We’ve seen in this series that contemporary worship music has become dominated by songs modeled on romantic, experiential, subjective musical expressions. We’ve further seen that, though such songs are a legitimate stream of Biblical worship expression, they have been historical and Biblical worship models (such as the Psalms or the Book of Revelation) held in balance with objective, doctrinal song content.

We then began to investigate how and why such an imbalance has occurred in arriving at such an experiential overemphasis. We began by seeing that the deep alienation between God and mankind engendered by the Fall leads men to see the world dualistically, as split between the “pure” spiritual realm and the flawed and imperfect physical world, a view which is a result of the simultaneous and inescapable knowledge that men have rebelled against their Holy Creator while they attempt to suppress that inescapable knowledge (Rom 1: 18-32).

This split was institutionalized in Platonic thought, which hugely influenced monastic thought, which shaped to a certain extent the way the Medievals viewed Reality, resulting in a Late Medieval and Renaissance perspective which located emotion and instinct in a "religious" zone, while reason and normative life were seen as belonging to the "secular" sphere.

 Christian reactions to the rationalism of the Enlightenment fused with Victorian and pietist viewpoints to produce a feminized, experientially-fixated Evangelicalism whose worship music institutionalized these attitudes for that branch of the Church.

This was all the easier because there is a legitimate strand of subjective and emotional aspects included in Biblical worship paradigms (for instance, in Psalms 51, 56, 3, 6, etc.). 

Now, before we look at some of the other places in Holy Writ where balanced worship is demonstrated, it would be good for us to get a bit of the sense of why God would desire a balance in this area. Thus, we will quickly consider some implications for worship of the central Biblical and Creedal doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation of God in Christ.

 As the Creeds (Apostles', Nicene, Definition of Chalcedon, and Athanasian, all sound summations of Scriptural teachings concerning the Nature and Works of God) tell us, the Triune God is both One (Unified in His Substance or Being) and Many (Diverse in His Three Persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). He is not more One than He is Many, nor is He more Many than He is One. These Attributes of God, as a theologian would say, are Equally Ultimate: They are in Perfect Balance.

This is important for worship for several reasons. First, since mankind are made In His Image, we humans, individually and together, reflect the Aspects of God on a creaturely level. We are like God as creatures created to reflect things about the One Whose Image we all bear. So, secondly, we humans will only achieve our full destiny as humans by accurately reflecting God in what we are and do (which is why the Fall in Eden was such a big deal, alienating God's Image-bearers from the One Whose Image they bear, necessitating the rescue, redemption, and re-orientation/sanctification of humanity by the Lord Jesus' Sacrifice of His Sinless Humanity to atone for our sin, restore our relationship to God, and begin to sanctify/reorient His People so they could begin to image the Triune God Whose Image they carry more accurately).  

Thus, thirdly, one of the things in which we are to image the Trinity is worship, which is also an enactment in which we are to fellowship with the Triune God directly. This means that, as in everything we are to do, our worship should accurately reflect God's Fundamental Tri-Unity if we are going to correctly worship as revelatory images of God.

Our worship (like all the things we are, do, and make) should bear the imprint of God's Image (just as all the things He has made, especially mankind, communicate truth about Who God Is in His Essence, Attributes, and Persons, cf. Rom 1:18-21). Therefore our worship is to be like Him in that it reflects What He is like, as well. So, just as God is One/Unified (in His Essence) and simultaneously and equally Many/Diverse (in His Persons), so must our worship be. What does that mean?

Something like this: In His Unified Essence (His Oneness), the Lord's Viewpoint/Experience is also Unified, Common to the Persons of the Trinity. However, in His Diverse Personhood (His Three Differing Persons [remember that the Father begets the Son, the Son is Eternally Begotten, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, all Differing Functions in the Economy of the Triune God]), the Lord's Viewpoint/Experience differs necessarily in the Inner Personhood of Each of the Persons. Yet both the Unified and Diverse Perspectives are Equally Important. In a sense impossible for us to comprehend fully (to do so we would have to be God), the Unified/Shared Perspective of God represents what we men call Objectivity (the general or commonly perceived perspective on things), while the Diverse/Unique Perspectives of the Persons represent what we call Subjectivity (though how these fit together and co-exist in the Depths of God's Unified Multi-Personhood is a great Mystery to us).

The upshot of all this is that our worship is to reflect those eternal truths (especially since we ourselves are created in the Image of the God from Whom those truths flow). Thus, our worship should embody equally objectivity and subjectivity (just as we find revealed to us in the Bible's worship examples).

In worship, we are to laud God by speaking of, being grateful for, praying in recognition of, and singing about Who God Is and What He Has Done both objectively and subjectively. We worship Him for Who He Is (Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer, Consummator, etc.) and for What He has done, both objectively  (You have created; You sustain; You have acted savingly; You will come again, etc.) and subjectively (You have created me; You have sustained me; You have saved me; etc.).

To overemphasize any of these expressions (to focus on the objective confession of Who God is, or What He has done, or on the subjective confession of His having been or done the things for me [the current imbalance amongst us Evangelicals]) is to present in worship a distorted view of Who the Lord is and What He has done, to foster a deformed view and experience of reality, and generally to fail in our task of worship as Image-bearers of the Triune Lord. Let's don't do that anymore.

Next issue, we'll look at other aspects of the implications of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation for balanced Biblical worship: Yet more fun and frolic in theology-ville.

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