Worship as Witness: The Subject and the Glory of God

Abstract

In recent years, worship leaders, scholars, and pastors alike have leveled concerns about increasing individualism in worship practices and song lyrics. The difficulty in reconciling the individual spirituality of each believer with the communal identity of ekklesia has become acute, and as a result, many have rejected subjectivity in worship in pursuit of a “pure” and objective view of God. Rather than being a debate about relativity and objectivity, this dilemma is symptomatic of an underdeveloped view of the finite subject in worship. This dissertation seeks to redirect the discussion by proposing the following questions: What does it mean to worship God as a subject, from a finite creaturely perspective? And, how does God receive glory through the finite perspectives of worshipers that are present now and into the new creation (Rev 21:24– 26)? This dissertation argues that the subjectivity (not relativity) in Christian worship is not a compromise of objective truth. Instead, a rich view of God’s glory through creaturely subjectivity is essential to cultivating robust Christian worship. Creaturely worship is both wonderfully restrained by the ontological finitude of the subject yet unleashed in the symphonic witness of multiperspectival truth borne by the gathered ekklesia.

Chapter 1 outlines the scope of this debate around subjective worship as it currently stands, contextualized within the widespread appeal of both Pentecostal worship songs and practices.

Chapter 2 explores the subjective application and experience of salvation in the ordo salutis before building a theology of human subjectivity through three biblical paradigms of God’s glory through subjectivity: creaturely finitude, progressive revelation, and heavenly capacities and rewards.

Chapter 3 explores competitive construals transcendence that problematize human subjectivity and refutes the idea that an emphasis on God’s immanence through subjective worship is in competition with God’s transcendent otherness, suggesting James K. A. Smith’s “incarnational phenomenology” harmonizes human subjectivity and divine transcendence. Far from compromising God’s transcendent otherness, this chapter argues that human subjectivity creates the capacity for relational encounter and is the means by which humans access transcendence.

Drawing on Roger Scruton’s The Face of God and The Soul of the World, chapter 4 establishes the subject as a transcendental concept and argues that multiperspectival worship, as it is related to a collectively held knowledge of God through consonant testimonies, functions as a means of intersubjective knowledge and meaning.

Chapter 5 argues that subjectivity is the means by which the Church bears a symphonic witness to God’s glory through the corporate imago Dei. The perspective of each worshiper is a manifestation of an inexhaustible gospel. As the testimonies of saints even approach the inexhaustibility of God, he becomes more visible in the world and, therefore, more glorified. Corporate worship, both here and in the new creation, is the context where individual testimonies get swept up into a larger story and verified in a kaleidoscopic panorama of God’s overwhelming, infiltrating grace. Christ has filled his world with the particularities of perspectives because his glory is too abundant to be exhausted by any singular perspective or testimony.