Worship: A Spiritual or Aesthetic Activity?

The doctrine of worship is a topic that has long peaked my interest. Worship is the central activity of God's people both on earth and in heaven, but it seems to be more often a source of division rather than unity.

One key aspect of worship that is regularly confused by well-meaning Christians is whether worship is primarily a spiritual or aesthetic activity. Dr. Peter Masters of the historic Metropolitan Tabernacle has a helpful introduction to this issue here. His basic argument is that worship exclusively spiritual and the aesthetic features of a service are neither vehicles of worship nor aids for worship. The following lines especially caught my attention:

When we evaluate new worship, we must do so in terms of those biblical principles recovered (by God’s mercy) at the time of the Reformation, the first of these being that worship is spiritual, and not an aesthetic performance. At the Reformation, simplicity, intelligibility and fidelity to the Bible replaced the impressive mystery and pageantry of Rome. It has been well said that the aesthetically splendid mass surrendered to the understanding soul…We would never say, for example, that the organ ‘enriches’ worship. It disciplines the singing, and teaches and maintains the tune, but we know very well that in spiritual terms it can contribute nothing…Worship is not the exercise of our gifts, but the exercise of our hearts and minds. For many people this is the lost genius of worship, the principle which has disappeared from sight — that worship is not the presentation to God of skill or beauty, or of personal gifts, but the communication of the soul with God, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ alone, and by the enabling power of the Holy Spirit. Worship is not an aesthetic activity.

Yet a question remains: even if they are not vehicles for worship in themselves, do the aesthetic features of a service (its sights and sounds) ever help or hinder true spiritual worship? Does the external (aesthetic) style or quality of the architecture, decorum, words, and song have ANY bearing on the internal (spiritual) character of worship? This is a question I am hoping to address over the coming months as I begin a course of directed study with Michael Horton at WSC.