Theology Of Ritual In Jewish And Early Christian Worship

Source: The Complete Library of Christian Worship, Robert E. Webber, General Editor

Religious rituals are corporate symbolic actions in which people engage when they worship. The theological principle underlying ritual worship is that our principal access to the spiritual is through the outward and visible. Even the most spiritual ideas must be expressed in outward words or actions, which are almost necessarily symbolic. Love, for example, is expressed by symbolic words and actions, that is, by ritual acts. For Christians the supreme example of this outward and visible...

 

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