LITURGICAL THEOLOGY: CURE FOR A CRISIS

Drew Dixon | December 1, 2015

It has been said that there is a crisis in America. Over the past several years various surveys

have shown that Americans have lost confidence in the Church1; that the general public is becoming

less religious2; and that even regular church attendees are losing robust theological understanding3.

Meanwhile, theological education has also been in crisis. Seminaries across America, and across

denominational lines, have been facing dire economic struggles primarily because there has been a

declining interest in attending seminaries causing seminary enrollment to fall.4 There are countless

causes for such a change in church involvement and educational enrollment. From the outside of

these institutions, it could be the increase of secular values or the shift toward intellectualist

philosophy. But perhaps from the inside, it could be seen as a widespread loss of liturgy or the apparent

irrelevance of theology.

These crises goes hand in hand. Churches have distanced themselves from historical liturgy

and robust theology to be more accessible to the public and thus have lost their efficacy for

transformation. Theological scholarship has distanced itself from liturgical experience and thus fallen

into disinterest. These crises stem from what Alexander Schmemann called a rupture between

theological study and liturgical experience.5 A cure for the present crises might be found by drawing

together liturgy and theologythe prayers of the saints and the papers of the scholars need one

1 Cathy Lynn Grossmann, Americans Confidence in Religion Hits a New Low, USA Today, 2015,
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/06/17/americans-confidence-religion-poll/28872253/.
2 Pew Research Center, U.S. Public Becoming Less Religious, 2015,

http://www.pewforum.org/2015/11/03/u-s-public-becoming-less-religious/.
3 Lifeway Research, Americans Believe in Heaven, Hell, and a Little Bit of Heresy, 2014,

http://www.lifewayresearch.com/2014/10/28/americans-believe-in-heaven-hell-and-a-little-bit-of-heresy/.
4 Libby A. Nelson, The Struggling Seminaries, Inside Higher Ed, 2013,

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/03/29/luther-seminary-makes-deep-cuts-faculty-and-staff-amid-tough-
times-theological.
5 Alexander Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology, 2nd ed. (New York: St. Vladimirs Seminary Press,

1975), 9.

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another! The beginnings of this re-integration can be found in liturgical theology. For quite some time

theology has dismissed liturgy out of its thinking,6 so the present task of liturgical theology is to

show that rite and liturgy implicitly were the basis for classical theology and that we cannot do

theology without an ordered ritual and liturgical basis.7

In this paper I will provide a brief overview of liturgical theology, identify its beginnings in

two historic Christian theologians, legitimize its importance through recent philosophical and

epistemological developments, and conclude with its implications for the Church and the Academy.

WHAT IS LITURGICAL THEOLOGY?

The formal study of liturgical theology has its beginnings in the 1960s in the work of Orthodox

scholar, Alexander Schmemann. Catholic scholar Aidan Kavanaugh picked up this work in the 1980s,

and his student, David Fagerberg has continued the tradition into the current era.8

Fagerberg gives a simple and compelling description of liturgical theology utilizing Ludwig

Wittgensteins metaphor of grammar. Wittgenstein insists that studying words and using words are

quite different tasks. To know the meaning of a word is not just to know its ostensive definition from

the dictionary; it requires knowing how to play with the word in its language game.9 Kavanaugh uses

a similar metaphor when he notes that though philologists study words and editors arrange them

neither of them are engaged in our present word-exchange. He explains, These honorable activities

represent not first but second order enterprises.10 Fagerberg uses this metaphor to display that

6 Dorothea Haspelmath-Finatti, Theologia Prima: Liturgical Theology as an Ecumenical Challenge to

Lutheran Worship Practice, Dialog 48, no. 4 (2009): 377.

7 Ibid., 377.
8 Bryan D Spinks, From Liturgical Theology to Liturgical Theologies: Schmemanns Legacy in Western

Churches, St Vladimirs Theological Quarterly 53, no. 23 (2009): 231.

9 David W. Fagerberg, Theologia Prima: What Is Liturgical Theology?, 2nd ed. (Chicago, IL: Hillenbrand Books,

2004), 3.
10 Aidan Kavaugh, On Liturgical Theology (New York: Pueblo Press, 1984), 84, quoted in Ibid., 40.

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theology has a similar order to it. Academic theology, like philology, is a second order enterprise.

Liturgical theology, Fagerberg insists, is theology in the first order, which he calls theologia prima.

By identifying liturgical theology as theologia prima, Fagerberg does not mean to dismiss

theology in the second order, but rather to carve a place for liturgyin Schmemanns wordsas a

genuinely theological discipline.11 Fagerberg declares there must indeed be a theological critique of

liturgy or else the dichotomy remains in place whereby liturgy has to do with esthetics (not theology)

and theology has to do with doctrine (not liturgy).12 However, he also insists that attention to liturgy

takes priority over theology because the former is claimed to be the foundation for doing the latter.13

Fagerbergs whole thesis is based on the ancient adage: lex orandi, lex credendi that the law of prayer

(liturgy) establishes the law of belief (theology).14

Throughout his discussion, Fagerberg makes an important distinction between liturgy in its

thin sense and its thick sense. In its thin sense the Church creates liturgy as it decides which scriptures

to read, which songs to sing, and so on. In its thick sense liturgy creates the Church as God forms

people into a heavenly community. Dorothea Haspelmath-Finatti summarizes Fagerbergs thick sense

of liturgy this way: Liturgy is the place of Gods self-revelation; liturgy is Gods act upon Gods

people. Liturgical theology is not about human ceremony, but about Gods transforming act.15

In short, liturgical theology is the theology present in the actions of the gathered church. It is

theology that is liturgically embodied.16 Fagerberg says that the question liturgical theology wants

to ask is why the raw material of worship must be translated into a second order form before it can

11 Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology, 11.

12 Fagerberg, Theologia Prima: What Is Liturgical Theology?, 66.
13 Ibid., 118.
14 Ibid., 118.
15 Haspelmath-Finatti, Theologia Prima: Liturgical Theology as an Ecumenical Challenge to Lutheran Worship

Practice, 376.
16 Fagerberg, Theologia Prima: What Is Liturgical Theology?, 7.

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be called theology,17 and throughout his account he insists thatreturning to the original language

metaphora theologian who calls liturgy non-theological would be as nonsensical as a linguist calling

a conversation non-linguistic. That [parishioners] dont use the jargon of academic theology does not

mean the adjustment they make to their encounter with the Holy One is non-theological, it only means

it is non-academic.18 If liturgy is the work of the people, then liturgical theology is the theology of the people.

AUGUSTINE AND ANSELM: EARLY EXAMPLES

One might ask, does any of this have any basis prior to the 1960s or is this all merely a liturgical

extension of experiential phenomenology?19 The thesis of liturgical theology (lex orandi, lex credendi)

finds roots in the writings of two prominent historic Christian theologians, both of whom were

canonized as saints: Augustine of Hippo and Anselm of Canterbury.

Augustine lived and wrote in the fourth and fifth centuries. Originally a secular rhetorician, he

would come to be a bishop and one of the most influential theologians in history. In one of his lesser-

known works, a commentary on the Gospel of John, Augustine wrote, Believe so that you may

understand.20 This approach to theology would be quite foreign to the inverted modernist approach.

In this statement, Augustine insists that faith establishes proper understanding in the same way

liturgical theology insists that the law of prayer establishes the law of belief. Augustine does not only teach

this, but he also displays it.

In what is perhaps his most famous work, Confessions, Augustine begins with a prayer: You

are great, lord, and greatly to be praised; great is your power, and infinite is your wisdom. 21 From

17Ibid., 63.
18Ibid., 128.
19 Jacob D Myers, Toward an Erotic Liturgical Theology: Schmemann in Conversation with Contemporary

Philosophy, Worship 87, no. 5 (2013): 399.

20 Saint Augustine and John W. Rettig, Tractates on the Gospel of John 28-54, vol. 88, The Fathers of the Church

(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 18.

21 Saint Augustine, Confessions, ed. George Stade (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2007), 3.

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here Augustine traces his life in a memoir-like fashion. Toward the end of the book, as Augustine

approaches more traditionally theological content (questions of memory, time, and Trinity), he still

leads with prayer: Let me know you, my knower; let me know you even as I am known, 22 and, I

call on you, my god, my mercy, who made me and did not forget me, though I was forgetful of you.23

Indeed, Augustines prayers establish his understanding.

Anselm lived in the Middle Ages (c. 1033 1109). Unlike Augustine, Anselm sought after a

monastic education early in his life. It was during his education that he would read Augustine and

undoubtedly be shaped by Augustines theological method. In one of his primary theological works,

Proslogion, Anselm would expand Augustines words:

I do not try, Lord, to attain Your lofty heights because my understanding is in no way equal
to it. But I do desire to understand Your truth a little, that truth that my heart believes and
loves. For I do not seek to understand so that I may believe; but I believe so that I may understand. For I
believe this also, that unless I believe, I shall not understand [Isa. 7:9].24
From this statement, Anselm would continue onin prayerto discuss theological matters such as

the existence of God and the nature of God.

Augustine and Anselm insist that a posture of faith establishes proper understanding and they

both demonstrate this by approaching theological reflection with prayer. Thus, we can see from

Antiquity and the early Middle Ages that the law of prayer establishes the law of belief.

SMITH AND MEEK: EMERGING PHILOSOPHY

Now that we have rooted liturgical theology in the writings of Augustine and Anselm, how

might we see it grow out from there as a legitimate and important discipline today? The philosopher

22 Ibid., 148.
23 Ibid., 230.
24 Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion, in The Major Works, ed. Brian Davies and G. R. Evans (Oxford:

University Press, 2008), 87. Emphasis added.

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James K. A. Smith and epistemologist Esther Lightcap Meek are helpful conversation partners in this

arena.

While Smith does not specifically write about liturgical theology, his Cultural Liturgies series

shares several common interests with the present subject. One may notice the obvious similar interest

in liturgy, but another commonality is the purpose for which he writes: the renewal of the church

and the Christian university.25 Smith is addressing the same crises that we began with! He continues

on to say that this renewal hinges on an understanding of human beings as liturgical animals,26

which he describes in detail in the first chapter of Desiring the Kingdom (Cultural Liturgies Vol. 1).

In order to describe what he means by liturgical animal, Smith walks through a brief history

of philosophical anthropology.27 He begins with a model that he calls The Human Person as Thinker

whose motto is I think, therefore I am. Smith describes this model as a broadly rationalist or

intellectualist picture of the human person, saying it entails a sense that persons are defined by

thinking and is often allied with a sense of functional disembodiment. Smith critiques this rationalist,

cognitivist anthropology as overly intellectualist and explains that it can be seen in Protestant

worship that fixates on messages that disseminate Christian ideas and abstract values.

From this critique, a new model emerges which seeks to recognize the degree to which

thinking operates on the basis of faith. Smith calls this model, The Human Person as Believer. Its

motto comes from the lips of Augustine and Anselm: I believe in order to understand. In this model

what defines us is not what we thinkbut rather what we believe, the commitments and trusts that

orient our being-in-the-world. While Smith seems more favorable toward this model, he finds it too

25 James K. A. Smith, Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works, Cultural Liturgies, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI:

Baker Academic, 2013), 3.

26 Ibid., 3.
27 James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation, Cultural Liturgies, vol. 1

(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), 40-63.

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similar to the first model is two ways: First, that it just moves the clash of ideas down a level to a

clash of beliefs, and second, that it still tends to operate with a very disembodied, individualistic

picture of the human person. So he seeks a third model.

The model that Smith ultimately suggests is one that he calls The Human Person as Lover

whose motto is I am what I love. This model sees humans not as primarily thinking beings or as

religious beings, but rather as most fundamentally oriented and identified by love. It is from this

model, as Smith describes love, that he begins to discuss liturgy.

Smith describes that, as loving beings, our love has an aim and a goal, or an intention and an

end. The first two models seem to scratch at the surface of our aims and goals, which are located in

our thoughts and beliefs, but Smith takes it a step further by suggesting that our love is shaped by

habits and practicesthings that we actually do.

By suggesting this third model, is Smith critiquing Augustine and Anselm? Not exactly. While

they each explicitly stated Smiths second model, I believe in order to understand, Smiths third

model draws attention to what it was that formed their belieftheir constant devotion to prayer. It

was their practice (lex orandi) that established their understanding (lex credendi). Smith insists that these

identity forming practicessubtly shape us precisely because they grab hold of our love.28 This is

what Fagerberg means when he says, Liturgy should shape and change us to fit Gods vision of what

a human being is.29 We are essentially our love and our love is formed by our practice.

Now that we have arrived at what Smith calls a liturgical anthropology, which is centered on love,

we can engage the epistemological work of Esther Meek. Meek describes knowing as an act of love.

In her covenant epistemology, Meek declares that rather than knowing in order to love, we love in order

28 Ibid., 83.
29 Fagerberg, Theologia Prima: What Is Liturgical Theology?, 122.

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to know.30 This reversal is consistent with the reversal we have seen throughout, which insists that

prayer establishes belief and belief establishes understanding. In Meeks epistemology, love establishes

knowing.

In a similar vein as Meeks covenantal epistemology, Jacob D. Myers discusses a sacramental

epistemology or, what he calls, an erotic (as in love, not sexuality) liturgical theology. He describes this erotic

liturgical theology in four steps31: The first step is, like Meek, to prioritize love. The second step is to

approach liturgical phenomena as portals to divination, which is what Meek describes as inviting

the real.32 In this step, we see liturgy as the place of divine (real) encounter whereby we [make] a

path for God to come to [us] by.33 The third step is a prayerful renunciation of the will to

knowledge. Like Meeks knowledge as subsidiary-focal integration,34 this recognizes the passive

aspect of coming-to-know and receiving knowledge as a gift.35 Myers fourth and final step is simply

to love God more fully through liturgical expression. He summarizes his erotic liturgical theology as

something that leads me to sacrifice my intentionality so that God may give Gods self without force,

coercion, or seduction. This act of sacrifice is similar to Meeks statement: If love is the gift of the

self, and we love in order to know, then we give ourselves in order to know.36 Overall, this kind of

epistemology, grounded in liturgical theology, recognizes the ways in which we are changed and

transformed by our liturgical experience.

Meeks covenantal epistemology shows us that knowing is rooted in love and Smiths liturgical

anthropology shows us that our love is formed by liturgy. With their help, we can see how liturgical

30 Esther Lightcap Meek, Loving to Know: Introducing Covenant Epistemology (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011),
420.
31 Myers, Toward an Erotic Liturgical Theology: Schmemann in Conversation with Contemporary
Philosophy,406-410.
32 Meek, Loving to Know: Introducing Covenant Epistemology, 425.
33 Fagerberg, Theologia Prima: What Is Liturgical Theology?, 21.
34 Meek, Loving to Know: Introducing Covenant Epistemology, 67.
35 Ibid., 365.
36 Esther Lightcap Meek, A Little Manual For Knowing (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014), 39.

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theology can act as a cure to our crises by returning attention to our liturgical foundation. Theological

education apart from liturgy is bound to fail because love without liturgy grows cold. Similarly, the

Church without an intentional liturgy will undoubtedly lose its vision for the very same reason. With

this we will move into some practical implications of liturgical theology.

SAINTS AND SCHOLARS: TODAYS TASKS

When pastors prepare for the gathering of the saints, liturgy must remain at the core of their

preparation. It is their task to structure a worship service that will render what the church promises

perceptible to the senses.37 Liturgical theology challenges the widespread assumption that if we get

our principles right then our liturgy will naturally follow in good order. 38 Smith critiques such

approaches because they fail to appreciate that we are liturgical animals shaped by practices that work

on our cognitive unconscious.39 If it is important for pastors to preach theologically sound sermons

(second order theology) then it is perhaps even more important for their worship services to provide

formative liturgy (first order theology). What does this mean for those who are part of supposedly

non-liturgical traditions? Brian Spinks addresses this very question in a paper in which he traces the

legacy of liturgical theology from Schmemanns Orthodox origins down a line to the Catholic

(Fagerberg), Lutheran (Gordon Lathrop), Baptist (Christopher Ellis), and charismatic (Simon Chan)

traditions.40 Spinks conclusion is not that all should conform to a monolithic liturgy, but rather that

each tradition would look at the deep structures of their own worship traditions, and to attempt to

elucidate a Liturgical Theology, theologia prima, within those deep structures.41 Liturgical theology

37 Peter Fink, Towards a Liturgical Theology, Worship 47:10 (Dec. 1973), 603, quoted in Fagerberg, Theologia
Prima: What Is Liturgical Theology?, 125.
38David R. Newman, Observations on Method in Liturgical Theology, Worship 57:4 (July 1983), 379, quoted

in Fagerberg, Theologia Prima: What Is Liturgical Theology?, 125.

39 Smith, Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works, 168-169.
40 Spinks, From Liturgical Theology to Liturgical Theologies: Schmemanns Legacy in Western Churches.
41 Ibid., 249.

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shows a pastor that form and content are not two different things. This knowledge will aid him or her

in a growing awareness of how parishioners are being shaped by the service.

Aside from displaying the importance of participating in the liturgy of the church, liturgical

theology reminds the theologian, The ultimate test of his theological model is not its theological

correctness, but the ability of the praying church to recognize in its prayer the richness which the

model promises.42 Liturgical theology creates a different standard by which to evaluate academic

theology: not by its powerful rhetoric or its persuasive logic, butas Jesus taught usby its fruit

(Matthew 7:16). The question is no longer Is it right? but rather, Is it good?

Liturgical theology has the potential to re-stabilize the present crises facing the Church and

various theological institutions. The work of James K. A. Smith and Esther Meek suggests that there

is perhaps, a trend toward this approach in theology and practice. May liturgical and theological

creativity spring up in Churches and schools throughout the world!

Lex orandi, lex credendi!

42 Fink, Towards a Liturgical Theology, 603, quoted in Fagerberg, Theologia Prima: What Is Liturgical Theology?,
125

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