山道期刊

Message in Prayer: The Scripturalization of Prayer in Jewish Tradition

WONG Fook Kong

I think no one doubts the importance of prayer in worship. What may not be obvious is that prayers convey messages to the believers no less than sermons and songs. In this essay, we will look at the practice of prepared prayers in Jewish tradition. My point is that prepared prayers, in particular prayers that cite Scripture, are not just messages from believers to God, but also messages from God to the believers. According to Jonathan Sacks, when sacrifice and prayer merged in the post-temple period, prayer took on the highly structured character of the sacrificial service, with fixed texts and times. Whereas before, sacrifice was made in silence, it was transmuted into the speech of prayer. In the majority of these prayers, scriptural passages are either alluded or cited. The Amidah (or “Eighteen Benedictions”) and the Shema, which are prayed on numerous occasions, are two good examples. These prayers evince the underlying theological assumption that God will act in the pattern he exhibited in the past. At the same time, the repetition of scriptures impresses the teachings of the passages in the minds of the worshippers. Thus, “praying” scriptures sends its contents in two directions–one to God and the other to the worshippers.

Hymns in the Book of Revelation

CHAN Yue Yan Grace

Worship and hymns in Revelation have become a major interest in recent decades. Scholars generally agree that hymns play a significant role in Revelation as John uses them to convey and deliver important message to the audience. This article explores the role and purpose of the hymns in Revelation in order to understand the message and its underlying meaning for the audience.

Revelation is full of heavenly worship scenes with doxologies and hymns, focusing on the worship of God and the Lamb. From a narrative perspective, the hymns not only can be used as a meaningful commentary within the dramatic acts of Revelation but also provide a context for all the eschatological actions. Just as worship celebrations make present the kingdom of God, so the hymns powerfully evoke and make present the victory of God and His followers! As the faithful join the heavenly chorus celebrating God’s victory, they participate and share the victory already won by God and the Lamb. By affirming the reality of divine sovereignty and kingship, the hymns inspire confidence, faith and eschatological hope. Therefore the hymns serve an important function of motivating and challenging the audience to endure and bear faithful witness in circumstances of religious and political oppression.

The True Meaning of “Worship”:
A Biblical and Historical Re-evaluation of Public Worship

Nathan K. NG

What is the true meaning of worship? Is it just a meeting consisting of singing and praising God, as many modern churches perceive it? This article tries to re-evaluate the real meaning of “worship” and argues that our present view on worship has actually deviated from the teaching of both Old and New Testaments as well as the ancient ecclesiastical tradition.

“Worship” in the Bible is synonymous with service. Instead of being a meeting, it is a kind of pious life. The most essential expression of worship is not singing or praising, but obeying and serving God. The key functions of the church meeting, nowadays commonly called “public worship,” are teaching the divine words, stimulating one another to love and good deeds, and encouraging one another. The main focus of such public worship should not be on the meeting itself, but rather on its impact on the daily life of the congregation after the meeting.

Church, Worship, and Preaching from the Perspectives of Gunton and Webster

Andres S. TANG

The aim of this paper is not to discuss what preaching is, nor to teach how to preach. Rather it is to re-think how to think theologically about preaching. We cannot understand preaching by abstracting it from the worship of the church community. Thus we need to grasp theologically what the church community is. Indeed the origin and telos of the church community have to be traced so as to grasp the theological nature or being of the church community in the economic activity of the triune God. In this way, we may understand that the worship of the church community is the proper place of the divine presence. Then the nature of preaching can be grasped in such a context as a theological event, that is, an event of God. Colin E. Gunton and John Webster, two contemporary English theologians, establish the base for us to re-think theologically the issue of preaching.

Christianity, Confucianism, Chinese Family and Modernization:
A Reflection from Max Weber’s Religious Sociology

HUNG Tsz Wan Andrew

This paper explores Max Weber’s three criticisms of Confucianism: lack of tension between this world and the transcendent world, overemphasizing the harmony of kin relationship and lack of the spirit of professionalism. Although Weber’s viewpoints have been criticized by many scholars, such as Thomas A. Metzger, Tu Wei-ming and Yu Ying-shih, I would argue that Weber’s criticisms are not completely unreasonable. Compared with the “external transcendence” of Christianity, Confucian “inner transcendence” has more difficulty forming the tension with the transcendent world. And the prevalence of vulgar Confucianism with its emphasis on familial relational ethics also makes Chinese people give priority to human relationship and face-saving over professional norms and transcendent truth. This causes a kind of nepotism which in fact violates the ideal of pre-Qin Confucianism. However, the emergence of the East Asian economic miracle in recent years also reveals that Weber has ignored that Confucian familial relational ethics can become a cultural driving force for cultivating diligence and national economic development, which is similar to Weber’s thesis of Protestant ethics. Examining the Japanese family system of Iemoto shows that Confucianism is able to transcend the bound of consanguinity. Furthermore, I would argue that Christian belief helps the modernization of Chinese culture. Christianity emphasizes the family value of the present world which is sustained by the redemption and love of Christ. It also believes that the Heavenly Family is the model of the human family in which obedience to the Heavenly Father’s will as the Ultimate Truth overrides all other relationships. Such belief is not only compatible with Confucian family values, but may also help Chinese to break through barriers caused by nepotism.