The Aquila Report

Your independent source for news and commentary from and about conservative, orthodox evangelicals in the Reformed and Presbyterian family of churches

Coram Deo Conference - click for details
Home/Featured/Isn’t it Romantic?

Isn’t it Romantic?

Has romanticism infected how we worship? I think so

Written by Persis Lorenti | Friday, March 11, 2016

In a recent Facebook discussion, a friend posted some quotes from “Jesus Calling” and asked whether there was any Biblical defense of the supposed statements from “Jesus.” No scriptural defense was given but there were a few lively responses that if people were “touched” and “helped”, the end justifies the means. However, the question remains, if someone was “helped”, were they given greater and more accurate understanding of the One True God as attested to in the Bible or a figment of someone’s imagination? The figment may evoke very nice feelings and still be false.

 

The Romantic period is typified by an uncontested embrace of personal experience, not merely as self-expression or self-representation, but also as epistemology and personal identity (who I am, ontologically)…

Romanticism claimed that you know truth through the lens of your personal experience, and that no overriding or objective opposition can challenge the primal wisdom of someones subjective frame of intelligibility. In romanticism, this knowing and being known is identity-rooted and identity-expressive. Romanticism went beyond a solipsistic, me-centered understanding of selfhood. Solipsism is the belief that only one’s own mind and its properties are sure to exist. Romanticism took this one step further to declare personal feelings and experience the most reliable measure and means of discerning truth.1

This quote from Rosaria Butterfield’s Openness Unhindered makes the case that sexual orientation as identity is a byproduct of romanticism. I agree with her completely in this regard, but romanticism has infiltrated more than this sphere. I would also argue that romanticism has infected our ideas of worship.
In a recent Facebook discussion, a friend posted some quotes from “Jesus Calling” and asked whether there was any Biblical defense of the supposed statements from “Jesus.” No scriptural defense was given but there were a few lively responses that if people were “touched” and “helped”, the end justifies the means. However, the question remains, if someone was “helped”, were they given greater and more accurate understanding of the One True God as attested to in the Bible or a figment of someone’s imagination? The figment may evoke very nice feelings and still be false.
Dorothy Sayers made the statement, “The proper question to be asked about any creed is not, ‘is it pleasant?’ but ‘is it true?’”2 And this question “is it true?” still needs asking. After all, if we profess to love God, why would we be content to speak of Him in ways that are inaccurate and misleading? If we profess to love the truth, shouldn’t the means whereby we worship be put to that test?

 

The foundation of all true knowledge of God must be a clear mental apprehension of His perfections as revealed in Holy Scripture. An unknown God can neither be trusted, served, nor worshipped.3

1. Openness Unhindered, Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, Crown and Covenant Publications, 2015, pg. 95. (italics mine)
2. The Mind of the Maker, Dorothy L. Sayers, HarperCollins, 1987, pg. 17
3. The Attributes of God, A.W. Pink, Baker Book House, 1975, pg. 7.

Persis Lorenti is an ordinary Christian. You can find her at Tried With Fire and Out of the Ordinary. This article appeared at her blog and is used with permission.

Related Posts:

Subscribe to Free “Top 10 Stories” Email

Get the top 10 stories from The Aquila Report in your inbox every Tuesday morning.

Name(Required)

DISCLAIMER: The Aquila Report is a news and information resource. We welcome commentary from readers; for more information visit our Letters to the Editor link. All our content, including commentary and opinion, is intended to be information for our readers and does not necessarily indicate an endorsement by The Aquila Report or its governing board. In order to provide this website free of charge to our readers,  Aquila Report uses a combination of donations, advertisements and affiliate marketing links to  pay its operating costs.