Liturgy and Theology

Economy and Reality

Jennings

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781498229319
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Rituals & Practice

What is the relationship of liturgy to theology? The author describes the economic nature of liturgy in order to reimagine cosmology, sacrifice, the figural reading of Scripture, and metaphysical realism where liturgy itself enacts an apocalypse of transcendent realities.

Chapter One

Liturgical Theology as the House of God

The household of God is liturgical theology, where liturgy is the economy of a shared household and theology is the invitation to share in the gift economy of the divine life of a Triune God. I first discuss theology as the (teaching of the) Trinity. I then define the kind of economy enacted in liturgy, that is to say, a gift-cycle economy, in order to give an account of the divine economy. From this account of God’s house, I then spell out some of the implications of the liturgical nature of cosmos as an act of worship. God’s house is the cosmos as both the dynamic of persons in relationship and as an artifact, or set of artifacts, that receive their shape from, and correspond to, these dynamic relationships.

Theology, the Triune God

Theology names the Triune God. For the Triune God is a God whose Son is Logos, the perfect reflection of the Father in the Spirit. God is the Theos-Logos, and, although super-rational, not irrational. According to the contemplative tradition, theology is the contemplation of God in God’s nature and the nature of God revealed to us in Christ is that God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The contemplation that God shares within his own life is the contemplation we may share in God’s life. This means that, most properly speaking, it is God’s own Triune life, not verbal or representational reflection about it or upon it, that is theology. The nature of God is to be a life of gift-exchange. The word theology also extends to those teachings and reflections that lift our mind to such contemplations.

Now the Triune life of God is a life of mutual indwelling, a divine economy, a perfect gift-cycle of love among the three persons. In this life of love, God creates finite persons who can share in this love, a divine economy. God creates a house wherein to dwell and to provide for his children. This household, this divine economy is the divine liturgy. This sense of the divine liturgy is a theologia prima. And, in an even deeper (or higher) sense, theologia prima is the very uncreated life of God—the mutual gift-exchange of the Father’s substance among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God’s economic behavior always accords with his nature and provides anagogical material for reflection. The Triune life of God may also be considered a gift economy, a liturgy. Thus we come as close as possible to the identity of liturgy with theologia prima. The liturgy that liturgical theology engages is not a local, historic human ritual, but the divine economy. The divine economy is an angelic liturgy that renders cosmos. A given concrete human liturgy thus becomes, for us, theologia prima only insofar as it is not merely a human action; but, through the gift of faith, God sweeps our action up into the divine economy: the house of God.

Liturgy as an Economy of Gift

The philosophy of the Mediterranean basin at the time that God became incarnate understood ethics to be teleological, answering the question: how do we fulfill our inherent nature as human beings? And it acknowledged three levels of ethics: personal, household, and political. The personal corresponds to the corporal along the somatic continuum,61 the political to the corporate, while the household falls somewhere in between. I assert that these are all one pattern of human teleology manifesting in their ways appropriate to their location along the somatic continuum. The modern distinction between politics and economics makes little sense here. At whatever level of scale we are trying to achieve human flourishing, we are talking about economics—how to provide and shelter human thriving, corporal and corporate. An economy and a house, or household, name the same thing: a corporate dynamic of mutual benefit and protection. At these differing levels of scale, then, we have different bodies holding different property—appropriate to their scale. As the expression of the will in things, property is the right of action in things, the right to use something outside the boundaries of a given human body. Property may be rendered capital, or property may be given away as gift.

The economy of gift extends to procreation insofar as a human (corporate) body must procreate or cease to exist and thus fail to thrive. And this procreative extension is, in itself, liturgical in nature. Most cultures, and certainly Christianity, recognize human life as a gift. Thus we find the “giving away” of the bride; itself a corporate, tribal act. In many pre-modern cultures, and especially those represented in Scripture, the woman who is “given away” is no one individual’s property. Her womb belongs to the tribe, to the race as a whole; her womb is the means by which humanity as a corporate body continues. It thus comprises a primordial gift, a donation.62 On the other hand, the sacrifice of the firstfruits redeems God’s right to the firstborn male.63 So the womb cycles tribe to tribe, but the male-child, the seed, returns directly to God. Thus arises the necessity of a system of substitutes for the sacrifice of the male firstborn.64

The economy of gift also leaves behind a material culture in its wake. And, like all material culture, its accretions become part of the encountered environment over time. This material cultural accretion is liturgical as well. It is not so much that (ancient) cities had temples as (ancient) temples had cities. The material culture of a household, at whatever level of human corporate scale, will come to reflect the degree to which, and the means by which, that corporate body keeps the gifts that sustain it in flow.

Circulated gifts nourish human flourishing beyond the private and the individual. But gifts also connect us with the gods as well. Gifts commune with the group, with nature, the nation or people-group, and with their gods. Sacrifice turns the face of the god toward that god’s people. Some compassionate gods, in turn, offer gifts to their people.65 Hyde himself points out how this corresponds well to the description of sacrifice, especially that of the firstfruits, in the Jewish Scriptures and the Christian Old Testament.66 I would add that both also correspond well to ANE temple cults in general.67 A priestly order is set aside to receive the gifts of the people. Through them, the people offer gifts to (a) god(s). The god(s), in turn, return the gift with further increase. All human life is a gift. Hence, the covenantal demand of the firstfruits. Gifts in cyclical gift-exchange must be commensurate with one another, or, at least, returned through gratitude.

Hyde gives the example of Dionysus and the various corn gods of the ancient mystery cults. In these cases, the god (usually male, firstfruit) gives its life for others and then regains it at a higher plane. When honey rots, the spirit bubbles up within it—alcohol. Drinking the “spirit” passes the life of the god into the imbiber. The god of alcohol is broken into a higher life. So, in this special case, the god becomes incarnate and offers his own incarnate body as the gift that establishes the bond between god and human being. Sometimes, but not always, this gift heals a previous breach or separation.68

A primordial, founding donation makes a gift-cycle possible. Liturgy is concourse between higher and lower in gift-exchange. Liturgy is the gift of a benefactor, down economic levels, that enables sacrifice—gift-exchange in return to the beneficiary, up levels of economic status. This is true whether on the part of the wealthy benefactor to the population of the city-state on an earthly plane, or on that of the goddess of the city to her people on a transcendent plane. Thus, a liturgy constitutes a total gift-exchange among unequal partners that enables peer gift-exchange and grants beneficiaries a taste of peerage, even if through (divine) condescension. Donation commences the flow of the gift economy. This is liturgy, proper: a primary gift enabling sacrifice and gift-exchange; really, sacrifice as gift-exchange. Liturgy is simultaneously the founding act that sets the initial condition, and, because of that, the overall reality of gift-exchange across levels of wealth. Thus, liturgy enables sacrifice: literally, metaphorically, analogically and, following my main argument, anagogically.

When we take the anthropological description of gift economy as an analogy for the divine economy and then, anagogically, we reverse the analogy and place God’s economy as its primary meaning, then God’s gift economy becomes the originary and primary meaning of all economies. God gives the most primordial gift of all: a share in his own being. All anthropological insight flows out of reflection upon God’s original household of creation and salvation.

Gift Economy as Household

Recall from the Introduction that leitourgas named a civic economic event that benefitted the city and her citizens. Liturgy was a gift-exchange from a wealthy benefactor at the highest economic level of human gift-giving. Liturgy was an essential part of keeping the gift in motion in the ancient gift economy of the Mediterranean basin. Liturgy was a dynamic economic activity. The very word economy comes to us from the Greek word for “house” or “household.” For the ancients, an economy, a household, and a house were, if not one reality, certainly understood as echoes of the same pattern across levels of scale.

These levels of scale and differing media show themselves more plainly in the Hebrew cosmic project. Jon Levenson outlines three different meanings of the use of the Hebrew word for house in the Jewish Scriptures.69 First, primarily, house is an economy that brings provision and protection, brings life, and brings safety from imminent death. We need to provide for our family and we thus generate those behaviors that build the provision and security of the household. Next, house means a continuing inheritance among the living for those who must die. House means (re-)generation. Part of the protection and provision of the household is insuring its continuance in the face of the inevitability of death.

Finally, house means a material culture that inherently follows these two previous core economic activities of provision and generation, behaviors that lead to the construction of more static “residue,” manifesting in material culture a shape fitting to the dynamic of those very house-defining behaviors.70 The shape of that material culture arises inherent to the activities it compliments. The result is the material cultural artifact or conglomeration of artifacts we think of most dir...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Liturgical Theology as the House of God
• Chapter 2: Liturgical Theology as the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ
• Chapter 3: Liturgical Theology as Contemplation of Mystery
• Chapter 4: Liturgical Theology as Figural Interpretation
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Bibliography