Kevin Johnson quotes from an article in the most recent Credenda, and admonishes me for something I didn’t say in it.
“Correspondingly, the Reformation was first about our repentance and embracing of Christ something which Wilson never mentions in this article.
This was curious on two counts. First, it should be possible to write an article about liturgy and not incur someone’s displeasure because I didn’t mention something else that I believe equally strongly. You can’t say everything everytime — it’s a time management thing.
But the curious nature of the second count was even more odd. That is because, as it happens, I did mention a “genuine love for Christ” in the article, along with how certain kinds of people need “learn something fundamental about God.” I also mentioned, twice as it turns out, the fact that Holy Spirit can be grieved by our behavior in worship. What Johnson dismisses as mere moralism and legalism, checking things off a spiritual to-do list, was actually an exhortation to function within the context of triune personalism, never forgetting that God is always present with us in worship and will not be fooled by our mummeries, high or low.
Actually, there was a third oddity in Johnson’s response. That was the fact that one of the main thrusts of the article was the point that a simple “liturgical to-do list” won’t cut it. Here is another snippet from that article and, you tell me, is this the kind of “plug and chug” approach that legalists like to take?
“To say up front that liturgy is extremely important — that having a defined, biblical structure to the worship service is crucial, and that formality does not necessarily drive our genuine love for Christ — does not require us to then embrace any particular practice that some Anglicans might be doing. To follow the covenant renewal pattern of worship [the pattern we follow at Christ Church] not only does not require us to adopt any proposal (provided it is ‘higher’ than what we were all doing ten years ago), it actually requires us to be suspicious of all such tendencies to overshoot the goal.”
In other words, there are any number of ways to honor Christ in worship. The next paragraph describes two pastors doing the same thing, one out of obedience to Christ and the other not. The legalist wants everything cut and dried. The wise response to such questions and situations is usually something like “it’s not that simple.” Two men can do the same thing and one be received by God and the other not. Two other men can do very different things and both be received by the same God.
Johnson’s critique is comparable to challenging my writing or preaching because I don’t use the King James Version of the Bible. To which I could respond, “But I do use the King James.” Now what do we do? It is apparent that Johnson wants very much to find a crucial area where he and I differ, and I am sure there are plenty of them. But whether or not the Reformation was first brought about by “our repentance and embracing of Christ” is not one of them.