We celebrate five-hundred episodes of Christ the Center with an open discussion on worship, the regulative principle, and the apologetic impetus. Join us for a conversation that ties together many of our favorite themes from the past nine+ years.

Links

• Redeemer Presbyterian ballet offertory
• Carl Trueman, “The Church of England’s Nietzschean Proposal“

Participants: Camden Bucey, Glen Clary, Jeff Waddington, Jim Cassidy

Several traditions within the Christian church have understood the second commandment differently. Some have understood it is a prohibition against statues. Others understand the commandment to prohibit images of God in worship. Still others argue it is a prohibition against all images as representations of God. We discuss the duties required and reasons annexed to the second commandment as well as the liturgical theology inherent to the issue.

Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 21: Of Religious Worship, and the Sabbath Day

1. The light of nature showeth that there is a God, who hath lordship and sovereignty over all, is good, and doth good unto all, and is therefore to be feared, loved, praised, called upon, trusted in, and served, with all the heart, and with all the soul, and with all the might. But the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshiped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scripture.

Westminster Larger Catechism

Q. 107. Which is the second commandment?
A. The second commandment is, Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

Q. 108. What are the duties required in the second commandment?
A. The duties required in the second commandment are, the receiving, observing, and keeping pure and entire, all such religious worship and ordinances as God hath instituted in his word; particularly prayer and thanksgiving in the name of Christ; the reading, preaching, and hearing of the word; the administration and receiving of the sacraments; church government and discipline; the ministry and maintenance thereof; religious fasting; swearing by the name of God, and vowing unto him: as also the disapproving, detesting, opposing, all false worship; and, according to each one’s place and calling, removing it, and all monuments of idolatry.

Q. 109. What sins are forbidden in the second commandment?
A. The sins forbidden in the second commandment are, all devising, counseling, commanding, using, and any wise approving, any religious worship not instituted by God himself; the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever; all worshiping of it, or God in it or by it; the making of any representation of feigned deities, and all worship of them, or service belonging to them; all superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, or taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretense whatsoever; simony; sacrilege; all neglect, contempt, hindering, and opposing the worship and ordinances which God hath appointed.

Participants: Camden Bucey, Glen Clary, Jim Cassidy

It is also rumored that when Martin Luther read Jason Stellman’s post on The Biblical Basis of Man-Made Liturgy, he said, “What drunken Ex-PCA pastor posted this?” I’m sure that’s just a rumor.

Nick’s article posted on the website of Jason Stellman, the self-described “drunk ex-pastor” who served as prosecutor in the Peter Leithart trial, awards Calvin a dunce cap for not realizing that his liturgy contradicted the Reformed doctrine of justification.

It’s not clear to me how the Confession of Sins and Prayer for Pardon [in Calvin’s liturgy] is compatible with the Reformed idea that man’s sins are completely forgiven at the moment of Justification and that God only views man in light of the Righteousness of Christ imputed to him. Why ask for forgiveness of sins every Sunday if you believe all your sins were already forgiven and that God never counts your sins against you?

It is true that Calvin’s liturgy—like the liturgies of Luther, Cranmer, Bucer, and Knox—included a Corporate Confession of Sin and Declaration of Pardon.

In Calvin’s Strasbourg service, after the Confession of Sin, Calvin would deliver “some word of Scripture to console the conscience”; then, he would pronounce “the Absolution in this manner:”

Let each of you truly acknowledge that he is a sinner, humbling himself before God, and believe that the heavenly Father wills to be gracious unto him in Jesus Christ. To all those that repent in this wise, and look to Jesus Christ for their salvation, I declare that the absolution of sins is effected, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Calvin’s Strasbourg service followed the pattern of Martin Bucer’s liturgy, which began with a Confession of Sin followed by a “Word of Comfort” from holy scripture (1 Tim. 1:15; or John 3:16; 3:35–36; Acts 10:43; 1 John 2:1–2; etc.) and the “Absolution.”

This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Let everyone, with St. Paul, truly acknowledge this in his heart and believe in Christ. Thus, in His name, I proclaim unto you the forgiveness of all your sins, and declare you to be loosed of them on earth, that you be loosed of them also in heaven, in eternity. Amen.

Bucer’s liturgy makes it clear that the Absolution is an exercise of the keys of the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 16:19; 18:18). As excommunication declares that the impenitent are bound by sins, absolution declares that the penitents are loosed from them.

We find a similar pattern of Confession of Sin followed by an Absolution in the liturgies of Luther, Cranmer and Knox.

How is it that Nick and Stellman can see so clearly what all these Reformers failed to see?

The Confession of Faith that Stellman at one time believed and defended clearly explains why praying for forgiveness of sins every Lord’s Day does not contradict the Reformed doctrine of justification.

God doth continue to forgive the sins of those that are justified; and, although they can never fall from the state of justification, yet they may, by their sins, fall under God’s fatherly displeasure, and not have the light of his countenance restored unto them, until they humble themselves, confess their sins, beg pardon, and renew their faith and repentance (WCF 11:5)

J. G. Vos explains,

The justified person still can and daily does commit sin in thought, word and deed…. These “daily failings” cannot cancel his standing as a justified person; they cannot bring him into condemnation. But they can offend his heavenly Father, and cause him to withdraw the light of his countenance from the person’s soul for a time. They cannot destroy the believer’s union with God, but they can interrupt and weaken his communion with God. Therefore, the believer is daily to confess his sins and to pray for God’s pardon for his daily failings.

It is not uncommon for a drunken man to believe that he has a brilliant idea that no one else has ever thought of. His sober buddies, of course, realize that he’s making a fool of himself.

Now, that may seem obvious to most Christians, but there are some who believe that infant baptism is lawful even if it is not commanded in scripture.

A few years ago, I came across a book entitled Baptism: Three Views edited by David. F. Wright.[1]

The title puzzled me because I knew the book was addressing the subject of infant baptism.

I also knew that one of the contributors (Sinclair Ferguson) was for infant baptism, and another (Bruce Ware) was against infant baptism.

But I was surprised to discover that the third contributor (Anthony Lane) argued for a middle position, which he called “the dual-practice view.” According to Lane, both paedobaptism and credobaptism are legitimate options for the church and the Christian family.

Both Ferguson and Ware assume that baptism is either forbidden or commanded. But Lane argues Christian parents are free to choose whether or not to have their children baptized. Lane also argues that the church should leave the decision up to the parents.

Even though confessional Presbyterians affirm the position defended by Ferguson, in practice, some of them are following the advice of Lane. Presbyterians teach that infant baptism is biblical, but they are often reluctant to require it as a divine imperative.

I think one of the reasons is that they fail to recognize that what is deduced from scripture by good and necessary consequence (Westminster Confession 1:6) is just as binding as an explicit command. If infant baptism may be deduced from scripture by good and necessary consequence, then it is a divine imperative, just as if it stood written, “Thou shalt baptize infants.”

Robert Shaw explains,

In maintaining the perfection of the Scriptures, we do not insist that every article of religion is contained in Scriptures in so many words; but we hold that conclusions fairly deduced from the declarations of the Word of God are as truly parts of divine revelation as if they were expressly taught in the Sacred Volume. That good and necessary consequences deduced from Scripture are to be received as part of the rule of our faith and practice, is evident from the example of our Savior in proving the doctrine of the resurrection against the Sadducees,—Matt. xxii. 31,32; and from the example of Paul, who proved that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, by reasoning with the Jews out of the Old Testament Scriptures.—Acts xvii. 2, 3. “All Scripture” is declared to be “profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness;” but all these ends cannot be obtained, unless by the deduction of consequences. Legitimate consequences, indeed, only bring out the full meaning of the words of Scripture; and as we are endued with the faculty of reason, and commanded to search the Scriptures, it was manifestly intended that we should draw conclusions from what is therein set down in express words.

Michael Bushell rightly explains that the Westminster Confession of Faith “clearly operates on the assumption that principles derived from the Word by ‘good and necessary consequence’ [cf. WCF 1:6] are every bit as binding upon us as those ‘expressly set down in Scripture.’”[2]

James H. Thornwell argued that this interpretation of the Confession has always been the Puritan view.

We have not been able to lay our hands upon a single Puritan Confession of Faith which does not explicitly teach that necessary inferences from Scripture are of equal authority with its express statements: nor have we found a single Puritan writer, having occasion to allude to the subject, who has not explicitly taught the same things.

So if infant baptism may be deduced from scripture by good and necessary consequence, then it is a divine imperative, just as if it stood written, “Thou shalt baptize infants.”

Those who hold to the regulative principle of worship—which asserts that “not to command is to forbid”—must either affirm that infant baptism is commanded by God or it is forbidden by God.

What seems to me to be incompatible with the regulative principle of worship is Lane’s “dual-practice view.”

Either we must baptize infants or we must not baptize them. It’s either lawful or unlawful. But the one thing it cannot be—if the regulative principle is true—is optional.

[1]David F. Wright, Baptism Three Views (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2009).

[2]Michael Bushell, The Songs of Zion: A Contemporary Case for Exclusive Psalmody (Pittsburgh, PA: Crown and Covenant, 1993) 123.

An Episcoterian (the term used for Presbyterians who ape the Anglicans) is a relatively modern phenomenon.

In the late nineteenth century, the mainline Presbyterian Church started down the Canterbury trail. But in more recent years, many conservative and confessional Presbyterian churches have followed suit.

Perhaps this fascination with Anglicanism has something to do with the love affair that some Presbyterian churches are having with N. T. Wright.

Whatever factors have given rise to Episcoterian worship, one thing is clear, Presbyterians are abandoning their liturgical heritage.

Historically, the Reformed church has argued that in matters of worship, Geneva and Canterbury are incompatible.

In Presbyterian theology, the church’s authority is not legislative but ministerial and declarative (cf. OPC Form of Government III.3).

Consequently, when the leaders of the church determine what shall be done in worship and direct the saints to participate in worship, they must not impose practices on the saints that are not prescribed in holy scripture.

This teaching is typically referred to as the Regulative Principle of Worship (RPW). The RPW sets the Reformed church apart from the Anglican Church, which rejects the RPW in favor of what’s commonly known as the Normative Principle of Worship (NPW).

In the vestments controversy that centered around John Hooper and in the “Black Rubric” controversy that centered around John Knox, both Hooper and Knox used the RPW to defend their views. But Archbishop Thomas Cranmer emphatically rejected it and even characterized it as “the chief foundation of the error of the Anabaptists, and of diverse other sects.”

Cranmer said that the RPW is a “subversion of all order as well in religion as in common policy.” Likewise, Richard Hooker characterized it as legalistic and irrational.

Thomas M’Crie quipped that the RPW separated Canterbury from Geneva. The school of Canterbury “held that what was unforbidden in Scripture might be treated as indifferent,” while the school of Geneva held that “what was unbidden in Scripture must be rejected.”[1]

For example, Article Twenty of the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England states that “The Church has power to decree Rites or Ceremonies” provided that those rites and ceremonies are not contrary to the scriptures.

Article Thirty-four adds,

Whosoever, through his private judgment, willingly and purposely, does openly break the Traditions and Ceremonies of the Church, which be not repugnant to the Word of God, and be ordained and approved by common authority, ought to be rebuked openly (that others may fear to do the like), as he that offends against the common order of the Church, and hurts the authority of the Magistrate, and wounds the consciences of the weak brethren.

This was why Puritans and Covenanters could be disciplined or persecuted for refusing to submit to man-made rites and ceremonies. John Owen traces the bloodshed and persecution of many saints back to this rejection of the RPW.

The principle that the church has power to institute any thing or ceremony belonging to the worship of God … beyond the observance of such circumstances as necessarily attend such ordinances as Christ Himself hath instituted, lies at the bottom of all the horrible superstition and idolatry, of all the confusion, blood, persecution, and wars, that have for long a season spread themselves over the face of the Christian world.[2]

Furthermore, the Puritans, following the teaching of Calvin, pointed out that the corruption of the human heart rendered man unable to determine acceptable forms of worship. The heart of man is a perpetual factory of idols, argued Calvin.

William Young puts it this way,

The total corruption and deceitfulness of the human heart disqualifies man from judging what is to be admitted into the worship of God. It may be that before the fall, our first parents had written on their hearts the law of worship and by looking within the depth of their own beings, could read off the commandments of God. Yet even then, they were not without direct external communication of the will of Him who walked and talked with them in the garden. Since the fall, however, though the human conscience still witnesses in all men that worship is due to the supreme Being, no information can be gained from the heart of man as to how God is to be worshiped.

In rejecting the RPW, Anglicans failed to recognize the danger of allowing fallen men to determine liturgical rites, traditions and ceremonies. The RPW guards against the idolatrous nature of the corrupt human heart.

The RPW also addresses the nature and extent of church power or authority. The authority of the church is limited by the Word of God to the Word of God. The church has no authority independent of scripture.

The RPW restricts the power of the church and, therefore, protects liberty of conscience. No mere human authority has the right to bind one’s conscience in matters of religion.

The Belgic Confession says,

We believe, though it is useful and beneficial, that those who are rulers of the church institute and establish certain ordinances among themselves for maintaining the body of the church; yet they ought studiously to take care that they do not depart from those things which Christ, our only Master, has instituted. And, therefore, we reject all human inventions, and all laws which man would introduce into the worship of God, thereby to bind and compel the conscience in any manner whatsoever.

Likewise, the Westminster Confession of Faith states that man’s conscience is “free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are, in anything, contrary to his Word; or beside it, if matters of faith, or worship” (20:2).

The distinction here in the Confession is between “civil matters” and “religious matters.”

In other words, the distinction is between those aspects of life governed by church-officers versus those that are not governed by church-officers.

James Bannerman explains,

The direct object of the Confession in this passage is no doubt to assert the right and extent of liberty of conscience; but along with that, it very distinctly enunciates the doctrine, that neither in regard to faith nor in regard to worship has the Church any authority beside or beyond what is laid down in the Bible; and that it has no right to decree and enforce new observances or institutions in the department of Scriptural worship, any more than to teach and inculcate new truths in the department of Scriptural faith.

Again, this is contrary to the Anglican position, which limits matters of faith to scripture but not matters of worship. Presbyterians, however, limit the authority of the church to what is expressly taught in scripture in all matters religious—whether doctrine, polity, worship or discipline.

So the RPW guards the Christian’s conscience from being bound by human authority in matters of religion.

The NPW, however, says the church has the right to require acts of worship as long as those acts are not forbidden in scripture. On this principle, the church can invent all kinds of ceremonies and rites and impose them on the saints so long as the required actions are not in themselves sinful.

Crossing oneself, smearing ashes on the forehead, fasting during Lent, anointing with oil, burning incense, lighting candles, etc. There are many activities that are not in themselves sinful and yet, as acts of worship, they are unlawful because they are not prescribed.

To be fair, Anglicans argue that the NPW does not mean that anything goes in worship as long as it’s not forbidden in scripture because whatever ceremonies or rites the church invents must be deemed beneficial and edifying for the church for them to be appropriate.

Article Thirty-four states,

Every particular or national church has authority to ordain, change, and abolish, Ceremonies or Rites of the church ordained only by man’s authority, so that all things be done to edifying.

This principle of edification keeps Anglican worship in check, so to speak, but if man-made worship is, in fact, unlawful (that is, if the RPW is true), then no act of worship invented by man can be deemed edifying for the church.

Episcoterians (or Wanglicans, which is short for wannabe Anglicans) have ignored the liturgical theology and heritage of the Presbyterian church. Perhaps this is the real reason that Episcoterianism came to exist in the first place.

Endnotes

[1] Thomas M’Crie, Annals of English Presbytery (London: James Nisbet and Co., 1872) 110.

[2] John Owen, Of communion with God the Father, Sonne, and Holy Ghost, each person distinctly in love, grace, and consolation, or, The saints fellowship with the Father, Sonne, and Holy Ghost, unfolded (Oxford, 1657) 170.

But who discovered the regulative principle of worship? No, it wasn’t John Calvin or John Knox. It was actually an Anabaptist. Surprise!

The earliest statement of the regulative principle of worship that I have found in the Reformation era is in a letter written by Conrad Grebel (the ringleader of the Zurich Anabaptists) to Thomas Müntzer on September 5, 1524.[1]

Speaking on behalf of the Zurich Anabaptists, Grebel said to Müntzer, “That which is not taught by clear instruction” we regard as forbidden, just as if it stood written, “Thou shalt not do this.”

This principle is applied in the letter to various matters of worship including infant baptism. “Nowhere do we read that the apostles baptized children with water. Consequently, in the absence of a specific Word and example, they should not be baptized.”

Likewise, in a dispute over infant baptism with Zwingli, the Anabaptists argued, “Children are nowhere in Scripture commanded to be baptized, nor is it anywhere said that Christ or the apostles baptized children;” hence, it is a man-made tradition that “ought to be done away with as an abuse, as other papistical abuses have been done away with.”

Grebel apparently discovered the regulative principle in the writings of Tertullian.

When the works of Tertullian were published in 1521, Grebel was one of the first to study them. In De Corona, which Tertullian wrote around the year 211, we find the story of a certain Christian soldier, who refused to wear the laurel crown on the accession of the emperor Severus. This led to the soldier’s imprisonment.

Some Christians argued that the soldier was making a big deal out of nothing, a mere matter of dress. “After all,” they reasoned, “we are not forbidden in Scripture from wearing a crown.” Tertullian, on the other hand, wrote De Corona in defense of the soldier’s actions.

Tertullian writes,

To be sure, it is very easy to ask: “Where in Scripture are we forbidden to wear a crown?” But, can you show me a text that says we should be crowned? If people try to say that we may be crowned because the Scriptures do not forbid it, then they leave themselves open to the retort that we may not be crowned because Scripture does not prescribe it. But “Whatever is not forbidden is, without question, allowed.” Rather do I say: “Whatever is not specifically permitted is forbidden.”[2]

These two opposing principles—whatever is not forbidden is allowed (on the one hand) and whatever is not commanded is forbidden (on the other)—reappear in the sixteenth century debates on worship.

Both the Calvinists and the Anabaptists employed the latter principle, but the two groups had different criteria for what constituted biblical warrant to justify liturgical practice.

Specifically, the Anabaptists had a narrower understanding of biblical warrant and, therefore, a more restrictive version of the regulative principle than the Calvinists had.

“Direct biblical warrant, in the form of precept or precedent, is required to sanction every item included in the public worship of God,” claimed the Anabaptists.[3] Therefore, they rejected infant baptism, for instance, because of the absence in scripture of any clear command or example to justify it.

On the other hand, Calvinists recognized that biblical warrant could be established, not only by precept or precedent, but also by biblical inferences or, as the Westminster Confession says, deductions by good and necessary consequence.

As James Bannerman explains,

The doctrine of the Westminster Standards [WCF 1:6] and of our church is, that whatsoever is not expressly appointed in the Word, or appointed by necessary inference from the Word, it is not lawful for the Church to exercise of its own authority to enjoin; the restriction upon that authority being, that it shall announce and enforce nothing in the public worship of God, except what God himself has in explicit terms or by implication instituted.[4]

Endnotes

[1] Dr. Hughes Oliphant Old tipped me off to the Grebel-Tertullian connection.

[2] Robert Dick Sider, ed., Christian and Pagan in the Roman Empire: The Witness of Tertullian (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001) 120.

[3] J. I. Packer makes this comment about the Puritans, but in our opinion, it is more descriptive of the Radical Reformers; see Packer, Among God’s Giants: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Eastborne: Kingsway, 1991) 326.

[4] James Bannerman, The Church of Christ (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1974) 1:340.