Orthodoxy

Early last week I was in one of the City churches where I picked up a leaflet that invited me to join the community there in worshipping the Lord Jesus Christ. Now my first response to that was to say “surely we worship God?” We see it in the opening line of the Prayer Book canticle “Te Deum laudamus” — “We praise thee, O God, we acknowledge thee to be the Lord. All the earth doth worship thee, the Father everlasting.” In the same way the “Gloria in excelsis” says “We praise thee, we bless thee, we worship, we glorify thee, we give thanks to thee for thy great glory, O Lord God, heavenly King, God the Father Almighty.” So it might seem that worship is directed not only to God but quite specifically to God the Father. We find it also in the Eucharistic prayer concluding, in a form also found in the Prayer Book “through Jesus Christ our Lord; by whom, and with whom, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honour and glory be unto thee, O Father Almighty, world without end. Amen.” Alongside this we must set the words of the creed “Quicunque vult” — the so-called Athanasian Creed — which tells us “the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God” and affirms “that in all things the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped.”

Let us turn now to the New Testament. The Magi on coming into the house and finding the child with Mary his mother fell down and worshipped him. The NRSV seems uncomfortable with this and translates it as “paid him homage”. Actually this is a reasonable translation, for the Greek word proskuneo comes from the verb to kiss, kuneo, and means to do reverence or homage by kissing the hand, and is extended by analogy to mean divine homage, worship or adoration. It is the verb Jesus uses when he talks to the woman of Samaria about worship. It is also the word he uses when he tells the devil “Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.” The disciples in the boat, having encountered Jesus walking on the water, worshipped him and declared him truly God’s Son. The blind man who received his sight, in John’s Gospel, called him “Lord” ands worshipped him. The risen Christ was worshipped by the women and by the disciples in the last chapter of Matthew. The Greek verb is uniformly in Latin by adoro.

Now I think we can see from the liturgy and from this brief survey of gospel texts that God is to be worshipped, in the sense of the formal religious act of worship, but that Jesus is clearly worshipped in person in the gospels because he is seen to be the Son of God and worthy of the same reverence that God himself receives. Doctrinally, the teaching of the Church stresses the unity of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and expects both prayer and worship, in general, to be addressed to God. It is more specifically addressed to the Father. It is sometimes said that we pray in a Trinitarian context, to the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Prayer Book catechism posing the question about what is desired when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, answers “I desire my Lord God our heavenly Father, who is the giver of all goodness, to send his grace unto me, and to all people, that we may worship him, serve him, and obey him, as we ought to do.” And this is the clear position of the Church.

It is certainly the case that in practice we address some few liturgical prayers directly to Christ and that we reverence the sacramental presence of Christ in the Eucharist. At the stations of the cross, we say “We adore thee, O Christ and we bless thee”. So undoubtedly in devotion worship is given to God the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, though hardly ever to the Holy Spirit, though the Nicene Creed says quite clearly, in relation to the Holy Ghost, “who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified”.

I think it unlikely that we would put out a notice that says “Come and join us in worshipping the Holy Spirit” or indeed in “worshipping the Father” or even in “worshipping God the Son”. Even though we do it in devotional terms, we don’t generally say, “let us worship the Lord Jesus Christ.” We say “Let us worship God” and the key to this is surely there in the creed – the word “together”. We worship and glorify God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, together. This, it seems to me is the correct Christian practice and hence “right worship”. The word for “right worship” is orthodoxy, to give glory correctly, and I think that we should stick to that.