History and Incarnation

To understand the first of these themes, we cannot just begin with Schillebeeckx, but must also turn to his formation and training, and in particular the influence of Marie‐Dominque Chenu on his thought. Chenu was one of the first wave of ressourcement thinkers, challenging neo‐scholastic orthodoxy. The principal element Chenu sought to restore was the significance of history consequent on the Incarnation – it was for him a fundamental part of the structure of the donnés of theology. Chenu's concern was for the prominence of the historical event for theology by recognising history as the place where salvation ‘happens’ – which is a recovery in many ways of the patristic sense of the economy of salvation. This must be set against the neo‐scholastic orthodoxy that prevailed at the time, which included Chenu's own teacher – Réginald Garrigou‐Lagrange, that had removed the study of theology from any historical context, and thus read Thomas as – at least according to Chenu – ‘a perennial philosophy’.Footnote ⁵ Chenu, in contrast, wished to emphasise the need to recognise that ‘understanding a text or doctrine is inseparable from knowing the setting in which they originated, for the simple reason that the insight which produced them is encountered in the context, literary, cultural, philosophical, theological, spiritual, in which they took shape’.Footnote ⁶ Furthermore, for Chenu, because of the incarnation, ‘it is the human condition that decides the basic configuration of the donné.’Footnote ⁷ That is, the incarnation includes ‘the temporality [which] is one of the signs of human reality’.Footnote ⁸

Chenu's principle here is sound. The problem with his approach is that there is tendency to lose sight of the particular to recover this general principle. He focuses on a ‘law of incarnation’ but does not place an historical Jesus of Nazareth at the centre at its heart. At the other end of the same problem, there is also a sense in which all history becomes salvation history for Chenu, rather than there being particular moments of specific importance.

Schillebeeckx, in contrast, grounds the use of history in the concrete, and because of this is able to discriminate between history and those historical events that have particular place in the economy of salvation. His approach is not a transformation of Chenu's, simply a rooting of it. Thus, he leans far more heavily on the historicity of Christ as the primary anchor and location of the donnés of theology. This is then played out in the importance of the Paschal Mystery, and the life of the Church, to which I return below.

But what does this say for the liturgy? The first idea that must be prominent is the significance of the event in history as the place for the encounter with God. Whilst the human‐to‐human encounter with Jesus of Nazareth in the streets of Galilee or Jerusalem was the preeminent example of this, as I will return to, for Schillebeeckx the sacraments retain this human quality of encounter. And so, the prior experience of the Church in encountering God through the Church's liturgical worship, through the sacraments, must be taken seriously in addressing the future space for such encounters. The simply legalistic question of validity is motivated by the correct inspiration – to know what will ‘work’, we must at least consider what the past teaches us has ‘worked’. Or more directly, as Robert Taft has observed, the liturgy ‘can only be understood in motion, just as the only way to understand a top is to spin it’.Footnote ⁹ It is by the use – in the case of the liturgy, that is undertaken in an historical framework – that we can understand.

Undoubtedly, this requires a careful reading of history. Many of the critics – and indeed some of those generally more positive about twentieth century liturgical reform – have highlighted the degree to which those reforms looked to an imagined golden age in the fourth century. Perhaps the more vocal comments in this regard relate to the Roman Catholic reforms following the Second Vatican Council, but given the degree of commonality between Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, etc. revised liturgical material, some of the critique applies more broadly. As Paul Bradshaw has described it:

Sadly, many of the critics of the reform have not managed any better. As examples, I will briefly consider here the contributions of Klaus Gamber and Alcuin Reid. Gamber takes as given that the Roman Rite is – or at least, was, before the reforms – unchanging and unchangeable in any essential matter, dating back perhaps even as far as Pope Damasus I at the end of the fourth century, but certainly to Gregory the Great and thus the end of the sixth century. Gamber compares this to the gradual development of the Byzantine Rite. Such an approach not only leaves him unable to take seriously the development of the Roman Rite after that – the seventh century addition of the Agnus Dei or the Last Gospel in the thirteenth century, changes on a par with those which he sees in the Byzantine – but significantly for his thesis is also unable to truly even take seriously the Baroque golden age to which he himself seems to want to point.Footnote ¹¹

Reid perhaps does better justice to the changes to the Roman Rite with his model of ‘organic development’ than Gamber's static approach, but still seeks to point to a golden age with the Carolingian reforms, where the melding of the received Roman traditions with the local Gallican material needed to fill the gaps is – for Reid at least – the perfect form of liturgical reform and renewal. The problem with Reid's ‘organic development’ is that it is development built around a fundamentally arbitrary sense of a core tradition. He presumes – for example – the presence and recitation of the Institution Narrative at the heart of a core tradition, from earliest days, without giving any serious attention to ancient evidence that does not include the Narrative, or what about that Narrative is important. Even within his narrow Roman focus, Reid presumes the Roman Canon becomes part of this tradition without any consideration to its status as a text that has a history of development – he treats it almost as though it was recorded from the lips of Christ at the Last Supper, and has been in continuous use ever since. Perhaps on this point, he would be inclined to agree with the Council Father at Trent who argued that Christ must have spoken the Words of Institution in Latin as that was the received ‘core tradition’.Footnote ¹²

Aside from disputing which golden age should be referenced, there are at least two problems with the turn to any golden age. First, it is fundamentally pointless because we can never restore such an age. At best, an imagined version is created. As might reasonably be said regarding the current popularity of fantasy fiction like Game of Thrones – we choose not to include the dysentery, just the marketable bits. Second, the history alone does not justify the return to a particular age. We must also apply a theological discernment as to what should be retained or restored, and what should not. And as has pointed out with regard to, for example, the Peace, the theological significance of a restored element need not be the same as its original justification.Footnote ¹³

It is for Schillebeeckx ‘the objective reality of dogma’ that is ‘actively experienced in the liturgy’.Footnote ¹⁴ And it is has always been such. But it is necessary to seek out the dogma in the historical – just as all history is not salvation history, not all liturgical history is concerned with the objective reality of the dogma – and certainly not in a timeless and unchanging way. Instead, the approach to liturgical history must recognise that the task of the liturgy was to proclaim that, in Schillebeeckx's phrase, ‘Christ lives now’.Footnote ¹⁵ It has the same task now as it has had in previous generations, and it is only by recognising how it has done so that we can ensure it continues to do so.

Christ as Sacrament

The second element to which I give attention gives a theological principle that must stand alongside history, and which can be used for discernment from it. Primary for Schillebeeckx is the place of Christ as sacrament of the encounter with God. Central to this is the mystery of redemption, the historical actions of which are, for Schillebeeckx, the ‘great liturgical mystery of worship’ offered by Christ to the Father, for the grace of redemption for all.Footnote ¹⁶ Central also is the continuing human encounter with Christ.

Schillebeeckx describes the mystery of redemption – that which we commonly call the Paschal Mystery – in four movements:Footnote ¹⁷

Construed in this way, the Mystery spans (and extends beyond) Christ's earthly life – and certainly not just the Passion and Death. In contrast with the tempting idea to view the Paschal Mystery as simply the activity of the Father and the Son, either together or simply one of them, Schillebeeckx's framework is inherently Trinitarian.

As has been demonstrated by – amongst others – Patrick Regan, there was a deliberate shift from the focus on the Passion and Death to the broader sense of the Paschal Mystery in the liturgical reforms that produced the post‐conciliar Roman Missal.Footnote ¹⁸ The liturgical recovery parallels the broader theological recovery of the concept of mystery generally, and the centrality of the Paschal Mystery in particular, a move of which Schillebeeckx's work is a part. The move to the Paschal Mystery though is only a part of the direction Schillebeeckx points to here though.

The shaping of worship around the Paschal Mystery is only correct for Schillebeeckx because it is the shaping of worship around the revelation of God. As Bruce Morrill has described,

This leads quickly back to the theological justification for the historical reference: the Incarnation. Schillebeeckx suggests that Christ grows and develops as a human being does. In other words, Christ does not become fully himself, the Incarnate Lord, until his exaltation by the Father. It is only through the events of his life – the historic events that reveal the Paschal Mystery standing prominent amongst them – that Christ becomes incarnate. The Incarnation is not a single moment, either when Mary consents to Gabriel's message or when her child is born and laid in the manger. The unfolding of the mystery of the Incarnation extends throughout the whole of the earthly life of Jesus, only finding its fulfilment in the glorification of the Crucified‐and‐Living One. In this, the covenant faithfulness of God – in continuity with its expression in the covenants with Noah, with Abraham, with Moses, seen in the witness of the prophets and throughout the history of the economy of salvation – is revealed definitively in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

Christian worship cannot focus simply on the Crib, or the Cross, or the Empty Tomb, but the whole mystery must always be in mind, even if through the lens of a particular aspect being considered at a given time or season. It must be allowed to be entirely shaped by the God to whom it is directed. And it can only be so by being shaped by the one who is the fullest revelation of God – Christ himself.

This should not lead to a purely didactic liturgy. The shaping is not for the purpose of teaching those who ‘hear Mass’ a series of propositions. As the Second Vatican Council's constitution on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, described it, the liturgy must be ‘the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed’ and ‘the fount from which all the Church's power flows’.Footnote ²⁰ It is more dynamic than mere didacticism and more than simply an intellectual engagement. Nevertheless, it is appropriate for the liturgy to teach – and in any many pastoral contexts, it is perhaps the only opportunity for teaching, when many of the worshipping community will have no direct or explicit opportunity to be taught the Christian faith outside the liturgical celebration.

First and foremost, though, the liturgy should facilitate the sacramental encounter with Christ and through Christ with God – Christ being the sacrament of the encounter with God. Schillebeeckx highlights two aspects to this encounter: that it is an encounter with the Word, and that it is a human encounter.

Schillebeeckx's consideration of the encounter with the Word begins with what in the context of the Eucharist is called the ‘Liturgy of the Word’, but is present in the liturgical celebration of other sacraments: ‘every sacrament is introduced, surrounded, and enclosed by the ministry of the word’.Footnote ²¹ Schillebeeckx makes clear that this extends beyond the Liturgy of the Word, and indeed extends beyond the apostolic kerygma, into ‘a “word of prayer”, a “word of hymn” or song of divine praise, a doxology, an acclamation or a priestly blessing. All these variations. . . are so many different forms of the one word of God.’Footnote ²² In the Liturgy of the Word, these elements that comprise the ministry of the Word serve to prompt ‘obedience and surrender in faith’, to prepare the gathered assembly for what follows – though not in contrast to it, but as integral component thereof. The proclamation of the word continues in the proclamation of the same word by liturgical action, and the accompanying formulae.Footnote ²³ For Schillebeeckx, it is ‘in the very core of the anaphora – that the word reveals its supreme saving power and, as it were transcending itself, becomes compressed into a personal reality.’Footnote ²⁴

Here the encounter with the word becomes the personal encounter: ‘The spoken word finally gives way here to the pre‐eminent word, the person of the living Christ.’Footnote ²⁵ That this is a human encounter with the same Christ who lived, and died and was raised is essential for Schillebeeckx. Nevertheless, this is not through the removal of the historical life of Jesus into an ahistorical frame – Schillebeeckx suggesting such moves support ‘a new form of Docetism’.Footnote ²⁶ As such, the human encounter with Christ is somehow in mysterio, but yet not inhuman – it differs significantly from the human encounters between Jesus and others recorded in the Gospels, but is still fundamentally an encounter of the same type. The historical drama of redemption located in the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth collides with, but is not eliminated by, the meta‐historical drama of the resurrection and glorification of the very same Jesus. Schillebeeckx does not – cannot – resolve the mystery, but is confident in the maxim of Leo the Great: ‘What was visible in Christ has now passed over into the sacraments of the Church’.Footnote ²⁷

The Church as Sacrament

It is of course no great statement that the Church celebrates sacraments, but one of the great shifts made by the theological ressourcement was the recovery of the idea the Church, wherein these encounters are facilitated, is itself a sacrament. One of the central proponents of this idea was Henri de Lubac, with whom Schillebeeckx was drawn into controversy later in his career over his formulation of the nature and of the direction of this sacramentality. De Lubac was very critical of the way Schillebeeckx presented the Church as ‘sacrament of the world’. In contrast, for de Lubac, it was imperative the Church was seen as the sacrament of Christ, mediating Christ to the world as Christ mediates God.Footnote ²⁸

There are, though, two aspects to Schillebeeckx's formulation here. In his later works, Schillebeeckx does indeed draw out a sacramental relationship between the Church and the World. His starting point is the position stated by the Council in Lumen Gentium: ‘the church, in Christ, is a sacrament – a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of the unity of the entire human race’.Footnote ²⁹ Schillebeeckx develops this into a presumption that God's grace is already and active and present beyond the boundaries of the Church. It is the task of the Church to make known and to name this activity, and the One who works it.Footnote ³⁰

This leaves Schillebeeckx with a phenomenon of ‘Anonymous but real Christianity’ where the life of grace is lived out – albeit in a stumbling and faltering way – in the ‘absolute and gratuitous nearness of the mystery’ without the name of the Giver being known.Footnote ³¹ The Church, in its true identity, is the persistent ‘yes’ to the call to live this life of grace, and does so in explicit and sacral form; nevertheless, there remains a ‘distinctive, non‐sacral, but sanctified expression of man's living community with the living God’.Footnote ³² This capacity to make known is fundamental to the sacramentality of the Church vis‐à‐vis the world – and perhaps it would be better to render the insight as ‘sacrament for the world’ than ‘sacrament of the world’.

The explicit and sacral form of the life of grace within the Church must be placed alongside, what for Schillebeeckx, is the indistinguishability of the inward communion and the visible society of the Church: it ‘is Christ's salvation itself, this salvation as visibly realized in this world’.Footnote ³³ And not just that, for it is also Christ himself that is the ‘eschatological redemptive community’.Footnote ³⁴ In other words, being ‘filled with the reality to which it is giving form’, the Church is the sacrament of Christ.Footnote ³⁵

Schillebeeckx does not constrain this to a list of the seven sacraments, but extends it throughout the Church's life. Nevertheless, for Schillebeeckx, it is certainly the case that ‘To receive the sacraments of the Church [i.e. the seven] in faith is. . . the same thing as to encounter Christ himself’, and the seven sacraments remain central within the sacramentality of the Church, and the manifestation there of Christ's loving worship of the Father.Footnote ³⁶ However, Schillebeeckx argues that this sacramental character goes beyond simply the hierarchical activity of the Church, seeking to also emphasis the place in this of the lay faithful – ‘in virtue of their baptismal and conformational mission’ – who sacramentally present Christ by the charisms given them.Footnote ³⁷

These two aspects to the sacramentality of the Church outlined by Schillebeeckx are really two sides of the same coin. It is by manifesting the work and worship of Christ that the Church names and identifies the work and worship of the same Christ that already happens in the world. That is, it is because the Church is the sacrament of Christ that the Church is the sacrament of the world, and by being the sacrament of the world that the Church lives out its vocation to be the sacrament of Christ.

The liturgical theological implications for this are significant. That the Church's activity as ‘Church’ is Christ's worship of the Father means it cannot be otherwise – especially as this extends throughout the life and work of the Church, not just shaping the sacraments and their rites. And it is not insignificant to the interaction of our worship and our mission that the other side of this task is recognising the way that this work is already bring done around us. But this is quite different to any calls to make the Church's worship ‘relevant’ and ‘accessible’ by what amounts to reducing it to the lowest common denominator. It is only because of the grounding in the human actions of Jesus that the Church achieves what it should. Whilst we may now criticise the scholastic attempts to found each sacrament on an event in Christ's earthly life, the motivation that drove it is correct: the Christological foundation is imperative. The Church is only sacrament of Christ or of the world because it is shaped by and in the image of Christ himself. It is therefore necessary to extend this into the liturgy, for – and whilst Schillebeeckx may well have chosen a different formulation to de Lubac here, but the principle applies – the Eucharist makes the Church.Footnote ³⁸