To Glorify God: Essays on Modern Reformed Liturgy
Reviewed by Robert D. Dooling, August 10, 1999
To Glorify God is a series of specially commissioned studies of The Book of Common Worship (1993) of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and Common Order (1994), the newest liturgical resource of the Church of Scotland. Seventeen diverse articles examine every aspect of the North American and Scottish rites – including the idea of common worship itself, baptism, the Lord’s Supper, marriage, and the funeral service. Of particular interest to this reviewer was the discussion of the universalism that is intrinsic to both North American and Scottish liturgies.
Unfortunately, To Glorify God is a book that I suspect will be off-putting to a majority of American Presbyterians. Not only are most of its essays somewhat arcane, they are also uneven. That is to say, some of them appear to be more of a rationalization for the direction taken by two new worship resources than a theological evaluation of their content vis-à-vis our historical Reformed tradition.
On the other hand, the book does explore a number of issues that, in my experience, have too often been ignored by American pastors and elders responsible for writing liturgies. First among these, of course, is the relationship between liturgical freedom and liturgical order. Put another way, how do we find the proper balance in worship between what is essentially “charismatic” (that is to say, a spontaneous gift of the Spirit to be expressed spontaneously), and a careful liturgical order that is worthy of the beauty and glory of God? This book addresses this question at length.
Presbyterian Pelagianism
Of particular interest to me, however, was James Kay’s essay on baptism.
Kay’s dogmatic assessment of the new rites, among other things, points out the incipient Pelagianism (not semi-Pelagianism, but Pelagianism) of the Book of Common Worship — its emphasis upon what we do and what we promise rather than on the gracious work of God in Christ. Kay argues, for example, that the rite’s renunciation of evil suggests that we are able to repudiate something that God has been unable to overcome by grace. According to Kay, these are “practices rejected by the Reformation.” The Scots, on the other hand, indicate their continuity with the Reformation with an anti-Pelagian emphasis on the grace of God alone.
Thinking about worship
The final essay, by Donald Macleod, is worth the price of the book itself. Macleod’s article entitled Calvin into Hippolytus argues that we Presbyterians have attempted unsuccessfully, both in Scotland and America, to wed the Word centered theology of Calvin (i.e. worship as a response to revelation) to the sacramentalism of medieval Catholicism.
These are precisely the kinds of theological questions and issues that we American evangelical Presbyterians tend to ignore. For the most part, we don’t think about worship – what is appropriate and what isn’t; what our underlying theological assumptions are. Rather, we favor of liturgical expressions that are “effectively” affective (i.e. that produce the requisite feelings).
But feelings aren’t truth. So, to the degree that this book forces us to pause and to think carefully about worship it will be a worthwhile addition to our libraries.
Robert D. Dooling is pastor of Mountain View Presbyterian Church, Loveland, Colorado.