Cristian E Guzmán Belzú Renzo E Guzmán Belzú
I.- Algunas consideraciones a modo de intro ducción
This review of literature in the field of liturgical theology is loosely organised around the themes set forth in the section on methodology in the introduction to the thesis, on the one hand as a way of structuring the literature available in this field and on the other hand to show even more fully that the methodology employed in the thesis is appropriate (because also applicable to liturgical theology more generally).412
1. Liturgy as primary theology
The word ‘leitourgia’ means ‘common work’ or ‘work of the people’ and was originally used to refer to such public activities as paying taxes and other ‘public works’ in the Greco-Roman empire.413
In the Christian tradition it came to designate the work of the Christian community, primarily—though not exclusively—in church.414 Today it is often used to refer to liturgical texts used in Christian ecclesial gatherings, occasionally as referring to the sacraments, or, more loosely, to the activity of worship in all its facets. In the widest sense it can designate any communal Christian experience.415 ‘Liturgical theology’ as a subdiscipline of theology (often categorised under ‘practical’ or ‘applied’ theology) is a fairly recent
endeavour, emerging only in the past 50-60 years, often linked to the ‘liturgical reform movement’ to a large extent leading up to and in the wake of Vatican II.416 The Eastern Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann also had much to do with its emergence as an independent discipline. Today a distinction is often made between liturgics as a more strictly scientific discipline concerned with the earliest emergence of liturgical
412 I do not include again a review of Ricoeur’s biblical hermeneutics. A fuller version of this including such a review
and arguing that Ricoeur’s hermeneutics is an appropriate method for liturgical theology is forthcoming in Worship. That version, however, includes significantly fewer bibliographical notes which are here provided for the review of the available literature.
413 For a thorough review of the origin of the term and its appropriation, see Irwin (1994, chapter 1). I.H. Dalamais
explains that ‘as used originally in the Greek cities, “liturgy” could mean any “public service”, but especially services that were costly and were accepted as done in the name of the city because they were linked to its most vital interests. In a culture permeated by religious values (as most of the traditional cultures were), “liturgy” thus understood was
predicated first and foremost of actions expressing the city’s relations to the world of divine powers on which it acknowledged itself to be dependent. “Liturgy” referred, therefore, not to cultic actions of individuals or private groups but only to those of the organised community, that is, the entire people, who realised that they shared a single destiny and a collective memory. In other words, liturgy belonged to what has sometimes been called a “perfect [or: complete] society”. This is why the name can and even ought to be reserved (as it is in official documents) for the exercise of a worship that is public in the fullest sense, that is, a worship actually offered in the name of the community, which acknowledges it as its own’ (in Martimort, 1987:233).
414 John Baldovin argues convincingly that much of the church’s liturgy in urban centres was of a public nature and took
place in the streets. Thus, liturgy is not solely confined to the architectural space of the church building (1987).
415 Most liturgical scholars draw a distinction between public rite and private devotion. See, for example, Keith Pecklers,
S.J., who devotes a chapter to private devotion or ‘popular religion’ (not all of it private or individual) in his book on liturgy (2003:139-161).
416 The four-volume series edited by A.G. Martimort is a good example of this (1986-87). For a brief review of the
twentieth-century liturgical movement, see Pecklers (2003:91-166). For a fuller treatment, see Fenwick & Spinks (1995; also Madden, 1992). Toverell re-examines the liturgical reforms that came out of Vatican II quite critically especially in light of ritual studies, which suggest that mystery is an essential part of worship and that a liturgy that aims primarily at comprehensibility may fail to engage the imagination of its participants (2000).
rites as examined especially in early texts417 and liturgical theology as a theological reflection upon such texts. Schmemann draws a somewhat similar distinction at the very beginning of his Introduction to Liturgical
Theology when he outlines ‘the task and method of liturgical theology’ and distinguishes it from ‘liturgics’ or
‘liturgical study’, which is concerned with ‘how worship is to be carried out according to the rules’, instead of ‘what is done in worship’, i.e., its meaning (1986:9). James White contends that neither group sufficiently engages the other: ‘Unfortunately, most liturgical theology tends to be historically naive, just as much
liturgical history may be theologically unsophisticated. Most liturgical theologies are based on a single period of a single tradition. And frequently it is an idealised version of that tradition’ (in Anderson & Morrill, 1998:57). David Fagerberg claims that there are ‘four understandings of the relationship between liturgy and theology’: theology of worship (which focuses on worship as response to God but says little about liturgical rite), theology from worship (which is primarily interested in doctrine but tries to root it in the liturgy), liturgical theology (theology as found in the structure and performance of the rite) and the study of liturgical theology (2004:11-12, revised version of 1992).418 He gives examples of each approach.
This sense of liturgical theology as primary theology is encapsulated by the phrase lex orandi, lex
credendi (loosely translated as ‘the law of worship determines the law of belief’).419 Aidan Kavanagh and David Fagerberg make this distinction the most forcefully, although it has become a common assertion in
417 Historical liturgical studies are primarily devoted to uncovering evidence for and analysing early Christian liturgical
texts and observances. Such scholars are concerned with the development of Christian Sunday celebrations, the
emergence of the festal and sanctoral cycle, the divergences in observances in various geographical and cultural areas, as well as the emergence and organisation of certain parts of the rites. Talley (1986/1991) and Winkler (1997) have done particularly important research on the emergence of the Paschal and the nativity cycle, Taft on the emergence of the Byzantine rite and its various elements (1995) and the emergence of the liturgy of the hours (1986), Brock (2006) and Winkler (1997) on Syrian Christianity and Varghese on West Syrian liturgy (2004). James White collects some useful resources and early documents (1992; see also Deiss, 1979). This research is primarily historical and descriptive (although occasionally comments are made about contemporary liturgical reform in light of particular evidence from the past). Bradshaw carefully summarises what we know about the origins of Christian worship and frequently warns of drawing conclusions too confidently and too hastily (2002). In a different text he edits several essays on the emergence of Eucharistic celebration and its liturgical prayers (1997). Some literature deals specifically with the emergence of the Christian Sunday celebration and its possible links with the Sabbath (Carson, 1982; Doering, 1999; McKay, 1994) or with the Jewish roots of worship more generally (Fisher, 1990; Bradshaw & Hoffman, 1991). Comings focuses on the emergence of the liturgical year in Cappadocia at the time of Basil, the two Gregories, Amphilochius, and Asterius of Amasea, using their writings to establish her insights (2005). Baldovin examines the ‘urban character’ of Christian worship by looking at the development of stational liturgy in Jerusalem, Rome and Constantinople (1987). He contends that the varieties of stational liturgy function as a means to claim the public space for Christian faith. Stational liturgy became a kind of ‘urban language’ (267). Susan White examines how technology impacted Christian worship at various points in its history, for example in regard to questions of the calendar and the clock (1994). Johnson brings together papers assessing the current status of historical research on many of these questions, especially the festal and sanctoral cycle (2000). Mazza crosses this disciplinary divide between historical study and liturgical theology to a certain extent by developing a liturgical theology based on the early mystagogical texts (1989).
418
In the more recent edition, he also make a further distinction between what he calls a ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ sense of liturgy: ‘liturgy in its thin sense is an expression of how we see God; liturgy in its thick sense is an expression of how God sees us. Temple decorum and ritual protocol is liturgy only in its thin sense; in its thick sense, liturgy is theological and ascetical’ (2004:9). The emphasis on asceticism as essential to liturgy is much stronger in the revised edition.
419
This is a shortened version of Prosper of Aquintaine’s longer statement lex supplicandi legem statuat credendi. This phrase is repeated and examined by many liturgical thinkers and in most introductions to liturgical theology. Schmemann also employs the phrase repeatedly. For a particularly useful and thorough introduction see Irwin (1994, chapter 1).
many writers.420 Kavanagh emphasises that to see liturgy as primary theology ‘is very radical. It implies that worship conceived broadly is what gives rise to theological reflection, rather than the other way around’ (1984:3). Liturgical practices shape the life of faith and this faith of the community informs and shapes the liturgical texts and actions. It ‘is about the possibility that liturgical worship, an endeavour both worldly and ecclesial, is itself fundamental to and constitutive of the faithful community and also of the ways in which that community reflects upon itself theologically’ (22).421
Kavanagh uses colourful language to express why we have difficulty with the notion that liturgy might be more primary than doctrine: ‘We today can hardly be expected to understand how liturgy could be considered seriously as the basic condition for doing theology, even less as the law which founds or constitutes the law of belief, so long as we perceive liturgical worship as a pastel endeavour shrunk to only forty-five minutes and consisting of some organ music, a choral offering, a few lines of scripture, a short talk on religion, a collection, and perhaps a quick consumption of disks or pellets and a beverage’ (60). Kavanagh objects to a theology that merely employs liturgy as a quarry for arguments and maintains that instead liturgy reveals the discourse of an ecclesial society (82, 85).422 He concludes that ‘Lex supplicandi legem statuat credendi says something about the deepest structure and purpose of Christian worship. It also suggests a method of analytical procedure which the secondary
theologian ignores to the Church’s peril. For the liturgy of faithful Christians is the primary theological act of the Church itself, and the ways in which this act carries on its proper discourse are above all canonical in structure and content, and eschatological in intent’ (150).
Graham Hughes is less interested in whether liturgy is primary or secondary discourse, but makes the meaning of worship the central concern in his work. He draws both on Ricoeur and insights from semiotics for his analysis of how worship can become meaningful, formulating his central question as follows: ‘What sort of meaning is this which some people construct and in which other people participate which we call a liturgical event? Or, to put the question in a slightly different way, what would a theory of meaning look like which could guide or facilitate the achievement of this kind of meaning? Or, to have yet a third shot at it, is it
420
It has even become the revised title of Fagerberg’s book on liturgical theology (2004). For his discussion of ‘primary theology’ see chapter 1 of the early edition and chapters 1 and 2 of the revised version.
421 He explains that ‘it would be foolish not to recognise that placing sacramental discourse prior to, above, and in a role
which subordinates theology in the modern academic sense is a difficult if not incomprehensible move for many people. We generally think of the two sorts of discourse the other way around, theology coming first and sacramental discourse very much later as a possibly implied excursus of the former. Sacramental discourse in fact is often thought of as theological adiaphora best practised by those with a taste for banners, ceremonial, and arts and crafts. It is regarded as an academically less than disciplined swamp in which Anglican high churchmen, Orthodox bishops, and many if not all Roman Catholics and others are hopelessly mired’ (46).
422 Again, he draws the contrasts in vivid language: ‘Unlike these [systematic theologies], however, it [liturgy] is
proletarian in the sense that it is not done by academic elites; it is communitarian in the sense that it is not undertaken by
the scholar alone in his study; and it is quotidian in the sense that it is not accomplished occasionally but regularly throughout the daily, weekly, and yearly round of the assembly’s life of public worship’ (89). Instead, or maybe precisely for that reason, ‘secondary theology, even at its best, seems to approach the liturgical worship of Christians with a certain condescension and as not much more than a possible locus theologicus whose existence is to serve secondary theology and whose work must therefore be closely monitored’ (90). He therefore concludes: ‘Liturgics, which is the discipline a liturgiologist practices, is thus not a performing art, nor it is a species of something seminary catalogues often call “practical theology”. It is a major discipline, similar to biblical exegesis or church history or doctrinal theology, particularly in those institutions which devote themselves to preparing people for ministry to assemblies of faith’ (148).
possible to give some account of the ways in which the meanings of worship are organised and transmitted by those who lead and are appropriated by those who participate in a worship service?’ (2003:11). He argues that in order for a worship event to have meaning it must ‘make sense’ in some way and be theologically
comprehensible (31). For Hughes this implies a genuine encounter with the contemporary postmodern world. Meaning is created in the circular engagement of traditional rite and postmodern worshipper. Consequently, ‘convictions need to be held on an open palm rather than in clenched grip; our work must be undertaken in a seriously experimental way, as a wager for meaning rather than senselessness, and for the particular wager suggested by the liturgical signs themselves’. The person who engages in worship must ‘yield to the promise and the invitation proposed in the liturgy... in proposal and in acceptance, then, is the meaning of worship constructed’ (302).
Kavanagh also emphasises that meaning is no easy matter: ‘Thickening meaning and then
incrementing that meaning with style is no easy task, and it does not happen by accident. It is a knowledgeable accomplishment of the highest order’ (1984:48). He finds such meaning becomes possible through the
practice of Christian worship as it engages with faith and the reciprocal interchange between the two. Rite emerges precisely through this interaction between liturgical acts and faith (100). This circular arrangement is also stressed by Gordon Lathrop who juxtaposes a circular relationship between two aspects of liturgy (such as praise and beseeching, teaching and bath, pascha and year, etc.) in each of his chapters on liturgical practice and argues that the meaning of liturgy emerges from this paradoxical pattern (1993/1998). There is thus reciprocal interaction between the liturgy and the community.423 Understanding arises from this circular relationship.
It is claimed by many liturgical theologians, then, that liturgy can and indeed must serve as a source for theology and that it is primary theology in contrast to systematic or speculative theology, which reflects on doctrine that is secondary to and dependent upon it. Liturgy and faith exhibit an essentially circular structure and continually inform each other.424 Furthermore, it is now widely accepted that the early developments of the creeds and other doctrinal statements are firmly grounded in worship practices and concrete soteriological experience of the community, as Robert Taft indicates: ‘To borrow a term from the biblical scholars, the liturgy is the ongoing Sitz im Leben of Christ’s saving pattern in every age, and what we do in the liturgy is exactly what the New Testament itself did with Christ: it applied him and what he was and is to the present.
423 Some ecclesiological studies also touch on the nature of liturgy. Limouris (the Orthodox spokesperson for Orthodox
involvement in the WCC process especially on faith & order questions) collects several essays on this question, including some Orthodox contributions (1986). Some make connections between liturgy and homiletics. Slenczka examines early sources in order to examine how preachers set forth theological doctrines within the liturgy (2000). Cunningham & Allen (1998), Mühlenberg & Oort (1994) and Blowers et al. (2002) examine patristic homiletics, Dunn-Wilson does so in a much more general and sweeping fashion (2005).
424
Nichols expresses this in even more Ricoeurian language: ‘Liturgical hermeneutics is able to add to this discussion the conviction that the worshippers bring an initial faith in the world being proposed to their participation. In the presence of faith, the world of the rite is expressed both in the “first-” and in the “second-level denotation” of the liturgical act. The structural and linguistic modes of proposal confront the people at the first level with the official statements of the faith. But through this first level of presentation, the worshippers reach the second level which is their projected inheritance. The liturgical rite proposes a way of appropriating the world of the Kingdom, which is only valid if the participants believe in the Kingdom’ (1994:84).
For the Sitz im Leben of the Gospels is the historical setting not of the original event, but of its telling during the early years of the primitive Church. Do not both New Testament and liturgy tell us this holy history again and again as a perpetual anamnesis?’ (1993:336). The creeds emerge in the context of liturgical settings and the liturgical worship did often influence doctrinal developments heavily (including Trinitarian formulations in the Arian controversies and the development of the Theotokos formulation and other Marian dogma).425 Another aspect of this circular ‘wager’ of meaning is the liturgical arrangement itself which is inherently circular, whether in its arrangement of the daily hours of prayer, of the weekly cycle beginning from and culminating in the celebration of the resurrection, or most obviously, the yearly cycle of feasts and fasts.426
2. Liturgy as shaping a world
Ricoeur’s concept of the world of the text is particularly useful for the analysis of liturgy. Liturgical practice opens a world in quite physical fashion. Ecclesial architecture is profoundly shaped and inspired by liturgy. The sacred space is arranged so that liturgical worship can take place and achieve its highest
expression.427 As one enters the church and its sanctuary, one enters into a world that provides access to the divine in particular ways. A whole universe is opened by the sacred space.428 The world of the believer merges (at least to some extent) with the world of the texts chanted during the liturgy and is shaped by the particular space and time where the texts are heard and experienced through the liturgical practice. The world of the texts becomes our own, as we enter within them and appropriate them through chanting, singing, or speaking them and allowing our bodies to move within them.429
Don Saliers expresses this as follow: ‘Worship characterises human beings who recall and give expression to a story about the world. The language of this story teaches us to describe all creatures in the world as God’s. Worship forms and conveys the awareness of God and the orders of creation and history’ (in Anderson & Morrill, 1998:17). Hughes calls this process sign-production and sign-reception. The worshippers receive and interpret the signs produced by others. Receiving the signs ‘is “a world seen differently”, a world