Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ttngx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-06T18:45:27.691Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The primacy of liturgy in Christianity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2020

BRUCE ELLIS BENSON*
Affiliation:
School of Divinity, University of St Andrews, KY16 9JU, UK

Abstract

I argue that liturgy is primary to the Christian faith. By ‘liturgy’, however, I do not mean merely what happens on Sunday morning. Instead, I distinguish between ‘intensive’ and ‘extensive’ liturgies, those that occur when the body of Christ meets together and when that body disperses. All of this together constitutes Christian liturgy. My thesis is not that practice is more primary than theory, for that presupposes the possibility of drawing a sharp line between them – an impossible task. Rather, liturgy is a variety of embodied cognition through which we know God and our neighbours. Theology is something that arises from our liturgies and is itself liturgical in nature. We may believe the Nicene Creed, but saying it aloud is performative in nature. I end by examining the relation of phronēsis and theōria in Aristotle and then consider the way Heidegger uses this distinction to argue that ‘know-how’ (Verstehen) is the most basic kind of human knowledge.

Type
Original Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Augustine, (2005) On Christian Belief, Hill, E. et al. (trs) (Hyde Park NY: New City Press).Google Scholar
Bell, Catherine (1997) Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (New York: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Chrysostom, John (1889) Instructions to Catechumens, Brandom, T. P. (tr.), in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, IX, Schaff, P. (ed.) (Buffalo NY: Christian Literature Publishing).Google Scholar
Cuneo, Terrence (2018) Ritualized Faith: Essays on the Philosophy of Liturgy (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1976) Philosophical Hermeneutics, Linge, D. E. (tr.) (Berkeley: University of California Press).Google Scholar
Gallagher, Shaun & Zahavi, Dan (2012) The Phenomenological Mind, 2nd edn (Abingdon: Routledge).Google Scholar
Guardini, Romano (1998) The Spirit of the Liturgy, Lane, A. (tr.) (New York: Continuum).Google Scholar
Hadot, Pierre (1995) Philosophy as a Way of Life, Chase, M. (tr.) (Oxford: Blackwell).Google Scholar
Heidegger, Martin (1962) Being and Time, Macquarrie, J. & Robinson, E. (trs) (New York: Harper & Row).Google Scholar
Heidegger, Martin (1997) Plato's ‘Sophist, Rojcewicz, R. & Schuwer, A. (trs) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press).Google Scholar
Johnson, Mark (1987) The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lacoste, Jean-Yves (2004) Experience and the Absolute: Disputed Questions on the Humanity of Man, Raftery-Skehan, M. (tr.) (New York: Fordham University Press).Google Scholar
Meeks, Wayne A. (1983) The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven CT: Yale University Press).Google Scholar
Orsi, Robert A. (2010) The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880–1950, 3rd edn (New Haven: Yale University Press).Google Scholar
Plantinga, Alvin (2002) Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Price, Charles P. & Weil, Louis (1979) Liturgy for Living (New York: Seabury).Google Scholar
Ratzinger, Joseph (2004) ‘Homily for Msgr. Luigi Giussani’, Communio: International Catholic Review, 31, 685687.Google Scholar
Schilbrack, Kevin (2014) Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto (Malden MA: Wiley Blackwell).Google Scholar
Schrijvers, Joeri (2005) ‘Jean-Yves Lacoste: phenomenology of liturgy’, Heythrop Journal, 46, 314333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smart, Ninian (1969) The Religious Experience of Mankind (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons).Google Scholar
Smart, Ninian (1996) Dimensions of the Sacred (Berkeley: University of California Press).Google Scholar
Smith, William Cantwell (1998) Believing: An Historical Perspective (Oxford: Oneworld).Google Scholar
Stein, Gertrude (1937) Everybody's Autobiography (London: Heinemann).Google Scholar
Taliaferro, Charles (2004) ‘Ritual and philosophy’, in Schilbrack, K. (ed.) Thinking through Rituals: Philosophical Perspectives (New York: Routledge), 237250.Google Scholar
Thelen, Esther et al. (2001) ‘The dynamics of embodiment: a field theory of infant perseverative reaching’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 134.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
von Allmen, J. J. (1965) Worship: Its Theology and Practice (London: Lutterworth).Google Scholar
Wolterstorff, Nicholas (2018) Acting Liturgically: Philosophical Reflections on Religious Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar