Article: The Freedom of the Regulative Principle by Kevin DeYoung (original source here)

Even though I grew up in a Reformed church, until seminary I was one of the multitude of Christians who had never heard of the regulative principle. It’s not been at the core of my identity. But over the years I’ve come to appreciate the regulative principle more and more.

Simply put, the regulative principle states that “the acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by himself and so limited by his own revealed will” (WCF 21.1). In other words, corporate worship should be comprised of those elements we can show to be appropriate from the Bible. The regulative principles says, “Let’s worship God as he wants to be worshiped.” At its worst, this principle leads to constant friction and suspicion between believers. Christians beat each other up trying to discern exactly where the offering should go in the service or precisely which kinds of instruments have scriptural warrant. When we expect the New Testament to give a levitical lay out of the one liturgy that pleases God, we are asking the Bible a question it didn’t mean to answer. It is possible for the regulative principle to become a religion unto itself.

But the heart of the regulative principle is not about restriction. It is about freedom.

1. Freedom from cultural captivity. When corporate worship is largely left to our own designs we quickly find ourselves scrambling to keep up with the latest trends. The most important qualities become creativity, relevance, and newness. But of course, over time (not much time these days), what was fresh grows stale. We have to retool in order to capture the next demographic. Or learn to be content with settling in as a Boomer church or Gen X church.

2. Freedom from constant battles over preferences. The regulative principles does not completely eliminate the role of opinion and preference. Even within a conservative Reformed framework, worship leaders may disagree about musical style, transitions, volume, tempo, and many other factors. Conflict over preferences will remain even with the regulative principle. But it should be mitigated. I remember years ago at a different church sitting in a worship planning session where people were really good at coming up with new ideas for the worship service. Too good in fact. We opened one service with the theme song from Cheers. Another service on Labor Day had people come up in their work outfits and talk about what they do. Everyone had an idea that seemed meaningful to them. The regulative principle wouldn’t have solved all our problems, but it would have been a nice strainer to catch some well-intentioned, but goofy ideas.

3. Freedom of conscience. Coming out of the Catholic church with its host of extra biblical rituals, newly established Protestant churches had to figure out how to worship in their own way. Some were comfortable keeping many of the elements of the Catholic Mass. Others associated those elements with a false religious system. They didn’t want to go back to the mess of rites they left behind, even if by themselves some rites didn’t seem all that harmful.

This was the dynamic that made the regulative principle so important. Reformed Christians said in effect, “We don’t want to ask our church members to do anything that would violate their consciences.” Maybe bowing here or a kiss there could be justified by some in their hearts, but what about those who found it idolatrous? Should they be asked to do something as an act of worship that Scripture never commands and their consciences won’t allow? This doesn’t mean Christians will like every song or appreciate every musical choice. But at least with the regulative principle we can come to worship knowing that nothing will be asked of us except that which can be shown to be true according to the Word of God.

4. Freedom to be cross cultural. It’s unfortunate most people probably think worship according to the regulative principle is the hardest to transport to other cultures. And this may be true if the regulative principle is mistakenly seen to dictate style as well as substance. But at its best, the regulative principle means we have simple services with singing, praying, reading, preaching, and sacraments–the kinds of services whose basic outline can “work” anywhere in the world.

5. Freedom to focus on the center. Usually when talking about corporate worship I don’t even bring up the regulative principle. It is unknown to many and scary to others. So I try to get at the same big idea from a different angle. I’ll say something like this: “What do we know they did in their Christian worship services in the Bible? We know they sang the Bible. We know that preached the Bible. We know they prayed the Bible. We know they read the Bible. We know they saw the Bible in the sacraments. We don’t see dramas or pet blessings or liturgical dance numbers. So why wouldn’t we want to focus on everything we know they did in their services? Why try to improve on the elements we know were pleasing to God and practiced in the early church?” In other words, the regulative principle gives us the freedom to unapologetically to go back to basics. And stay there.

Article: Worship: A Dialogue Not A Checklist by R. Scott Clark (original source here)

Most of the debate over the so-called “worship wars” for the last 30 years has focused on the disagreement between those who favor a progressive/contemporary style of worship and those who favor a more “traditional” style of worship. One of the reasons why this debate can be so frustrating is that it is really an argument about an essentially subjective matter: style. Think about the arguments in the 1960s between crew-cut wearing Dads and long-haired teen boys or arguments about how to dress for church. Ultimately, these sorts of debates come down to preference. Neither side can make a conclusive argument from an objective authority.

Christians who confess the Reformed theology, piety, and practice, however, have way out of this frustrating cul-de-sac. We confess a principle according to which our public worship services are governed. Calvin spoke of the “rule of worship” (see also the Institutes). Zacharias Ursinus used this language in his lectures on the Heidelberg Catechism. Behind that usage lay Tertullian’s expression “rule of faith,” which he extended to the conduct of the Christian life and worship.1 The biblical, patristic, and Reformed “rule of faith” as applied to worship or the “rule of worship” is that we do in worship only what God commands. When it comes to the rule and when it comes to the elements of worship, preference and taste are irrelevant.

The only place preference enters is relative to the circumstances of worship, e.g., time, place, language, and tunes. Contrary to at least one understanding of circumstance widely held within conservative Presbyterian and Reformed circles, a circumstance is not “whatever helps us worship.” This is a category mistake. By definition a circumstance is that which is necessary by nature and logic. We must gather together in some agreed place. Where we gather is a convention or a matter of preference. We must gather at an agreed time. Again, that is a mater of preference. We must use an agreed language (or provide a translator), and we must use some tune by which to sing. All these are matters of taste or preference.

When it comes, however, to the elements, to the administration of the Word and to the prayers we offer in response to the Word, it is God’s Word not preference that governs or worship. Were we firmly to grasp our principle, our rule of worship, again we should avoid much of the contemporary debate about worship styles and the like. When it comes to the elements, to the administration of the Word and to the congregation response to the Word, the only question is: what has God commanded?

Within the divinely commanded administration of the Word and the authorized response by God’s people there is a biblical and historic pattern to be observed, a pattern which is sometimes lost. That pattern is sometimes described as the “dialogical principle.” This is not something that was discussed at length in the older writers. It is an expression I learned from my Professor of Practical Theology, Derke Bergsma, in 1984. According to J. D. Benoit (1958), at the dedication of the Chapel at Torgau, Luther explained, “…worship is at once a dialogue and an act of praise…. The event which we call worship…consists simply in this, that our well-beloved Lord himself speaks to us by his Holy Word, and we, for our part, speak to him by our prayers and our hymns of praise.”

Luther was following the biblical pattern of call and response. Some years ago I wrote: God established a dialogic pattern of worship in the history of salvation. God speaks, and his people respond with praise and thanksgiving. Psalm 18 is a classic example of this pattern, in which the Psalmist recounts God’s mighty saving acts for his king and people and then responds with joyful, submissive reverence in v. 50, “Therefore I will praise you among the nations, O LORD; I will sing praises to your name.” This dialogic pattern is fundamental to biblical worship.

According to this pattern, God has the first word in worship. After all, God spoke creation into being. God the Son is the Word. Creation and redemption begin with God’s Word and so our services begin with a call to worship from God’s Word, an invocation (e.g., the minister quotes Ps 124:8) and Greeting from God (e.g., Rom 1:7), followed by a response by God’s people from his Word (e.g., the singing of Psalm 100). We read God’s Law (e.g., Ex 20:3–17; Matt 22:37–40) confess our sins and rejoice in the declaration of God’s grace toward his people (Pss 51, 32). The Word is also administered in confessions of faith, which are appropriate responses to God’s declaration of pardon from his Word. In response to the Gospel, out of gratitude, we give alms (1 Cor 16:1–3),2 and, since prayer is the chief part of thankfulness (Heidelberg 116), we offer our hearts in thankful prayer. God speaks to us in the sermon (e.g., Second Helvetic Confession ch. 1) and we respond, with his Word, in worship and praise. God has the last word in the service as the minister pronounces God’s blessing upon his covenant people (e.g., Nu 6:24–26; 2 Cor 13:14). Just as the service begins formally with the invocation and call to worship so it ends formally at this point. A doxology may be sung in response—there are five books of the Psalter and each one ends with a doxology, so we have an embarrassment of riches from which to chose—but this has the same standing liturgically as a song service before the call to worship. Chris Gordon, however, offers a helpful alternative pattern, where the doxology occurs before the benediction.

As you can see, there is an internal logic and movement in a Reformed liturgy, i.e., the order of worship (1 Cor 14:40) ). God is speaking and we are responding. Worship is the expression of a vital relationship between the living Triune God and his people. The temptation, particularly in conservative Reformed and Presbyterian circles, is, however, to reduce the liturgy to a checklist of things to be accomplished before and after the sermon, which is, to be sure, the central act of the liturgy but those liturgical acts before and after the sermon are not mere preparations or busy work to be checked off. Continue reading →