Postscripts From The Catholic Spitfire Grill

My post about Pastor's Furtick's blog has led to this comment below and an entry on his blog.  As I did with ty23's comment I will intersperse comments with Pastor Neyhart's words. If you wish to read his comments in their complete unbrokeness, you may do so at the bottom of my original post. 

Tom N.: I am not going to poke holes in your entire post but want to challenge on one aspect. Personally I liked Pastor Stevens post.

Having just finished a rather lengthy response to ty23's post, I must say from the bottom of my exceedingly grateful heart. "THANK YOU!" for not poking holes in my entire post. I have lost almost an entire day crafting my reply to ty23 and the prospect of a shorter one gladdens my heart. The prospect of dinner gladdens my family's heart. I must also say thank you for saying that I "challenged you" I will say that I too, have been challenged by Pastor Furtick's remarks and the subsequent response to mine. Not all of which has been visible on this blog. 

I am glad you like Pastor Furtick's post. Really and truly. When I was a Protesant, I am certain that I would have felt exactly the same way that you do about Elevation Church and Pastor Furtick's blog entry. I disagree vehemently now....bet you didn't catch on to that part....but it doesn't bother me at all that others love and support Pastor Furtick. Just in case you didn't read my response to ty23 (and frankly as long as it was, I can't say that I blame you) let me say again, I have nothing personal against Pastor Furtick. I was asked my opinion about his blog entry by someone else who has no relationship whatsoever to Elevation Church and for various reasons which are not really important to this conversation, I posted that opinion on my blog. I am sure that Pastor Furtick is a godly and holy man. I'd happily have coffee with him....sorry, that's a lie. I don't drink coffee. But he could have coffee while I drank my spinach juice. I am sure that Elevation Church has done much for Our Lord and the community of Charlotte. If your church was located where I live, I am CERTAIN beyond any doubt that the pastor of my parish would happily engage in projects benefitting our community with your staff and members if that was something that was acceptable to your church membership. We'd probably invite you to our church bazaar too. But doctrine matters, otherwise you'd be Catholic or I'd be Protestant and while we can say "why can't we just unite and reach lost souls?" Our Lord said that our visible unity would be a witness to the world. (John 17:20-29) That the world would come to believe BECAUSE of that unity. That means that no matter what success we have in our personal communities in the short term, if we take Jesus at His word; then, souls are being lost because of whatever keeps us from that visible unity.

Tom N.: I am a worship minister and do not plan weekly services around my personal preferences but rather on where I feel God is leading me in conjunction with our preaching minister. I would challenge you that worship is very much a cultural thing.

Well when you first posted this comment my knee-jerk reaction to this statement was to say, "Well I'll just ask him to show me in scripture where it says that "worship is a cultural thing." I am glad that you blogged about this though because it helps me to understand your position a little more and I won't go with the knee-jerk response. As I understand it you believe that scripture is your sole rule of faith (sola scriptura) and that where Sacred Scripture is silent, there is freedom. When it comes to worship in the New Covenant, you believe that Sacred Scripture is silent. I must disagree on both counts. First, Sacred Scripture itself does not support sola scriptura. Briefly, there is no verse that lists the canon and it is not self-evident (several councils were needed to finalize the canon); therefore, the canon itself rests on church authority. There there is the matter that Sacred Scripture never says that it ALL is the sole rule of faith. In fact, it says the opposite! John says that not everything Jesus said is recorded in Sacred Scripture. If He commanded something and it was "written" in the actions of the Apostles is that any less of a command? Where is Jesus command to write everything in Sacred Scripture?  The Apostles record in 1 Corinthians 11:2 "hold fast to the traditions I handed on to you", in 2 Thessalonians 2:15 "hold fast to traditions, whether oral or by letter"  (that verse indicates that even though a command is not written, it is binding!), in 2 Thessalonians 3:6 we are instructed to "shun those not acting according to tradition." Finally, how is is possible that the church was built when for many many years many parts are not part of the New Testament were not written, most churches couldn't afford to posses more than a portion of what was considered scripture, and the canon wasn't finally set until the Council of Carthage in 397? Next, Sacred Scripture is not at all silent with regard to freedom of worship but I will get to that later.

Tom N.: If you were to go to a God fearing, bible believing church in Africa, it would be very different than church in America. It would be dictated by culture. In the early church in Jerusalem, worship was very much cultural. As the christian movement began in the book of Acts, christians patterned their worship much like that done in the temple with the addition of teachings of Christ and the breaking of bread. Other elements were taken directly from the Hebrew culture. The singing of hymns, psalms and spiritual songs as Scripture points out, would have derived from the Hebrew culture. Why would it be any different now?

RNW: While I don't think we are going to come to agreement on this issue (today anyway....but you are welcome to come home to Rome any time you'd like!! [gni]). I do think that we have more common ground than you imagine. When a Catholic speaks of worship he means the liturgical norms that form the foundation of the Mass. He does not mean church decoration, or the quality, quantity or origin of the music. It has nothing to do with who sings, what they sing, the instruments that use (or not). While Mass is essentially the same no matter what parish I attend, no matter what corner of the world, whether it is in a cathedral or on an upturned canoe as John Paul II used to say Mass with his youth group in the mountains; there are cultural differences allowed. Liturgical garments while they may have a similar pattern because of their function, also reflect the personality and culture of those who wear them. The music from one parish to another often differs to reflect the personality and culture of the majority of the parishioners. In my own parish, the music of the Mass conducted in Spanish is very different from the music of the Mass I customarily attend. But it isn't the music that makes it worship. Mass is worship with African music. Mass is worship with Latin chant. Mass is worship with no music at all. It isn't the decoration that makes it worship; although, it can contribute to it. It is the priest leading us in confession, and glorifying God, in lifting our voices in the same praise given by my Catholic brothers and sisters in faith in every Mass, in every place, in every time now and until Our Lord comes for us, it is him uniting us to Our Lord in the Eucharist, that we enter into the actual worship of heaven. The Mass allows us to participate in the eternal worship of heaven....we enter into only what is already going on. (And no we no not re-crucify Jesus. The Mass only makes present to us what is eternally present in heaven.) We come and go from it in union with Our Lord and all of the Catholic faithful. So while I do agree that worship may have an element of cultural expression attached to it (and you may be unaware that this is allowed in the Catholic Church), those parts of it are not worship itself. They only become part of worship when united to True Worship....kind of like how we become living sacrifices when we unite ourselves to the Sacrifice of Jesus.

Tom N.: That fact that you are blogging is something that you do based on current culture.

 RNW: But blogging is not worship.

Tom N.: Romans 12:1 Therefore, offer yourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship. That places worship upon me, that worship of God comes from giving my life as a sacrifice to His will, His purpose, making the things I do, planning services, singing, giving of my tithes and offerings, communion, prayer, visiting the sick all become physical acts of worship to God. Because I have given my life to His will. Written by: Tom Neyhart at 2007/03/14 - 10:24:32

RNW: But that is not the only place that Sacred Scripture speaks about worship. Scripture is a unity and the things that God revealed about worship in the Old Testament in other places in the New Testament must be put together with Romans 12:1 to form a more complete picture. I am cheating and pasting something that I have already posted....

First, worship as seen in the Old Testament is defined by God. We don't know the specific instructions given to Adam but we do know that when Cain had his own ideas about the way things should be, he was corrected by God. I see in the Old Testament that God gave the form of worship in detail and that any time folks got a hankering to tinker with the rules (2 Chronicles 26:16-23; Exodus 30:36-38; Leviticus 10:1-3) there were consequences. I see that throughout the Old Testament, God never left it up to "us" when it comes to what He wants from us in the way of worship......fortunately for us, because the Bible is full of examples of what happens when we take matters into our own hands. Nowhere in scripture do I see any indication that God is leaving it up-to-us in the New Covenant. He defined worship in the Old Covenant; I am left with the expectation that He will do so in the New Covenant. So when Jesus says at the Last Supper, during the last moments He will have before His Sacrifice on the cross, "Do this in memory of me," I have to believe that it is significant. He is facing His execution. Time is short. Whatever He says and does in those moments is not going to be one of the little things.

Old Testament worship was not only the foreshadowing of the coming perfect sacrifice, it also prefigured worship in the New Covenant. Under the Old Covenant the sin sacrifices were offered over and over to remind the people of the coming of the Lamb of God that would take the place of Isaac. In the New Covenant, the Perfect Sacrifice is made present to us in the offering of the Mass simultaneously calling to mind the Incarnation and acting as a foreshadowing of the Second Coming and the Feast of the Lamb in Revelation. In the Old Testament, Melchizedek, a priest and king, offered bread and wine prefiguring the bread and wine offered by Jesus, priest and king in the New Testament. (Hebrews 7:1-7) The sacrifice of Jesus is also prefigured in Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. Isaac carried his own wood up hill to one of the hills of what would later become Jerusalem only to be told by God that He would provide Himself the Lamb. But those are not the only significant images of Old Testament worship that are fulfilled in Jesus and establishment of worship in the New Covenant. The deliverance of the Israelites from the land of Egypt (a land gripped with a religion of death itself and the Israelites literally in bondage to death) prefigures our deliverance from sin. This is God’s metaphor for salvation written into the very lives and experiences of his Chosen People. The Passover lamb was killed and eaten…not simply killed…the blood placed on the doors and the Angel of Death passed over their homes. God however, did not intend to save the Israelites from just the Angel of Death. This was a rescue mission. Action was required. They had to gird their loins, eat the Passover dinner while standing and ready to leave; and then, they had to leave the bloody door behind taking with them the riches they were given, and flee the land of death. To escape the pursuing Egyptians, the Israelites passed through the waters of the Red Sea (prefiguring Baptism) and entered into the desert. There they begin their long preparation for entering the Promised Land. While wandering in the desert, God fed them on manna a substance that resembles bread but acts like flesh (gets wormy and rots not molds -- Exodus 16:20). God decreed Passover as a perpetual ordinance and establishes the OT sacrificial worship system. Again, we see offerings of both fine (wheat) flour (bread) and animal sacrifice with a differentiation between the holocaust offering which was not eaten and the sin sacrifice that was.

Later God’s only son, identified in the first line of the New Testament as Abraham’s son, carried the wood of the cross up the hill to be the Lamb provided by God. The very circumstances of his birth in a stable with the animals, visited by the shepherds that watched the flocks of animals destined to become temple sacrifices called to mind his destiny as a sin sacrifice. Driven into Jerusalem on the day the Passover lambs were brought into the city, it is thought that Jesus died at the same time as the afternoon sin sacrifice in the Temple. The sin sacrifice is at the center of what God demands for our reconciliation with Him. At the Last Supper, Jesus, the Perfect Sin Sacrifice, decreed that in the New Covenant, worship would be centered on His Sacrifice. He tied all of the threads of Old Testament worship into one miraculous memorial. Priest and King and Lamb, Bread and Wine, Body and Blood and just as the Israelites were required to eat the Passover Lamb, to eat the sin sacrifice so are we required to do so in the New Covenant. Just as God provided bread that acted like flesh to feed them in the time from their deliverance from the land of death before their entrance to the Promised Land, He has done the same for us. The Apostles, steeped in the prophetic rituals and remembrances of the Old Testament would have understood what eating the flesh of Jesus meant. If Jesus meant for Holy Communion to be anything other than his literal Body and Blood, He would have needed to explain that. Not vice versa. The Gospels repeatedly speak of details that mark Jesus as the fulfillment of the Passover Lamb/Sin Sacrifice….no broken bones (Exodus 12:46), wine from hyssop (Exodus 12:22), and when speaking of Jesus garment at the time of crucifixion John uses the same term used for the priests’ vestments when offering a sacrifice. Just as Jesus didn’t back away from the hard words He spoke in John 6, He didn’t soften what He said in those last hours before His Passion.

Old Testament worship was transformed by the Perfect Sacrifice. The Temple was no longer necessary but all of the elements of Old Testament worship remained. Instead of the imperfect ram that substituted for Abraham’s son, and the animal sacrifices that were to be offered repeatedly; Jesus established a new form that fulfilled all the elements of the Old Testament prophecies and practice and itself foreshadows the worship of heaven. It is only in the mystical re-presentation of the sacrifice of Jesus in the Mass that the threads of worship seen in the Old Testament are all brought together, remembered, renewed, and present a renewed foreshadowing of what is to come in heaven (numerous references in Revelation). Well-educated, devout Catholics believe that in the Mass we literally enter into the eternal worship as pictured in the Book of Revelation (CCC 1089, 1090, 1136). Jesus as Priest and Victim is always present at the altar in heaven where the angels sing for eternity “Holy, Holy, Holy” and it is we…bound in time and on earth that come and go from that altar in worship in the Mass.

(I highly recommend The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth by Scott Hahn and On Being Catholic by Thomas Howard.)

The living sacrifice that St. Paul speaks of in Romans 12:1 is our joining in to the sacrificial worship of the Mass. We add our sufferings and our sacrifices in imitation of Our Lord. It is NOT a license to define worship for ourselves.