Reading our good friend Joe Horness’ chapter today I realized what a difficult quandary we are in. Mr. Horness has defined God, the church, and worship in a way that tremendously increases the validity of his view. I don’t know where to begin in responding to it (although a trust Harold Best has done an excellent job just a few pages later).
Aside from being an apparently rabid Arminian/Semi-Pelagian hybrid (p 99), he has a strange sort of consustantiational, theophanical, warm and fuzzy definition of worship. The best definition I could find was
“It is a two-way communication between God and his people. We exalt God. He reveals his presence and changes our hearts. We pour out our hearts and remember his greatness. Refusing to be outdone, he meets our needs for intimacy and grace.”
I’m not sure where he gets some of this. Two-way communication? It seems that God speaks to us through his Word, so I guess if we’re singing the Word then this makes sense. He reveals his presence? Umm…. I’m not sure where to start on this. A proof text or passage would be helpful. We pour out our hearts? Let’s assume that it’s casting our cares upon him. Refusing to be outdone? Uhh, anthropomorphism? Maybe? He meets our needs for intimacy? Ok, I suppose this could happen through the Word contained in the songs. Need for grace? Now wait a minute, our chief need for grace is um SIN. That is NOT met when we sing, that was met on the cross. Could it be the sort of sacramental nourishing grace? Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know what he means, and I think he wants it that way. By being unclear or ambiguous he can avoid a lot of trouble.
But what is worship? The first time the English word ‘worship’ (which is itself a mixture of worth-ship) occurs in the ESV is Genesis 22:5.
“Then Abraham said to his young men, ‘Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.’”
This is the passage where Abraham was ready to sacrifice Isaac. The next is in Genesis 24:26-27
“The man bowed his head and worshiped the Lord and said, ‘Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not forsaken his steadfast love and his faithfulness toward my master. As for me, the Lord has led me in the way to the house of my master's kinsmen.’”
I don’t see any two way interaction going on. It seems as though worship is God’s people responding to God as He has prescribed and celebrating Him for who He has revealed Himself to be.
The word also occurs in Exodus 4:30-31
“30 Aaron spoke all the words that the Lord had spoken to Moses and did the signs in the sight of the people. 31 And the people believed; and when they heard that the Lord had visited the people of Israel and that he had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshiped.”
It seems as though here God’s people are thanking Him for His faithfulness and His love. They are not proclaiming their own love for him. They are not receiving further revelation from him during worship. Oh yeah, and they’re probably not singing. I don’t think I’m buying his definition.
Also, check this out: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5216320.stm
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I agree that Joe fits his own definitions rather well. Unfortunately for him they seem to be rather unbiblical.
ReplyDeleteHe is truly a leader in the strange sort of therapeutic, Hallmark-ish Christianity he has made up. How good of him.