Journal: Journal of the Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies
Volume: JIRBS 03:1 (NA 2016)
Article: The Regulative Principle Of Worship: Contemporary Objections
Author: Samuel E. Waldron

JIRBS 3 (2016) p. 185

The Regulative Principle Of Worship:
Contemporary Objections

Samuel E. Waldron*

* Samuel E. Waldron, Ph.D., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is one of the pastors of Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Owensboro, KY. He serves as the Dean and Professor of Systematic Theology at Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of several books. This article is a slightly revised version of material that appeared in Going Beyond the Five Points and is used with permission. For the first part of this treatment, see Sam Waldron, “The Regulative Principle of the Church,” in By Common Confession: Essays in Honor of James M. Renihan, ed. Ronald S. Baines, Richard C. Barcellos, and James P. Butler (Palmdale, CA: RBAP, 2015), 377–407.

The regulative principle has been the object of a great deal of contemporary objection, confusion, and question. I have isolated ten such objections and questions that will be dealt with in this article.

Ten Contemporary Objections

1. It Implies A Counterintuitive Regulation Of Worship (Or The Church) Different From The Rest Of Human Life.

One of the major directions in which John Frame re-interprets the regulative principle is by arguing that it applies to all of life. So understanding it, he is able to adopt it verbally, though not, I would argue, substantially in its historical form. In a key statement of this re-orientation of the principle, he says:

I therefore reject the limitation of the regulative principle to official worship services. In my view, the regulative principle in Scripture is not about church power and officially sanctioned worship services. It is a doctrine about worship, about all forms of worship. It governs all worship, whether formal or informal, individual or corporate, public

JIRBS 3 (2016) p. 186

or private, family or church, broad or narrow. Limiting the doctrine to officially sanctioned worship robs it of its biblical force.1

It is clear from this citation that the notion that all of life is worship provides writers like Frame one of their primary reasons for either re-interpreting or rejecting the regulative principle. They, so to speak, intuitively dismiss the distinction between worship and the rest of life historically associated with the regulative principle in favor of the popular contemporary notion that all of life is worship. By way of a response to this intuitive dismissal of the distinction between worship and the rest of life historically associated with the regulative principle, let me begin by summarizing my view of this matter.

First of all, I have a sympathetic response. I d...