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A word in closing about the word leitourgia. So far as I can make out, in classical Greek the word was used for a benefaction to the public by a private citizen. Sometimes the benefaction was, as Professor Dustin mentions, the financial support of a religious festival; but not always, and perhaps not usually. When a trireme was fitted out at private expense for the defense of the city, that was said to be a leitourgia . The public libraries funded by Andrew Carnegie across the United States in the early part of the twentieth century were liturgies on Carnegie's part. The early Christian writers borrowed this word for the actions that took place in their assemblies. Numerous late twentieth century writers on liturgy, intent on promoting lay participation in the liturgy, have argued that our liturgies should be participatory because the early liturgies were participatory; they have based that contention, in good measure, on the claim that leitourgia means work of the people. So far as I can tell, leitourgia never meant that. It meant a work for the benefit of the people at private expense. Why then did the early Christian writers borrow the word? They don't say. But the most plausible speculation would seem to be that they saw what went on in their assemblies as a work, a deed, an action, rendered by someone to someone. Was it a deed rendered by us to God? Or by God to us? Or both? Whatever their thought, my suggestion is that it is in fact a deed rendered by each to each. Liturgy is practice, participation, in the ways that Professor Dustin elucidates: practice that incorporates acknowledgement of worth. But in my view its telos is not contemplation by human persons of the divine, but dialogue and sacramental engagement among persons human and divine. Nicholas Wolterstorff is Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale Divinity School. His recent work has concentrated on epistemology (John Locke and the Ethics of Belief, and Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology), philosophy of religion (Divine Discourse), and political philosophy (Until Justice and Peace Embrace, and Religion in the Public Square). He has given the Wilde Lectures at Oxford University (published as Divine Discourse), as well as the Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews University (entitled from Presence to Practice). In the spring of 1998 he gave the Stone Lectures at Princeton Seminary, on political philosophy and theology. |
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