Trueman's article is very helpful, speaking to his own (our) tradition about a closely related tradition (Lutheran), that is still a bit alien to us, due to a cultural divide that goes down to a remarkable sibling rivalry. We are of the younger-brother stock. Lest a Lutheran object to his comments in any way, it should be remembered that he's not accommodating a Lutheran audience by what he says, but is speaking a Reformed vocabulary to a Reformed audience. That said, simply taken as an historical presentation, it is hardly objectionable, and evidently laudatory (but it's not unheard of for Lutherans to resent how much we appreciate "their" Luther--after all, they despise Calvin, so why can't we do the decent thing and reciprocate?).
Lutherans would never deny "the glory of God," or outright deny that men should "glorify God" as a matter of course. But there is an allergy among them to almost any talk about "glory" or "glorifying." They instinctively react to a statement like the first answer to the WSC with a reflex-response: "That's a theology of glory."
WRONG. It's actually very far away from what Luther called "the theology of glory." Just because someone uses the word, or is more comfortable than Lutherans talking about the whole matter of glory in its proper place, doesn't mean that he has become entranced with "a theology of glory." The theology of glory is deeply problematic because it is NOT the glory of God, but the glory of man. It tries to dress up human efforts in gaudy presentation; it tries to impress men with grandeur and splendor; it tries to cover up the scandal of the cross by introducing magic and glitz.
You want ironic? Go to a Reformed church, where there is little or no musical accompaniment to the singing, or where a separate choir is eschewed in principle as being an unwarranted introduction of "glory" into the worship (obviously, there is a big "spectrum" of fidelity to historic Reformed standards). And compare that to a typical Lutheran church where there's plenty of religious rigamarole, where choirs and organs have never been excluded on principle, where high religious art is welcomed.
The Reformed (on paper) believe that the plainer the worship, the more evident is the glory of God, because human additions are minimized. Lutherans, who have a completely different worship-principle (an "inclusive" rather than "exclusive" regulation) relative to the Medieval Roman heritage we share, retain all sorts of distracting human inventions to worship, thus instituting a "theology of glory" in their worship practice. They mock as impossible the Reformed attitude that "we are taken to heaven when we worship;" preferring their view that in worship "heaven comes down to earth," and thus infuses the mundane with spiritual splendor.
When you think about it, the two views are actually not that far apart, formally speaking. Both involve us in an "eschatological inbreaking" of the world-to-come with this one. But the Lutherans accuse us of introducing "human effort" into our direction of travel. (We don't, but are rather "carried" to heaven by Holy Spirit). Lutherans think of themselves as being content to remain here on earth as God in Christ comes to us, as he repeats his humiliation again and again for us, and they emphasize that this is very monergistic in their view (Christ's direction of travel being downward). This Christology lends itself to their view of the Lord's Supper. The Reformed tend to emphasize in this age the settled, exalted Session of Christ, "whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things," Act.3:21.
And one can see, then, how the Lutheran divine Presence has a tendency to sanctify every human effort that isn't outright forbidden. In our Reformed view, all that junk has to be left behind, because none of it gets carried with our spirits to heaven, and anything that's here on earth should only be the authorized elements that have God's promise attached, and will actually help us avoid too much distraction. But in Lutheranism, God just uses feeble human efforts--whether bread and wine, or Bach's St. Matthew's Passion--to give men a spiritual experience that "feels spiritual." Do you see the difference in "direction of travel," and how the RPW plays into that?
Let me repeat the irony: Reformed worship (in strict Confessional terms) is the MOST truly glorious, because it is the LEAST infected with "the theology of glory," being most heavenly and least distracted. Whereas Lutheran worship, unencumbered with total restrictions on unauthorized elements, has no formal Confessional prohibition on the introduction of a mundane "theology of glory," being jumbled together with the real means of grace (Word and Sacrament).
P.S. I don't think the ToG/ToC issue has nearly as much to do with the Justification/Sanctification relative emphasis in the two traditions, seeing that expression as probably more typical of the Lutheran perspective on the divide.
