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(from section three of the first chapter)


But there is a less obvious danger in worship centered upon man's feelings; the fullness of Christian worship is likely to become obscured by such an attitude. To make worship largely o dependent upon transient moods, is to concentrate upon only one aspect of worship and to sacrifice the most important aspects. It is tragic how many dimensions of worship have been lost to our consciousness in the last hundred years. Many denominations have, in effect, sold their birthright in worship for a pot of porridge.

Far more is involved in worship than simply our feelings about God and man. In worship our relationships to God and man are constituted so that our whole being is changed. This is not simply a temporary emotional spree but an enduring transformation of our beliefs, our activities, and indeed our relationship to being in general. Writing on the religious affections in the eighteenth century, Jonathan Edwards pointed out that feelings were transient and could not be adequate gauges of a person's relationship to God.19 (19 Religious Affections, edited by John E.,Smith) Worship changes one's being by uniting him to a community of faith. As such, he is placed in a new relationship to God, to his fellow Christian, and to the world. But this new being is not something effected by man's efforts or gauged by his sincerity. He comes into his fullness by being made a member of the community united to God in faith. And this community, the Church, is established not by the efforts of man but by the grace of Christ.

It is important to remember that Christ is present in, with, and through the acts that we perform in worship. According to His will, His work is accomplished through what we do when we gather for worship. The work of worship that we offer can be a means of receiving Christ. Through His grace, the acts that we perform in celebrating holy communion become a means for the building up of His Church. Preaching and listening to preaching are acts of man through which God's Word addresses men. It is indeed misleading to distinguish in worship between acting and receiving for both occur simultaneously. Our giving is receiving. Christ may work in the worship we offer.

The unique quality of Christian worship is that it centers upon the work of God in Christ in establishing a community of those who are enabled to worship Him. It is by the power of God that men are united in receiving what God has done for them. The Pauline metaphor, the "body of Christ," expresses most concisely the nature of the Church. Just as no part of the human body can exist independently of the rest, so Christians cannot exist without the Church. John Calvin was merely echoing a third-century theologian when he observed that he saw no "hope for any forgiveness of sins or any salvation" outside of the Church.20 (20 Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV, i, 4) Christian worship, then, is the worship of those who "are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another."

In this sense we refer to Christian worship as corporate worship, that is, the worship of those who are one body, the body of Christ. This important fact distinguishes Christian worship from all other worship offered in this world. It has a unity which the dimensions of time and space cannot overcome.

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Just a few months before his untimely death in 1944, William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, broadcasting over the BBC, made the statement,

The world will be saved from political chaos and collapse by one thing only: That is worship.

Then he gave a definition of worship:

To quicken the conscience by the holiness of God,
To feed the mind with the truth of God,
To purge the imagination with the beauty of God,
To open the heart to the love of God,
To devote the will to the purpose of God.

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WHAT! No "in the groove" worship band? What about the banners? Dancers? Plastic communion cups? megawatt sound systems? Thousands gathered together? What about IMAG, with giant preacher heads on big screens?

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I firmly believe the music of Jesus' day was 1970s stadium/prog rock.


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To include the whole person, I would add:

To engage the body in the work of God.

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To submit the body to the work of God

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There seems to be a greater reality to the body of Christ than, say, a student body or a legislative body. With such a real connection with Christ himself, how can I not love the body of Christ and marvel that we can be an integral part of his ongoing work of reconciliation?

Any thoughts on this literal view of the body of Christ and the continuation of the Incarnation?

Magneton

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(o),
I’m a little confused here. Is this author suggesting that we only gradually become part of the body of Christ as part of a process of spiritual transformation?

Magneton

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(o): That does seem so.

How can us Protestant's make sense of that? We have such a tradition, with widely scattered pronoucements (like: "once saved...") that anything less abstract than what we are used to seems, foreign.

As you said, "gradually become part of the body of Christ", or as the article said, "the transformation of our lowly body into the glorious Body of Jesus Christ (Phil 3:21).", does seem to be this foreign talk. But maybe that is just the "native" talk of Christians all along.

I really like this article by the Bethel Seminary prof. R. Rakestraw:

http://www.bethel.edu/~rakrob/files/THEOSIS2.html

Rakestraw records: "Leech writes that according to Maximus, "deification is the work of divine grace by which human nature is so transformed that it `shines forth with a supernatural light and is transported above its own limits by a superabundance of glory'."

And also: Archbishop Basil Krivocheine, expressing the thought of St. Symeon the New Theologian, writes: Divinization is the state of man's total transformation, effected by the Holy Spirit, when man observes the commandments of God, acquires the evangelical virtues and shares in the sufferings of Christ. The Holy Spirit then gives man a divine intelligence and incorruptibility. Man does not receive a new soul, but the Holy Spirit unites essentially with the whole man, body and soul. He makes of him a son of God, a god by adoption, though man does not cease being a man, a simple creature, even when he clearly sees the Father. He may be called man and god at the same time.


And: "Wesley would agree with both. Whatever his primary understanding, his thought is clear: in the incarnation God adds to himself human flesh, so that human flesh may actually become transformed as it is changed by the very life of God indwelling it.
At the end of one of his eucharistic hymns, Charles Wesley prays:

Thy Kingdom come to every heart
And all thou hast, and all thou art."

Continuing: Wesley desires not only God's gifts, but also his life and perfections--all that can be conjoined to human beings. In another hymn he is even more explicit:

Heavenly Adam, Life divine,
Change my nature into thine;
Move and spread throughout my soul,
Actuate and fill the whole;
Be it I no longer now
Living in the flesh, but thou."

THOSE are not explicitly about worship. But as you have centered on, Magneton, we have to recognize the connection between worship and our state and transformation.


Returning to James White, let me see what I can find in the rest of the chapter.

Word-searching "transform":

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Far more is involved in worship than simply our feelings about God and man. In worship our relationships to God and man are constituted so that our whole being is changed. This is not simply a temporary emotional spree but an enduring transformation of our beliefs, our activities, and indeed our relationship to being in general. Writing on the religious affections in the eighteenth century, Jonathan Edwards pointed out that feelings were transient and could not be adequate gauges of a person's relationship to God.19 Worship changes one's being by uniting him to a community of faith. As such, he is placed in a new relationship to God, to his fellow Christian, and to the world. But this new being is not something effected by man's efforts or gauged by his sincerity. He comes into his fullness by being made a member of the community united to God in faith. And this community, the Church, is established not by the efforts of man but by the grace of Christ.
16 Religious Affections, edited by John E.,Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959).

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Please notice that "by the grace of Christ" does not use the "unmerited favor" definition of "grace" -- but means the "energies" of God. (Both Calvin and Eastern Orthodoxy use it that way.)


THAT SAID, HERE'S SOMETHING NEW FROM WHITE:

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This corporateness in Christ is expressed in Christian worship by two distinct disciplines, personal devotions and common worship. It should be made very clear that personal devotions and common worship are both corporate in nature. In personal devotions one does not approach God as the "alone with the Alone," but as a member of the body of Christ even though the other members are not physically present. Likewise it should be remembered that personal devotions and common worship have always been regarded as complementing and depending upon each other. Neither discipline is superior to the other; both suffer when one is neglected. They do, however, have some quite different characteristics aside from the corporate nature that unites them.

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Note that these are both forms of "CORPORATENESS IN CHRIST," even though one of them is con individually and the other is done together in a group.

That's interesting.


Keep it up, guys!


Edited by - PotOnWheel on 04/05/2003 5:33:54 PM

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I do, however, believe that God works through us as well as in us, when we minister to the physical and spiritual needs of those around us.

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Absolutely, God works through us. But, I would say that's our response to the work of God in us.

God shows us his love, we respond to Him(worship) and to others(service). Love God and love one another.

peace and love, don

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The understanding of the Incarnation that I’m getting from Torrance ... (draws heavily on the Greek Fathers) goes this way:

Christ became part of this world and of humanity by being born into it, inheriting the same susceptibility to illness, injury, and exhaustion that we do. In other words, his body was not perfect. The incarnation was not a transient event, but rather Christ continues to be incarnate in his followers, who bear God’s Spirit within them. The body of Christ is an ontological reality, not merely an association of people with a common purpose. Again it is not a perfect body; there is a great deal of weakness and dysfunction. Yet amid this weakness and dysfunction, he does his work in the world through this body, while transforming us into his likeness. The fact that his work on the cross was accomplished through ultimate vulnerability and weakness is an indication of the way he continues to operate, through the weak things in this world...

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