Conclusion

This book has attempted to give a substantive account of liturgical practice in a particular religious tradition, that of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The hope was that paying close attention to the “lifeworld” of a specific tradition would help us to ascertain its structures more easily without the kind of abstraction often practiced in the (philosophical) study of religion while also not remaining at a purely empirical level.

Intentionality

Chapter 7 criticizes the way in which many contemporary phenomenologists privilege the question of God in their analyses and argues that we must focus instead on human experience. Intentionality is crucial in liturgy and may become a way of ascertaining how liturgical participants are directed toward the divine and expect to encounter God within it. Within liturgy we express hope for a merciful God.

Temporality

Chapter 1 analyzes the liturgical experience of time. It begins with brief reviews of how liturgical theologians and phenomenologists respectively explore time. It then examines in more detail the temporality of Orthodox liturgy: its tension between anamnesis and eschaton, the liturgical present, the cyclical back-and-forth between penitence and celebration, and its emphasis on repetition.

Corporeality

Chapter 3 explores the role of the body in liturgy, beginning with what liturgical theology says about the body’s involvement in liturgical life and reviewing phenomenological insights into body and flesh. It explores how movement, posture, and gesture shape and direct the body within liturgy to a form of self-disclosure and vulnerability that opens those at worship for healing.

Affectivity

Chapter 5 focuses on the role of emotion, affect, mood, and disposition in liturgical experience. It briefly considers the ambivalent role pathos plays in the tradition and then goes on to focus on the ways in which liturgy shapes certain kinds of affective dispositions, such as compassion, peace, and joy. It also considers the role liturgical models play in this.

Sensoriality

Chapter 4 discusses the role of the senses in liturgy, arguing that they function in the form of a dialogic call and response. It also suggests that excess is not always the best way to talk about liturgical experience. The final section of the chapter considers liturgical “things” such as the Eucharist.

Spatiality

Chapter 2 explores the importance of space in liturgy, including the ways space is organized and traversed. It explores the organization of ecclesial space (architecture, stational liturgy, cosmic dimensions) and phenomenological insight about spatiality. It shows how liturgical space is prepared, intentional, and oriented. It is a space of hospitality that welcomes us into its prepared space and opens a world to us.

Community

Chapter 6 considers the communal dimensions of liturgy, arguing that they are fundamental and provide a way to speak of communal religious experience (thereby criticizing the prevalent focus on the individual self in phenomenology). The chapter also focuses on the role imitation and identification play in liturgical experience.

Introduction

As this book tries to address multiple audiences who may well not be familiar with the other disciplines that are engaged here, the Introduction tries to provide some background for phenomenology as a methodology and the ways in which this philosophical examination touches on liturgical theology. (Brief introductions are also provided in each chapter for what liturgical theology and phenomenology have to say to the respective topic under consideration for those readers not familiar with the material.) This may also be a good place to make clear that I claim no expertise in all of the multiple disciplines and bodies of research that are on some level relevant to the topic of liturgy: liturgics (as the historical study of liturgy), liturgical theology, ritual studies, patristics, Orthodox theology more broadly, art history and the study of religious architecture, iconography, and others. I have in all cases attempted to find the most up-to-date research and to inform myself as thoroughly as possible, but obviously could not possibly master that many disciplines and may well have missed some important recent information or disregarded crucial methodological parameters. I beg the indulgence of the experts in the various fields for this philosophical engagement with a variety of insights from their respective disciplines....