Liturgical theology : the church as worshiping community

208 Pages·2006·2.41 MB·English

by  Chan

8
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L
ITURGICAL
T
HEOLOGY
The Church as
Worshiping Community
S C
IMON HAN
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InterVarsity Press
P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426
World Wide Web: www.ivpress.com
E-mail: [email protected]
©2006 by Simon Chan
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from
InterVarsity Press.
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InterVarsity Press is the book-publishing division of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA , a movement of
students and faculty active on campus at hundreds of universities, colleges and schools of nursing in the
United States of America, and a member movement of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students.
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lowship/USA, 6400 Schroeder Rd., P.O. Box 7895, Madison, WI 53707-7895, or visit the IVCF website at
<www.intervarsity.org>.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Ver-
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sion . NIV . Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan
Publishing House. All rights reserved.
Design: Cindy Kiple
Images: ©Kirill Smirnov/iStockphoto
ISBN 978-0-8308-7620-4 (digital)
ISBN 978-0-8308-2763-3 (print)
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For
the Rev. Dr. Joseph Frary,
teacher and friend
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C
ONTENTS
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
PART ONE: FOUNDATIONS
1 The Ontology of the Church. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2 The Worship of the Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3 The Shape of the Liturgy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
4 The Liturgy as Ecclesial Practice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
PART TWO: PRACTICES
5 The Catechumenate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
6 The Sunday Liturgy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
7 Active Participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Name Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
Scripture Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
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A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
T
his book would not have been possible without the help of many peo-
ple. First, the project would have remained stalled had not the principal of
Trinity Theological College, Dr. Ngoei Foong Nghian, agreed to release me
from all major administrative duties of the college.
Thanks to my colleague, Dr. Jeffrey Truscott, for reading chapters one
through three and making helpful suggestions. Dr. Joseph Mangina of Wyc-
liffe College, Toronto, read a slightly different version of chapter four and
offered many insights. Dr. Joseph Frary, who introduced me to the liturgy
more than a quarter century ago, read chapters five through seven. It is
therefore “very meet, right, and [my] bounden duty” that I dedicate this book
to him. Needless to say, I bear full responsibility for any of its shortcomings.
Our librarian, Michael Mukunthan, has been most helpful, acquiring all
the materials I needed, including some out-of-print books.
Finally, as usual, my wife’s attention to other details of life has freed me
to write. This is a rare gift. I could not ask for more.
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I
NTRODUCTION
I
n recent years a number of evangelical theologians have subjected the
modern evangelical movement to close scrutiny and found it wanting.1
Thinking evangelicals would hardly dispute David Wells’s indictment:
In entering the mainstream of American cultural life, [evangelicals] were
brought face to face with the great shaping forces of modern life, and one of
the immediate casualties was their sense of truth in both private and public
life. Almost immediately their capacity to think theologically about themselves
and their world also disappeared.2
Wells enumerates a number of signs of evangelical capitulation to the
ways of the world. Christ as personal Savior has less to do with the objective
truth of what he did than with how a person feels subjectively. Many church
services have become one huge entertainment, in which there is no mention
of sin and what is offered as gospel is “the therapeutic model of life.”3 There
is the “professionalization” of the clergy, evidenced by its impermanence
and marketability. Ministry is no longer a lifelong calling but another career
that follows a certain “career path” like any other profession. If it does not
work out, one moves on to another job.4 The professional minister must
have some marketable skills. This means that the focus of theological train-
ing is no longer on the knowledge of God as an end in itself (what Edward
Farley calls “theologia”)5 but on “know-how.” Thus it is not uncommon to
find the modern theological curriculum dominated by practical subjects like
counseling, church administration and leadership. When ministry is defined
professionally, there is really nothing left in the ministerial profession that
distinguishes it from other professions.
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10 LITURGICAL THEOLOGY
Preaching finds its echoes in secular teaching and counseling. Evangelism
finds its echoes in sales. Pastoral counseling finds its echoes in the efforts of
the case worker. Church ritual finds its echoes in the formal procedures of the
court and legislature. And the administration of the church programs finds its
echoes in the management of countless secular organizations.6
Similarly, Mark Noll has noted the failure of evangelicalism to critically
engage modern culture.7 Noll attributes the intellectual demise of modern
American evangelicalism to three factors. The first is a revivalism that both
promoted a new style of leadership focusing on the revivalist and undercut
the traditional authority of the churches and thus helped to foster “individ-
ualism and immediatism.”8 The second is the separation of church and state.
The disestablishment of the church meant that each church had to compete
for members, which in turn necessitated the practice of revivalism, the “free-
market economy” in church life. This gave great dynamism to church life,
but it also promoted individualism and a focus on “spiritual matters” apart
from the intellect. Truth must become “practical.” These two effects resulted
in the third: a synthesis of Christianity with popular culture in order to sur-
vive in the marketplace.9
The tendency to accommodate to popular culture is in fact not new, nor
is it unique to modern evangelicalism. David Bebbington’s study of evangel-
icalism in the last two and a half centuries has revealed a similar tendency.
The “optimism of grace” of the Wesleys and the “reasonable faith” of Philip
Doddridge reflected the optimistic temper of the Enlightenment.10 Similarly,
the Keswick Movement’s emphasis on the surrender of the will in the culti-
vation of the “overcoming life” and its appreciation of nature as an avenue
of divine revelation owed as much to nineteenth-century romanticism as to
Scripture.11 One might expect that the holiness movement of this period,
with its emphasis on not being “of this world,” would have provided the dis-
tance for a more nuanced critique of the world, but this was not the case.
That the evangelical movement is recognized to be in crisis cannot be de-
nied. What we might want to question is how the crisis is being addressed.
Here, we find that evangelicals have been generally long on analysis and
critique but short on answers. Noll, for instance, thinks that for evangelical-
ism to be renewed, it has to change its attitude. “For evangelicalism as a
whole, not new graduate schools, but an alteration of attitudes is the key to
promoting a Christian life of the mind.”12 Furthermore, according to Noll,
many of the distinctives of evangelicalism are not even the essentials of