Doxology and Theology

Posted by J. Mark Bertrand
on Tuesday, May 20, 2008
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Friends are a good substitute for memory. While I was chatting with my friend Luke this morning, he reminded me of a phrase our first seminary professor, Dr. David McWilliams, often used: "Truly, this is theology which leads us to doxology." Like many of the things Dr. McWilliams said, this one made an impression on me (so much so that I quote it on page 105 of Rethinking Worldview, and refer to it again on page 247). One of the things I've taken it to mean is this: good theology should lead to doxology. When theology doesn't do that, it's suspect.

But Luke, who had lunch with Dr. McWilliams recently, helped me see the phrase in a new light. There's a crisis in evangelical worship and has been for years, giving rise to a succession of band-aids -- and band aids, if you see what I mean. For the purposes of debate, the concept of worship is narrowed down to a question of musical style, and if you'll forgive a little cynicism the argument is essentially whether we should sing to the Lord in a late nineteenth-century way (which is conceived as 'traditional') or an early 1980s way (which is conceived as 'contemporary'). To an outsider, it probably makes as much sense as debating whether we should say Cicero or Kikero -- hey, it's still Latin.

For the record, I'm generally in favor of what people call 'blended' worship, ideally a combination of what's best in the tradition (going back farther than Fanny Crosby, one hopes) with the best of what's being written today (and yes, what was written in the 80s). More importantly, I'm in favor of whatever we do in worship being done well. Being asked to choose between bad contemporary music and bad traditional music ... well, it's a dilemma all right. I just don't see the point in asking people to express themselves in a musical idiom not their own, so the challenge is helping a congregation own whatever music it sings.

But suppose the real crisis isn't so much musical as it is doxological. If good theology should lead us to doxology, could bad doxology point to a lack of theology? This assumes a link between what we believe and how we praise, but not necessarily a melodic one. Good theology does not lead inevitably to four-part harmony. But it does inspire an urge toward transcendent worship, where the focus is on God's presence rather than human performance. It's been my experience, both in traditional and contemporary settings, that the spotlight slips all too easily away from the cross and onto the stage -- which is why I'm grateful to performers, traditional and contemporary, who guard against this. People behave in worship the way they would at a performance, and consider the worship good if the performance was.

Ideally, a self-consciously liturgical approach to the service should alleviate this, because the music is distributed in a larger architecture of worship, and the congregation is invited to participate -- to respond not to the performer but to the presence of God. To be ideal in this way, though, a liturgy must be saturated in Scripture, creed and confession. God speaks through his Word, we confess our faith. The experience is wordy, and the words carry theological import. The crisis is not about style so much as it is about the thinness and paucity of words. Not enough words. The wrong words. Not enough people given the chance to voice them. The solution is liturgical, but only in the sense that liturgy is a conveyance for theology. Theology leads us to doxology, and liturgy (like a sonnet structure) gives doxology its form. Form and content, in other words, are not discreet categories. They're parts of a whole, influencing one another. If we desire a rich doxology, we need a rich theology.

Or, to put it another way, in the face of good theology, we might utter with Dr. McWilliams: "Truly this is theology that leads us to doxology." And in the face of bad doxology, we might say: "Truly this is doxology that ought to lead us to re-examine our theology."