About Defining Worship

Q: You make some good points, but it all depends on how you define “worship.” As any scholar knows, you need to define terms.

TRW: Yes, definitions are important. But if we’re trying to determine NT concepts, it makes no difference how you define worship. Rather, the critical task is to define the Greek words that the biblical writers used. No biblical writer ever used the English word ‘worship’. Rather, they used the Greek words proskuneo, latreuo, leitourgeo, sebomai, and threskeia.

Examples of the Definition Debacle

For example, if we want to determine the NT concept of church, we gain nothing by defining the English word ‘church’. Such an effort will lead you into modern concepts of sacred buildings and denominational organizations. Defining the Greek word ekklesia is what matters (which has nothing to do with buildings and denominations).

The word ‘saint’ is another good illustration. Defining saint will lead you down the wrong path, right into modern notions of special elite Christians. Rather, we need to define the Greek word hagios (“holy ones”).

The same is true with baptism. Defining the English word ‘baptize’ is a futile exercise. But we finally learn something when we define the Greek word baptizo. In reality, translating baptizo into “baptize” is a lazy and misleading translation.

If we think that defining the English word ‘worship’ is a productive venture, we have presumed that the English construct of worship is a helpful and accurate translation of the five Greek words. But it isn’t. In fact, the English concept of worship is laden with hundreds of years of evolving theological concepts that have little or nothing to do with Christian gatherings of the NT period.

Defining the Greek Words is Productive

For my doctoral dissertation, I studied the hundreds of times the five Greek words for “worship” are found in the LXX and NT. I learned that those five Greek words are not synonymous. They all have distinctly different meanings. In fact, none of those five Greek words connotes praise, singing, praying, or attending a religious assembly.

There are good reasons why the biblical writers never used any of those five words to describe what Christians do when they gather. All those five Greek words have connection to Jewish temple activity. But Jesus not only replaced the temple, he also predicted its utter destruction, describing its annihilation as “days of vengeance, to fulfill all that is written” (Lk 21:22).

In my view, when biblical translators translate those Greek words into “worship” they have chosen a lazy solution of using a catch-all English word that misleads the English reader. I would even venture to say that our modern construct of “worship” belongs on the ash-heap of history, along with the idea that ministers are priests and that Christians need sacred places.

The Quagmire of Questions about Worship

One more point. I am often asked questions like, “What then is true worship?” “How then should we worship God in church?” or “Wasn’t Christian worship based on synagogue worship?” But these questions contain a false premise, assuming that these ideas of “worship” are actually biblical ideas. They aren’t. In order to respond to such questions, I need to deconstruct the question so that it doesn’t assume false ideas as true ideas.

Over the last five decades of studying this problem, I’ve learned this hard truth: Any question that includes the word ‘worship’ in the question is likely to result in confusion, conflict, and controversy. Why? Because it presumes a false premise. It assumes that the English word ‘worship’ is a biblical construct. It isn’t. If you rephrase the question and avoid the term ‘worship’, you’ll likely have a question that results in a productive discussion.

Ultimately, we need to do a fresh deep dive into the NT to discover the details, dynamics, and purpose of the Christian assembly. If this deep dive is done without any concern for retaining our modern ecclesial systems, we’ll find that “worship”—as we understand it today—has nothing to do with Christian assemblies of the first century. This kind of deep dive was the focus of my dissertation.