No 76 SPRING 2019 Contents Editorial 1 Stephen Clark A Biblical Theology of Worship 7 Mark Johnston Minister, Bethel Presbyterian Church, Cardiff (Evangelical Presbyterian Church in England and Wales) When You Come Together: Gathered Worship in the New Testament 34 David R. Kirk Lecturer in New Testament Studies, Highland Theological College; minister, Free Church of Scotland What is Sweeter to us is Clearer: The Aesthetics of Worship – A Historical Survey 61 Robert Letham Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology, Union School of Theology Tuning the Heart: A Historical Survey of the Affections in Corporate Worship 84 Graham Beynon Pastor, Grace Church, Cambridge; Director, Independent Ministry Training, Oak Hill Theological College Worship Today: Maintaining Continuity with the Past and Across the World 110 Ray Evans Lead Minister, Grace Community Church, Bedford and Church Leadership Consultant, FIEC Worship Today: Contemporary Expression of Worship in One’s Own Culture(s) 131 Stephen Clark Pastor, Freeschool Court Evangelical Church, Bridgend, Director, EMW Theological Training Course and Lecturer in Systematic Theology, London Seminary Review Article: Outside In - Margins of Islam: Ministry in Diverse Muslim Contexts 162 Mark Pickett UFM Worldwide Book Reviews 178 Foundations Foundations is an ministry. Its particular focus is The views expressed in the international journal of the theology of evangelical articles published in evangelical theology churches which are Foundations do not published in the United committed to biblical truth necessarily represent the Kingdom. Its aim is to cover and evangelical ecumenism. It views of Affinity or its contemporary theological has been published by Affinity partners although all content issues by articles and reviews, (formerly The British must be within the bounds of taking in exegesis, biblical Evangelical Council) from its the Affinity Doctrinal Basis. theology, church history and inception as a print journal. apologetics, and to indicate It became a digital journal in their relevance to pastoral April 2011. Foundations is Editor published twice each year online at Vacant www.affinity.org.uk Book Review Editor Matthew Evans It is offered in two [email protected] formats: PDF (for citing pagination) and HTML (for greater Associate Editors accessibility, usability, and Jamie A. Grant infiltration in search engines). Vice-Principal (Academic), Highland Theological College, Foundations is copyrighted by University of the Highlands & Islands Affinity. Readers are free to Bob Fyall use it and circulate it in digital Cornhill Training Course (Scotland) form without further David McKay permission (any print use Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland requires further written Dan Strange permission), but they must Oak Hill College, London acknowledge the source and, of course, not change the Ted Turnau content. Anglo-American University, Prague & Wales Evangelical School of Theology Keith Walker Director, SIM-UK Paul Wells Emeritus Professor, Faculté Jean Calvin, Aix-en-Provence, France Foundations is published by Garry Williams PO Box 1958 The John Owen Centre, London Theological Seminary Bristol BS37 0DH Peter Williams Telephone: 07989 773043 Tyndale House, Cambridge Website: www.affinity.org.uk Alistair Wilson Email: [email protected] Edinburgh Theological Seminary Foundations 76 (May 2019): 1-6 EDITORIAL The current issue of Foundations is mainly comprised of the six papers on the subject of “worship”, delivered and discussed at the 2019 Affinity Theological Study Conference, which was held in March at The King’s Centre, Northampton. In recent months Martin Salter has taken the decision to step down as editor of this journal and the Affinity council is very sorry to see him go. We are very thankful to him for his work on the previous two excellent issues and we trust that he will continue to know God’s blessing on his ministry as part of the leadership team at Grace Community Church, Bedford. Since the vacancy for the editorship has not yet been filled, and since I retired at the recent Conference from the position of being its Chair – having occupied that “office” since the inception of Affinity – I have been invited to write this editorial. This being, therefore, a time of transition and change, it will be profitable to focus on those things which must change and on those which must never change. Fixed and Flexible All Christians, all churches and church bodies need to be both fixed and flexible – fixed with respect to those things which never change but flexible with respect to the way in which one relates and applies those fixed realities in an ever-changing context. A classic verse which spells this out is Acts 13:36: “For when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep” (NIV). David’s generation was very different from those of Abraham, of Moses and of Joshua before him, just as Hezekiah’s would be very different from David’s generation after him. Some of the demands faced by Moses, leading God’s people in the wilderness, were quite different from those of Joshua, leading the people into the Promised Land. And the needs faced by David, now that God’s people had been settled in Canaan for generations, were yet different again. Some things, however, never change: God is unchangeable – the Father is the eternal Rock; the Son is “the same yesterday, today and forever”; and Hebrews 9:14 informs us that the Holy Spirit is “the eternal Spirit”. God’s Word is unchanging, and so is the gospel and the eternal realities of which it speaks. The perennial danger for us is to emphasise only one part of the tension in which we live: we may so emphasise the importance of being fixed on the unchanging realities that we fail properly to contextualise things in our time and place; or we become so attuned to cultural trends and changes that we fail to maintain continuity with the people of God in past ages and in other places than our own. We 2 Editorial may do something even worse: become fixed where we should be flexible and flexible where we need to be fixed. What takes place when God’s people gather together is one area where it is essential to be both fixed and flexible. To state the obvious, while we worship and praise the same God as Moses and the apostles, it would be absurd to read and preach from the Old Testament in biblical Hebrew and from the New Testament in koine Greek, or to sing the psalms in their original Hebrew. The semantic content of God’s Word is unchangeable; the languages in which that content is to be expressed must change from nation to nation and, indeed, from one period to another. The papers in this issue address some of these matters. The gospel is something that is fixed and is that upon which we must ever remain fixed. It is essential to stress both the definite article and the noun. First, it is the gospel – there is no other. In the modern global village, philosophies and life-style choices compete, side-by-side, for the allegiance of the twenty first century “consumer”. This is the context in which the gospel is to be made known. But although surrounded by a bewildering variety of world views, ideologies, religions and philosophies, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is called to proclaim, without compromise or equivocation, that the gospel is not simply one option amongst many, which is to be offered on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, but is the very truth of God and the only remedy for humanity’s greatest need. Ancient Rome had a veritable pantheon of gods but Paul was utterly convinced that it was only the gospel which was the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes and this is why he was so eager to preach it to the people of Rome, whether they were of Roman or Greek origin, for it is precisely because there is only one gospel that it is universal in its scope and appeal. The noun, of course, is equally important: the gospel. The good news is defined in various places within the pages of the New Testament, sometimes bringing out one particular emphasis, at other times a different one; but central to this message is a series of glorious events – the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, events which deal with the fundamental problem of human sin and God’s wrath upon that sin. Whether it is Peter preaching in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost to his fellow Jews or in Caesarea to the household of Cornelius; whether it is Paul preaching in the synagogue at Pisidian Antioch or proclaiming the divine message to the people of Athens at the Areopagus; or whether he is reminding his Corinthian readers of the gospel at the outset of the great fifteenth chapter of his first letter to them, or urging faithfulness in persecution upon young Timothy (2 Tim. 2:8), this is the message which the apostles identified as “the gospel” (1 Cor. 15:1-11). Of course, this message needs to be “unpacked” – who is this Christ? Immediately, this raises the issue of his uniqueness and his nature(s), and FOUNDATIONS 3 this, in turn, leads on to the being, nature and character of God. Why did Christ die for sins? What does this sentence mean? This inevitably necessitates defining and explaining the word “sin” and God’s view of it. Furthermore, the sermons in Acts 2, Acts 10 and Acts 13 make clear reference to the Old Testament Scriptures, and this is spelled out twice in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4: “according to the Scriptures”; and although Paul does not cite specific Bible passages in his message to the Areopagites (though he does quote a Greek poet – he was, after all, preaching to people who did not know the Old Testament Scriptures and who would not have recognised its unique nature, status and authority), it is abundantly clear that his discourse is saturated with the truths which the Old Testament proclaims, truths both about God and about humanity.