In today’s experience-oriented, purpose-driven, emotion-laden evangelicalism, much polemical work remains to be done in the realm of proskyneology; a theology of worship. So much of theological Downgrade is done through worship, because worship is not rightly understood. As with all polemics terms, they are created in order to take mastery over language and definitions, to allow for accurate distinctions, and to converse more precisely.
Proskyneology
The word for worship in the Greek is προσκυνέω (proskynéō) which comes from two words, prós, “towards” and kyneo, “to kiss.” Proskyneology is the Biblical study of worship. It is also called in layman’s terms more colloquially, “a theology of worship.”
By applying this term to the theology of worship and using it regularly, polemicists hope to encourage the study of worship as seriously as other theological disciplines, which have their own unique names (such as soteriology, eschatology, pneumatology, ecclesiology, and so on).
The Hope
The hope in utilizing an academic name for the theology of worship, we may begin to avail our modern evangelicalism of a general ignorance of what is and is not acceptable worship to God, which is the bulk of the Downgrade in our day.
