“For: the Institute of contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt”

Until I read Wright’s Simply Christian (1), I had thought that role of the scriptures in worship was mostly relegated to being a foundation from which songs/liturgy are written. In other words, worship leaders were using the scriptures in worship properly if they were choosing songs with texts that either matched up with scriptural theology or were scripture themselves.

I am not yet quite sure what I think of his idea–although it is at least many centuries if not closer to two mellennia older than Wright himself (and now that I think of it I must have heard this idea before, but dismissed it as from a differing tradition. The idea is this, that scripture itself, specifically its public reading, is worship: it reliably declares God’s character and works in history.

Contentions?

What about the earliest Christians who did not yet possess written scripture? Well, they did have the Old Testament, i.e. Jesus’ Bible, most practically the Psalms much of their perhaps original melodies. They had the oral traditions and the apostles, disciples and other eye witnesses of Christ’s life and teaching as well.

Would it be worship to God to retell these stories? Why not!

Well it’s not directed to God for one thing? So are thousands of hymns and songs: God is in third person.

But it’s so passive? One must just sit and listen. Not if everyone brings a story!

Nevertheless, it does seem especially that the church should sing to God together in worship. Brian Doerksen puts it well:

Why do we sing songs in the first place? We do it because it is something that we can do together. There are probably other things that we could do to express our love and our worship to God that would be, in one sense, just as valid. But they’re not easy for us to do together. Yet we can get ten people, or a hundred people, or a thousand, or a hundred thousand – whatever number we choose – and we can all get together and sing a song. That song reflects what is going on in our hearts and our minds, together. There is truth that we’re affirming, but there’s also affection that we’re expressing. That’s why I think that singing as an expression of worship has stood the test of time (2).

Yet there is something simple, eternal and universal about reading scripture in the context of worship. But can it really be the central activity? I just can’t imagine it.

I’d love to hear some thoughts on this one.

(1) N.T. Wright, Simply Christian. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006.

(2) Dan Wilt, “Exploring Our Roots: The Contemporary Worship Movement.” Perspectives On Christian Worhsip: Five Views, Ed. J. Matthew Pinston. B&B Publishing Group. 2008.

“For: the Institute of contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt”

Ok, the Trinity.  God is one but three.  Weird.  Who can blame our fellow Jewish and Muslim monotheists for misunderstanding Christian theology as polytheistic.  I have to admit, I follow pretty well with the Father and the Son but the Spirit gets a little, well. . . , ethereal.   

I think this difficulty is nothing new.  In fact, as I understood it from my last church history class, the theology of the Trinity evolved as the church and its councils began sorting out the divinity of Christ and his relationship with his Father.  The Holy Spirit was then understood as a part of that relationship but much less defined. 

Perhaps brushing up on my church history could lead to a later post, but for now I just want to ask some of the questions in respect to the Trinity.

First, we start with the Creator.  Obviously the Father, right? But then he didn’t just speak his fiat by himself, rather the Spirit was brooding on the waters, and later we learn in the eighth chapter of Proverbs that Wisdom was not only with God (v.27) but was his craftsman (v.30.) Before I get accused for trying to add a fourth member of the Trinity we find the statement at the outset of John’s Gospel that the Word (clearly a personification of Christ here, which becomes flesh in v. 14) was with God in the beginning and through whom all things were made. 

My point, or rather the understanding of many biblical scholars [1 & 2] is that the traditions of Word and Wisdom combine in the Logos, the second Person of the Trinity: the Son–although Wright seems to put these traditions into the Holy Spirit [3].

But regardless whether the Son or the Holy Spirit culminate the Word and Wisdom traditions of the Old Testament, we are left with the fact that the Father was not alone at or in creation.  

In light of this, one might ask the question whether any member of the Trinity acts independently of the other members.  Well, Christ did seem to die on the cross independently.  That is, in the moment he took on the sin of the world the Father turned his face on him, right?  Certainly, the Spirit led him there.

On the other hand, all persons were present and active even in this most terrible execution. Perhaps that’s it: if God is one being with different persons, perhaps those persons always act together in one accord, as it were, but with different roles.  

Hmmm, food for thought…

[1] Brown, Ramond E., The Gospel According to John (i-xii) Vol.29. The Anchor Bible. Doubleday & Company, Inc: Garden City, New York, 1966.

[2] Talbert, Charles.  Reading John. New York: Crossroad, 1992.

[3]N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006)