On Liturgical Dogmatics: David Fagerberg Interviewed

If you read past entries on here, you will know that I am an undisguised admirer of the work of David Fagerberg, whom I have interviewed previously about his many excellent books, all of which are worth your time. I have used his first book, Theologia Prima, in courses for some fifteen years now. 

More recently I have been recommending his On Liturgical Asceticism to students.

Now there is a new must-read book from him, and it really does belong on every RCIA reading list, and on the syllabus of introductory courses in Christianity, whether in a parish or undergraduate classroom. For Liturgical Dogmatics is, quite simply, that good. It has achieved the rare feat of being a book written by a top-drawer academic who eschews complicated jargon and an academic apparatus to write an accessible, cogent book that is not at all dumbed down but remains meaty and substantial from your first bite to the last morsel. 

As is my custom, I sent David some questions about his background, the book, and future plans. Here are his thoughts. 

AD: Tell us a bit about your background

DF: I am nearing retirement (another year) so I find myself retrospecting quite a lot. In 1988 I submitted a dissertation proposal titled “What Is Liturgical Theology” and I have been adding to my answer since, as though the dissertation was a small sculpture and I’ve been adding clay to the bust. The pathway to Liturgical Dogmatics was direct thematically, even if meandering biographically.

AD: What led to the writing of Liturgical Dogmatics?

DF: The books on the wall in front of me are about liturgy and Byzantine theology. The books on the wall behind me are about philosophy and systematic theology. They are from two different phases of my life, and perhaps this volume is their reconnection. I began with systematics, and was drawn into liturgical studies. It is nice to think that instead of those initial years being wasted, they have hung around to be put to use now.

I also answer this question with a short and true anecdote. I wrote the book in a second and a half in my mind; putting it on paper naturally took longer. 

I was asked once if I could teach the course in liturgical history one summer. I thought, “Yes I could. I would start with Adam and Eve as cosmic priests, talk about their forfeiture of a liturgical career, cover salvation history from Abraham to Moses to the prophets, arrive at Jesus as the High Liturgist, and consider the baptized Christian as his liturgical apprentice.” 

Then I realized I was only being asked to teach a course on the history of the liturgy. All that got me thinking that we might also do a liturgical triadology, liturgical cosmology, liturgical anthropology, liturgical hamartiology (sin), liturgical soteriology, liturgical Christology/Pneumatology, liturgical ecclesiology, and liturgical eschatology. These are the sections of the book.

AD: Your first book, Theologia Prima, has been out for many years now, and I've used it for over a decade in classes before also using On Liturgical Asceticism  and Liturgical Mysticism. How does Liturgical Dogmatics stand in relation to those other three? What is its unique contribution?

DF: There was no grand plan. I marvel at authors who have some multi volume project in mind from the start, but such was not the case for me. I was carried along the current of liturgical theology. The first task was to understand what Kavanagh and Schmemann meant when they said, respectively, that liturgy is primary theology and the ontological condition for theology. The first book was linking liturgy + theology as two words naming one reality. 

But I found that students and colleagues misunderstood, and I concluded it must be due to operating with a different grammar, so I wanted to thicken both terms: treat liturgy as leitourgia, theology as theologia. The Orthodox theologians of asceticism helped me with that. 

The ascetical dimension opens another door. Not only is it what capacitates us for committing liturgy, it also is a connection between the sacred and the profane. Robert Taft wrote, “the purpose of all Christian liturgy is to express in a ritual moment that which should be the basic stance of every moment of our lives.” So my previous two books (Consecrating the World and Liturgical Mysticism) looked at daily life through the lens of liturgy. And since dogma concerns the whole of Christian thought and life, it was time to look at dogma through the lens of liturgy.

Kavanagh referred to his fictitious Mrs. Murphy as someone who does primary theology. If I may say so, then, my books have been describing Mrs. Murphy as a liturgical theologian (though not of the academic variety), a liturgical ascetic (though not of the monastic variety), a liturgical mystic (though not of the extraordinary variety), and now I am considering her as a liturgical dogmatician. The dogmas that scholars talk about, she experiences.

AD:Already in your introduction you unapologetically introduce a term that, in the Latin Catholic world at least, is still being "recovered" as it were: theosis. Tell us a bit about the connection between liturgy and theosis.

It is like flower and fruit, pathway and home, tasting and seeing, work and beatitude, dawn and noontime, tabernacle tent and Solomon’s Temple. There is a foretaste of theosis in liturgy, but the discipline and rhythm of liturgy leads to the throne of God. That we drink from the river of liturgy (the reference to Jean Corbon is intentional) means we acquire a taste for deification. It brings us home. One of the sentences that fell off my keyboard said what I mean: “the liturgy is not the performance of a human religion; liturgy is the religion of Christ perpetuated in Christians.” Theosis is Christ taking up his occupancy in us. 

AD: The great liturgical historian Robert Taft of blessed memory often analogized liturgy to what happens between the outstretched fingers of Adam and God in Michelangelo's famous Sistine fresco. Is that analogy useful in illustrating your opening emphasis on liturgy as synergistic co-operation with God?

I found Lev Gillet’s definition of synergy to be perfect: “two unequal, but equally necessary, forces.” Both fingers must stretch out, but God’s power of grace is stronger than man’s power of ritual. So it is in sacraments: the human minister applies water and grace regenerates. So it is in liturgy: liturgy is a work of God, though it is an activity of man. (This is also expressed in scholastic categories of causation. Garrigou-Lagrange wrote, “one part does not come from us in the other from God. The act is entirely from God as from its first cause, and it is entirely from us as from its neck and cause. The first cause does not render secondary causes superfluous.”)

AD: I'm wondering if the use of "dogma" and cognates in your work won't stick in a few throats given common misconceptions of dogma as stifling, cramped, restrictive. Here is where I'm wondering if your work on Chesterton might be helpful. I often paraphrase him (accurately, I hope, for it's been a while since I went back and read him!) that we should see "dogma" as a bounded playground, as a free space where we can play at leisure within certain boundaries beyond which the Church simply says "Here be mines!" or "There be dragons!" Is that apt?

You have helped me fulfill my vow to quote Chesterton to somebody, somewhere, once a week. That is exactly his point, yes. “Nine out of ten of what we call new ideas are simply old mistakes. The Catholic Church has for one of her chief duties that of preventing people from making these old mistakes.” So he calls doctrine or dogma a sort of map of the mind; a guide to the maze; the key that fits the lock. Dogmatic teaching takes “the responsibility of marking certain roads as leading nowhere or leading to destruction, to a blank wall, or a sheer precipice.” It allows for freedom.

AD: Perhaps more seriously, tell us a bit about the relationship between dogma and liturgy. The old tags about "lex orandi" and "lex credendi" have sometimes carelessly been used to suggest a monocausal and unidirectional relationship between the two, but it's more complicated than that, surely?

DF: I do propose a unidirectional relationship, but that’s because it’s a category mistake to treat them on the same level. Kavanagh thought we are misled by having ignored the verb statuat. “So long, I think, as the verb stays in the sentence it is not possible to reverse subject and predicate any more than one can reverse the members of the statement: the foundation supports the house.” Of course the house exerts weight upon the foundation, but the unidirectionality is expressed by Schmemann calling liturgy the ontological condition for theology.

AD: I'm struck by the care you pay to the great Orthodox Met. John Zizioulas in your book (as well as Florensky and others), and this, together with your long interest in and writing about Schmemann and others from the East, makes me think that while our liturgical practices differ very considerably, our liturgical theology, as Catholics and Orthodox, is very closely intertwined indeed. Is that a fair assessment?

DF: I would like to think so – agreed. I sometimes say that I can catch the scent of something in Eastern liturgy, Eastern spirituality, Eastern theology that I might not otherwise single out, but once I am aware of it I can detect it also in the West. 

Bowing down in docility to both the letter and spirit of the Second Vatican Council (from docilis, meaning “easily taught”), I have sought to obey the magisterium’s command in paragraph 15 of Unitatis Redintegratio:

Catholics therefore are earnestly recommended to avail themselves of the spiritual riches of the Eastern Fathers which lift up the whole man to the contemplation of the divine. The very rich liturgical and spiritual heritage of the Eastern Churches should be known, venerated, preserved and cherished by all. They must recognize that this is of supreme importance for the faithful preservation of the fullness of Christian tradition, and for bringing about reconciliation between Eastern and Western Christians. 

I want to avail myself of spiritual riches. I want to be lifted to the contemplation of the divine. I want to know, venerate, preserve, and cherish the heritage of liturgy and spirituality as it appears in the fullness of Christian tradition, and therefore I will look over the fence to pastures of the East. (I borrowed that from the opening of an essay I wrote for a forthcoming collection titled Mapping the Una Sancta, ed. Sotiris Mitralexis and Andrew Kaethler.)

AD: I'm struck by the creedal structure of your book: you start by reflecting on the conditions necessary for the "I believe" or "I know," move next to God, the fall and redemption, the Holy Spirit, the Church, and then eschatology. In addition, we get sections on angels and demons, on seven deadly sins, and much else, making the book seem in some ways ideally suited for, say, an RCIA program? Was that structure deliberate?

I looked at the table of contents of some manuals on dogmatics on the shelves behind me and noticed that’s the way they divide things up. If I’m going to look at traditional dogmatics through a liturgical eye, I might as well use their organizational scheme. It would please me very much to think I have made things more intelligible to someone in RCIA. They will have to send an email to Ignatius Press. 

AD: Naturally, while enjoying the whole book, I paid special attention to your section on ecclesiology, an area I have written about in my own books. Oddly enough I confess to relief at what is not here: any notion that offices and structures are worth your time! You say nothing about them and I'm assuming--correct me if I'm wrong--that this reflects the truth that offices and structures will pass away and exist no more in heaven, but that there we will always and forever liturgize?

Though I cannot find the quote in all the Schmemann material at my fingertips, I swear he is the one who said: “the Church is not an institution with sacraments, she is a sacrament with institutions.” That seems to speak to your point. I did not intentionally skip offices and structures: they simply were not the main characteristics of the Church to parade before my eyes.

AD: You open by explicitly eschewing footnotes, leading me to assume you are hoping for a readership beyond the AAR or the Society of Oriental Liturgy. Then your very clear style, and concrete metaphors and illustrations, make this an accessible book for a lot of people I suspect. Who was your imagined audience, and who especially would benefit from reading the book?

DF: What do academics do with dogmas? Talk about them, organize them, prioritize them, footnote them, write about them, systematize them, shelve them and take them back down again. But I suppose the thesis of the book is that Mrs. Murphy can experience dogmas. I’m not expecting Mrs. Murphy to read this book, then, but I do hope it defends her to the academic guild. 

AD: Having finished this book, what are you at work on next?

A couple times I have quipped that it would be possible to write a second volume of Liturgical Asceticism by using only Western authors this time. I’m going to give it a try under the title Liturgical Abnegation. There are Catholic spiritual authors that use terms troubling to our modern ears, terms like “abnegation, annihilation, indifference, resignation, mortification, nothingness, self-denial,” etc. The terminology sounds harsh because we hear it within a limited horizon, but it might be better understood if we could place the language against a more transcendent horizon. 

That transcendent horizon, I hypothesize, is the act of liturgizing God. Liturgical asceticism is a capacitation for liturgy; liturgical abnegation is a consequence of liturgy. Asceticism and abnegation are akin, but I look forward through the former at liturgy and am now looking backward through liturgy upon the latter. I do not gather my authors under any hard and fast temporal or geographical line grouping the authors, they are simply ones who have spoken about abnegation in a way revealing and provocative to me: Olier, Grou, Boudon, Rodriguez, de Caussade, Fenelon, de Sales, Libermann, Saint-Jure, Eudes, Scaramelli, de Granada, Ravignan, for example. 

David Fagerberg on his New Book

In February I noted the forthcoming publication of David Fagerberg's next book, Liturgical Dogmatics. 

I was sent a review copy by Ignatius Press, and have now read it with the same profit and delight as I find in all of David's books. If you go here you will find interviews I have done with him on here over the years about those other books. 

I write today simply to say that I have sent him questions about Liturgical Dogmatics, and hope to have those posted when he responds. Watch this space for that.

In the meantime, let me say this would be an outstanding book for any introductory class on Christianity, whether at a parish or in an undergraduate classroom. The richness of its content is made more accessible still by the eschewing of references (which is a hard sentence for an academic to type!). 

Liturgical Dogmatics

A new book by David Fagerberg will always rocket to the top of one's must-read lists for he is one of the outstanding commentators on the great Alexander Schmemann, and also himself one of the great liturgical theologians in the Catholic world today, where he has done much to bring Eastern understandings to Western awareness. 

I have used his book, especially Theologia Prima for more than 15 years in classes, and more recently his Liturgical Asceticism as well. So I shall read his newest one with an eye to enjoyment and edification for me and my students alike when it appears in a few weeks: Liturgical Dogmatics: How Catholic Beliefs Flow from Liturgical Prayer (Ignatius Press, April 2021), 260pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

God is incomprehensible, but he is not unapproachable. What cannot be fully comprehended by dogma can be approached when we liturgize God.

What knowledge cannot fasten together, love can unite. There is a movement occurring between God and his children, and this divine economy is the subject matter of dogmatics. It is also exactly the definition of liturgy that this work assumes. Liturgy is the perichoresis of the Holy Trinity kenotically extended to invite our synergistic ascent into deification.

The Trinity's circulation of love turns itself outward, and in humility the Son and Spirit work the Father&;s good pleasure for all creation, which is to invite our ascent into participation in the very life of God, which consists of glory, love, beatitude.

All chapter topics in this volume are subdivisions of this single story stretching from alpha to omega, and they all turn out to be liturgical verities. What dogma stammers to state, liturgy celebrates in mystical participation. Liturgical Dogmatics therefore examines dogma in light of liturgy. The whole sweeping, saving activity of God, as described by dogma, is the subject of this book.

I'll see if I can arrange an interview with David, as I have done on here in the past.  

Liturgical Mysticism

I have used David Fagerberg's Theologia Prima in my classes for fifteen years now. And after reading that one book, students always very enthusiastically seek out his other writings, including, more recently, Liturgical Asceticism. But he has several others worth your time, including the one discussed here in my interview with him.

At the very end of last year, his latest book was published: Liturgical Mysticism (Emmaus Academic, 2019), 200pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Some think that liturgy is formal, public, and for ordinary people, while mysticism is uncontrollable, private, and for extraordinary saints. Is there a connection between the two? In this volume, David Fagerberg proposes that mysticism is the normal crowning of the Christian life, and the Christian life is liturgical.

We intuitively sense that liturgy and theology and mysticism have an affinity. Liturgical theology should reveal liturgy’s mystical heart. Liturgical theology asks “What happens in liturgy?” and liturgical mysticism asks “What happens to us in liturgy?”, and perfects our interior liturgy. In Liturgical Mysticism, Fagerberg directs the reader to look fixedly at Christ, who is the Mystery present in liturgy, and who bestows his resurrection power upon his adopted children.

Giving Thanks for the Life and Work of Alexander Schmemann

My friend Bill Mills, who is no stranger when it comes to writing about Alexander Schmemann, and whose moving, funny, unsparing, and invaluable memoir you should by now have sent to all the clergy and seminarians you know, alerts me to the imminent publication of another book devoted to the great Orthodox liturgical theologian's vision: We Give Our Thanks Unto Thee: Essays in Memory of Fr. Alexander Schmemann, ed. Porter C. Taylor with a foreword by Serge Schmemann (Wipf and Stock, 2019), 274pp.

I'm hoping to arrange an interview with the author. In the meantime, here is the publisher's blurb about the book, which contains essays from, inter alia, Paul Meyendorff, Bill Mills, and others across the spectrum:

Fr. Alexander Schmemann continues to influence liturgical and sacramental theologies some thirty-five years after his death. Despite the wide acceptance within Protestant circles of his timeless classic, For the Life of the World, there has been relatively little written about him from an ecumenical context. This volume of collected essays seeks to explore his theological legacy and further his work. With essays from leading scholars such as David Fagerberg, Bruce Morrill, Joyce Zimmerman, and more, this volume is meant for both teachers and students of liturgical and sacramental theology. In an effort to introduce Schmemann to a wider audience and to celebrate his work through meaningful engagement and dialogue, contributors come from a wide variety of ecclesiastical backgrounds: Anglican, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, Free Church, and more.

David Fagerberg on Alexander Schmemann's Liturgical Theology

I have previously discussed on here several of David Fagerberg's splendid books, and I have often used them in classes, especially Theologia Prima: What is Liturgical Theology, and recommended them to students, including On Liturgical Asceticism. 

Additionally, I have often discussed on here the works of Alexander Schmemann (see, inter alia, my interview here with Bill Mills about his book on Schmemann), who remains such a welcome voice within Orthodoxy today and well beyond it also.

So it is a double delight, then, to have a book about Schmemann authored by fagerberg. I am always interested to hear when David has published something new, as he recently has: Liturgy Outside Liturgy: the Liturgical Theology of Fr. Alexander Schmemann. His publisher sent me a copy of and I in turn sent to him some questions for an interview. Here are his thoughts.

AD: Tell us about your background.

DF: It is now three decades since I arrived at Yale and asked Fr. Aidan Kavanagh to do a directed readings with me. He agreed on the stipulation that we would read everything we could lay our hands on by Schmemann, because he was in the midst of the lectures that would become his book On Liturgical Theology. That was my introduction to Schmemann, who died a year later in 1983 before I ever had the chance to meet him in person.

I sometimes say that my subsequent PhD work was trying to get the number of the bus that hit me. My understanding of liturgical theology changed completely. I had been ordained a pastor in the Lutheran Church (ELCA), and done a Masters at St. John’s in Collegeville, intending to raid the Benedictine pantry for some liturgical geegaws to import. But I wrote myself into Catholicism in chapter 5 of my dissertation (the sort of existential effect not usually expected of dissertations). I taught for 12 years at a Lutheran undergraduate college in Minnesota (Concordia), and was two years at the Liturgical Institute at Mundelein when an invitation to join the faculty at Notre Dame came, and I have been here now 15 years.

AD:With my students over more than a decade now, I’ve used your Theologia Prima, and more recently OnLiturgical Asceticism. What connections, if any, do you see between these two and your new book, Liturgy Outside Liturgy? 

DF: The five lectures that make up this book were delivered in Sweden during January 2017. The first three were given at a conference on Schmemann sponsored by the ecumenical community at Bjarka-Saby, at the invitation of Peter Halldorf. The latter two were given on the campus of the University of Lund to a graduate seminar and a group of laity, at the invitation of Samuel Rubenson, who presides over a theological study center called the Academy of St. John. The invitation said there has been growing interest in the heritage of Schmemann in Sweden, and his writings have been important for this community with members from Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran and evangelical traditions.

I therefore approached this as an opportunity to make a fresh survey and summary of Schmemann. It was a chance to try and unpack Schmemann’s frequent insistence that liturgical theology is “the slow and patient bringing together of that which was for too long a time broken and isolated – liturgy, theology, and piety, their reintegration within one fundamental vision.” One might see Theologia Prima as my attempt to reintegrate liturgy and theology, and On Liturgical Asceticism as my attempt to reintegrate liturgy and piety (read: asceticism); this was a chance to delve into why Schmemann felt this was so important. So the lectures let me cast a glance over my previous work.

AD: It will be 35 years this December since Fr Alexander’s death, and yet he seems more widely read today than ever. What do you think is the key to this longstanding interest in his writings?

DF: I remember Robert Taft quipping at a conference on Schmemann held at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary that Schmemann “has a remarkably long shelf life.” It’s true. And as remarkable is the additional fact that Schmemann continues to hold the interest of Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants. No doubt each audience brings their own expectations to his writings: conservative or liberal, tradition or renewal, sacred high liturgy or connection to the profane world, etc. But I think it is a testimony to Schmemann’s balance and complexity that he can speak to such a varied audience without personal self-contradiction. His writings contain both safeguards against excesses, and a vivifying power for renewal. The only way I can account for this is to suggest that he writes out of a deep personal love of Christ and his Church.

AD: Tell us a bit about how you, and Schmemann, understand the liturgy outside liturgy—what does this mean, and what are the implications for Christians once they walk out the door Sunday mornings?

DF: I am proposing that in addition to looking at liturgy (a perfectly responsible scholarly thing to do) it is also important to look through liturgy – through it at life, spirituality, faith, theological understanding, providence, asceticism, justice in society, and so forth.

When Schmemann gave his 1963 keynote lecture that spoke of liturgy existing For the Life of the World, he was aware of liturgical scholarship, but that was of secondary concern to him. He repudiated the view of other liturgical scholars who interpreted him as the sort of person who wanted to “prepare grounds for a liturgical reform that would restore the ‘essence’ of the liturgy” and relegate accessories to their place. He patiently explains that this is not his concept of liturgical theology at all. Rather, he seeks to show how the fruit of our new life in Christ is grounded in the Church’s leitourgia. So my idea is that liturgy gives birth to something beyond itself.

AD: Your introduction notes that your first reading of Schmemann, for your doctorate, was focused in one way, but for this book you had a chance to widen the focus to other writings. Which ones in particular, and why?

DF: It was a risk to return to an author who was so important to me over three decades ago – will I find him passé? Will my interests have moved on?

I am happy to report that Schmemann was as stimulating and fruitful a tutor as he ever was. For my doctoral study I zeroed in on articles where he defined liturgical theology, and explore the relationship between liturgy and theology. For these lectures I tried to speak to the liturgical question by staying in Schmemann’s voice, but gathering material from a much broader range of essays he wrote, in which I had not yet read. With the benefit of digitalized journals now, I downloaded about seventy essays, of all sorts of genres: reports to the holy Synod of bishops concerning OCA concerns, history of Byzantium, memoria to deceased Orthodox theologians, the Western rite in Orthodoxy, secularism. Three might be singled out from 1964, which were a sequential series in the St. Vladimir’s Quarterly, and bore the common main title “Problems of Orthodoxy in America,” but three subtitles: The Canonical Problem, The Liturgical Problem, The Spiritual Problem.

AD: You begin with Schmemann’s famous “negations” of what liturgical theology is not—not a theology of worship, and not a “reduction of theology to liturgy.” What, then, is it in both his eyes and yours? 

I had begun graduate school as a systematic theologian, intent on finding some topic on worship, or sacraments, or prayer to make the object of my study. That was my understanding of what “liturgical theology” was. The academy had taught me that the best way to investigate something is to dissect it, and to do so, of course, one must kill the object of investigation, pin it open on the board, and look inside.

Kavanagh and Schmemann suggested I might learn more if I watched the liturgy in motion. And as it moved, it would throw off theology, like a grinding wheel throws off sparks. The question Schmemann asked--which leads people to describe him as having started a revolution in liturgical studies--was whether liturgy is an object of theology, or the source of theological thinking? What if liturgy is not just the pious straw of simple believers that awaits an academic Rumpelstiltskin to spin it into real theological gold (Western scholasticism)? What if instead we follow the Church fathers’ approach? “Just as they do not theologize about the Church, the Fathers do not theologize about the liturgy. Liturgy as the life, as the ‘sacrament’ of the Church is not the ‘object’ but the source of their theology because it is the epiphany of the Truth, of that fullness from which the ‘mouth speaks.’”

AD: You quote Fr Alexander (p16) as noting that too often people are not interested in understanding liturgy, much less theology, because instead they are in search of some mystification—some kind of “’spiritual experience, spiritual food’” provided to those in a “'cultic society’.” How does he recommend Christians begin to overcome this kind of thinking? 

Schmemann loves the liturgy because he loves his Lord. I often begin my semester with an anecdote about the time I was dressed in cap and gown waiting to enter for commencement exercises, and the person behind me, knowing I did liturgical studies, said “you must like this sort of thing.” Yes, I sarcastically thought; this excessive pomp and extravagant formality is the shiny object that attracted me to it. 

Schmemann does not seem to swoon over liturgy, rather liturgy is the Paschal mystery encountering us in the deepest moments of our lives. I suppose he thus disappoints activist liberals because he stands firmly in Church liturgical tradition, and I suppose he disappoints spiritualist conservatives because he is not enraptured by rite. He wrote, “I realize how spiritually tired I am of all this ‘Orthodoxism,’ of all the fuss with Byzantium, Russia, way of life, spirituality, church affairs, piety, of all these rattles. I do not like any one of them, and the more I think about the meaning of Christianity, the more it all seems alien to me. It all literally obscures Christ, pushes Him into the background.” 

AD: You note the importance of antinomy to Schmemann, and for this you draw on Pavel Florensky. Tell us a bit about the connections between the two, and how they help us understand antinomy. 

While I do not find quotations of Florensky in Schmemann, I know he knew about him by his introductory survey to Russian theology. Florensky provides a very valuable way of dealing with contradiction as paradox. He writes in his thesis,

“Life is infinitely fuller than rational definitions and therefore no formula can encompass all the fullness of life. … Antinomicalness does not say, ‘Either the one or the other is not true.’ It also does not say, ‘Neither the one nor the other is true.’ It only says, ‘Both the one and the other are true, but each in its own way.” 

In my earlier works I tried to explain Schmemann’s idea of “cultic antinomy:” the Church uses cultic categories to express something that cult cannot contain. In this book I use the concept to explain how Christians are all the time leaving the world, but all the time remaining in it.

AD: In your section on the consecration of the world (also addressed at greater length in your Consecrating the World: On Mundane Liturgical Theology), you note that liturgy, properly speaking, must have an impact on matter, anthropology, hearts, and history. Tell us a bit more what you mean here and how you see its impact on each. 

Suppose that liturgy puts a light into our eyes by which we can see. Suppose it is the light of Mount Tabor illuminating creation so that its truth, beauty, and goodness glorifies God. And suppose having a theological eye means seeing by this light. If all this is so, then Mrs. Murphy is a theologian not for having attended academic courses to learn scholarly jargon: she is a liturgical theologian for having this charismatic sight by which to see matter, persons, hearts, and history.

This idea, sketched out in my book Consecrating the World, derives from Schmemann’s complex (antinomous) understanding of world. On the one hand, world means rebellion, death, communion with a dying world; “food itself is dead,” Schmemann writes, “it is life that has died and it must be kept in refrigerators like a corpse.” But on the other hand, world is simply “in which and by which we live,” and if we could reestablish the world and its proper relationship to God then we could be said to consecrate the world. This, of course, would require overcoming the passions so that we no longer misuse the world. That’s why liturgy and asceticism are connected. There’s nothing wrong with money, sex, or beer; the problem lies in avarice, lust, and gluttony.

10. Sum up what you were hoping to accomplish in Liturgy Outside Liturgy: the Liturgical Theology of Fr. Alexander Schmemann, and tell us who would benefit from reading it. 

Tradition has said that liturgy has two purposes: the glorification of God and the sanctification of man. I hope to suggest to people that the former is accomplished when the latter occurs. God sanctifies so that we may glorify. When we are given new life, then God is glorified. This means that liturgy has consequence on every aspect of Christian life, and it is not confined to the temple etiquette alone.

Another of my other mentors, Paul Holmer, wrote “It would be odd to say that Christian worship and liturgy are only stimulating or expressive. For worship requires not that one like the liturgy but that one come to abide in God himself.” The Fall was the forfeiture of our liturgical career, but in his grace God redeems and deifies, and liturgy becomes the trysting place for a cosmic and eschatological liturgy. My hope is to explain what Schmemann meant when he said liturgical theology is not academic theology staring at liturgy: liturgical theology is the reunification of liturgy, theology and piety.

AD: Having finished Liturgy Outside Liturgy, what are you at work on now? Any new publishing projects? 

I don’t know what will come to fruition, but there are two subjects intriguing me now. First, current reading of spirituality in Western sources has made me think this should be better connected to liturgy, so I am thinking about Liturgical Mysticism.

Second, if liturgy is as connected to theology as Schmemann suggests, I wonder if one could write a Liturgical Dogmatics. I can express myself in an interior conversation I had with myself in a second and a half. One day I was asked if I could teach the course on liturgical history, and the following shot through my mind: “Liturgical history is an important topic; where shall we begin? I suppose with Abraham, then find ourselves with Moses at the burning Bush, and then Israel’s Kings and prophets. No, wait, probably the Noachic covenant needs to be mentioned. No, actually, liturgical history begins with Adam and Eve’s cosmic priesthood, the forfeiture of their liturgical career, and the long story of salvation history designed to restore man and woman to their liturgical state by making them apprentices to Christ, the premier liturgist, to be led to the heavenly Jerusalem. That would be a liturgical history of man and creation and redemption.” But, of course, my interlocutor was only asking if I could teach a history of the liturgy. It seems to me a parallel move could be made about liturgical anthropology, liturgical cosmology, liturgical ecclesiology, liturgical exegesis, liturgical morality, liturgical Mariology, liturgical eschatology. I wonder.

Fagerberg on Schememann

David Fagerberg, of whose books (discussed here) I am very fond, having often assigned them to students over the years, e-mailed me recently to say he has a new book out. This will be of wide interest not only to those who find Fagerberg edifying and interesting, but also to those many who, nearly 35 years after his death, still find much richness and new life in the works of the late Alexander Schmemann: Liturgy Outside Liturgy (Chora Books, 2018), 220pp.

I have asked David for an interview about the book, and he has kindly consented to that. We hope to run it sometime in Paschaltide.

About this book the publisher tells us:

"Does liturgy only matter to members of the Jesus Club when they get together to kill a Sunday morning? Is liturgy basically nothing more than temple etiquette, inessential to the mundane world? Should liturgy matter outside the Church?" This is an important question that David W. Fagerberg, Theology Professor at Notre Dame University, asks himself and us. And to answer this question, he is presenting the thought of Fr. Alexander Schmemann (1921-1983), who was a leading theologian in the Orthodox Church in America and one of the foremost thinker in liturgical theology.

The material is based on careful scholarship, but presented in such a way that the common reader will also benefit from the many powerful insights that can be found in it.  Schmemann made powerful statements to make readers think seriously. For example, about the world he says, “We seem to forget that in the New Testament and in the whole Christian tradition the ‘world’ is the object of two apparently contradicting attitudes: an emphatic acceptance, a yes, but also an equally emphatic rejection, a no.”

And about the relationship of theology and the Church he writes, “[Theology] today constitutes within the Church a self-centered world, virtually isolated from the Church’s life. It lives in itself and by itself in tranquil academic quarters, well defended against profane intrusions and curiosities by a highly technical language." Against the dangers of a liturgy that is auto-referential, Fagerberg observes that “Liturgical reform should not, therefore, be self-serving; liturgical reform is a matter of empowering the Church’s leitourgia, which is the work of a few on behalf of the many.” The liturgical cult does not exist for itself, but for the sake of the world, for the sake of understanding and transforming the world.” This book is not only for academic theologians, but also for all those who love the liturgy and are willing to be challenged with a fresh perspective on this fundamental topic for our Christian life.

Fagerberg on Mills on Schmemann

Earlier I interviewed my friend, the Orthodox priest and theologian Bill Mills about his new book Church, World, and Kingdom: The Eucharistic Foundation of Alexander Schmemann's Pastoral Theology. 

I sent the book out for specialized review for Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies (which is in an exciting period of growth and transition, and should soon have multiple options for on-line access available not only to academic subscribers, but to individuals also--stay tuned!).

Our reviewer for Fr. Bill's book was the distinguished liturgist and professor at Notre Dame, David Fagerberg, whose own scholarship, in books such as Theologia Prima: What Is Liturgical Theology? has drawn heavily on Schmemann. Fagerberg wrote a very positive review, and we will be running that review in the spring issue of Logos along with our usual panoply of articles, notes, essays, and other reviews, both long and short. I will have more details in the coming weeks so stay tuned.

David Fagerberg on Liturgical Asceticism

As I noted previously, David Fagerberg of Notre Dame has written one of the best books around introducing us to the topic of liturgical theology, and drawing extensively on Orthodoxy's most beloved practitioner of it, Alexander Schmemann. Now he has another one coming out in the spring of 2013: On Liturgical Asceticism (CUA Press, March 2013),  272pp.

About this book the publisher tells us:

Drawing on the Eastern Orthodox tradition of asceticism and integrating it with recent Western thought on liturgy, David W. Fagerberg examines the interaction between the two and presents a powerful argument that asceticism is necessary for understanding liturgy as the foundation of theology. Asceticism may have been perfected in the sands of the desert, but it is demanded of every theologian and, indeed, every Christian. It grants the capacity for pondering liturgy and sharing the life of Christ. Fagerberg brings to light asceticism's essential importance in liturgical theology.

Fagerberg's earlier work, Theologia Prima, understood liturgy as the foundation of theology. To that framework, he now adds the relevance of asceticism. Asceticism was understood to overcome the passions by cooperating with grace. It detailed how to train the life of grace and produce what the ancient church called a theologian. Fagerberg carries the wisdom of the earliest centuries forward. He develops a new framework called liturgical asceticism that combines discipline with sharing the life of Christ.

One of Orthodoxy's most respected theologians today has this praise for the book:

The idea of liturgical theology has become popular during the past few decades, wresting liturgy from the liturgiologists and testing what the church teaches against how the church prays liturgically. In this powerful and original book, David Fagerberg takes this development a stage further. By exploring Christian asceticism, mostly using Orthodox sources, he introduces another dimension, essential if liturgical theology is to be fully assimilated in the lives of Christians. -- Andrew Louth, professor emeritus of patristic and Byzantine studies, Durham University

Theologia Prima

Next after virtually any one of Alexander Schmemann's books, David Fagerberg's Theologia Prima: What Is Liturgical Theology? (Hillenbrand) remains my favorite book in the area. It is a wonderfully written book, full of great insights from the ancient and modern Church, and from Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox sources--chiefly Schmemann himself, to whom a good portion of Fagerberg's book is dedicated. My students consistently and uniformly react very favorably to Fagerberg's work, and rightly so.

First published several years ago now, it was this month released in electronic form by the publisher, who tells us this about the text:

"Liturgical Theology" is often a convenient label for any theology that has loosely to do with worship or Eucharist. In this innovative book, David W. Fagerberg distinguishes liturgical theology from a general theology of worship. He proposes two defining attributes of liturgical theology:
(1) "lex orandi": It is manifested in the Church's historical rites.
(2) "theologia prima": It is theology done by the liturgical community.

By this understanding, liturgical theology can be adequately defined as the faith of the Church in motion, and as such is the basis of the Church's "lex credendi". To see liturgical theology (to witness lex orandi), one must go to the deep structures of the rite. Liturgical asceticism gives us the capacity to participate in the liturgical response.

Theologia Prima: What Is Liturgical Theology? is a thorough revision of Dr. Fagerberg's groundbreaking What Is Liturgical Theology? (The Liturgical Press, 1992). It has been reorganized for easier reference and contains new examples as well as more anecdotal material derived from Dr. Fagerberg's extensive experience as a teacher and theologian.

David Fagerberg on Edith Humphrey's Grand Entrance

I have received a book review from the liturgical scholar David Fagerberg of Notre Dame, himself the author of one of my favorite books in liturgical theology, which I ensure my students always read: Theologia Prima: What Is Liturgical Theology? 

In his book, Fagerberg shows, inter alia, extensive familiarity with the great--many would say the greatest--Orthodox liturgical theologian of the last century, Alexander Schmemann.

I asked Fagerberg, at once equally at home in Western and Eastern liturgical sources, to review a new book by Edith Humphrey, a former Canadian Anglican who entered the Antiochian Orthodox Church recently. We will publish Fagerberg's review in Logos next spring.

As I noted previously, Humphrey has written a number of really excellent critical reviews for Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies including of  Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions and also, more controversially, Eugene Rogers' After the Spirit.

She is also herself the author of a number of interesting books, to be discussed in more detail next week when we have an interview with her on here. I asked Fagerberg to review her most recent book, Grand Entrance: Worship on Earth as in Heaven (Brazos Press, 2011), 272pp.

The contents of Grand Entrance are as follows:

Introduction: The Crisis of Corporate Worship and the Life of the Church
1. "Teach Us to Pray": What Is Worship, and Where Does Corporate Worship Fit?

2. "Praise God in His Sanctuary": Worship as Entrance in the Old Testament

3. "In Spirit and in Truth": Entrance in the New Testament

4. "From You Comes . . . Praise": Traditional Liturgies of the East

5. "In the Great Congregation": Traditional Liturgies of the West

6. "Your Church Unsleeping": Expressions of Worship Today

7. "That Your Prayers Not Be Hindered": Avoiding Pitfalls in Corporate Worship

Conclusion: "To Sing Is a Lover's Thing"

Glossary

Index

Humphrey's "ecumenical" approach is an encouraging one, and puts me in mind of  a book I recently received: Anton Usher, Replenishing Ritual: Rediscovering the Place of Rituals in Western Christian Liturgy (Marquette UP, 2011), 277pp.  Usher shows some familiarity with noted Eastern liturgists and historians, including Robert Taft and Peter Galadza.

But back to Humphrey. Fagerberg's review of her book notes that one of Humphrey's major concerns is to rescue the very notion of corporate-communal worship from the individualistic culture of today, especially among some evangelicals. A related concern is justifying the use of very ancient forms and venerable traditions in Catholic and especially Orthodox worship. As he drolly puts it:

The answer to questions like why cannot we reverse the sequence of word and sacrament, or why we cannot revise the stations of the cross to align with the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals is simple: it is not done this way. Asking "what elements do you include in your worship?" is like asking "in our laboratory we make water with two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom – what do you use?"