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In this view, worship is not primarily ahistorical mystical introspection.36 Donald Bloesch, for example, links ahistorical mysticism with an attempt "to transcend the Trinity by positing a 'God above God,' an infinite abyss that lies beyond personality and diversity," which he identifies as "incontestably other than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."37 Neither is Christian liturgy merely a celebration of nature and natural cycles. Echoing an idea of Abraham Heschel, among others, Adrio König places great emphasis on the fact that ancient Israel changed its calendar of feasts from one "linked with nature, into one which was tied to history," and thus transformed what had been celebrations of natural cycles into celebrations of historical events. König argues that this shift in cultic practice corresponded to the theological commitment to conceive of God on the basis of God's action in history,38 a pattern inherited by Christian worshipers, appropriate for a faith that adores a God who acts in history, especially in the incarnation. This historical orientation is expressed concretely through several particular liturgical actions. First, Christian worship features the reading and preaching of scripture as a prominent liturgical action. It is, A. C. Honders argues, "the most direct way of testifying to God's great acts."39 William Placher claims that "only in regularly reading scripture and reflecting on it in the gathered community can there develop a common language and a framework of shared stories and understandings of those stories within which we can live our lives together as Christians....Sermons provide the space for inviting the community to reflect together in the context of the language of the scriptural texts, thereby at once learning to use that language and learning to think about the world in its terms." He concludes, "The preaching of the Word, the telling of the stories of God's work with Israel and of the crucified Jesus, plays its part in making a Christian community by issuing reminders of the sort of God Christians worship."40 Just as needless speculation and untethered technical philosophical discourse must be rooted out from theology, so too they must be rooted out from liturgical language about God. Second, in praise and prayer we identify God and specify God's character in terms of specific actions. Direct address to God in liturgical prayer proceeds best by identifying God in terms of God's actions in history. Large portions of Hebrew prayer, and especially the Psalms, are devoted to telling God what God presumably already knows, what God has done in history. In Christian euchology this pattern is preserved, for example in the structure of the collect. Before any petition that asks God to act in a particular way in the present and future, the collect form often (though not always) names a specific way in which God has acted in the past,41 for example, "O God, who by the leading of a star..." This pattern is also prominent in eucharistic and baptismal prayers, and in many hymn texts. A fitting example from the early church is the Te Deum laudamus. In the culture of the ancient world from which this text comes, it is not remarkable that God is praised as almighty and powerful. What is remarkable—and what makes it incipiently Trinitarian (or at least Binitarian)—is that praise is offered also for Jesus' birth and death, events that seem at first to be un-godlike. This orthodox prayer, which closely mirrors the Apostles' and Nicene creeds that were shaped during the same period, protests the picture of God as merely an Unmoved Mover, a solitary figure of power, and professes that Jesus' birth, life, death, resurrection, and coming again are "the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being" (Heb 1:1). Third, the large structures that guide Christian worship over the course of the year call attention to God's action in history. This is why N. T. Wright, in a sermon at Lichfield Cathedral, could argue that the events of the Christian year "function as a sequence of well-aimed hammerblows which knock at the clay jars of the gods we want, the gods who reinforce our own pride and prejudice, until they fall away and reveal instead a very different god, a dangerous god, a subversive god, a god who comes to us like a blind beggar with wounds in his hands, a god who comes to us in wind and fire, in bread and wine, in flesh and blood: a god who says to us, 'You did not choose me; I chose you.'"42 This point underscores not just why the Christian year should be observed, but also suggests how. If the Christian year is valuable in its rehearsal of God's actions in history, then it should be celebrated in such a way as to make this point clear. A celebration of Christmas will have little "anamnetic value" if it merely celebrates the importance of gift-giving. A celebration of Easter will have little "anamnetic value" if it merely highlights the endless cycle of death and rebirth. These celebrations aim at recalling the ways in which God has acted in history, and to contemplating what these actions imply iconically about God's character. Fourth, the anamnesis of God's actions in history is realized in the liturgy of the Lord's Supper. Anchored in Jesus' words, "This do in remembrance of me," the function of memorializing is arguably the most universal feature of the dominical feast (though it is only one of many key themes associated with the Lord's Supper). Every Christian theologian, from the most sacramental to the least, understands the Lord's Supper as an act of memory, an act that rehearses the decisive events of Jesus' passion and triumph. Von Allmen argues that "the Christian supper offers to those who participate in it, not the experience of being in communion with a myth, but participation in historical events."43 That is why traditional eucharistic prayers, like many biblical Psalms, are shaped as bard-like, doxological history lessons—recounting the history of God's actions from creation to new creation. In all of these areas, of course, the challenge is not only to restore narrative recital but to look at narrative iconically, as a window into divine life. At Christmas we need not only Luther's narrative hymn "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks," which tells the story, but also Wesley's "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," which interprets what the nativity narrative means for our understanding of God and the salvation God provides. In the Eucharist we need not only historically-oriented eucharistic prayers, but also the adoration of the Sanctus and the strong petition of the epiclesis, which draw on this history to inform and deepen our vision for God. In sum, in contrast with a deistic world in which praise is rooted in timeless attributes of pristine divine perfection, Trinitarian worship identifies God in terms of God's action in history. We constantly hone our ideas of God on the basis of meditation on the divine economy, and thus confront the inevitable idols that our culture may fabricate. 4. The Theme Of Balance And IntegrationThe fourth theme in recent literature is that of balance and integration. Consider Richard Mouw's quip, at the beginning of a recent chapter on Trinitarian ethics, that "Christians play favorites with the members of the Trinity."44 Similary, H. Richard Niebuhr contended, only slightly whimsically, that Christianity might well be characterized as "an association, loosely held together, of three Unitarian religions."45 Niebuhr's point is that Christians have a persistent tendency to narrow their view of God's actions, and to separate, rank, order, and pit against each other aspects of the divine economy. In contrast, the doctrine of the Trinity calls for viewing God's actions as a comprehensive and unified whole. As Niebuhr argued, part of the value of the doctrine of the Trinity is that it serves as "a formulation of the whole Church's faith in God in distinction from the partial faiths and partial formulations of parts of the Church and of individuals in the Church." The doctrine, he continues, is valuable "to correct the over-emphases and partialities of the members of the whole not by means of a new over-emphasis but by means of a synthesized formula in which all the partial insights and convictions are combined."46 Here "Trinitarian theology" is offered in contrast with a "christomonistic" or other partial or disintegrated approaches. Here "Trinitarian" becomes a formal construct, resulting in books with chapters on each divine person, or hymns with each divine person getting a stanza—a formal construct much more interested in symmetry than the New Testament, in which the Holy Spirit is always the shy member of the Trinity. Interestingly, in the popular Christian imagination this is what Trinitarian worship is assumed to be: worship in which each of the persons of the Trinity gets some airtime. |
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