“Are some really suggesting now that only Sunday corporate worship is accepted by God?”

It is a matter of emphasis, etc. Six-day worship just isn’t the same as Sabbath worship. I know that is hard to swallow, given your egalitarian presuppositions that flatten everything out. It can’t be Christmas or one’s birthday everyday, you know. There’s good reason for that.

Not on this thread, no.

Are some really suggesting now that only Sunday corporate worship is accepted by God? So in Acts 4, the believers should never have “lifted their voices together” to ask God to “stretch out His hand…” on their behalf?

Just goes to show, you can never satisfy a legalist.

“Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!” Hallelujah!

I believe his high view of the Sabbath would be motivating his view.

And as such, I completely agree with him.

Let’s take the Christ OUT of Christmas

Reminds me of Peter Leithart’s Against Christianity. The turns of phrase are similarly Chestertonianly paradoxical, but in support of such opposite agendas!

Admittedly provacative but a bit odd at the same time. I’m all for combatting Constantinianism (cultural Christianity) and the inherent defanging of the Lion of Judah it perpetuates, believe me. But I am not all that persuaded it should be done at the expense of the collective wisdom of the saints that something like the liturgical calendar expresses. There’s the RPW and the doctrine of simplicity, etc., and then there’s white-washing things, Zwinglian and Radical Reformation style.

When you hold a worship service for the Ascension, don’t you make the statement that Sabbath worship services don’t do enough to remember the Ascension, and that we need an extra one to do so properly? And if so, how can it be said that that DOESN’T bind peoples’ consciences to participate?

I think the nature of the thing inherently binds peoples’ consciences to worship other than regular Sabbath practice.

I think there are some special worship services that can be called for reasons other than the celebration of the liturgical calendar that can be appropriate, such as the service that commemorates a church’s particularization or their calling, ordination and installation of a pastor, etc. But to celebrate the liturgical calendar? No, we have been given the Sabbath for that.

E

What is the justification for celebrating the liturgical calendar?

I think there’s liberty to call worship services outside of Sunday, and surely our respective denominations have answered that question. I really don’t think this is Bruce’s point.

I think his point is, WHY should we call Christmas a Christian holy-day, or Easter or Ascension day, when the things especially remembered on those days are properly remembered and preached about every Sabbath?

As Godfrey says, “Let’s take the Christ OUT of Christmas.” I love him for it.

E

Or how about how the Lutherans “separate law and gospel as to lead to antinomianism, the dimunition of sanctification and the dismissal of good works.” (Andrew Sandlin). Fesko takes care of this kind of thing in TCP 2007, Volume 3 (same issue OHS Hyde takes on the Descendit, BTW).

Sheesh, now I know why I get called Lutheran, antinomian, etc. I am with Hyde here as much as I am with Fesko on how misunderstood Lutheranism is.

I like it…. a LOT! I’m just spit-balling here, but can we do a karaoke machine?! You could collect a cover charge and call it a “love offering”. I’ll get back to you on this, this could be something.

And where is the command that the elders are only permitted to call the congregation to worship on the Lord’s Day?

and explain to me how it is “Calvinistic, not Lutheran” — what would the Lutheran form of the question be?

Can a consistory compel one to attend non-sabbath services on pain of discipline? No. That’s the difference between non-sabbath-day services and sabbath-day services.

Is that the only difference? Is RPW the lever by which elders compel attendance to sabbath-day services? As I ask above, is RPW relaxed midweek, such that exclusive psalmists may sing hymns? Or for those who believe that RPW forbids instruments, could a midweek service use the organ? Or electric guitar and drumkit? How about dancing?

Maybe if and when my article on Lutheran adiaphora (where, among many things, I try to demonstrate that our Reformed insistence that they hold to the so-called “normative principle” is inaccurate and a caricature) and its parallels in Reformed liturgical principle and practice (at least in the area of the feast days) finds a home in an academic journal (I’m awaiting word) I’ll have a coherent, sustained argument to offer.

Until then, I’ll stand on the side of those non-evolved, crypto-papist, liturgical liberals such as the Divines at Dort and men like Francis Turretin.