Lessons from Calvin on Worship

Renewing Biblical Worship – Some Lessons from John Calvin

“It is not particularly original to observe that, in the dissolution of Christendom, Europe retained the body while America inherited the spirit; but one sometimes wonders whether for ‘spirit’ it would not be better to say ‘poltergeist’…many of its most dominant and reputable churches have evolved a Christianity so peculiar as to be without precedent.”
- David Bentley Hart

I frequently hear about evangelicals becoming Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox Christians. Given the choices many of them face, this hardly surprises me and I don’t blame them one bit. Many have witnessed their Protestant congregations abandon the Faith, embrace pop culture worship, and cease standing firm within the culture for even the most basic human decencies that arise from the knowledge that we are made in God’s image. If my alternatives are a rock concert with a creed, a celebrity preacher with a following, Dr. Phil-ish theology/therapy, or endless Bible lectures devoid of community and sacrament, I might well head that way too. At least in those contexts I’d sense some measure of communion with the saints, and rightly think that if Irenaeus or Athanasius came back from the dead to visit one Sunday they’d be part of worship service they at least recognized as truly Christian: Psalms being sung, Scriptures being read, prayers being prayed, sins being confessed, and the Supper being served. And please, don’t start with me on the ‘validity’ arguments over whether the RCC or the EO are really serving the supper, and so on. We are all very familiar with the differences between us on that and other issues, including church polity and ontology, scripture and tradition, and so on. I disagree with a whole host of issues there. The problem today, however, is not the Tradition of Rome or Constantinople, but the Traditions of Atlanta and Dallas, and the lack of any visible tradition at all in some Presbyterian circles; the problem today is not an icon of the Blessed Mother of God, but the iconography of giant screens in churches with Baal-worship displays of nationalistic arrogance, together with the idolatry of worshipping worship bands and preachers; the problem today is not the presence of the ancient but the absence of any semblance of the ancient at all. It is pure American religion – consumerist and idolatrous to the core, ‘the Church Designed with YOU in Mind’, a product to be bought and sold rather than a sacrifice to be offered with reverence and awe. It isn’t Biblical worship. What it is, in short, is idolatry.

Enter Calvin

Of course, we don’t have to settle for these as our only choices. We could learn a thing or three from John Calvin. In his excellent article on Calvin’s contribution to worship, DG Hart notes some particular lessons we should take to heart and put into practice.

Hart suggests first of all that we learn from the way Calvin made worship the priority of the Church’s work. “An axiom of Calvin’s theology was the importance and centrality of worship for vital and genuine Christian faith and practice.” Calvin wrote that the Christian faith reveals of supreme significance the ‘mode by which God is to be worshipped’, and ‘secondly, the source from which salvation is to be obtained.’ It is true that the desire to reverence God is the foundation for Calvin’s thought on the regulative principle (and our continued employment of the same). But more than this, Calvin saw the terrible consequences of the fall, the first of which is that man became an idolater. Idolatry is at the core of our being, and is a great danger most especially when it is the true God we seek to worship. Any decent exposition of the Commandments will tell you that the violation of the First and Second Words is not simply the true worship of false gods, but the false worship of the True God. Calling golden calves ‘Yahweh’ doesn’t make them so. Calvin knew this and sought to redress the idolatries of his own day, not by destroying the liturgy but by renewing and reforming it.

Here’s Calvin’s basic order in Geneva:

Invocation
Confession of Sins
Prayer for Pardon
Singing of Psalms
Prayer for Illumination
Scripture Lessons
Sermon
Offerings
Prayers of Intercession
Creed (sung or said as Lord’s Supper was prepared)
Words of Institution
Exhortation – Promise, Warning, and Invitation
Communion (with Psalm sung as Supper is received)
Prayer of Thanksgiving
Benediction

Look familiar? With minor exceptions of order, it is as basic and ‘catholic’ a structure for congregational worship as there was in the Church in the West, and remains the basic order among us today.

This order is formal and ‘theocentric’ – centered in God the Holy Trinity. We don’t do ‘formal’ so well these days. In fact Austin is a place where one must learn to ‘embrace the flip flop’ as an essential article of clothing. But our informality in wider cultural activities and yard work isn’t necessarily the culture of heaven – which is where the liturgy takes place – and takes us! There we behold the glory of the Lord, adore his majesty, hear his voice, and receive his manifold graces. This means that worship is not to be thought of as evangelism, though God uses such services to reach those who do not yet know him. Non-Christians and ‘seekers’ are welcomed and encouraged to listen carefully; we hope the Holy Spirit will make Christ known to them in salvation. Yet our purpose in gathering is not the salvation of the lost but the edification of the found by the Word and Spirit of God. Then, strengthened by grace and filled with the Spirit, the Church goes to the world making Christ known in word and deed and sign that many may be saved.

At the center of the worship is the ministry of the Scriptures. God’s word not only forms our worship, but is itself at the heart of our worship. As Paul wrote to Timothy, we ‘give attention to the public reading of Scripture’. The pulpit stands above the Table and at the center of the Church. We read and proclaim the word of God, hear his voice, and respond to his truth with joyful repentance, authentic praise and thanks (this only begins with our saying ‘Thanks be to God’ after the declaration ‘This is the word of the Lord!’), and dedicated obedience. Just ponder the following questions and answers from the Westminster Larger Catechism on the preaching and hearing of God’s word:
Q. 159. How is the Word of God to be preached by those that are called thereunto?
A. They that are called to labour in the ministry of the Word, are to preach sound doctrine, diligently, in season and out of season; plainly, not in the enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit, and of power; faithfully, making known the whole counsel of God; wisely, applying themselves to the necessities and capacities of the hearers; zealously, with fervent love to God and the souls of his people; sincerely, aiming at his glory, and their conversion, edification, and salvation.
Q. 160. What is required of those that hear the Word preached?
A. It is required of those that hear the Word preached, that they attend upon it with diligence, preparation, and prayer; examine what they hear by the Scriptures; receive the truth with faith, love, meekness, and readiness of mind, as the Word of God; meditate, and confer of it; hide it in their hearts, and bring forth the fruit of it in their lives.
This represents a very high view of preaching. The minister must ‘labor’ in this service and wisely make known the whole counsel of God without ‘mincing words’! The congregation must view such preaching not as a mere ‘sermon’, and certainly not as ‘entertainment’ or a nap time, but rather as ‘the word of God’ and ‘hide it in their hearts’.

The centrality of the pulpit points to the necessity of the sacraments. Joined to the word, and under the power of the Holy Spirit, the sacraments are God’s appointed means of saving his people and nourishing them in the Faith. They are not optional extras to be squeezed into the service but rather the place and the means by which God meets with his covenant people in powerful blessing and judgment. Approach with joy – and caution! Aslan is good, but certainly not tame.

In short Calvin did not destroy or discard the catholic inheritance but rather renewed it. In many ways he and the other great Reformers recovered liturgy from beneath the encrusted layers of medieval traditions of men that tended to obscure from clear vision the excellencies of Christ and his grace. Worship became intelligible (in the people’s tongue), simple, sacramental, and scriptural. The congregation was engaged in the worship through antiphonal response and singing was also restored to the congregation. All of this was in keeping with a high view of ministerial office (about which more next week) and the Priestly service – the leitourgeia – of all the people.

Clowns to Left of Me, Jokers to the Right

The danger today is not from the reverent and awe-filled services of my Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox friends, much as I may disagree with them on certain matters. No, the greatest danger in our own day is the eclipse of Christ in the Church through our addiction to pop culture and its primary tradition – the tradition that all tradition is wrong. There is nothing more traditional in American piety and ecclesiology than the conviction that every generation must re-invent the Faith. Far from covenant succession in which every generation is charged to guard the treasure entrusted to them and pass it on to the next generation of faithful men, we live in a culture that teaches its young to eat their mothers and consequently destroy the very life-source they need to sustain the Faith. This has gone on now for so long that our impoverishment – which is great (indeed, my own is very great indeed) – is scarcely noticed by us, coming to shock only if by chance we catch a glimpse of some Christian from a former age who, it turns out, was far better informed about the Bible and the Faith then we could scarcely imagine. We stupidly think that because we have micro-waves and air conditioning and they didn’t, that we are their mentors; that our superiority in technology makes us superior in theology. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Calvin knew this. Go to the index of the Institutes and check the references to the early fathers – they are prolifically quoted throughout his work. He sat at the feet of the ancients before he rose to speak to the congregation.

Let me give DG Hart the closing words. “Worship always reflects a people’s conception of God. True theology yields true and acceptable worship. Improper or erroneous theology yields false worship. Worship is not a matter of taste; it is a statement of theological conviction about who God is and who we are as his covenant people.”

Nonchalance in worship reflects a lack of being gripped by the holiness of God; ingratitude in worship reflects ignorance of the mercy of God; making worship a product to be packaged and consumed makes a mockery of God. It is blasphemous – and judgment as already begun. This is why we will remain committed to the ancient and Biblical norms Calvin (and others) recovered and gave to us. We will not settle for new world revivalism and pop culture idols, nor need we obtain a visa to the Vatican. We will stay committed to Biblical worship, to living as a holy priesthood, rooted in the reformation’s recovery of the truly catholic and orthodox inheritance. We await the coming of better days, prisoners of hope for, as David Bentley Hart as observed, “while it is possible that modernity may not have much of a future, antiquity may very well prove deathless.”