Worship has become a hotly debated topic across confessional lines and in our own circles. In an effort to bring clarity to this issue the 35 district presidents of our synod issued eight theses, which I would like to examine over the course of the next few months, devoting one blog or two to each of the theses. I will not blog exclusively on this topic until it is completed, but rather intersperse it with blogs on other topics. Overall, I think that the theses point us in the right direction, although how one fleshes out the ideas behind each thesis is crucial.
The first thesis is that “worship is not an adiaphoron.” An adiaphoron (plural: adiaphora) is something neither forbidden nor commanded; an individual is able to make whatever choice he or she desires in the matter. Whether one has Cheerios or Frosted Flakes for breakfast is an adiaphoron. Indeed, whether one skips breakfast or not is an adiaphoron, although a doctor might argue to the contrary.
As later theses will demonstrate, there are many things in worship that are adiaphora. Do we stand for hymn stanzas that mention the Trinity? Do we commune kneeling or standing? How do we gather the offering? Do we confess the creed before or after the sermon? There is some flexibility on the particulars, but worship itself is not an adiaphoron. We are commanded by God to hear His Word and to receive the sacrament of His Son’s body and blood. We are commanded to make disciples by baptizing and teaching. In response to God’s grace we are obligated to pour forth our prayers and our praises before Him. Conversely, we are forbidden to pray to idols or to seek divine help from any other source but the LORD God. Moreover, we are forbidden to neglect the gathering together of the saints and are commanded to support one another through our common worship. The authors of the eight theses acknowledge these truths by drawing the following corollaries: “worship is commanded by God; the highest form of worship is faith; worship is Trinitarian, and centered in Christ; the means by which faith is created and nurtured are essential to worship.”
Even on matters that are genuinely adiaphora there ought to be serious thought. Practicalities such as the size of a congregation may dictate whether we commune kneeling or standing, for example, but in either posture we should do so with reverence, and any church making that decision should do so with great care and reflection. In so doing we will avoid two extremes. One is to find a dogma at stake in every minor choice and then to say that any difference in the most trivial areas of practice reflects an entirely different confession. The other extreme is to say that we can do whatever we want in our practice unless it explicitly violates a major doctrine of our confession, and even then we can perhaps “Lutheranize” it. Both errors ignore the fact that doctrine and practice are not identical but are closely related. What we teach, believe, and confess will shape how we worship, and vice versa, but our practices will reflect to some degree individual and cultural variety. Those who turn every minor choice in worship into a major doctrinal issue ignore the fact that doctrine and practice are not identical. Those who have no real limits on the variety of practice ignore the fact that bad practices lead to bad doctrine.
Before we examine these theses further, it might be helpful to examine a couple of powerful movements that shaped worship in the twentieth century and that promise to continue to influence the twenty-first century. As we will see, much of what these movements advocated had to do with worship practices, but they also had different understandings of doctrine (especially with reference to the church and justification and the Christian life), and the shift in worship practices was often accompanied by a shift in the church’s teaching. But you will have to read my comments about that in my next blogs.
© 2010 James A. Kellerman
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