Worship Weblog
Friday, May 23, 2008
Blog posts from Philosophy and Liturgy
Blog posts from the Philosophy and Liturgy conference:
Related Post
Initial report from John Wilson of Books&Culture
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Thursday, May 22, 2008
Philosophy and Liturgy - Update 11
Update from the Philosophy and Liturgy conference:
A panel just concluded the conference with reflections and suggestions for future progress in the area of philosophy and liturgy.
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Philosophy and Liturgy - Update 10
Update from the Philosophy and Liturgy conference:
Terence Cuneo just spoke on icons in the Orthodox tradition as “vehicles of divine speech.”
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Philosophy and Liturgy - Update 9
Update from the Philosophy and Liturgy conference:
Peter Ochs led us in vibrant small group reflections on philosophy and Jewish morning prayer—in particular, what happens to the “I,” or sense of self in the act of prayer and through the words of prayer.
Philosophy and Liturgy - Update 8
Update from the Philosophy and Liturgy conference:
John Witvliet began the day with philosophical and theological reflections on a 4th-century eucharistic text, before Ludger Viefhues-Bailey spoke on “Displacing Bodies: Ritualization and Resistance.”
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Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Philosophy and Liturgy - Update 7
Update from the Philosophy and Liturgy conference:
In the most explicitly liturgical paper so far, Reinhard Hutter is discussing how the liturgy of the adoration of the sacrament articulates the belief of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist.
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Philosophy and Liturgy - Update 6
Update from the Philosophy and Liturgy conference:
Jamie Smith began by critiquing 20th-century philosophy of religion as clinging to rationalism and studying only the beliefs of religion rather than the lived experience and ritual practice, and reducing believers to merely holders of ideas rather than living beings. In this sense, he said, philosophers are working with the wrong tools—“thinking about thinking” rather than thinking about practice, ritual, and lived experience. Creeds, for example, did not originate as abstract statements of belief, but originated as prayers within a worshiping community. And so philosophers of religion, Smith said, will need to gain an interest and ability to consider the affective as well as the cognitive in religion.
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Philosophy and Liturgy - Update 5
Update from the Philosophy and Liturgy conference:
Sarah Coakley’s paper, “Beyond ‘Belief’,” followed this outline:
Introduction: How Can Liturgy be ‘True’?
I. Perceiving God: ‘Doxastic Practices’ and Liturgy
II. Feminist Epistemology and Knowledge by Relationship
III. The Spiritual Senses and Liturgical Cognition of Christ
In part II, Coakley drew on the fascinating insight that human knowledge is in part relational and affective; we may get knowledge about concrete objects by visual perception, but we know deeper truths not just by perception but through relationships. This, she said, is surely true of our relationship with God in worship. In part III, Coakley drew on patristic treatment of the “spiritual senses” and how they help us perceive, know, and become better image-bearers of, God. And so, she said, we can rightly consider what we experience in worship via our senses not as a complement to what we believe, but integrally formative of our beliefs.
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Philosophy and Liturgy - Update 4
Update from the Philosophy and Liturgy conference:
Angelo Cardita of the Advanced Liturgical Institute in Barcelona called for a more sophisticated model for thinking of ritual and belief—or “ritual action and critical thought.” After surveying existing material on the relationship between worship and belief—including Vatican II’s Sacrosanctum Concilium—Cardita gave this conclusion, as stated on his outline: “Philosophy is called to create a hermeneutical ‘context’—for Liturgy’s Practice and Wisdom—in such a way that the religious intentional ‘pretext’ can be re-proposed to the socio-anthropological ‘text.’”
The first respondent said this paper was a classic example of how this conference represents an opportunity for new understanding about science, religion, sociology, worship, and how they relate and interact—and for new opportunity for fresh dialogue among Christians, Jews, and Muslims about the deeper significance of their liturgical practice.
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Philosophy and Liturgy - Update 3
Update from the Philosophy and Liturgy conference:
Josh Reeves spoke about why philosophers have historically prioritized belief over practice, theory over action. He traced this back to Aristotle, who prioritized ‘epistome’ (theoretical knowledge) over ‘tekne’ (practical skill), especially as Aristotle’s thought was appropriated in medieval philosophy. The empiricist emphasis on “disembodied knowledge over embodied knowledge” led philosophers to fear error above all else, and thus to consider skepticism safer than belief. In religion, however, actions are essential to belief; consider, for instance, the gospels’ emphasis on authentic action as superior to words, as in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Later, though, the Reformers’ critique of over-emphasis on ritual led to an overcompensation in which cognitive belief was again privileged over practice, and the emphasis in liturgy was on mental activity.
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Philosophy and Liturgy Conference - Update 2
Update from the Philosophy and Liturgy conference:
Howard Wettstein began the day with a philosophical exposition of the Shema of Deut. 6, discussing the question of intimacy in the use of the divine name, and the messianic hope of divine unity. (Audio will be posted soon.)
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Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Philosophy and Liturgy Conference - Update 1
Update from the Philosophy and Liturgy conference:
“This conference is the beginning of the fulfillment of a dream that I’ve had for about 25 years—getting philosophers to engage liturgy,” said Nicholas Wolterstorff to begin the conference. Too often philosophers content themselves with talking only about belief and epistemologies of belief, he said, while liturgy is considered mere ritual. Wolterstorff laid out a definition of liturgy as “scripted action” in a broad sense. In liturgy we “face God” and “affirm the worth” of God. Liturgy is not just a ritual that expresses social values, traditions, and beliefs; it is a response to core underlying reason or logic (he used the Latin word ‘ratio,’ akin to the Greek ‘logos’) to worship, and this demands further philosophical attention. Questions Wolterstorff suggested for philosophical discussion included:
- what does it mean to pray a psalm as one’s own words?
- what is going on in the liturgical use of the present tense (“Christ is born today”)?
- in entering a worship space, do we leave secular space?
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Workshop and Worship at Open Table of Christ United Methodist Church in Providence, R.I.
We were grateful to get this note and these pictures from Open Table of Christ United Methodist Church in Providence, Rhode Island, one of our current grant recipients, and share them here with permission.
We had a glorious, Spirit-filled Pentecost that touched everyone involved.
Over 20 people attended the Saturday afternoon workshop that Jorge led. At
its conclusion at 4 PM, many people asked, “Can’t we just keep going?” We
learned to think more thoughtfully about style versus content, sacred
moments and memories and how to attempt to facilitate the holy.
Jorge continued the singing and teaching at our Pentecost potluck for about
90 people, including some new Cambodian refugees.
Sunday morning was glorious with Jorge both leading music and preaching. We
sang new music and experienced a new beautiful sung communion. We had a
powerful sense that this weekend was a turning point for the church in terms
of worship renewal and that we now moving forward with greater joy,
enthusiasm, fuller conscious participation and awareness of the Holy Spirit
in our worship and in our lives.
Learn more about our Worship Renewal Grants Program
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Ministering to returning soldiers: an urgent but underappreciated need
At staff meeting last week, we met with Herman Keizer, director of Chaplaincy Ministries for the Christian Reformed Chuch, about how churches can better enfold returning soldiers from overseas duty. Too often, churches fail to minister to returning veterans who may have profound psychological and spiritual needs, including PTSD. Some of the many needs, challenges, and other considerations we discussed:
- the need for churches to understand and minister to the psychological effects of military service
- the need for churches to understand and minister to the abrupt adjustments to civilian and family life that returning from service brings (and the continual abrupt adjustments of multiple tours of service)
- the need for churches to avoid idolatrous nationalism on the one extreme, and silent detachment on the other
- the need to minister to people, regardless of politics
- the need to identify, in prayer, song, and in other ways, with Christian communities in areas of military combat—to see believers of other nations as “us,” not “them”
- the need to lament and pray for the suffering of innocent victims in all areas touched by war and combat
... and many more. We plan to develop resources around this theme; here are some initial links:
-Resources from Chaplaincy Ministries for Soldiers and Families
-National Center for PTSD from Veteran Affairs
-’Beyond the Yellow Ribbon: How Churches Can Help Soldiers and Their Families Readjust After Combat’ from Speaking of Faith
-’Clergy learn together how to help vets’ from the Boston Globe
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ISOT on Covenant-God, not Contract-God
[We should see our relationship with God not] in terms of a legalistic contract between humanity and God rather than a gracious covenant. Whereas a covenant is unconditional, Torrance explained, a contract is a legal relationship and has mutual conditions. ‘First and foremost, the whole federal scheme is built upon the deep-seated confusion between a covenant and a contract, a failure to recognize that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is a Covenant-God and not a contract God.’
Here’s the Torrance reference:
James B. Torrance, ‘Covenant or Contract? A Study of the Theological Background of Worship in Seventeenth Century Scotland’, Scottish Journal of Theology 23 (1970), p.66.
Related Resource
Worship as Covenant Renewal
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