Also in the day of your gladness and in your appointed feasts, and on the first days of your months, you shall blow the trumpets over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings; and they shall be as a reminder of you before your God. I am the Lord your God.” (Numbers 10:10)
The RPCNA uses their interpretation of the Regulative Principle of Worship to claim that instruments in worship were only associated with sacrifices in the Old Testament, and thus, forbidden in worship in the New Testament.
Worship is to be offered only in accordance with God’s appointment, and in harmony with the scriptural principle that whatever is not commanded in the worship of God, by precept or example, is forbidden. (RP Testimony 21:2)
The Psalms are to be sung without the accompaniment of instruments, which are not part of the New Testament pattern of worship. Musical instruments were commanded for use with the offering of sacrifices in the Old Testament temple worship. The death of Christ being the perfect and final sacrifice brought an end to this way of worship. There is neither command for nor example of the use of musical instruments in the words or practice of Christ and the apostles. The command of the New Testament is to offer the sacrifice of praise—the fruit of our lips. (RP Testimony 21:6)
Eisegesis is a common failing in Biblical interpretation. When the Bible is interpreted through the lens of "what do I want it to say" and not "how do I gain understanding from what it says," we end up with convoluted and often inconsistent approach to practice.
The RP Testimony goes above the Westminster Confession of Faith which says:
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 worshipping the true God is instituted by Himself, and so limited by His own revealed will, that He may not be worshipped 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. (21:1)
WCF says that worship is "limited by [God's] revealed will" and he "may not be worshipped" in "any other way not prescribed in ... Scripture". RPT says whatever is not commanded or demonstrated by example is forbidden. Very clear cut and black and white.
There is a secondary argument, though. "the New Testament pattern of worship". So, the RPT seems to be saying that command and example must be specifically through the lens of New Testament worship. What this means is that even though musical instruments are used throughout the Old Testament, their use is forbidden in modern worship. That also applies to dancing, even though the Psalms suggest, or even command praising God with instruments and dancing (e.g. Psalm 150).
What about baptism?
What is missing in the RPCNA consideration of worship is a careful evaluation of other worship practices. For example, circumcision was done on the 8th day after birth in the Old Testament. It is not coupled to any sort of worship. In the New Testament, the examples of baptism are arguably outside the context of congregational worship. People are baptized when they are converted, not when they are presented to the congregation.
What we see here is thus eisegesis. Instruments are forbidden not because of "command or example" but because "command or example" is a convenient way to claim the spiritual high ground over personal opinion. If "command or example" is the litmus test, baptism cannot be done in worship, as there is neither command nor example in the New Testament of baptism being done in worship.
What about the offering?
What else gets dismissed? Offerings. Offerings are clearly an aspect of worship in the Old Testament, although it's questionable how it worked within congregational gatherings. Paul says, "On the first day of every week each one of you is to put aside and save, as he may prosper, so that no collections be made when I come." (1 Cor 16:2) As far as I know, this is the only suggestion that offerings belong in worship, and it fails on two points. First, it is a special collection for downtrodden saints in Jerusalem, not an offering to support the ministry of the local church. Second, the fact that it is "on the first day of the week" does not couple it to corporate worship. That would be like saying that churches can "thresh grain" in worship, because the disciples did it and it was clearly on the Sabbath.
What about the benediction?
The benediction is clearly commanded in the Old Testament in Numbers 6:22-27, but, that is the Old Testament, and RPT is saying that only New Testament commands and examples count for determining what can and can't be part of modern worship. Even if we can make that argument, the command is specifically the Aaronic Blessing - "The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord..." not the blessings sprinkled throughout the New Testament writings.
As an ex-RP, I don't agree with the RPT interpretation of everything must be re-established in the New Testament (it's clear that they do not walk the talk anyway!) I hold the WCF interpretation, that what God wants in worship can be understood from scripture and that we are likely sinning when we invent new worship practices (bowling??) or try to follow practices from other religions without supporting them from scripture.
What are your thoughts on how God wants to be worshiped?
11 comments:
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship” (Romans 12:1).
Can we worship in our song? Absolutely. But this is not our primary worship. Worship is how we live and bring glory to God. We are all worshipping something.
I can’t say if those who initially instituted the regulative principle did so in good conscience, as I don’t know. The people who teach on it seem to really believe it. But we can just as easily and truly believe any lie as well as any truth- how much more when some truth is mixed with some error?
I don’t believe the church who holds this rp concept will ever be willing to righteously examine its validity, as they have been successful in one very crucial area: it has been very effective in retaining their members. It becomes such a complex in their minds that they can’t seem to break free to even attend another church without feeling they are sinning…and this is an important point not to lose sight of. They do this with other things, too. For example, it’s clear in the Bible we should accept the children produced within the marriage- but they hold this one high because they cannot sustain their denomination without it. More babies born equals more future members, greater likelihood members won’t leave because they’ll lose more family members, and because it can be used as a source of pride to those who like to boast in the fullness of their quiver- even if he has no real love for those children.
Thanks, that is helpful! It was definitely the biggest hurdle leaving the RPCNA - that no other Reformed church had the same view and practice of corporate worship.
I think it's also very pertinent for you to point out that "worship" is how we honor God with our lives every day and not just on Sunday. I remember cherishing Sunday because weeks were filled with manual labor and it was a chance to rest. RPs were mostly good at that. Right now, I need rest less from physical toil, more from the emotional burden of feeling responsible for the success of my family, work and church (in different ways and capacities). I can't say I ever learned how to set aside that emotional work one day a week.
That’s interesting… I think it’s precisely that rest Jesus would have us have in Him. Rest from the striving to be good enough, righteous enough- it’s trust, essentially. A big part of leaving was admitting that in this church one cannot simultaneously trust God and it’s leadership. Trusting in and yielding to the leadership is what merits a good RPer, regardless of whether one has searched the scriptures to see if anything they teach is actually true. One has to practically transfer trust in God to trust in men in order to get by. It begins to eat at the conscience, and then you arrive at a crucial fork in the road: turn to God or turn forever to man alone. The more one yields to the leadership in, especially, the things which violate or trouble the conscience, the more one increasingly hardens his heart. Once the conscience is seared, only a miracle of God can bring a person back.
Perhaps that's what is so hard to escape in the RP system. The exclusive worship is hard to leave, but what about the years and years of being taught to seek and rely on man's approval (pastor, elders and even peers)? Part of leaving is knowing that those people will at least distance themselves from me and perhaps reject me outright.
I think it helps to have a think about why the exclusive worship is hard to leave. You said the crucial word, ‘exclusive.’ Of course it’s in the title, EP, but there’s a double-meaning to exclusive. I think it’s 2 things:
1. The EP concept can form a complex in our minds. Not all complexes are negative things. We are taught to develop complexes for good reasons as soon as we’re toddlers, practically. “Don’t talk to strangers,” etc. In the case of EP, I believe the complex is overwhelmingly negative, and serves only the leadership. Even people who have seen the clear reason to move their families and have counted the cost and are willing to leave, find themselves dragging their feet over this one issue. They are definitely afraid they will be sinning if they attend a service in any other tradition. Breaking down this complex will force the person to do one of 2 things: leave the faith altogether, or, and hopefully (and with the help of God), begin to see the legalism undergirding such an idea. The latter will not be an easy process. There’s so much talk about ‘deconstructing’ we hear now, and it breaks my heart. But there is a positive type of deconstruction wherein a person begins to deconstruct the error in their theological beliefs, and that is something we can only do with the help of the Holy Spirit to open our eyes and lead us into the truth. Even our yearning and willingness to engage in this process is a gift from God alone. Hard as it is to go through, it’s beautifully refining and refreshing to the soul!
2. Pride. Being in this church, members are consistently reminded, in one manner or another, of the exclusivity of the group. Being the “only faithful people who are doing it right” contributes to the enormous spiritual pride you find in groups like this.
By the way: both of these things are top things you see in cults. For a long time some churches can fly under the radar because the model of cult identity currently precludes those emerging from within orthodoxy. Some churches are 'good' about insulating their members from being able to put together the pieces.
And there's a third thing already: dissociating from people who leave, as if they are really unsaved. Cults do this.
Completely agree. I think "deconstruction" is negative in the same sense that it DOES NOT serve the leadership.
Deconstructing is me saying, there is a higher standard than what my parents, church, society is telling me and I need to find the proper place for those voices beneath what is primary.
I have friends who started questioning, "the pastor said X and it bothered me, but then I asked myself 'does this bother me because it's false, or does it bother me because someone told me falsely that it's false?'"
That's the core of deconstruction, IMO. I was taught about a Jesus that I don't see in scripture - one of legalism, authoritarianism and exclusivity. To follow the Jesus I read in scripture, I have to deconstruct my legalism, my pride and my feelings of superiority, and, honestly, I don't want to be in the tents of those who proclaim Jesus but hate their neighbors.
That said, there is a good side to the complex - there is a strong degree of care for worship as being something we offer to God and something that edifies the congregation. So, RPW, etc., likely came from a desire to obey God and serve wholeheartedly, but devolved legalistically into tribalism, superiority and cult.
Deconstruction is just breaking down, dissecting, and analyzing things. It doesn’t matter what the thing is. I don’t care what sociaety chooses to declare as its definition.
It doesn’t matter what we were taught. We have the responsibility to connect with the Lord on our own. Yes, it’s hard in a church of this kind because seeking the Lord will put one up against the RP ‘gods.’ But our heart is to be one of a child, not our mind- our mind should be that of an adult if we’re an adult, and we have to take responsibility for our own spiritual growth.
To follow the Jesus of Scripture, you have to die and be born again- nothing else. He renews our minds and gives us a new heart. There will be some intellectual work and study, sure, but that comes as a result of the re-birth. I never heard the Gospel or saw that anyone in these churches had any understanding of what it is to be made new. And how can they? They are still striving for their salvation. It doesn’t matter if they uphold the solas in word but strive in their own strength in action.
I hope one day you can step back from this nonsense and just spend time with Jesus.
It's a double-edged sword. One one hand, deconstruction is spending time with Jesus, yes, but on the other hand, it is re-constructing a spiritual life. The early disciples called it "the way" - meaning that it wasn't just an individualistic I'm going to follow Jesus the way I feel like it. They had a community where they lived their lives searching together what obedience to Jesus meant.
That is the tension of at least my Christian walk - I see the danger of monochromatic and legalist readings of scripture, but I also see the danger of deconstructing away from fellowship with other believers who are also spending time with Jesus. For example, in trying to develop my sense of God's presence, it's helpful that I have fellow Christians who are aware in that way.
Deconstruction is not spending time with Jesus. Time with Jesus is a result of a new heart. I understand how it makes sense from your starting point: your identity as a member of the denomination. And that is a crucial distinction: membership here really does become a new identity. The Christian has only one identity, and it is not tangled up in a denomination. One may attend a building that is part of an organized religious denomination, but his or her identity is Christian, and everything is seen through that sense.
When you left the denomination, you only left it physically. There is still some of you enmeshed in it.
Jesus is that Way, and they were individual members of a collective whole, which is Christ. The community exists through all time, and is not limited by any constructs we on earth tend to erect to contain ourselves within a collective belonging or, worse, one we have come to believe is the apex.
I think the word deconstruction has been so tainted by recent societal rebellions, so I will no longer use it to avoid confusion. I see it as defined in the dictionary, and that is what I will keep.
I don’t know why the emphasis of the collective is used and emphasized in your answer here, as it doesn’t seem to follow the conversation.
I don’t believe their motive was good, upon reflection, in instituting the RP. It’s funny how we as humans latch onto an idea, cal it good, and over time believe we are doing some wonderful, faithful, set-apart thing. There’s then one question that determines if we are right: were we told, in Scripture, to do it? If we were not, and it’s something that’s ok, sure, why not? But when we then mandate and legislate that point and abuse and punish others for not taking the same view, we are becoming devils. We are not faithful to God for carrying out anything he didn’t command for us to do. We have freedom in Christ, so yes, we can sing how we like in church. We are doing something not faithful or unfaithful. We really lose sight of that starting point: WERE WE TOLD? If we were not told, we have erected our own idea; we are okay so long as we don’t stamp God’s sign of decree on it.
You seem to still have half of your heart in this group. It’s a clear conflict of interest. People leaving this group need to be able to trust- something that was stolen from us by wicked people in this church.
Deconstruction is a label, like Evangelical. You flip out when I choose to use a specific definition of Evangelical, which is backed by research. According to Barna https://www.barna.com/research/survey-explores-who-qualifies-as-an-evangelical/:
"When extrapolating these percentages across the entire adult population, the difference is staggering: 84 million adults based on self-report versus 18 million using the nine-point theological filter."
So, when I say "Evangelical" is that one of the 18M that meets Barna's definition, or the 84M that have chosen some sort of identity.
In the same way, you can claim "deconstruction" means specifically someone who is "not spending time with Jesus", and you will find strong disagreement even among theologians what that means. Some believe, like me, that deconstruction is a process where we weigh the religion we were taught against something we see as primary. Those who slam deconstruction claim that it is primarily selfish and man-centered - I get to decide what is important to me.
I think you have also not left the RP church. I was taught to be very judgmental as an RP, and you reek of judgmentalism. Just like my RP elders. They barely knew me but they would read much into anything I say and then diagnose all sorts of ills and offer their "help" in correcting my obvious sin. I'm not interested in your help. I'm fleeing judgmental arrogance and superior attitude, not embracing it.
I don't know what you mean about "instituting the RP" - the RP church was instituted when enough Scottish Covenanters ended up in the US to form a church, but the Scottish church goes back to the Reformation era, similar to the Church of England and the Anglican church. Many of the Reformed and Presbyterian denominations are just US transplants of churches that were started in the Reformation (Lutheran, Anglican, PCUSA, RCA/CRC...) because the Catholic church excommunicated anyone who believed the gospel.
I think the "problem" with the RP church comes out of the Reformation.Instead of focusing on the gospel and what they could agree on, they quickly made figurative and literal wars over every issue and splintered (mode of baptism, adult/child baptism, view of communion, engagement in politics) and this is the heritage that I believe breaks the RP church. They are so splintered and so adamant of their unique set of beliefs that every other church is false until shown true. When they say, "Frank has left the church" it might be to another true branch of the church, but it's portrayed as if Frank has given up his salvation to, for example, join a Lutheran church. I was at a church where someone was threatened with church discipline for wanting to join a Lutheran church. I think there is a lot of nuance and confusion in scripture that needs the light of the Holy Spirit. The Bible, for example, says we can have slaves, and it says we can have more than one wife. Yet, churches today, I believe, would rightly excommunicate slave owners and polygamists. I believe RPs look at worship/psalmody in the same way that it should be obvious to anyone reading how worship is done. I think we need a lot of grace when picking our battles. I don't consider psalmody to be in the same category with slavery. I would break fellowship with a slave owner, most likely polygamist, but not an exclusive psalmist.
I'll ask you on the "constructs", though. In Matt 18, when Jesus says, "If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector." How do you define church without a construct? Who is the "church" who gets to decide who is a pagan?
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