Chapter 1
Liturgical Ecclesiology
The Church is first and foremost a worshipping community. Worship comes first, doctrine and discipline second.
âGeorge Florovsky
What is Liturgical Ecclesiology? A part of what this present project aims to do is to identify an emerging field at the intersection of two fairly new theological disciplines: ecclesiology and liturgical theology. It will first be necessary to provide some contextâthematic, historical, and methodologicalâin order to locate the present project within those larger disciplinary conversations.
Pioneers and Subsequent Settlers
On the border between ecclesiology and liturgical theology is a relatively undeveloped theological subdivision. In what follows, my intention is to take some of the materials from the one neighborhood (liturgical theology) along with the best plans from what we might consider to be well-constructed houses in the neighborhood of ecclesiology, to see what kind of structure von Allmen, as a pioneer, built there. Or to use another metaphor, I want to put on a pair of ecclesiological spectaclesâin particular (though not exclusively), the Nicene marks of the churchâand read von Allmenâs liturgical theology through them. What we see there will be a new thing: a liturgical ecclesiology. We will begin with a brief examination of a few theologians who, consciously or not, followed in von Allmenâs footsteps, whose work and methodologies echo those von Allmen used decades earlier, and who, self-consciously or not, were also doing liturgical ecclesiÂology. Our goal is to be particularly attentive to their methodological moves. We will then be in a position to articulate the approach that will guide the rest of this study.
The connection between liturgy and ecclesiology is an obvious one, but not a clear one. That is to say, while it is plain to see that there is a connection, it is more difficult to define precisely what that connection is. Recent interest in both fields of study has led a few scholarsâespecially liturgical theologiansâto try to do so. For example, as the Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann writes in his Introduction to Liturgical Theology: âThe purpose of worship is to constitute the Church.â Hence, his methodological approach is to start with the church at worship, its liturgical life, and its fundamental ordo, and to discern in them the material for theologicalâand thus ecclesiologicalâreflection. In contrast, Lutheran scholar Frank Senn suggests a mirror image of this relationship between the two: liturgy and the study of it is encompassed by ecclesiological questions and concerns. He writes that liturgiology (a cousin of liturgical theology) is really âa subdivision of ecclesiology.â
The recovery of the doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ was central to the emergence of the Liturgical Renewal Movement, and to liturgical theology as its own discipline. The fundamental conviction arising from this recovery is that the church is most explicitly itself when it gathers on the Lordâs Day for worship. This is the starting point and returning touchstone for nearly all of the scholars who, like von Allmen, undertake to do liturgical theology from an ecclesiological viewpoint. Hearing, in the pages that follow, from later settlers in this territory (or, to use the other metaphor, those who wore ecclesiological glasses while writing their liturgical theology) will give us some guidelines to discern the method and assess the prototypical liturgical ecclesiology we see in von Allmen.
Nathan Mitchell
In 1999, Nathan Mitchell published an article entitled Liturgy and Ecclesiology. His is an interpretation of Vatican II as a reform of both worship and churchâor perhaps, church through worship: âThe challenge of Vatican II, therefore, was not simply to find a new way of worshipping, but to find a new way of being church in and for the world.â For Mitchell, as for Schmemann and Kavanagh, doctrine arises from doxologyâecclesiology from liturgy:
Mitchell hastens to note that liturgy is not just a set of institutional rituals or body of beliefs, but a way of life.
For Mitchell, the presence of Godâs kingdom is characterized by radical renunciation of money, glory, and power. It is a community in which economic, racial, and sexual barriers have fallen. It is a community where people own things in common, willingly and quickly offer forgiveness, where they shoulder each otherâs burdens, etc. âThis,â says Mitchell, âis the ecclesiology that the liturgy rehearses and promotes.â Then, he places that ecclesiology in Godâs salvation history: âIt offers not only an ideal icon of who and what the Church should be but a lively sacrament of the whole worldâs future.â Ecclesiology, eschatology, and ethics all intersect, as the church calls itself and the world into a destiny of justice, peace, and charityâa destiny that must simultaneously be sought after and rested in.
The method for a liturgical ecclesiology that Mitchell outlines, then, is one characterized ânot only by an emphasis on the Churchâs cultic activity but alsoâand more importantlyâby its emphasis on the Church as a body of disciples who enflesh Jesusâ vision of a new human community based on justice, mercy, and compassion.â In other words, the worshipping church is important, but important because it is there that the Christian communityâs values for life in the world are shaped and expressed. It is there that the body of Christ is formed. Mitchell identifies two specific consequences. First, that Eucharistic hospitality is the hallmark of any community that is called church. This puts the Lordâs Supper at the center not only of liturgical celebrations, but also of Christian life. Second, there is a humility vis-Ă -vis the world, an acknowledgment of a âliturgy in the world,â a grace that God gives the cosmos at its depths, which is signaled but not exhausted in the Eucharist. Thus, the supper is not an invitation to abandonment of the âsecular,â but an offering the church makes, an offering of Christ, and itself, as sacrament for the world.
Mitchellâs article, while suggestive, has neither the length nor the focus to clearly articulate either a method for liturgical ecclesiology or a constructive project of liturgical ecclesiology. But it is significant in its use of the term and the centrality of eccle...