Introduction
Many free evangelical worshiping traditions of today find their genesis in the Reformation era’s reaction against set liturgical forms and forced liturgical practices mandated by external ecclesial governing bodies. As a result, modern evangelical worship pastors enjoy the privilege and freedom to plan worship for their congregations in any way they wish. Prayers can be extemporaneous or written. Worship styles can be traditional or contemporary. Songs can be ancient or modern. Houses of worship can be plain and simple or elaborate and ornate. Accompaniments to worship may take the form of a modern rhythm section, a piano and organ combination, or myriad permutations of folk and contemporary instruments. Worship formats can be repeated weekly or varied extensively. The service length can be short, or it can be long. Modern evangelical worship services can include the Lord’s Supper regularly, occasionally, or infrequently. Theatrical lighting and projection systems can shape an “environment for worship,” or a room can have only modest additions of technology. Lyrics can be distributed through screens, hymnbooks, printed worship guides, or web-based applications. The sounds of worship can be amplified or “unplugged,” acoustic or electric. A choir may support some worship services while others are supported by a small group of singers. The choices seem endless for those who lead worship in the free evangelical tradition. Freedom abounds. Yet, choice and freedom must be accompanied by a great sense of responsibility.
One significant danger for worship pastors who are free is essentially theological drift. Drift ensues when principles that should be considered nonnegotiable and biblically essential to worship service planning and design become confused, obscured, or undefined. Scripture provides great clarity for many of these principles. For example, God-pleasing worship is offered in spirit and in truth (John 4:23). Worship should be sacrificial (Heb 13:15). Reverence, awe, gratitude, admiration, expectancy, and contrition are states of the heart that accompany worship (Heb 12:28, Ps 100:4, Heb 4:16, and Ps 51). Clean hands and pure hearts are characteristic of those who are allowed to ascend the holy hill of the Lord (Ps 24:4-5). Ultimately, the worship of the believer is his very life offered to God as a living sacrifice every moment of every day (Rom 12:1-2). Though the Bible speaks much about the attitude of the heart, the New Testament offers very little direct instruction concerning liturgical formats. This absence of specific liturgical arrangement, however, does not mean that Scripture does not speak to worship service design. On the contrary, guiding biblical principles may be inferred from the many examples of divine-human encounters depicted in individual and corporate worship settings throughout Scripture. The paragraphs ahead will discuss the implications of the biblical principle of transcendence then immanence as applied specifically to the selection and sequential ordering of worship elements to be included in corporate worship services in the free evangelical tradition. Also, the paragraphs ahead will call worship pastors to reclaim the foundational doctrine of God’s transcendent otherness first and then his immanent nearness second as the primary template through which worship services are sculpted and designed.
If A. W. Tozer is correct when he stated that the most important thing about us is what we think about God,[1] then it is also accurate to assert that one of the most important considerations for worship pastors as they plan worship is how their services will shape their congregation’s thoughts about and views of God. Worship services shape not only the congregation’s understanding of God but also their assessment of themselves and their perspective on the world in which they live. Worship services speak, teach, and inform; they are formational, transformational, and reflective. The Christian corporate worship service shapes the life of the worshiper in profoundly sanctifying ways. God has uniquely designed people created in his image to be transformed by and into the objects of their worship. As Christians worship their God, they are shaped and re-formed into the image of God whom they adore.[2] As Christians worship, they are singing theology, speaking theology, and reenacting theology. Over time, sung, spoken, and reenacted theology form the character, belief systems, thought patterns, attitudes, and actions of the worshiper. Hence, corporate worship is profoundly influential in determining the character, personality, and life of the believer in Christ.
Yet, it appears that our views of God have gradually weakened as the Age of Immanence and the Age of Individualism have eroded the fundamental belief that God is wholly other than his Creation. Man often displaces and replaces God’s centrality in the church and in his own life. This erosion has been accelerated or at least aided and abetted by the freedom of worship design in many evangelical churches precipitating wandering or ungrounded worship praxis and design. When theological substructures for worship planning are weak or nonexistent, worship can become something that is neither healthy, God-honoring, nor biblically faithful. David Wells contended in his book God in the Whirlwind that the contents of today’s worship have become highly eroded. “It has been made light and insubstantial, replaced by a set of self-focused interests. There is often not enough substance to direct, discipline, and shape the forms through which the content is expressed.”[3]
In many houses of worship, reverence and awe have been replaced with an unfitting, cavalier familiarity with God. Reverential worship presupposes a proper understanding of who God is, a respect for who God is, and an appropriate perspective of who finite creatures are before an infinite God.[4] Perhaps Bruce Ware in God’s Greater Glory best characterized the appropriate mindset of a man toward the God he approaches in worship with the following poignant observations:
For in this relationship, one Member of the relationship knows absolutely everything, and the other knows far less than he thinks. One Member has perfect foresight and knows every detail of what the future holds, and the other has difficulty knowing where to lay hands on his keys before he heads to the car. One Member has such perfect wisdom, insight, and discernment that there never has been a time in his entire history that his plans have proved misguided or his judgment has been askew—while the other member of the relationship thought himself wise once when he figured out a clever shortcut to take, until he ended up on a long dead-end road! One Member possesses every quality or perfection in his being both infinitely and intrinsically—while the other possesses only a miniscule amount and only then because any and all of it has graciously been given to him by the One who has it all![5]
If one were to ask, “how important is transcendence in worship planning,” I would argue that understanding God in his transcendent otherness is not simply important, but, perhaps surprisingly to many, it turns out to be one of the most consequential concepts a worship leader can embrace and deploy in worship planning. Divine transcendence uniquely and best provides the necessary and proper interpretive framework for God and every immanent attribute he possesses. No other concept can better clarify or explicate God’s immanence than his transcendence. Sequencing the drama of worship in such a way that begins with transcendence and incorporates the rhythm of transcendence then immanence will transform how believers conceive God and subsequently how they worship God.
As this section of the website explores the implications and applications of the rhythm of transcendence then immanence for worship planning and design, I invite worship pastors who plan worship in freedom to enter a season of theological reflection about the task (and privilege) that God has placed into their hands week by week. I hope to call worship pastors either to a reorientation or a deeper orientation of worship planning and design to scriptural principles that should and must order the faith and practice of the believer, the church, and the church’s worship. I aim to encourage worship pastors to begin to consider the categories of God’s transcendence and God’s immanence as primary shaping influences on how worship services are planned. Ultimately, I hope to invite worship pastors to consider both the content of their worship elements and the sequencing of those elements in light of the God of their worship—a God who revealed himself first as transcendent and then immanent. To help frame the call to embrace the rhythm of transcendence then immanence in worship planning, I will explore the following points of inquiry: 1) why does the sequential ordering of worship service elements matter, (2) what happens when theology informs doxology, and (3) what are practical ways to implement the rhythm of transcendence then immanence in worship praxis and design?
Why Sequence Matters[6]
Before launching into the discussion on why sequence matters, I would like to make the following clarifications, disclaimers, and admissions. First, I am not advocating that churches in the free evangelical tradition return to ancient, lifeless liturgical forms. In reality, as a worship pastor for over twenty years, I have rarely planned a worship service in any way other than in freedom from set forms and independent of governing clerical bodies. I am grateful for the liberties granted to us by the courageous Reformers many centuries ago. Next, I am relatively neutral about prescribed liturgical formulae found in parts of evangelicalism. I recognize some value in them but in no way advocate that all churches be restricted to prescribed liturgies (unless they freely choose to adopt prescribed liturgical practices). Finally, I am advocating, that order and sequence are not neutral parts of a worship service, free or prescribed. On the contrary, sequence matters. Some in the free evangelical church do not give evidence of thinking theologically about ordering and sequence. Rather than theological principles, ordering is often guided by more practical musical considerations such as tempo, style, and key of songs as was strongly indicated in the Worship Design Project 2014. Yet, sequence does matter, and the rhythm of transcendence then immanence is deserving of special or even dominant consideration by worship pastors for the reasons that follow.
Biblical Patterns and Scriptural Contours
Sequence matters because biblical patterns and scriptural contours matter.[7] The Biblical witness to the rhythm of transcendence then immanence in divine-human encounters is recorded in the very beginning pages of God’s revelation of himself to mankind. “In the beginning, God created” establishes the pattern and priority in which believers are to view God: first as the Creator and then as their Creator, first as the one who transcends all created matter and then as the one who voluntarily draws near to his creation. The Bible does not begin by expressing God’s love, compassion, grace, or mercy. Instead, the Bible begins by establishing God as sovereign Creator—the Holy One who utterly hates sin and who condemns the willful disobedience of his creatures.[8]
In addition, fidelity to biblical models and scriptural themes necessitates a certain kind of ordering of liturgical elements in corporate worship. Hence, the order of Christian worship must be discerned from the biblical record of God’s encounter with man.[9] Once discerned, scriptural patterns must then be invited to impinge upon worship praxis and design. In essence, a biblically modeled order can be perceived from the “logic of the divine-human” encounters recorded in the Bible, many of which were discussed in Chapter 7 [Micah – can you link} of “Far and Near: Christian Worship of the Transcendent and Immanent God of Wonders”.[10] In each of these encounters, God is clearly, primarily, and initially transcendent. He is transcendent before he is immanent. He is wholly other than his creation. He is independent of his creation. He is above and beyond his creation. Yet, he is not exclusively transcendent. He is also immanent. This fascinating biblical duality of God must be represented in the dialogue of worship. He is not only distant and distinct but also the one who draws near, who cares for his creation, and who is intimately involved in working his plan meticulously throughout the course of human history. God is both transcendent and immanent. Both must be represented in the way a worship service is structured. However, he is transcendent first and immanent second.
Sequence Expresses Priority
Sequence matters because sequence expresses priority. I agree with Gordon Lathrop, author of Holy Things: A Liturgical Theology, who argued that “meaning occurs through structure.”[11] What comes first and what is subsequent loudly exclaims relative importance and significance. What comes first provides the essential framework for what comes second. What comes first establishes beginning points; beginning points often affect ending points. Worship pastors communicate something by their selection of elements to be included in a worship service and how those elements are sequentially ordered; they communicate importance, relative importance, foundational concepts, points of initiation, essentials, nonessentials, and what builds upon what.
Because worship is a dialogic expression of the rhythm of revelation and response, the opening words (or songs) are especially important.[12] The opening words establish the identity of the one who is summoning Christians to worship. The opening words create a sense of expectation that it is God himself who is speaking and inviting us to join in the drama of worship.[13] The opening words unequivocally establish that God is the host of the “worship banquet,” and worshipers are the invited guests to his worship table.[14] The opening words establish the nature and character of the God who calls believers to himself as the exclusive and sole object of Christian worship.
Faithfulness to the Biblical Narrative
Order and sequence matter because faithfulness to the biblical narrative and the grand scriptural themes matters. Each worship service communicates a portion of God’s story, and every worship service through both its form and content communicates theological convictions about God’s story that are held by the church.[15] Worship pastors must be faithful to rightly convey God’s story in a way that is true to and patterned after the biblical narrative. What are the stories that worship services communicate? I contend that every worship service communicates (or should communicate) one or more of four overarching grand biblical themes: the story of God’s glory, the story of the biblical metanarrative, the story of the gospel, and the story of worship. To faithfully mirror the contours of Scripture, worship pastors must carefully cast each part of God’s story in the right way and in the right order. Not surprisingly for the student of the Bible, all four stories illuminated in the paragraphs to follow are told from the perspective of and built upon the foundation of the transcendence of God.
The glory of God. To be true to the grand themes of Scripture, worship services must faithfully express the wonder of God’s glory. The glory of God could be considered the most central story of all, subsuming all other biblical storylines.[16] God is intrinsically glorious, a term most difficult to define within the limitations of human vocabulary. His inconceivable majesty transcends all human language to describe.[17] According to John Piper, the glory of God “is an attempt to put into words what cannot be contained in words—what God is like in his unveiled magnificence and excellence.”[18] Karl Barth stated that the glory of God “is the self-revealing sum of all divine perfections. It is the fullness of God’s deity, the emerging, self-expressing, and self-manifesting reality of all that God is.”[19]
God alone is glorious and will not allow his glory to be diminished.[20] Glory is exclusively a divine quality; no thing or no one shares this summative attribute of God.[21] God declares this truth in Isaiah 42:8a: “I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other.” His right hand is glorious in power (Ex 15:6). His name is glorious and awesome (1 Cor 19:13, Ps 66:2). His works are glorious (Ps 78:4). The majestic greatness of God is glorious (Ps 145:5). His throne upon which he reigns is glorious (Jer 17:12, Matt 25:31). His grace is glorious (Eph 1:6). His strength and might are glorious (Col 1:11). We are commanded to “sing the glory of his name” and to “make his praise glorious” (Ps 66:2, NASB). Ultimately, the proclamation of every Christian in worship and in life is this: the God of the Bible is transcendently glorious (Ps 96:3).
We understand that God is intrinsically glorious only because God has chosen to reveal his glory, at least in part, in and through his creation. All creative acts of God and his continued engagement within creation extrinsically declare that which is intrinsically true about himself—that he is majestically glorious.[22] The Bible declares that “the whole earth is full of his glory” (Is 6:3b). To this end, John Calvin remarked, “The world was no doubt made, that it might be a theatre of the divine glory.”[23]
As the Westminster Shorter Catechism instructs, the chief end of man is to recognize, appreciate, treasure, and reflect the glory of God[24]—to ascribe to God the glory that is due his name as we worship him in the splendor of his holiness (Ps 29.2). God’s glory must be the parchment upon which every other story expressed in worship is penned. It is the glory of God that keeps the orientation of man’s attention, affection, and treasure appropriately directed toward God rather than misdirected toward himself. Man’s propensity to desire and take glory for himself is so strong that the psalmist was compelled to write: “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory” (Ps 115:1a).[25]
The metanarrative of the Bible. To be true to the grand themes of Scripture, worship services must faithfully express the metanarrative of the Bible. The metanarrative (“meta-story” or overarching plotline) of the biblical cannon is often summarized in four words: creation, fall, redemption, consummation. The metanarrative unquestionably begins by casting God in his transcendent otherness; God is the one who created out of nothing. God spoke all that exists into being. God stands transcendently apart from his creation because he himself is uncreated. He is not like us; nothing created is comparable to the one who was not created. Therefore, the metanarrative of God begins with and is framed by the transcendent “creator-ness” of God. As worship leaders reflect the biblical metanarrative in their worship services, they must begin with God’s magnificent transcendence as the Uncreated One, the One who is totally independent of his creation, the one who needs nothing from this creation, the one who stands apart from his creation, and the who stands over his creation as Sovereign and Lord.
The gospel. To be true to the grand themes of Scripture, worship services must faithfully express the gospel story. Essentially, the gospel story is this: “God is holy. Man is sinful. Jesus saves. Jesus sends.” The beginning point of the gospel shouts the transcendent otherness of God. God is holy. He is perfection. He is something that earth-bound humanity will never be—sinless. He is set apart from his creation and stands before his creation in infinite purity. In order to capture the gospel story accurately, worship must launch with the beautiful and frightening transcendent holiness of God in full view. In the words of David Wells, “Holiness is what defines God’s character most fundamentally, and a vision of this holiness should inspire his people and evoke their worship. . . .”[26]
Early in Genesis, the Bible reveals God’s holiness and utter contempt for sinful disobedience especially revealed God’s punishment of Adam and Even recorded in Genesis 3. As God’s revelation continued in Leviticus, the sacrificial system accompanied by a host of rules, regulations, and ceremony was established to make a way for man to approach God. This system was a daily reminder of God’s holiness and the people’s sinful separateness from him.[27] Ultimately, Christ’s substitutionary atoning crucifixion for the sins of man would stand forever as the ultimate testimony of the magnitude of God’s abhorrence of human depravity.
Holiness matters to God, and holiness must matter to worshipers. Those who worship must approach with a sense of awe and wonder of the utter and complete purity of God, the splendor of his perfections, the absence of imperfection, and his separateness from all that has been created. Holiness, by its very nature, is not approached casually or with a sense of entitlement. Rather, holiness is approached by wretched sinfulness in sackcloth and ashes, in contrition and repentance, and finally in gratitude and wonder for the gifts of righteousness and forgiveness offered through the blood of Christ’s redemptive work on the cross.[28]
Yet, the gospel story is not singularly the story of God’s transcendence. It is also the story of God drawing near to his fallen creation. The idea that God draws near to humans or that humans can approach God, albeit boldly (Heb 10:19), presupposes that a distance exists between the infinite and the finite, between the sinless and the sinful. It is God who initiates the journey of drawing near, first through the offer of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus and then in perpetual personal relationship mediated by Jesus Christ. God in his gracious condescension voluntarily chose to draw near to broken mankind and, through the blood of his Son, to close the once non-traversable gap that existed between rebellious man and sinless God. Through the agency of Christ, God made it possible for a human being to come into his terrifying and glorious presence. Through the gospel, God approaches man, and man draws near to God again, but in reverence and in fear for the Lord is a consuming fire (Heb 12:28-29).
God’s holiness represents the epitome of his transcendent otherness. It is the essential beginning component of the gospel story and is, therefore, foundational to twenty-first century worship whose theological substructure and organizing principles are properly informed with biblical models of God’s interactions with man.
Worship. The story of worship, like all of the biblical stories described above, is authored by God, commanded by God, and made possible by God as he reveals himself and calls mankind to bow down and worship him. God was not obliged to disclose himself to humanity, to rescue humanity from its wretched condemned state, or to invite the elect to join in the everlasting song of worship, adoration, and praise of the transcendent God of the universe. Yet, in his great mercy and grace, he chose to welcome believers to come and join him at the grand celebration of worship where he perpetually remains the transcendent God of glory and we always remain the created redeemed.
This relationship between the two parties engaged in the story of worship—indeed the drama of worship—is utterly asymmetrical. Worship is not a dialogue between two equals. God exists inside the realm of holiness. Humans exist outside the sphere of holiness. God exists inside the realm of independent self-sufficiency. Humans exist inside their own world of need and dependence. In the scriptural worldview, God is above humanity. Humanity stands before God, not vice versa. God is the giver; humans are the receivers.[29] God is the originator; humans are the originated. God is the initiator; humans are the responders. In this asymmetrical relationship—this asymmetrical worship dialogue between God and man—man’s place is one of humility, seeking, gratitude, fear, contrition, and awe of the transcendent God of wonder who, to our utter amazement, would allow and even summon sinful man to engage in an intimate dialogue of worship and life with him. This is the story of worship that must be captured in every service a worship pastor prepares.[30]
When Theology Informs Doxology
When theology is appropriately superintending and informing doxology, the outcomes can be staggering. When theology is appropriately guiding worship service praxis and design and, specifically, when the biblical pattern of transcendence then immanence is applied to how worship elements are selected and sequenced, the following outcomes may be realized: a restoration of worship’s context, a recovery of worship’s biblical ethos, a reestablishment of theocentrism in the service of worship, and ultimately a reclamation of an appropriate view of God’s wholly otherness by Christians as they worship.
A Restoration of Context
When transcendence is returned as a primary goal, value, or objective of the worship service planner, the proper contextualization of the God we worship and indeed the proper contextualization of the act of worship itself is restored. Immanence must be contextualized within the “mysterious ultimate context” of God’s transcendent attributes.[31] All biblical data about God and man point to God as being gloriously and ontologically distinct from his creation. The context in which man approaches God is that of a humble creature in the presence of one who is wholly other and infinitely above himself. The creature does not praise God on his own. He is allowed to thank God, glorify God, serve God, honor God, praise God, and worship God only by way of divine permission.[32] On their own, creatures do not have the ability, possibility, or power to glorify and worship God. In the words of Karl Barth:
. . . [T]he creature is permitted to praise God. It is the permission which flows from the mercy of God to the creature in the fact that God befriends the creature, that He not only creates and claims and governs it, but that in all this He loves it, that He seeks it out in order that He may be God with it and not without it, and that in so doing He draws it to Himself, in order that it for its part can henceforth be a creature only with Him and not without Him. God gives Himself to the creature. This is His glory revealed in Jesus Christ, and this is therefore the sum of the whole doctrine of God. And the creature to whom God gives Himself may praise him. What can ability and obligation and necessity mean when everything depends on the gift of the divine love and therefore everything consists in this permission?[33]
The context of worship, therefore, is one of great mystery and privilege granted by the holy and glorious God of the universe. Worshipers only come as a result of divine permission, a consent that was solely granted voluntarily through the gracious uncoerced condescension of God.
Once the amazing, sovereign King of the universe who calls and gives permission to enter his presence is understood as the appropriate context of worship, God’s immanence can begin to be properly comprehended and cherished. God’s tenderness can begin to be properly appreciated. God’s grace and mercy can begin to be most fully prized, God’s care and provision can begin to be most fully treasured, God’s love can begin to be most fully valued, and God’s redemptive act in Christ can begin to be most fully extoled.
A Recovery of a More Biblically Modeled Expression of Worship
As the appropriate contextualization of worship is established, a more biblically modeled expression of worship begins to be recovered. What is the biblically modeled expression of man’s worshiping response when in the presence of God? Scripture records a wide spectrum of mindsets, attitudes, and emotions that run the gamut from extreme awe to extreme celebration to extreme contrition. However, a sense of awe, wonder, brokenness, and gratitude comes to the fore as the most common response of man to God—awe and wonder over who God is, brokenness over who man is, and gratitude for God’s gracious choice to repair man’s brokenness.
The prophet Ezekiel fell on his face when the glory of the Lord was revealed to him (Ez 1:28. Ez 44:4). The shepherds were overwhelmed with great fear when the glory of the Lord shone around them (Luke 2:9). Likewise, the disciples were in awe and wonder when a greater glory of Christ was revealed to them at the transfiguration; they fell on their faces and were terrified (Matt 17:6). As God is faithfully represented first in his transcendent, magnificent grandeur, splendor, power, glory, and holiness, the approach to God in worship and the response to God in modern worship will begin to reflect the ethos of those worshipers pictured in the pages of his Word rather than the cavalier and casual approach to worship that often characterizes the ethos of worship in many churches today.
A Reestablishment of Theocentrism
A reassertion of the transcendence of God enabled by the biblical ordering of transcendence then immanence in worship reestablishes a more theocentric expression of worship. Right theology will not allow God to be domesticated in the minds of humans nor in the worship of his people.[34] When worship is appropriately contextualized with a foundation of transcendence, the expressions of worship will naturally be God-focused rather than man centered. “I,” “me,” and “my” begin to grow dim and less prominently featured in the light of the glory of God’s transcendent otherness. As transcendence is reintroduced as a guiding principle to worship planning and design, the vision of the sublime that has faded from the consciousness of many Christians begins to be reclaimed as God is re-centered in his appropriate place of regal reign within the church and the life of the believer.
In addition, as worship becomes more theocentric and less anthropocentric, human individualism along with the unhealthy assertion of human preferences in worship will be repudiated. The idea that worship begins and ends with God becomes increasingly clear as theocentrism flourishes in the worship life of the church in the environment established by the rhythm of transcendence then immanence. In the realm of the transcendent, God is both the infinitely glorious subject of worship and the infinitely holy object of worship. In the realm of the transcendent, there is no room for anyone else on the sovereign throne of glory except God and God alone.
A Reclamation of God’s Transcendence and Appropriately Interpreted Immanence
Ultimately, when theology is allowed to govern doxology, God’s transcendence is rescued from obscurity and God’s immanence is rescued from abuse. God is re-centered in worship at his rightful place as the Sovereign King, Ruler, Lord of all, and Lord over all. Anthropocentricism is jettisoned. Man understands rightly who God is and falls in humble adoration of the great God of the Ages. Man’s own wretchedness is made crystal clear in the dazzling light of God’s utter holiness. Man bows in complete wonderment that the transcendent God of the universe would condescend to draw near and invite the finite into the presence of the infinite in the magnificent act of worship.
When theology governs doxology, man approaches God confidently but with fear, trembling, awe, and wonder. As theology governs doxology, worship is enlivened as worshipers understand rightly who the transcendent God of glory is first. Then, his gracious and magnificent immanence can be more fully understood, appreciated, valued, and cherished. Ultimately, when theology governs doxology, a greater expression of worship fueled by a more complete view of God may be offered to the Lord in humble adoration of both who he is and what he has done on behalf of his people.
[1]A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1961), 1.
[2]For an in-depth examination of Scripture that supports the transformative nature of worship, see G. K. Beale’s We Become What We Worship: A Biblical Theology of Idolatry.
[3]David F. Wells, God in the Whirlwind: How the Holy-love of God Reorients Our World. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014), 188.
[4]D. G. Hart and John R. Meuther, With Reverence and Awe: Returning to the Basics of Reformed Worship (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2002), 122.
[5]Bruce A. Ware, God’s Greater Glory: The Exalted God of Scripture and the Christian Faith (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004), 156.
[6]Many thanks to Cody Libolt for helping me to think through many of the ideas contained in this section.
[7]Much of Chapter 7 of this dissertation is devoted to establishing a clear scriptural contour of transcendence then immanence.
[8]David F. Wells, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1994), 137.
[9]Stephen F. Winward, The Reformation of Our Worship (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1965), 12.
[10]Simon Chan, Liturgical Theology: The Church as Worshiping Community (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 132.
[11]Gordon Lathrop, Holy Things: A Liturgical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 33.
[12]Debra Rienstra and Ron Rienstra, Worship Words: Discipling Language for Faithful Ministry (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 48.
[13]Rienstra and Rienstra, Worship Words, 48.
[14]Edith M. Humphrey, Grand Entrance: Worship on Earth as in Heaven. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2011), 70.
[15]Hart and Meuther, With Reverence and Awe, 16.
[16]I acknowledge that theologians have posited different overarching rubrics to interpret the Bible as a whole (e.g., the beauty of God, the covenant faithfulness of God, the kingship of God, et al.). However, I contend that God’s glory is the best fountainhead from which all other understandings of God and his Word flow.
[17]Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1991), 337.
[18]John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist, 3rd ed. (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2003), 308.
[19]Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, eds. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, vol. 2, The Doctrine of God, pt. 1, trans. T. H. L. Parker et al. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957), 643.
[20]Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 2, The Doctrine of God, pt. 1, 648.
[21]Christopher W. Morgan, “Toward a Theology of the Glory of God” in The Glory of God, eds. Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 169.
[22]Morgan and Peterson, The Glory of God, 160-87.
[23]John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews, trans. John Owen (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1948), 266.
[24]Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics, “The Westminster Shorter Catechism” Question 1, under “Historic Church Documents,” http://www.reformed.org/documents/wsc/index.html (accessed November 11, 2014).
[25]Stephen J. Nichols, “The Glory of God Present and Past” in The Glory of God, eds. Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 25.
[26]Wells, God in the Wasteland, 136.
[27]Hart and Meuther, With Reverence and Awe, 123.
[28]Wells, God in the Wasteland, 138.
[29]Ware, God’s Greater Glory, 18, 33, and 157.
[30]New Testament worship is redefined by Christ. Deeply ensconced in the fabric of Judaism is this first command given by God to his covenant people on Sinai mountain: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exod 20:3). Surrounded by the pagan worship of myriad gods, the people of Israel were commanded to follow, serve, and obey the one true God, Yahweh. In fact, the central confession of the Jewish faith is “Hear O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut 6:4). This statement, a profound declaration of exclusivity of allegiance to God and the rejection of any hint of polytheism, was the compass that kept Israel pointing true north in their allegiance and worship. Israel was to worship Yahweh, the great I AM, as its God singularly and exclusively. Though it took many centuries, by the end of the Old Testament, the idolatry-prone people of Israel had reformed to the point of embracing Yahweh as their only God.
In the midst of monotheistic Israel, Jesus of Nazareth burst into the unfolding story of redemption and claims to be God to those pledged to serve and worship the one true God, Yahweh. As Christ steps onto stage of redemptive drama, he inaugurates a new era of Trinitarian worship. “The Trinitarian nature of God is revealed to us in the coming of the Son, from the Father, in the power of the Holy Spirit” (Due, Created for Worship, 149). In the minds of the New Testament writers, the concept of Trinity was simply accepted and understood. It was not a subject of the theological discourse that would ensue among the early church fathers for the next several centuries. At first glance, it may seem strange that the jealous God of the Old Testament who held exclusive worship rights of his people would allow for another to be worshiped. Yet, God was pleased to dwell in fullness in Christ and through Christ “to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col 1:19-20).
The New Testament writers taught that Jesus was the begotten Son of God as well as God himself. Christ came as the full and complete revelation of God the Father. John the Evangelist legitimizes the worship of Christ by attesting to the divinity of Christ (Due, Created for Worship, 149). In the apostle John’s teaching, Jesus is the Lamb of God who is deserving of the same worship as God (Schreiner, New Testament Theology, 421). John records that Jesus was pre-existent with the Father in eternity past (John 17:5, 24). John also attests that it is the will of God the Father that all should worship the Son (Carson, Worship by the Book, 41). John 5:23 indicates that God receives honor as we honor Christ in worship. In fact, Philippians 2:9-11 shows that God the Father himself has exalted Christ—“Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
In the book of Revelation, John collocates God and Christ throughout with each receiving equal praise, equal worship, and equal adoration. In Revelation 5, the twenty-four elders and four living beings bow and worship God the Father—the one who sits on the throne and the Lamb (Grudem, Systematic Theology, 549). In Revelation 7:9, the redeemed from every nation and tongue stand before the throne of God the Father and before the Lamb in worship. Revelation 11:15 records this example of a collocation of God and Christ: “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” Revelation 11:15 also teaches that the ownership of the kingdom belongs both to the Lord and his Christ. Likewise, the redeemed are referred to as the first fruits of “God and the Lamb’ in Revelation 14:4. Revelation 12:10 attests that God and Christ hold authority—”the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come” (Schreiner, New Testament Theology, 422).
For New Testament believers, Christ transforms worship into the “gift of participating through the Spirit in the incarnate Son’s communion with the Father” (Torrance, Community and the Triune God of Grace, 1). Christ absolutely and irreversibly changed the face of worship. Monotheistic Unitarianism is forever transformed into Monotheistic Trinitarianism as believers worship God in Christ through the Holy Spirit (Hustad, True Worship, 40). God the Father in no way takes offense at worship offered to Christ. Instead, he sanctions it and demands it. Worship of Christ is the will of the Father and brings glory to the Father (Carson, Worship By the Book, 41). New Testament worship is forever transformed to be Trinitarian with Christ as its central focal point.
[31]John C. Robertson, Jr., The Loss and Recovery of Transcendence: The Will to Power and the Light of Heaven (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1995), 85.
[32]Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 2, The Doctrine of God, pt. 1, 670-71.
[33]Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 2, The Doctrine of God, pt. 1, 671-72.
[34]Susan J. White, Foundations of Christian Worship, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 13.