The regulative principle of worship suggests and bolsters a regulative principle of everything for the church. Doctrine, order, and doxology are a three-legged stool. When present and sturdy, these legs will bear great weight; when any are missing or compromised, collapse is imminent.

Thesis: No confessional Presbyterian church will long remain confessional or presbyterian if it loses Reformed worship.

First, some definitions:

• Confessional: orthodox soteriology and doctrine (especially of God) according to the Reformed confessions
• -Presbyterian: government by ordained male (per scripture) elders organized in accountable, graded courts
• -Reformed worship: scripturally regulated (RPW), simple, ordinary means of grace worship—a Reformed bucket to carry Reformed water.

Why will unscriptural, man-centered, culturally conditioned, over-contextualized worship undermine confessional orthodoxy? Because worship by its very form (which ought to be according to spirit—uppercase and lowercase— and truth) communicates certain things about the nature of God and man, thus theology proper and anthropology can’t help but be warped by unbiblical worship. Theology proper and biblical anthropology are the foundations of soteriology, which will also be warped by unbiblical (e.g., revivalist or sacerdotal) worship.

Why will unscriptural, man-centered, culturally conditioned, over-contextualized worship undermine biblical, Presbyterian church government? Because free-form, optional, variable worship forms suggest free-form, optional, variable ecclesial forms…or little form at all. And when worship is no longer led by ordained elders, government by ordained elders seems less plausible. Presbyterian order is not hierarchical, but neither is it excessively horizontal. Rolling it out too thin leads to its disintegration.

The regulative principle of worship suggests and bolsters a regulative principle of everything for the church. Doctrine, order, and doxology are a three-legged stool. When present and sturdy, these legs will bear great weight; when any are missing or compromised, collapse is imminent.

Calvin would seem to agree with this thesis according to his famous statement about worship and soteriology in “The Necessity of Reforming the Church” (admittedly written before Presbyterian government was fully developed):

“If it be inquired, then, by what things chiefly the Christian religion has a standing existence amongst us, and maintains its truth, it will be found that the following two not only occupy the principal place, but comprehend under them all the other parts, and consequently the whole substance of Christianity: that is, a knowledge, first, of the mode in which God is duly worshipped; and, secondly, of the source from which salvation is to be obtained. When these are kept out of view, though we may glory in the name of Christians, our profession is empty and vain. After these come the sacraments* and the government of the church, which, as they were instituted for the preservation of these branches of doctrine, ought not to be employed for any other purpose; and, indeed, the only means of ascertaining whether they are administered purely and in due form, or otherwise, is to bring them to this test. If anyone is desirous of a clearer and more familiar illustration, I would say, that rule in the church, the pastoral office, and all other matters of order, resemble the body, whereas the doctrine which regulates the due worship of God, and points out the ground on which the consciences of men must rest their hope of salvation, is the soul which animates the body, renders it lively and active, and, in short, makes it not to be a dead and useless carcass.”

Ultimately, worship is simply more important than we often assume it to be, and we undervalue or modify it into something else to our own peril. Calvin was right to place it first (at least once) and before doctrine/soteriology. He understood its essential, stabilizing role. He also was a true conservative who opposed most change (including change of worship) on principle, unlike evangelicals and even some among the Presbyterian and Reformed of our own day. On his deathbed, Calvin exhorted his fellow pastors in Geneva in 1564:

“I beg you also to change nothing and to avoid innovation, not because I am ambitious to preserve my own (reforming) work…but because all changes are dangerous, and sometimes even harmful.”**

Calvin’s conservative program for worship and the church might be a poor strategy to move books and CDs or sell out a conference, but it may be (since biblical reforms of the 16th and 17th centuries) the best way to preserve biblical order and doctrine.

Brad Isbell is a ruling elder at Covenant Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Oak Ridge, TN, co-host of the Presbycast podcast, board member of MORE in the PCA and the Heidelberg Reformation Association, and a co-editor of the Nicotine Theological Journal.

* The sacraments properly figure in both the ecclesiology/order and doxology categories.
** Quoted in Scott Manetsch, Calvins’s Company of Pastors, Oxford University Press, p. 1