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December 26, 2005
The Oxford History of Christian Worship
I have been enjoying reading a book I got with a great deal a few weeks ago from the History Book Club. Released just this year, The Oxford History of Christian Worship should prove to be an excellent resource for years to come. The book is arranged more or less chronologically but also has essays on Christian worship as performed by certain traditions (e.g. Mennonite, Baptist, Pentecostal, Anglican, Catholic) in certain parts of the world (e.g. India, Australia, Latin America, Korea, Africa) in association with various activites (music, art, cultural transformation, vestments). I just finished reading the intoductory chapter called "Christian Worship: Scriptural Basis and Theological Frame," written by one of the book's editors Geoffrey Wainwright. If that essay is a foretaste of the rest of the essays, I can hardly wait to dive into the book and bathe in its depths! Here are some words that Mr. Wainwright wrote concerning worship that I thought particularly worthy of noting.
"Christian worship recognizes its own scriptural basis by the fact that the continual reading of the scriptures is a constitutive part of the liturgy: these scriptures narrate the fundamental story, up to and including its awaited consummation; they contain the promises, commands, and patterns that worshipers take up as they play their own part in the story. The theological frame is vital because scripturally derived doctrine concerning God, man, and their proper relationship proves the standards by which Christian worshipers seek to abide as they embody and enact the ongoing life of the Church before God that is Tradition. In very broad lines, there is a consistency in the content and structures of Christian worship across the centuries..." (4).
"God's glory, in the first instance, is the sheer 'godness' -- the deity -- of God, which is love (1 John 4:16). Christian theological speculation, prompted by the self-revelation of God in history, will figure this as the love among the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity in all eternity. It can be said -- after the event -- that it was God's love that freely undertook the creation of a world other than himself, and that it was God's good purpose especially to create humankind in the expectation of a loving response that would also please God. In the words of the late-second-century bishop Irenaeus of Lyons..., 'the glory of God is man alive,' whose 'life is the vision of God'... Humankind, however in its God-given freedom has preferred to go its own way: idolatry is, at root, creaturely self-worship. Thus humankind has failed to reflect the radiant, self-diffusive goodness of God (cf. Exod. 33:17-23). In so doing, humanity has missed its vocation, as made in the image of God, to 'render' glory to God. True worship occurs when human beings are restored to their original vocation and final end. This has happened redemptively in Jesus Christ, who is the image of God both from the divine side (2 Cor. 4:6; Col. 1:15-20; Heb. 1:1-3) and from the Adamic side (Rom. 5:15-21; 1 Cor. 15:42-50), being himself (in Chalcedonian terms) on Person, the Son, known in two natures. 'And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; and we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father... No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known' (John 1:14, 18).
"Those who adhere to Christ by faith and are incorporated into him by baptism are being renewed after the image of their Creator (Col. 3:1-10), conformed to the image of the firstborn Son (Rom. 8:29), and may thus, in the power of the Holy Spirit, render God the glory that is theirs by reflection (Rom. 8:30; 2 Cor. 3:17-18). Their daily lives and their cultic acts will not be at variance. Eschatologically, Hans Urs von Balthasar suggests, the bringing home of humankind to God may be considered an 'additional gift' ... in the eternal and ever-new mutual self-giving of the Father, Son, and Spirit, in 'enrichment'... or 'enhancement'... of the divine life through its inclusion of the redeemed creature to which God grants participation in himself. God's generosity in creation and salvation is his own 'greater glory'" (8-9).
"Christian ritual constitutes a complex symbolic system—employing verbal, gestural, and material signs—by which the Church and the churches explore, describe, interpret, and fashion reality; express and form their thoughts, emotions, and values; and communicate across time and space in ways that both build and convey traditions as well as both allowing and reflecting social relations in the present" (16).
Well worth the read!
Posted by jhyink at December 26, 2005 06:30 PM