Deepening the Theological Dimensions of Liturgical Studies
Jeremy Driscoll
Without the precision which theology can offer, the community
risks celebrating simply itself or its story, and not the story of
Jesus.
Introduction
In a recent conference at my monastery and at the seminary where I
teach, a renowned biblical scholar spoke of the history of
Catholic biblical scholarship in this century. In the course of
this conference he made an interesting and important observation
about the situation of biblical scholarship as we near the end of
the century. In the first half of the century those Catholic
scholars who eventually devoted themselves to biblical studies
were ordinarily priests, already trained in general in Catholic
theology. In the revival of biblical studies launched in the last
thirty years as a result of Vatican II, many Catholic scholars,
both lay and clerical, have received higher degrees in various
dimensions of the biblical sciences as practiced in the current
academy; but it is now possible to do so without reference to, and
professional training in, the whole sweep of Catholic theology. In
short, a Catholic doctor in biblical studies can be highly
respected in the field and yet practice its methods and apply its
results while being largely innocent of the whole of Catholic
theology.
Early in my own theological training I was grateful to encounter
Bernard Lonergan's <Method in Theology>, and I learned from this
work that the results of biblical studies, indeed of any
specialization within theology, must be coordinated in a dynamic
process with the other specializations, which only when taken
together as a whole can properly construct theology.[1]
Specializations and specialists are tempted to take the results of
their own fields and use them alone for facing questions and
making decisions that are appropriately faced and made only by all
the specializations taken together in a dynamic process.[2]
What was observed about biblical scholars I have been able to
observe first hand in the North American scene within my own field
of specialization, patristics. Specialists across Christian
denominations and of no denomination have rapidly multiplied in
this field. The Catholic who wants to use the often very positive
results of their studies must, it seems to me, take account at
some point of the fact that these specialists also often face
questions and suggest evaluations without sufficient reference to
the whole dynamic sweep of Catholic theology. With my colleagues
in this field I am often aware that, having specialized in
patristics after my general training in Catholic theology, I work
in patristics in a way that often differs from those whose
professional training is only within patristics.
It seems to me that a situation not dissimilar to this exists in
part today among people professionally trained in liturgical
studies. It is possible today to be degreed in liturgy and to
practice in the field and yet again face questions and make
decisions without sufficient reference to, without sufficient
knowledge of, other dimensions of Catholic theology. I want to be
careful about my formulation of this observation. I make it
wanting to be neither offensive nor inflammatory, and yet at the
same time I wish to suggest it as a challenge, a challenge that
may at least in part explain some of the very serious practical
problems that we face in the North American Church today, a
challenge which also, once identified, can be met if there is the
will to do so.
It would not be difficult to point to any number of North American
liturgists who are very well versed in theology. I gladly
acknowledge the fact and profit from their scholarship. However,
in my opinion it must likewise be admitted that much of what is
advanced in liturgical circles today is being done in a way that
is theologically naive when compared with the maturity of the
Catholic doctrinal heritage. Let me try to describe the situation
I am referring to by addressing some sample topics that can render
my remarks more concrete. These are all areas where the
theological dimensions of the matter, it seems to me, could be
more deeply conceived.
Vernacular
We may ask what <theological> principles are guiding the current
search for an appropriate vernacular language that translates the
riches of the Latin liturgy? Have such principles, whatever they
might be, been sufficiently debated on the level of their
consequences for doctrine? Has there been sufficient <theological>
reflection on, say, the mystery of language itself, on the
relationship of this to the inner life of God, within whose life
one of the three persons is named Word? What bonds exist and can
be expressed between a vernacular spoken in the twentieth century
and the mystery of one of the Trinity becoming flesh and living a
human life in first century Palestine and, more, his being
proclaimed crucified and now risen Lord of the universe? And this
twentieth century vernacular-what bonds exist and can be expressed
between it and the saints with whom we are in communion over time,
who faced questions and gave answers in Creeds and Councils that
are still considered normative for believing Catholics today? I am
reaching toward profound questions, and how we answer them matters
not a little. But questions of this nature cannot be adequately
faced without the help of the best philosophically, historically,
and theologically trained minds of the community. Has the question
been faced on this level by ICEL or now by the various episcopal
conferences of the English speaking world who must decide whether
or not to ask the Holy See's approval of ICEL's work? A practical
and blunt question can indicate the tendency of such bodies to
foreshorten the theological task with which they are faced: has a
sufficient answer to theological questions raised about
translations in a Lectionary really been given when a biblical
specialist pronounces a text correctly translated (or
interpreted)? But that is the view of a specialist. How does it
coordinate with the perspective on that same text by the historian
of exegesis or by specialists who know how that text bears on the
perception of some doctrine?[3]
Sacred music and art
The question of a language suitable to the liturgy places us very
near the question of the meaning of sacred art. Virtually every
liturgical concern and practice is expressive of a position-
implicit or explicit-on sacred art. If we take just one example,
music, we can perhaps develop some remarks to indicate directions
in which a deeper and more carefully developed theological
approach to the question of sacred art would be helpful.
Individual composers of music for the liturgy in our time or in
former times need not themselves be trained in depth
theologically, though it is not likely that such training would be
an impediment to the task of achieving good music. Nonetheless, a
carefully developed theological understanding of liturgical music
is necessary for the task of suitably judging it and for directing
its future development.
Reliance on the three great transcendentals from classical
philosophy enables us to frame the question in terms of Beauty,
Goodness, and Truth. The relationship between art and the content
of Christian faith can begin with the observation that a profound
emotion accompanies the apperception of the form of Beauty,
Goodness, and Truth becoming flesh. This emotion forms part of the
very content of the Word uttered by God about himself in flesh,
such that it could be said that the Word is not fully apprehended
without the emotion proper to it. But not just any emotion; rather
the emotion proper to it. It is the office of sacred art-in our
case here, music-to discover and express in form (the art form)
the insight into feeling appropriate to the mystery of eternal
Goodness, Truth, and Beauty ("the form of God" to use an
expression from Phil 2:5) having taken the form of a slave.
Admittedly, this is easier said than done, but we have at least
been able to be clear on what must be done. Furthermore, theology
can remind artists that they cannot possibly succeed in this
office without the help of the Holy Spirit. This is more than
pious exhortation. It lies in the very nature of the task, which
theology alone is equipped to help us identify. No matter how
great the genius of, say, the composer, now that the Word of the
Father has come to dwell with us in very flesh, one could never
discover the form of music appropriate to this action of God
without the Holy Spirit whose work it is, from the moment of the
Annunciation down to the present, to form from limited, finite
materials a form of adequate expression for infinite Goodness,
Beauty, and Truth in the world.
Obedience to the Holy Spirit in the creative act of shaping sacred
art demands conversion of life (<metanoia>-a change of mind) and
submission of the intellect and will to the <form and content> in
which God utters his Word, to the <form and content> of
Revelation. This is a prior given from which no Christian artist
worthy of the name may be allowed to stray for the sake of what we
might describe today as a more individually shaped form and
content. The Christian artist exercises his task within this
fundamental option, which history has shown is wide enough to
allow for profound artistic achievement. This form and content of
Christian faith is identifiable and clear. And again, though the
artist need not be a theologian, theology is necessary to judge
the suitability of a particular work of art for the liturgy.
Theology focuses for the artist the nature of the form which is to
be created. Behind the form of a work of liturgical art lies a
prior and indeed a divine form: the form of one who, though he was
in the form of God, did not cling to <that form> but rather
emptied himself and took the form of a slave (cf. Phil 2:5).
Sacred music created by the breath of the Holy Spirit will be
music that expresses by means of measured sound and silence the
proportion (!) observed by God himself in bridging what should
have been an unbridgeable gap, the gap between eternal, infinite,
divine life, and the passing, finite life of the creature. God
bridges this gap with a delicacy and proportion which preserve
intact the finite vessel into which divine life enters, a delicacy
and proportion which from our human perspective can only be called
a new kind of power and a new kind of wisdom-power and wisdom
which puts to shame all worldly power and wisdom. It is the form
of divine power and wisdom. Sacred music must be in the form of
this same divine delicacy and proportion, and it must express for
us the emotion proper to the realization of what an awesome thing
God has done in becoming flesh, emotions of adoration, gratitude,
love, devotion, and a cry for mercy at finding oneself in the
presence of so great a God.
Thus, it is not enough for liturgists to have a merely general
anthropological sense of the importance of music in the cultic
rituals which human tribes shape. It will not do to leave
unexamined or unchallenged presuppositions about music and art in
general which are ours from a culture whose project is different
from the search for that form for which the Christian artist
searches. Philosophical precision and theological precision of a
Christian order are necessary to keep us on task. Boethius can be
of some help in illustrating what I am speaking about. Boethius
speaks of musica in a threefold sense: (a) <musica instrumentalis>
(<instruments>, made by human hands, using dead matter in the
interest of "spirit," breath); (b) <musica humana> (the human
voice); (c) <musica mundana> (the music of the spheres). These
three together are to form a "gym-phony" which involves the entire
cosmos across all the levels of its being and discovers that song
which lies at the foundation of all Being, the song that is
trinitarian love eternally exchanged and now that same love
offered to the entire created order. It is a "gym-phony" which in
fact penetrates the very heart of Providence's ordering of things,
and this same symphony must be discovered and made to sound in
Christian liturgical assemblies. As a commentator on Boethius puts
it: "It is not a matter of cheerful entertainment or superficial
consolation for sad moods, but a central clue to the
interpretation of the hidden harmony of God and nature in which
the only discordant element is evil in the heart of man."[4]
Music and language together
In Christian liturgy there is an especially close relationship
between music and the language of the liturgy, be that the ancient
Latin or a contemporary vernacular. Music must always be at the
service of the word. This has been said often enough, but there
are theological reasons for this which, when articulated, both can
insure that composers do more than pay lip service to a dictum
and, alternatively, can prevent music from being banal, excusing
its low level by explaining that it is at the service of the word.
One possible way of articulating this theology is to search to
develop an understanding of the roots of words in the human body
itself, in its pre-rational instincts and rhythms. Before there
are words, there is the whole language of the body with its
tremendous capacity to express the most beautiful, tender and
nuanced intuitions of the interior life. Before there are words,
there are shouts, exclamations, groans of pleasure, love, or pain.
Words are a highly refined and precise version of such bodily
expressions. If their refinement and precision sometimes allow us
to forget their bodily roots, this much always remains to remind
us: that no word is uttered without a mouth and a throat and
without air breathed in and out, and no word is heard without
bodies in proximity. Their content reaches mind and heart by
sounds entering an ear.
Theology sheds further light on what is up to this point a
philosophical or anthropological discussion. Christian faith
indicates something about the significance of a creature so finely
and divinely crafted as to be capable of expression on so profound
a level. It is in this capacity for refined expression that the
human person exhibits evidence of being made "in the image and
likeness of God" (Gen 1:26). Thus, the roots of words ultimately
lie deeper than in the human body; they lie in the very nature of
God himself. Revelation carries this content: that God eternally
utters a Word that is wholly one with himself, that it is the very
nature of God to be one by being more than one, that expression of
himself is in the very nature of God. It is this expression of
God, his Word, which has become flesh and thereby bequeathed to
human words, whose roots are in the flesh, the capacity to be
swept up into this divine utterance, and this in a twofold
direction, making out of human words God's eternal and wholly
adequate expression of himself and making likewise human words
directed to God capable of sharing in the eternal Word's direction
of perfect return to his Origin. But if this is to be our
language, it can come about only with some measure of theological
competence and control that assures it. There are other ways of
speaking, and language, like all other human capacities, suffers
the effects of the fall.
Language suitable to the liturgy and the music that is at its
service has as its task allowing human words to resound ("re-
sound") in this the fullest dimension of the divine Mystery into
which they have been caught up. Music surrounds the "emitted
sound" which a word is with the resonances of its bodily rhythms,
rhythms whose connection with the very inner life of God in whose
image they are formed must be discovered and likewise allowed to
sound.
<Lex orandi, lex credendi>
Many liturgists are justifiably fond of drawing attention to the
important dictum attributed to Prosper of Aquitaine, " . . . <ut
legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi>" (the law of prayer is the
law of faith: the Church believes as she prays). The phrase shows
the dynamic relationship between liturgy and theology and sets in
relief the more foundational role of liturgy. As is well known,
liturgy exists in the Church before the answers given to pressing
questions that come to be embodied in Creeds, Councils, or
theological <summae>. Indeed, it is the shape of liturgy and what
is believed to happen there which guides the process of the
formulation of doctrine throughout, and it is the same which is
used to measure the adequacy of such expressions.
Nonetheless, theology itself must understand this very dynamic,
not only to protect the foundational role of liturgy within the
theological enterprise but also to guard against the dictum's
misuse. One example of misuse of the dictum on the practical level
is a sort of implicit disregard of the <lex credendi>, as if it
were somehow optional since it is not "as foundational" as the
liturgy itself. A possible description of a "liturgist" formed by
such an attitude would be of someone who knows all about the way
Christians have prayed or might pray today, but cares very little
or knows very little about the relation of this to what the Church
believes and articulates in theological discourse. But caring
about how the Church articulates what is normative for belief
cannot be optional for anyone who would be professionally
identified as a Catholic liturgist. A little history shows that
the relation between a <lex orandi> and a <lex credendi> quickly
becomes reciprocal. There is something in the very nature of
liturgy that gives rise to the need to articulate on a different
level of discourse what happens in the liturgy, how it happens,
and the significance of what happens. Indeed, without such
articulation the shape of liturgy itself, which according to the
dictum is also a <lex>, could be manipulated at will. And
furthermore, without such articulation the believing community
could not engage in dialogue, either among its members or with
those outside the community, concerning "the reason for the hope"
(1 Pet 3:15) which is grounded in what happens in the liturgy and
which, at the apostle's urging, a Christian should always be ready
to give.
It seems to me that <lex orandi, lex credendi> can function as a
sort of grid which, once laid over the contemporary liturgical
scene, causes some things to fall into clearer relief. For
example, generally no one would be so bold as to identify and
justify explicitly such a procedure, but it sometimes appears that
ways of worship are manipulated with a view toward causing a shift
in some dimension of normative belief. This does not happen on any
official level, so the dynamic is difficult to trace but
nonetheless present for all that. It can come about when someone
or some community for whatever reason feels justified in altering
some liturgical practice of the tradition and has, as suggested,
little care or knowledge of the effects of such an alteration for
the theological heritage of the Church. Or it can come about more
intentionally, in which case the original dynamic is actually
reversed but not admitted to for strategic purposes. A new way of
believing is controlling a new way of worship. I have in mind here
theological positions at odds with the community's normative
articulation being embodied and expressed in some liturgical
practice. It is well known, even if a certain cynicism is
necessary to know it, that if a liturgical practice which embodies
a theological position at odds with normative teaching can be
established, eventually that theological position can be
established at least in the psyches of the theologically untrained
(and unsuspecting) masses. It is not for me to impute motives, but
it is useful to observe that theological agendas are operating,
either consciously or not, either known or unknown, in anyone who
discusses and makes decisions in any way about how liturgy should
be celebrated. The current liturgical scene in North America could
profit much from rendering these agendas more explicit, first for
the sake of intellectual honesty and then for the sake of genuine
and skilled theological debate on questions of huge concern to all
involved.
Christian faith's unique understanding of history and the
celebration of the paschal mystery
One practical approach to deepening the theological dimensions of
liturgical questions can be to begin by attempting a description
of some problematic situation and then to follow that with a
theological analysis of the same. One possible description of a
problem would be that in liturgical circles there is considerable
talk about how some ritual or language should be employed or
proclaimed but far less talk that attempts to understand what is
believed to be happening in the liturgy. But can the liturgical
renewal that was launched by the Council really advance without
continuing efforts to understand as deeply as is possible for the
inquiring mind the Mystery that is celebrated in the liturgy?
Understanding what is happening will greatly help us to speak
appropriately about how ritual and language should be employed. It
is dangerous to confront these practical concerns without
sufficient theological understanding.
An anthropological understanding of some dimension of the liturgy
is not sufficient, even if it is necessary, to grasp what is
happening. For example, anthropological studies of the nature of
ritual and myth offer valuable insights into what is happening in
Christian ritual and into the narrative structure which shapes it
in so thoroughgoing a way, but only theology can fix the
distinctive dimensions of Christian ritual and "myth." Without
theology's contribution, ritual and myth, insofar as these
describe some of what is happening in Christian liturgy, fade into
a blend conceived as nothing other than another tribe's version of
its approach to the spirit world.
To render my concern more concrete, we may look at the words of a
song often sung during eucharistic celebrations today which can
serve as a representative example of the problem. The refrain is
"We come to share our story." From an artistic point of view, the
criticism could be advanced that this comes off as being a bit
didactic; but the problems with such a text from a theological
point of view are more serious, even if perhaps elusive. Yet
theology, among other things, ought to be prepared even to track
down the source of elusive problems. We may begin with the
observation that in some sense the statement, "We come to share
our story," is true as a description of what is happening in the
Eucharist, or at any rate is at least aiming at an insight that we
would not want to do without in an understanding of what is
happening. The insight is that there is a narrative structure that
pervades the eucharistic liturgy, and whatever is narrated there
is somehow intimately related to the story of the lives that those
in the believing assembly are living. Yet, expressing such an
insight with no more precision or finesse than the blunt
declaration, "We come to tell our story," can in fact be very
misleading. First of all, there are no words in this song that
ever tell a story, leaving thus unanswered the justifiable
question of what precisely is this story. The effect of this can
be that there is no precise story. The singing community and even
the individual is allowed to fill in the blanks as may seem best.
Music is formation on a very deep level, but what guarantee can
there be with lyrics like these that the minds and hearts of the
worshippers are formed according to a <lex credendi>?
But we may also ask if there is not something misleading in
referring to what is happening as "our story." In fact, the story
that is proclaimed in liturgy is not immediately and directly the
story of the gathered assembly. What is immediately and directly
proclaimed is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and this
in the context of the whole history of Israel and in the context
of the apostolic Church. This must be the "our story" which any
worshipping assembly gathers to proclaim, and as such it exercises
control over and makes demands of any particular assembly that
would call it its own. What that control is, what these demands
are, theology can make explicit. In that sense the story is not
ours until we make it ours by assent. And assent is a public act,
publicly verifiable. If we were merely gathering to tell the story
of a particular gathered community, not a community which
identifies itself in communion with the Church across the world
and across time, then the story would be entirely ours and ours to
manipulate as we will.
We might further ask whether "story" is the best word for
describing all this. Is it precise enough? Once we get it straight
that what is narrated in liturgy is ultimately the death and
resurrection of Christ, does calling all that a "story" not risk
letting what is narrated there be regarded as no more than an
edifying tale? At any rate, nothing in the word (or the song)
implies the specific and unique Christian understanding of what in
fact happens when the death and resurrection of Christ are
remembered in a believing assembly. Scripture and tradition have a
word for this; namely, memorial or <anamnesis>. Do we not need
these words to express adequately what in fact is happening? What
has been believed and understood by the Church about the
"storytelling" that goes on in the eucharistic assembly evokes a
host of mysteries and questions that are wonderful to contemplate
and to seek to understand. A past is narrated and believed to be
entirely present. A future is revealed and likewise constitutive
of the present. Is this believed with good reason? What makes it
possible? On what grounds does the Church make such a claim? Who
cares or should care about such a past being present, about such a
future? What conditions are necessary for participating in such an
event, for claiming it as "our story"?
Liturgical renewal as envisioned by the Council cannot advance at
any depth without probing such questions as these. Not every
believing Christian asks or answers these questions in the way
that professional theologians do, but the Church knows that in
some way or other these are every believer's questions before the
mystery of the liturgy, and what is answered well and carefully by
her best minds at work finds its way of sifting down to every
level of conceiving and answering questions. Relatively few
people, whether they be intellectually simple or sophisticated,
are spiritually fed in the long run by approaches to the liturgy
that would burke this level of questioning. For a time the novelty
of some new practice or approach can claim some interest and seem
to offer some promise; but if the liturgy is to feed people for a
lifetime, in times as difficult as our own, then a theological
effort at understanding it as deeply and precisely as possible is
surely called for.
It is a fact that many worshippers are exceedingly bored in the
presence of the reformed liturgy, a fact either denied or admitted
with reluctance or with perplexity by those who are engineering
liturgies precisely so that such could never happen. The problem
probably does not lie, as is often explained, in the fact that
those who are bored are simply unreformed curmudgeons who will
never go along with what was, after all, a reform decreed by an
ecumenical Council. By this time more than the curmudgeons are
bored. Virtually everyone is or risks being so by much of what is
served up for our spiritual nourishment. The explanation may be
that the whole community is lacking in theological depth, the kind
of depth that is advanced by well trained professional
theologians-not to mention the holiness and contemplation of
believers[5]-but which always sifts down to the most simple of
believers. Without the precision which theology can offer, the
community risks celebrating simply itself, its story and not the
story of Jesus. This is boring.
There seems to me to be little or no contest on the level of
spiritual worth between the kind of liturgy represented by the "we
come to tell our story" mood and the liturgy which understands
itself, as the Scripture itself puts it, as "remembering the
wonderful deeds of God." This latter is a catch phrase of the
tradition around which a wealth of profound insight into what is
happening at liturgy groups itself, not least of which is what
Jesus intended by his command at the Last Supper, "Do this in
memory of me." He commanded that we repeat his action of taking up
bread and wine and that we repeat the words he said over them.
This is distinguishable in meaning from the sacred meals of other
tribes. His words and actions at the Last Supper refer concretely
and precisely to his death on the cross, which he was to undergo
on the morrow. This action and the command to remember it
henceforth refer all memorial, all storytelling, to this central
event of salvation history. But the crucifixion which is
remembered is the crucifixion of one who is risen, and thus it is
that, present to his Church as risen Lord, Jesus can associate
with his sacrifice a community at a point far distant in time from
the particular time in which he was crucified. This is what it
means to be risen: that he is able to reveal and bestow what he
accomplished in one particular time on every time and every place.
The liturgy is and proclaims a magnificent and completely
unexpected mystery: that the center and fulfillment of all time
stands in the very midst of time. The past is completely
recapitulated in the personal existence of the risen Lord, and so
also the future of the human race, manifested progressively in the
Church, is already present in him and revealed in the extension of
the reality of his risen body to the Church.[6]
Conclusion
What might these concrete examples suggest for the title and
project of this study, deepening the theological dimensions of
liturgical studies? Without pretending to be exhaustive concerning
a theological agenda for the future, I would like to group
suggestions into three categories.
The first category has to do with collaboration among theological
specialists. I think a much more thoroughgoing collaboration
between theologians trained in fundamental and systematic theology
needs to occur with those trained in history of the liturgy and
its anthropology. What liturgists think about and say and suggest
could be greatly deepened by such collaboration.[7]
A second category of suggestions might be described as developing
a willingness and the will to engage issues at the deepest
possible level. Too often in recent decades the word "pastoral"
has been the excuse for shirking the full range of discipline that
the whole community of believers and thinkers must undertake, each
member in a particular way, if the faith is to survive in the
richness in which it has been handed on to us and if it is really
to nourish our contemporaries. Gnosticism in the patristic period,
New Age theories in our own, and Pop Liturgy within the Church all
have something in common. First of all, they have a real capacity
to attract because they very often successfully articulate what
people's most genuine and indeed valid religious concerns are. But
they likewise have in common that they cannot deliver the goods
they promise, for to spotlight a need, an interest, a desire is
only half the pastoral task. The other half is to receive the
gospel as the only possible fulfillment of these desires, to
receive it with the complete <metanoia>, the completely new way of
thinking, that it requires. Theology is systematic, comprehensive,
and methodical exposure and subjection to this new way of thinking
in all its consequences, attempting, as the writer of a summa
might do, to face every conceivable question and to leave no
question without an attempted answer.
In a third category of suggestions we might try to identify some
specific theological questions that, if well developed, could be
of great service in deepening the theological dimensions of our
approach to liturgical questions. One such topic would be an
ecclesiology more thoroughly derived from the shape of the
eucharistic celebration itself. This is a call for a more vigorous
application of the principle <lex orandi, lex credendi> to our
understanding of the Church. It could counteract ecclesiologies,
implicit or explicit, which are more sociologically or politically
or "politically-correctly" derived. Included in a eucharistically
derived ecclesiology would be a theology of Holy Orders which is
"able to give a reason" (cf. 1 Pet 3:15) for the hierarchical
structure of the Church and its liturgical manifestation, able to
give a reason for different roles in the liturgy and the capacity
of these distinctions to create unity.
Another topic deserving of greater theological attention is
trinitarian theology. Whether concerning trinitarian theology as a
topic of specialization or its general bearing on the liturgy, it
is important to renew from the perspective both of history and of
systematic thought how the Church's trinitarian faith derives from
the Church's experience of the action of the Holy Trinity in the
liturgy, again, above all in the Eucharist. Yet, that its roots
lie in the liturgy does not restrict the advancement of insight
into its mystery to liturgical categories. Such insight can and
must be advanced also in the theoretical realm, not meaning by
this shapeless speculation and production of some new doctrine but
rather understanding something in the way that only disciplined
and systematic thought allow. Such theoretical advance must find
its way back to the liturgy, for there its coherence and adequacy
are ultimately measured, but there also it makes its ultimate
contribution; namely, a celebration of the mystery with the ever
greater kind of understanding suitable to a mystery.
Finally, it seems to me that theology in general and liturgy in
particular must both concern themselves more and more to dialogue
in critical and challenging fashion with all that characterizes
the contemporary <Zeilgeist.> The uniquely Christian understanding
of history, which is manifested most fully in the eucharistic
celebration, promises to solve what is one of the most anguishing
dimensions of contemporary experience; namely, the meaning of time
and history. To articulate correctly and well this uniquely
Christian understanding of history, theology is needed. To
understand at depth how it is manifested in the Eucharist, and
indeed by extension in all liturgy, liturgists will need this
theology.
In a different direction, still dealing with our contemporaries,
the Christian understanding of truth is something urgently needed
in our times because for us truth is not an abstract set of
correct principles, a gnosis however derived. For us truth is a
person, a divine Person, Jesus Christ; and, to connect this fact
to the anguished experience of time, this Jesus Christ is met in
history. This truth is life for us, and it is life delivered and
received, full of transforming power, precisely in the community
that is constituted by the eucharistic celebration. The best
theology is needed to articulate this truth, and liturgists must
understand the Eucharist as offering no less than this.
Finally, Christian faith conceives itself as offering the only
adequate understanding of that for which every human heart is made
and the only possibility of attaining it; namely, the notion of
what a human person is. A human person is that being so deeply
loved as to be unique and irreplaceable.[8] At the ground of all
being, both human being and divine being, is not an individual
with his rights but a person, that is, one whose entire definition
is derived from relation to another. The Eucharist reveals this
relation; the Eucharist <is> this relation. It is the relation of
Father, Son, and Spirit to one another and ourselves as summoned
to communion within this communion.*
ENDNOTES
1 B. Lonergan, <Method in Theology> (New York: Herder & Herder,
1972), esp. 125-45. Lonergan's discussion of method does not
render explicit a normative conception of theology, nor is
agreement on such necessary for specialists to be guided by his
insights. Articulating a normative conception of theology is part
of the task of fundamental theology. I have discussed this
elsewhere in re ration to liturgy. See J. Driscoll, "Liturgy and
Fundamental Theology: Frameworks for a Dialogue," in <Ecclesia
Orans> XI (1994): 69-99.
2 Lonergan, <Method in Theology>, 137.
3 This is an application of Lonergan's warning that theology
requires a dynamic coordination among specialists in many fields
to "curb one-sided totalitarian ambitions" to which specialists in
a single field may be prone. See <Method in Theology>, 137.
4 H. Chadwick, <Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic,
Theology, and Philosophy> (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981),101.
5 Cf. <Dei Verbum>, no. 8, on how tradition makes progress in the
Church.
6 I have greatly condensed here thoughts that I developed under
the influence of H.U.v. Balthasar, G. Lafont, and others in my
article, "Liturgy and Fundamental Theology."
7 It is not the focus of my present remarks, but here it is at
least worth noting that dogmatic theology for its part suffers
from insufficient contact with liturgists or, perhaps better put,
from insufficient attention to the liturgy itself. See my "Liturgy
and Fundamental Theology," 72-75, on the theological project of S.
Marsili.
8 This formulation is by J. Zizioulas, whose theological project
can in part be characterized by concern to develop understanding
of the human person in light of the trinitarian mystery as
revealed in the eucharistic assembly. See J. Zizioulas, <Being as
Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church> (Crestwood: St.
Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1993). For a study of the same and for
this particular formulation of a human person, see P. McPartlan,
<The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas
in Dialogue> (Edinburgh: T&T Clark Ltd., 1993), 174.
* This paper was first presented, in slightly different form, in
the foundation meeting of the Society for Catholic Liturgy in Salt
Lake City, 21-24 September 1995.
This article was taken from the Fall 1996 issue of "Communio:
International Catholic Review". To subscribe write Communio, P.O.
Box 4557, Washington, D.C. 20017-0557. Published quarterly,
subscription cost is $23.00 per year.
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