In This Issue: "Is Worship God’s Gift or Human Doing?: Insights from the Evolution of the Term ‘Revival’" (Part II)
The issue of Liturgy entitled “Revival,” guest-edited by Melanie Ross, explores the meaning of Christian revival in the multiple forms that have used that term. This excerpt from Lester Ruth’s essay, “Is Worship God’s Gift or Human Doing?: Insights from the Evolution of the Term ‘Revival’” points to what he is examining in the theology of various Christian traditions. The question is: Whose agency is at work in worship? From Ruth’s Abstract: “A close examination of contemporaneous descriptions by these participants highlights recurring tensions, tendencies, and affirmations in how Western Christians have approached the wonder of worship generally. Investigating recent developments among Christian Nationalists shows some of the problems that can arise when a proper balance—and humility—in the mingling of agencies is not maintained.” –– Melinda Quivik
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To know somehow that our actions in worship can be more than just our activity and that our services can be places of gracious encounter with the God revealed in Jesus Christ is indeed an awe-filled wonder.
But the difficulty is in the details of the “mysterious mingling” of divine and human agency in Christian worship. As we saw in looking at the evolution of the term “revival,” several issues persist: how to rightly emphasize in the activity of worship the divine and the human, when to highlight each one, and even the relative weight to be placed upon either divine or human activity, which can change dramatically among different theologians (even in a short period of time!). But, as we saw in the history above, most Christians seem to remain committed to somehow describing worship as a both/and affair between God and people.
That commitment, for example, stands behind historical discussions of the Lord’s Supper, including some of the earliest about how it is that people can experience the gracious activity of God in Christ at this meal. In that regard, consider Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, Italy, in the late fourth century, preaching to the newly baptized in his congregation. In his explanation for how these still-wet-behind-the-ears, new Christians should accept the bread and wine of Communion as the body and blood of Jesus Christ, this bishop noted both the human and the divine aspects of the consecratory prayer, placing the weight on human agency for all of the prayer except the Words of Institution themselves. For Ambrose, those Words (“This is my body…This is my blood…”) were the efficacious instruments for making the bread and wine
more than just themselves:
Perhaps you say: “The bread I have here is ordinary bread.” Yes, before the sacramental words are uttered this bread is nothing but bread. But at the consecration this bread becomes the body of Christ. Let us reason this out. How can something which is bread be the body of Christ? Well, by what words is the consecration effected, and whose words are they? The words of the Lord Jesus. All that is said before are the words of the priest: praise is offered to God, the prayer is offered up, petitions are made for the people, for king, for all others. But when the moment comes for bringing the most holy sacrament into being, the priest does not use his own words any longer: he uses the words of Christ. Therefore, it is Christ’s word that brings this sacrament into being.
(Ambrose, IV.14, in The Awe-Inspiring Rites of Initiation: Baptismal Homilies of the Fourth Century, ed. Edward Yarnold, 2nd ed. (Liturgical Press, 1994), 132–33.)
There was no ambivalence in Ambrose’s confidence about the effectiveness of speaking these words within a prayer since they came directly from Jesus. Of course, what Ambrose failed to mention was that Christ’s Words of Institution were spoken at Communion by a very human minister, namely, Ambrose himself! . . . It appears that Ambrose recognized an effective liturgical “hammer” when it was placed in his hands (or, better, his mouth). Charles Finney and William Sprague would have recognized Ambrose’s confidence in being able to wield such a hammer even if they would have thought the effective “hammers” for their own were much different means of grace.
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Lester Ruth is research professor of Christian worship at Duke Divinity School. Most of his publications deal historically with the worship of American evangelicals and Pentecostals.