Date

5-1-2025

Department

School of Music

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy in Christian Worship (PhD)

Chair

R. Scott Connell

Keywords

Paul's Theology, Paul's Theology of Worship, Worship in the New Testament, Pauline Studies, Biblical Theology of Worship, Biblical Studies of Worship, Theological Studies of Worship

Disciplines

Liturgy and Worship | Practical Theology

Abstract

This study examines the Apostle Paul’s vision of λογικός (logikos) worship in Romans 12:1–2 as a theologically rich and integrative expression of sacrificial self-offering and transformative renewal, grounded in the believers’ union with the crucified and resurrected Christ. While Pauline scholarship has often approached worship either as moral exhortation, liturgical metaphor, or philosophical concept, this study contends that Paul’s worship theology cannot be adequately understood apart from his theology of ἐν Χριστῷ (en Christo), a holistic, sacrificial, transformative, and Spirit-empowered union that redefines the believers’ identity, vocation, and existence. The study conducts a biblical-theological exegesis of key Pauline texts, situating Paul’s sacrificial and transformative motif of worship within its broader canonical, historical, and theological context. It argues that Paul reconfigures Old Testament sacrificial and renewal motifs (e.g., Levitical cultic practices, Psalm 51, Jeremiah 31, and Ezekiel 36), not merely as typological antecedents but as realities fulfilled and reinterpreted through Christ’s atoning work and the believers’ incorporation into Him. In doing so, Paul presents a vision of worship that transcends temple ritual and ethical formalism, relocating worship into the embodied life of the believer, who becomes a living sacrifice and participant in Christ’s narrative.

The study further explores how Paul engages and reorients Second Temple Jewish sacrificial traditions and Greco-Roman philosophical ideas regarding reason, virtue, and self-discipline. Rather than deriving his theology from these sources, Paul critically appropriates and subverts them through a cruciform and Spirit-mediated lens. This Christocentric reinterpretation yields a vision of λογικός (logikos) worship that is both rational and relational, sacrificial and transformative, inwardly renewing and outwardly embodied.

Ultimately, the study demonstrates that Paul’s concept of worship unfolds across five interrelated dimensions: soteriological, Christological, pneumatological, ecclesiological, and eschatological, all of which converge in the believers’ union with Christ. Far from being peripheral or metaphorical, λογικός (logikos), worship emerges as a central expression of Paul’s theology of redeemed existence: a cruciform and Christoform, Spirit-led life, formed into the image of Christ, sustained within the ecclesial body, and oriented toward the consummation of new creation.

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