Worship in Spirit and Truth

Worship In Spirit And Truth
By John M. Frame
P & R Publishing, Phillipsburg, New Jersey (distributed by Evangelical Press). xvii +171 pages. £7.95
ISBN 0 87552 242 4

Is it possible to have worship which is both theologically sound, with lots of intellectual - even theological - content, and also fresh, unexpected, full of life, with vitality in religious experiences, and contemporary?
There are so few instances of it that one might be tempted to think it is not. Some of us think that it is possible. And not only possible but also biblical. John Frame's short book speaks up for this view.
Frame handles a number of very general aspects of worship, so that although this is not a comprehensive book on worship, it provides enough ideas to transform the approach, or the 'feel' of the whole of worship. Topics range from the place and elements of worship to the order of the worship service and the place and type of music.
Frame writes from a commitment to a sound Reformed theology, and he thinks that this is important. He writes mainly for people who think the same. Partly as a result, his emphasis is on areas in which he thinks people like this need to develop. As he says, 'I believe that most books on worship...underestimate the amount of freedom that Scripture permits in worship.' However this development is, he claims, precisely a reappropriation of Reformed theology.
Frame is surely right to uphold what is called the 'regulative principle'. God is very definite that our worship of him is not to come from our imaginations but from his will. Frame does not perhaps deal sufficiently with the problem of introducing something into the worship of God. His formulation of the regulative principle - 'that true worship is limited to what God commands' - is a reasonable statement of it in a form which is not over-specific or begging the question. To take it that God does command (albeit implicitly) or deliberately allow much that is natural in our expression of worship and our response to God is, I think, on the right lines. Yet the way that he works out specific examples makes us worry whether one might end up not being able to say that anything is inconsistent with the regulative principle. We need to be able to describe more specifically when something would be a novelty not given to us in God's will for worship, something introduced into it, and when it would be just part of the freedom we have. Easter morning 'Son-rise' services might not be an introduction of something into God's worship which goes beyond what is given us in Scripture, but one can imagine a point at which the way they are employed makes them such.
This book is one that plants seed thoughts and possibilities. Each is enough to give the idea, but we are left hungering for more fleshing out and more detailed argument. Frame concludes by describing a worship service he led at New Life Presbyterian Church, Escondido. It is difficult to say that it is typical, for I am not sure that the word applies here, but this is a very useful thing to have, both encouraging and stimulating. I am from New Life Presbyterian Church in Glenside, where the worship is often similar. I am sure that Frame's description is only as exciting to me as it is because it reminds me of my worship there. Similarly, it is probably difficult for prose analysis and description of an approach to worship, without seeing and experiencing it in action, to convey all of its satisfying scripturalness and spiritual reality.

Worship in Spirit and Truth

Michael Peat

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