to specific biblical practices and texts in the works of its advocates. This is due, in part, to neglect of the OT as a source and norm for liturgical theology and practice.
I contend that the third model, a biblical-typological approach, is the most satisfactory model for developing a fully and consistently Reformed biblical theology of worship. This approach is the broadest of the three models because it is a canonical methodology aiming to draw upon the whole Bible to develop a theology of worship. However, it is less potentially open ended than the patristic-ecumenical model because it grounds Christian worship more firmly in a specific set of biblical texts about worship practices and reasons analogically from OT practices to their transformation and fulfillment in the NT rather than merely correlating liturgical practices with very general theological themes or ideas.
Devoting focused attention to the whole scope of the OT especially matters for a biblical and Reformed theology of worship. The OT provides biblical foundations for many ancient worship practices that many Protestants have long forgotten or rejected for polemical reasons. The OT also provides biblical guidance and wisdom concerning many disputed features of Christian worship such as the order of worship, the theological content and musical accompaniment of liturgical song, bodily posture in worship, art, architecture, color, ministerial vestments, and an annual calendar of liturgical festivals.
But is the OT a legitimate biblical warrant for Christian, and specifically Reformed, worship? Since most of God’s revelation about corporate worship in the Bible appears in the OT, and since the Reformed tradition rightly discerns the strong covenant continuity of Scripture, it seems quite likely that those details should inform and guide the practice of Christian worship. Furthermore, those who maintain that OT revelation about worship is fulfilled only in the work of Jesus in fact separate what the NT holds together. The NT consistently speaks of a double fulfillment of the OT in both Christ and the church. We can see the hermeneutical bridge between OT and NT in the way that the NT frequently uses OT categories of temple, priesthood, and sacrifice to interpret both the theological identity of the church and also the entire range of elements in Christian corporate worship. For example, the church is the temple of God (1 Cor. 3:16-17; 2 Cor. 6:16-18; Eph. 2:19-22; 1 Pet. 2:5) and the body of Christ is a kingdom of priests (1 Pet. 2:5, 9; Rev. 1:6; 5:10). Moreover, the NT uses sacrificial imagery and intertextual allusions to describe all the major elements of public worship in sacrificial terms including the ministry of the word of God (Heb. 4:12), prayer (Heb. 13:15; 1 Pet. 2:5, 9), material offerings (Phil. 4:18; Heb. 13:16), and the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 10:17-18 in addition to the obvious Passover connections).[4] It is the NT authors themselves who employ OT typology to interpret the redemptive-historical significance of Christian worship. Thus, Scriptural methods of reasoning imply that a fully and consistently biblical theology of worship must come from typological interpretation and application of the fullness of OT revelation about worship and NT transformation of OT categories for the church’s new covenant life and ministry.
Rev. Dr. Michael Farley is the pastor of spiritual formation at Central Presbyterian Church (EPC) in St. Louis, Missouri. He has served as an adjunct professor of theological studies at Saint Louis University and as an adjunct professor of worship at Covenant Theological Seminary, and he has published articles on liturgical history and theology in journals such as Studia Liturgica, The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Calvin Theological Journal, and The New Mercersburg Review.
[1] See, e. g., Peter Leithart, From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution.
[2] For example, John Calvin describes his liturgical hermeneutics as follows: “But because he did not will in outward discipline and ceremonies to prescribe in detail what we ought to do (because he foresaw that this depended upon the state of the times, and he did not deem one form suitable for all ages), here we must take refuge in those general rules which he has given, that whatever the necessity of the church will require for order and decorum should be tested against these” (Institutes 4.10.30-31; emphasis added). In the Genevan Psalter of 1542, Calvin summarized briefly his case for the reform of baptismal rites. Like Luther, he acknowledged that the church has the liberty to continue practicing some of the ancient baptismal rituals as a matter of indifference: “Those matters about which we have no commandment of God are in our liberty.”
[3] Indeed, a basic calendar of Christ-centered festivals found confessional status in the widely respected and influential Second Helvetic Confession authored by Heinrich Bullinger: “[I]f in Christian liberty the churches religiously celebrate the memory of the Lord’s nativity, circumcision, passion, resurrection, and of his ascension into heaven, and the sending of the Holy Spirit upon his disciples, we approve of it highly” (Chapter 14, “Of Holy Days, Fasts, and the Choice of Foods”).
[4] To add further detail, Jesus’ refers to the sacrament as a “memorial,” which is a term used pervasively in the OT to describe the function of sacrifices (e.g., Lev. 2:2). He also alludes to sacrifices at Mt. Sinai in Exod. 24 to explain the wine as the “blood of the covenant” in Matt. 26:28/Mark 14:24.
