Church As Christ's Sacrament and the Spirit's

THE TRINITARIAN FORM OF THE CHURCH: CHURCH AS CHRIST’S

SACRAMENT AND THE SPIRIT’S LITURGY OF COMMUNION

Thesis

Submitted to

The College of Arts and Sciences of the

UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

The Degree of

Master of Arts in Theological Studies

Robert Mark Zeitzmann, B.A.

Dayton, Ohio

August 2021

THE TRINITARIAN FORM OF THE CHURCH: CHURCH AS CHRIST’S

SACRAMENT AND THE SPIRIT’S LITURGY OF COMMUNION

Name: Zeitzmann, Robert Mark

APPROVED BY:

______

Dennis M. Doyle, Ph.D. Faculty Advisor

______Elizabeth Groppe, Ph.D. Faculty Reader

______William H. Johnston, Ph.D. Faculty Reader

______Jana Bennett, Ph.D. Chairperson

Robert Mark Zeitzmann

2021

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ABSTRACT

THE TRINITARIAN FORM OF THE CHURCH: CHURCH AS CHRIST’S

SACRAMENT AND THE SPIRIT’S LITURGY OF COMMUNION

Name: Zeitzmann, Robert Mark University of Dayton

Advisor: Dennis M. Doyle, Ph.D.

This thesis argues that the Western sacramental and christological ecclesiology of

Otto Semmelroth, SJ, is complementary with the Eastern pneumatological-trinitarian theology of liturgy of Jean Corbon, OP. Their little studied theologies are taken as key for interpreting and receiving the Second Vatican Council. Where Semmelroth had a distinct and influential impact on Vatican II’s sacramental ecclesiology, particularly in Lumen

Gentium, Corbon had a similar impact on the theology of liturgy of the Catechism of the

Catholic Church. A particular point of significance of Vatican II is its personalist paradigm shift of recentering the faith of the church on God’s revelation of self as Trinity of persons. Semmelroth and Corbon not only started with and maintained the primacy of divine initiative but they also made their faith-filled awareness of the mystery of God, revealed through Christ in the Spirit, the lynchpin of their theological endeavors. Their strikingly similar fundamental, methodological move of perceiving reality as determined by the mystery of the person of God enabled both Semmelroth and Corbon to achieve advances in sacramental theology and theology of liturgy, respectively. Building on these insights, this thesis synthesizes Semmelroth’s and Corbon’s theologies in proposing

sacrament and liturgy as co-principles of the church as the form of trinitarian communion.

This thesis proceeds by first characterizing the basic points of philosophical and theological twentieth century personalist thought, which takes persons as central and determinative in understanding reality. Ormond Rush’s theological hermeneutical principles of Vatican II are then described. The geographical orientations of the theologies of Semmelroth, Corbon, and Vatican II are explored next and a conciliar hermeneutical principle of complementarity with distinction between Eastern and

Western theologies is proposed. From there, Dei Verbum’s theology of divine revelation is analyzed. Following these foundational and grounding points, this thesis explores the essential points of the theologies of Semmelroth and Corbon and situates them in relation to Vatican II and its reception. Finally, a comparison is drawn between their theologies, it is demonstrated that they can be interpreted as complementary, and they are synthesized.

In synthesizing Semmelroth’s and Corbon’s theologies, their methodology of awareness of God’s mystery as fundamental is drawn on, a new understanding of and distinction between “liturgy” and “sacrament” is suggested, the concept of the church as Christ’s sacrament and the Spirit’s liturgy of communion with God is explained, and the priestly people of God is presented as the communal expression of the church as liturgy- sacrament.

DEDICATION

Dedicated to Ellie Zeitzmann, loving wife and dialogue partner.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This thesis took an extended amount of time to be completed, and for this reason,

I must thank everyone involved for their patience and support. Without certain people voicing their encouragement at key moments, this thesis might not have been possible.

I would like to express my gratitude to William Buhrman, Ph.D., for being my first mentor in theological studies. It was the research paper, on the eucharist as the sacrament of the church, for a graduate course he taught, during the spring 2017 semester at St. Mary’s University, San Antonio, TX, that eventually led to this thesis. I would like to express my gratitude to Dennis M. Doyle, Ph.D., who has been my mentor during my theological studies at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Dayton.

Dr. Doyle has been a steadying presence and source of patience, wisdom, and encouragement throughout my graduate studies. My appreciation to William Johnston,

Ph.D., for teaching a course on sacraments, liturgy, and cultural context, for our conversations, and for being a reader for my thesis. My thanks to Elizabeth Groppe,

Ph.D., for our conversations and for being a reader for my thesis.

Thank you to Ellie Zeitzmann for her constant support and love and for being my lifelong dialogue partner. Thank you to Bro. Tom Wendorf, SM, for being my spiritual adviser throughout my graduate studies and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to Fr. Otto Semmelroth, SJ, and Fr. Jean Corbon, OP, for their love for the church and for their visionary, discerning faith. May their theologies continue to serve the faithful people of God in the ongoing reception of the rich heritage of Vatican II and in responding to God’s invitation to communion.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... iv

DEDICATION ...... vi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... vii

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER 1 FOUNDATIONAL POINTS: PERSONALISM AND CONCILIAR

HERMENEUTICS ...... 6

1.1. Personalist Philosophy and Theology ...... 7

1.1.1. An Overview of Personalist Philosophy ...... 7

1.1.2. Personalism and 20th c. Catholic Theology ...... 10

1.2. Theological Hermeneutics of Vatican II ...... 14

1.2.1. The Basics of Theological Hermeneutics ...... 15

1.2.2. A Threefold Conciliar Hermeneutic ...... 17

CHAPTER 2 EASTERN AND WESTERN THEOLOGIES AND DEI VERBUM ON

REVELATION ...... 24

2.1. “The Church must breathe with her two lungs!” (John Paul II): Eastern and

Western Theologies ...... 25

2.1.1. The Geographical-Theological Orientations of Semmelroth and Corbon ...... 25

2.1.2. The Geographical-Theological Orientation of Vatican II ...... 33

2.1.3. The East-West Principle ...... 35

2.2. Dei Verbum on Revelation ...... 39

2.2.1. What Dei Verbum Left Behind: Propositionalism ...... 39

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2.2.2. Dei Verbum on Divine Revelation ...... 40

CHAPTER 3 THE THEOLOGIES OF OTTO SEMMELROTH, SJ, AND JEAN

CORBON, OP ...... 54

3.1. Semmelroth’s Sacramental Ecclesiology ...... 54

3.1.1. “Um die Einheit des Kirchenbegriffes” ...... 54

3.1.2. Revelational and Ecclesial “Consciousness” ...... 57

3.1.3. Semmelroth and Vatican II ...... 59

3.2. Corbon’s Theology of Liturgy ...... 61

3.2.1. The Wellspring of Worship ...... 61

3.2.2. A “Vision of Faith” ...... 68

3.2.3. Corbon, Vatican II, Liturgical Reform, Sacrosanctum Concilium, and the

Catechism ...... 73

CHAPTER 4 THE TRINITARIAN FORM OF THE CHURCH: CHURCH AS

LITURGY-SACRAMENT OF THE TRINITY ...... 82

4.1. A Comparison ...... 82

4.1.1. Corbon’s Threefold Synergy of Spirit and Church ...... 83

4.1.2. Semmelroth’s Threefold Aspects of the Church as Sacrament ...... 86

4.2. Complementing the Theologies of Semmelroth and Corbon ...... 91

4.3. A Synthesis: The Trinitarian Form of the Church ...... 95

4.3.1. The Fundamental Methodology: Consciousness Within the Mystery ...... 95

4.3.2. Distinguishing Between “Liturgy” and “Sacrament” ...... 96

4.3.3. Co-Principles of the Mystery of the Church: Church as Liturgy-Sacrament of

Trinitarian Communion ...... 98

4.3.4. The Faithful of the Church as Liturgy-Sacrament: Baptism, Confirmation, and

the Common Priesthood ...... 103

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 113

INTRODUCTION

Every Sunday, all around the world, Catholic faithful gather to celebrate the

Mass. In the English-speaking world, the congregation of the faithful may sing with one voice, “Come to the feast of heaven and earth! Come to the table of plenty! God will provide for all that we need, here at the table of plenty.”1 These lyrics give an indication of what is occurring and being experienced in the celebration of the Mass. The faithful are gathered by the Spirit, who says, “Come!” to all people, “saints and sinners,” “the lost and lonely.” “Heaven and earth” are brought together at this celebration, at Jesus Christ’s one “table of plenty.” “Here,” in this place, through this event, at this moment, the Father

“will provide.” The “feast” God has set out for God’s people to receive is rich “with faith and fullness of life,” “all that we need.”

In the moment of the liturgical celebration of the sacrifice of the Eucharist, heaven and earth are within one another and the people of God join with the Holy Spirit,

Christ, the saints, and the angels in celebrating the mystery of human redemption before the Father. These baptized and confirmed, priestly people are within the Christian mystery and the mystery is within them. At the same time, by their entire lives, they are the manifestation and presence of the mystery in the world.

The Second Vatican Council declares, “The universal church is seen to be ‘a people made one by the unity of the Father, the Son and the holy Spirit’” (Lumen

1 Dan Schutte, Table of Plenty (Oregon Catholic Press, 1992). The lyrics may be found at https://st- pats.org/documents/2020/7/Table%20of%20Plenty.pdf.

Gentium 4).2 The church is the communion of persons sharing in trinitarian communion.

In this way, the significance of the divine initiative in gathering people in communion becomes clear. Vatican II centered the teachings of the Catholic Church on the person and revelation of God. “Christ is the light of the nations,” and the light of Christ shines through the church, which is in Christ (LG 1). The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine

Revelation: Dei Verbum (DV), was critically important in emphasizing the theocentricity of the faith. Joseph Ratzinger states, “The Constitution on Revelation now stressed the importance of listening, thus moving beyond everything that was said at the Council in order to take up an attitude of listening in which the Church transcends itself, for it is not there for its own sake, but only to lead to him to whom all honour is due, God the Lord.”3

The task of receiving the council and its centering the faith of the church on God is an ongoing one.

This thesis seeks to contribute to the ongoing task of receiving Vatican II by proposing a new synthesis of theologies of the church in line with the teachings of the council. The synthesis to be effected is drawn from the Western sacramental, christological ecclesiology of Otto Semmelroth, SJ, and the Eastern liturgical, pneumatological-trinitarian theology of Jean Corbon, OP. The key insight of

Semmelroth’s ecclesiology in “Um die Einheit des Kirchenbegriffes” is consciousness of the mystery of the church based on God’s revelation expressed as the principle of the

2 Unless otherwise noted, all citations of the documents of Vatican II are taken from Austin Flannery, ed., Vatican Council II: The Basic Sixteen Documents: Constitutions, Decrees, Declarations, revised translation (Northport, NY: Costello Publishing Company, 1996). 3 Joseph Ratzinger, “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation: Origin and Background,” in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler, trans. William Glen-Doepel (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), 3:155-69, at 162.

church as Ursakrament (primordial sacrament).4 Ecclesiologically, the key insight of

Corbon’s The Wellspring of Worship is the conception of the church as embodiment of the heavenly liturgy, which is grounded in his “vision of faith.”5 I hope to demonstrate through this thesis that the theologies of Semmelroth and Corbon may be synthesized in articulating a principle of the church as the form of trinitarian communion expressed as liturgy-sacrament. That is, the church, the “‘people made one,’” “is seen to be” Christ’s sacrament and the Spirit’s liturgy of communion.

The significance of this thesis lies in continuing the task of reception of Vatican

II, drawing on the little-studied theologies of Corbon and Semmelroth, seeking to bring together Eastern and Western theologies as distinct but complementary, and drawing out some implications of perceiving reality from within a personalist framework. Dennis M.

Doyle has said of Semmelroth, “Although he stands among the nearly forgotten of the council’s periti [experts], at the time of the council his name and work were closely associated with the concept of the church as sacrament that was so important to Lumen gentium and other documents.”6 Similarly, Sanija Joseph Koovayil, SD, has said of

Corbon, “Being a significant contributor to the Catechism of the Catholic Church and a member of several significant theological and ecumenical commissions, Corbon is ranked as a theologian of quite an outstanding stature, one who deserves to be esteemed

4 Otto Semmelroth, “Um die Einheit des Kirchenbegriffes,” in Fragen der Theologie Heute, ed. Johannes Feiner, Josef Trutsch, and Franz Böckle, 3rd ed. (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1960), 319-35; ET “The Integral Idea of the Church,” in Theology Today, vol. 1, Renewal in Dogma, ed. Johannes Feiner, Josef Trutsch, and Franz Böckle, trans. Peter White and Raymond H. Kelly (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Company, 1965), 129-47. 5 Corbon first uses the term “vision of faith” while discussing the heavenly liturgy. Jean Corbon, The Wellspring of Worship, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 63. The French original is Liturgie de Source (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1980). 6 Dennis M. Doyle, “Otto Semmelroth and the Advance of the Church as Sacrament at Vatican II,” Theological Studies 76, no. 1 (March 2015): 65-86, at 65.

alongside the great theologians of the last century. … Although his theology is appreciated well, very few theologians have substantially commented on it supportively.”7 In other words, although both theologians have been too little studied, both had significant impacts on the teachings of the Catholic Church, through Vatican II or the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in the past century. In drawing on the insights of these theologians, this thesis also seeks to articulate a new understanding of

“sacrament” and of “liturgy.”

The thesis proceeds through four chapters, each divided into sections. In chapter one, I lay out the basic points of 20th c. personalist philosophy and Catholic theology

(1.1.), I then draw on Ormond Rush’s theological hermeneutical principles of Vatican II

(1.2.). In chapter two, I first explore and describe the geographical orientations of the theologies of Semmelroth, Corbon, and Vatican II before articulating a conciliar East-

West principle (2.1.), I then analyze the personalist theology of divine revelation of Dei

Verbum, structured through the journalistic “reporters’ questions” (2.2.). In chapter three,

I explicate the essential points of Semmelroth’s sacramental ecclesiology and situate it in relation to Vatican II (3.1.), likewise, I explicate the essential points of Corbon’s theology of liturgy and situate it in relation to Vatican II, the postconciliar liturgical reform,

Sacrosanctum Concilium, and the Catechism (3.2.). In the fourth chapter, I first draw a comparison between the theologies of Corbon and Semmelroth (4.1.), leading me to argue that their theologies can be seen as complementary (4.2), and I finally attempt a synthesis of their theologies in articulating “sacrament” and “liturgy” as co-principles of

7 Sanija Joseph Koovayil, The Pneumatology of Jean Corbon’s Theology of the Eucharist and Divinization: A Theology of Divinization Through Gratuitous Self-Giving, Etudes du Proche-Orient Chrétien 3 (Beirut, Lebanon: Centre de Recherches et de Publications de l’Orient-Chrétien, 2016), 25, 175.

the church, which finds communal expression as the baptized and confirmed priestly people of God cooperating with Christ and the Spirit in the work of human redemption

(4.3.).

CHAPTER 1

FOUNDATIONAL POINTS: PERSONALISM AND CONCILIAR HERMENEUTICS

Theologies can be connected with corresponding philosophies. The same is true for the theologies of Vatican II, Semmelroth, and Corbon. As was common for much of the forward-thinking theology of the twentieth century, these three theologies drew on a philosophical current called personalism. Personalism centers theological analysis, discourse, and language on the divine-human encounter as an ongoing relationship and dialogue between persons. This may be contrasted with neoscholastic theology and its propositionalist approach to divine revelation, which centers theology on discrete propositions revealed by God and guarded by the church. The latter approach emphasizes the cognitive dimension of faith over the experiential, embodied, and historical elements of faith. Personalism allows for a balance of these elements and emphasizes God’s self- gift, which all human persons are called to accept and receive. In the following account of personalist thought, I first broadly describe personalist philosophy of the twentieth century; then, I discuss the intersection of personalism and 20th c. Catholic theology, particularly by drawing on Doyle’s categorizations of theological approaches.

Since the present study is situated as a reception of Vatican II, I next draw on the theological hermeneutics of Vatican II formulated by Ormond Rush. Rush articulates a threefold conciliar hermeneutics of the authors, texts, and receivers. Both personalism and theological hermeneutics will be employed throughout the rest of the thesis, with personalism particularly functioning as a leitmotif. Both theological hermeneutics and

personalism begin to open the way to the fundamental methodology upon which the synthesis of this thesis depends.

1.1. Personalist Philosophy and Theology

1.1.1. An Overview of Personalist Philosophy

Personalism can be understood both positively, in terms of what it affirms, and negatively, in terms of what it rejects. In positive terms, all personalists generally take the

“person” as central for philosophical, theological, and humanistic investigations and, furthermore, “[regard] or [tend] to regard the person as the ultimate explanatory, epistemological, ontological, and axiological principle of all reality, although these areas of thought are not stressed equally by all personalists and there is tension between” the various strains of personalist thought.1 “[Personalism] emphasizes the significance, uniqueness and inviolability of the person, as well as the person’s essential relational or social dimension.”2 This leads personalists to take “personhood (or ‘personality’) as the fundamental notion,” which “carries with it an inviolable dignity that merits unconditional respect.”3 This, in turn, leads to an emphasis on practical or moral philosophical thought, so much so that any theoretical aspects of personalism are determined by and serve the practical aspects of it: “For personalists, a person combines subjectivity and objectivity, causal activity and receptivity, unicity and relation, identity and creativity. Stressing the moral nature of the person, or the person as the subject and object of free activity, personalism tends to focus on practical, moral action and ethical

1 Thomas D. Williams and Jan Olof Bengtsson, “Personalism,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Stanford, CA: Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2020), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/personalism/. 2 Williams and Bengtsson, “Personalism.” 3 Williams and Bengtsson, “Personalism.”

questions.”4 Thus, for personalists, any theoretical or speculative matters can and ought to be demonstrably grounded in lived human experience.

In negative terms, personalism arose as a rejection of the depersonalizing, or

“various impersonalistic,” philosophical elements of the Enlightenment and Romanticism that were perceived as dehumanizing.5 These depersonalizing philosophical elements gave rise, in turn, to social and political ideological forces. In other words,

“Enlightenment rationalism, pantheism, Hegelian absolute idealism, individualism as well as collectivism in politics, and materialist, psychological, and evolutionary determinism.”6 Against the instrumentalization of the person by individualism and collectivism, personalism asserts the inherent and absolute value and dignity of every person, the interrelationality of the person, and the uniqueness of each person: “The personalist Jean Lacroix is justified in declaring personalism to be an ‘anti-ideology.’”7

While there have been important historical antecedents to personalism, including, for example, the Christian trinitological and christological debates of the third to fifth centuries, St. Thomas Aquinas, and forerunners from the nineteenth century, personalism began its explicit development as a distinct intellectual system or movement in the early twentieth century. Considered as a twentieth century movement, personalism is diffuse, diverse, and encompasses a number of disciplines, including philosophy, theology, economics, ecology, and psychology. “It is, in point of fact, more proper to speak of

4 Williams and Bengtsson, “Personalism.” 5 Williams and Bengtsson, “Personalism.” 6 Williams and Bengtsson, “Personalism.” 7 Williams and Bengtsson, “Personalism.”

many personalisms than one personalism.”8 Typically, however, personalists identify with Judeo-Christian theism.

As a philosophical school, personalism is not committed to a specific methodology, approach, or starting point, leading to a great deal of diversity. Some personalists may tend to emphasize a form of ontological realism, the idea that a given aspect of reality exists and exists independently of consciousness. These include

Thomistic personalists, such as Jacques Maritain, Yves Simon, Étienne Gilson, and so- called “neo-personalists.”9 Others may tend to emphasize a form of ontological idealism, the idea that a given aspect of reality is contingent on consciousness. Amongst these idealist personalists are the American School of Borden Parker Bowne, the German

Rudolph Hermann Lotze, and the British Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison. Still other personalists may take their primary inspiration from the Continental European philosophies of phenomenology, which originated with Edmund Husserl, and/or existentialism, such as Gabriel Marcel.

These categorizations are not firm and care must be taken in identifying a particular person, event, or text as personalist. For instance, Edith Stein, one of Husserl’s students, “looked to phenomenological method as a complement to Thomism.”10

Therefore, the present study, in taking personalism as a leitmotif, seeks to carefully consider the various theological personalist characteristics, elements, and categories of

8 Williams and Bengtsson, “Personalism.” 9 Cf. Juan Manuel Burgos, An Introduction to Personalism, trans. Richard T. Allen (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2018). “Neo-personalist” philosophy arose around two decades ago and, therefore, falls outside of the scope of this thesis, since the theologies of Vatican II, Semmelroth, and Corbon were developed in the context of the twentieth century. 10 Williams and Bengtsson, “Personalism.”

the primary authors under study, Corbon and Semmelroth, and Vatican II. Next, the relationship between Catholic theology and personalism in the twentieth century, up to

Vatican II, shall be explored.

1.1.2. Personalism and 20th c. Catholic Theology

For several related reasons personalism, as a source and intellectual framework, was attractive for many forward-thinking Catholics of the twentieth century and at

Vatican II. First, personalism offers a way to account for and integrate “the turn of modern thought to historicity and subjectivity.”11 Second, personalist thought maintains the irreducible dignity, interrelationality, and mystery of the person. Third, personalism, in taking the person as primary, entails the rejection of various depersonalizing social, political, and intellectual currents of modernity. Fourth, personalism offered an alternative intellectual system to the predominant Catholic perspectives of “the long nineteenth century”: the juridical, clericalist, triumphalist, and essentialist anti-modernist view of much of the magisterium, which promoted neo-scholastic theology. In other words, as O’Malley says of the “la nouvelle théologie” movement, “It was an alternative or an antidote to what they saw as the spiritually arid and overly intellectualized theology officially promoted by the church.”12 As an alternative to an overly speculative and rational theology, with its concern for definitive statements, a personalist approach to theology will emphasize, for example, the universal call to holiness, or God’s calling every human person to a life of holiness.

11 John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 2010), 75. O’Malley is here speaking of “la nouvelle théologie” and does not directly refer to personalist thought, but the connection between the two may be readily seen. 12 O’Malley, Vatican II, 76.

Fifth, personalism is compatible with and complementary of the perennial

Christian sources: Scripture, Tradition, and the Fathers of the Church.13 Thus, writing about the “la nouvelle théologie” movement, O’Malley states, “It was… more in accord with the ‘turn to the subject’ that had preoccupied philosophers ever since Kant and that provided an opening for religious experience in theological method.”14 It can therefore be suggested that “la nouvelle théologie” scholars synthesized twentieth century personalism and ressourcement scholarship (“back to the sources,” that is, the “sources” of Christian belief, often particularly associated with Patristic sources). Many twentieth-century

Catholic thinkers, and not only those directly associated with the “la nouvelle théologie” movement, prepared the way for Vatican II by integrating Catholic thought with personalism.

Dennis Doyle describes four theological approaches to the study of the church that were prevalent in Catholic theology in the first half of the twentieth century and at

Vatican II: anti-modernism, object-centered personalism, experience-centered personalism, and history-centered personalism.15 There is a fifth, called politics-centered personalism, that began to take shape during the council but came to full expression only afterwards. Describing these various theological approaches provides a sense of the personalist theological currents that would prefigure, influence, and be present at Vatican

II.

13 Though, Christian sources should be taken as primary. 14 O’Malley, Vatican II, 76. 15 Doyle, “Advance of the Church,” 72-74, table 1. Doyle articulates these theological categories in relation to ecclesiology, but they can be readily applied to other areas of theology. For instance, Dei Verbum’s theology of revelation may be described as history-centered personalist. Cf. section 2.2.

According to Doyle, while “there exist various types of anti-Modernism,” this approach can be generally described as represented by Pius X and his encyclical

Pascendi dominici gregis (1907), which “condemned the reduction of the sacraments to personal experience in historical phenomena.”16 According to this theological approach, the church is seen as “a fellowship founded by Christ” with an emphasis on the church as an institution existing “for individual salvation” standing against subjectivism and historicism. The anti-modern approach tends to take a propositionalist view of revelation, that is, revelation as primarily doctrinal, discrete statements or propositions. This perspective is criticized as juridical, clericalist, triumphalist, and essentialist.

The object-centered personalist approach “represents an attempt to move beyond juridicism while retaining Pascendi’s rejection of experience and history as legitimate theological categories. The focus remains on the objective nature of revelation even as personalist dimensions are added.”17 This theological approach is particularly represented by Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi (1943), in which the church is viewed as the mystical body of Christ with an emphasis on the union of the spiritual and institutional aspects of the church against an overly juridical perspective.18 The concept of the church as mystical body of Christ may be likened to a sacramental conception, but

Mystici Corporis did not make this connection. The object-centered personalist approach is criticized as “insufficiently experiential, historical, and eschatological.”

According to Doyle, experience-centered personalism attempts to “focus on the personal” and “[add] existential elements of human encounter and reception as integral to

16 Doyle, “Advance of the Church,” 72-73, table 1. 17 Doyle, “Advance of the Church,” 72. 18 Doyle, “Advance of the Church,” 72-73, table 1.

theology,” but “without losing respect for the objective dimension of revelation” or

“becoming subjectivist.”19 Doyle recognizes Semmelroth’s pre-Vatican II works as representative of this approach. This theological perspective tends to view the church as sacramental with an emphasis on “lay reception and living out the faith” against “overly objective” theological perspectives.20 However, this approach is criticized as subjectivist and insufficiently historical: “Many experientially focused theologians did not take the turn to history.”21

According to Doyle, history-centered personalism attempts to “[ground] theological understanding within a historical framework,” “[retain] an interest in both the personal and the experiential,” “respect the objective dimension” of revelation, and avoid

“becoming… historicist.”22 According to Doyle, it is represented by Yves Congar, Marie-

Dominique Chenu, Lumen Gentium, and Semmelroth’s thought as it developed during the council.23 Further, history-centered personalism may be seen as early as the first conciliar document, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium (December

1963). In SC, the discussion of the nature and importance of the liturgy is foregrounded by discussion of the economy or history of salvation, formulated in personalist language

(5-6). As the council progressed and matured, personalism as a theme and perspective of the council became increasingly central and pronounced, as may be seen in Dei Verbum’s

19 Doyle, “Advance of the Church,” 72-74. 20 Doyle, “Advance of the Church,” 73, table 1. 21 Doyle, “Advance of the Church,” 73, table 1. Romano Guardini, a precursor of Vatican II, may be identified as an experience-centered personalist theologian who “did not take the turn to history.” Cf. Robert Anthony Krieg, Romano Guardini: A Precursor of Vatican II (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), esp. 66-69. For an example of Guardini’s ecclesiology, see Romano Guardini, The Meaning of the Church, trans. Ada Lane (Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2018). 22 Doyle, “Advance of the Church,” 73-74. 23 Doyle, “Advance of the Church,” 73n, table 1.

(November 1965) personalist theology of divine revelation.24 History-centered personalism, as a theological approach at the council, viewed the church as sacramental and tended to emphasize the humble and pilgrim aspects of the church against an essentialist perspective.25

The final theological approach, politics-centered personalism, Doyle discusses separately from the other three personalist categories because “it appears to have emerged for some Catholic theologians as an ecclesiological category during the time of the council itself.”26 This approach maintains a view of the church as sacrament and emphasizes the church, the world, and human progress against an “exclusively otherworldly” theological perspective.27 However, it is criticized as reductionistic.

According to Doyle, this perspective is particularly identified with Edward

Schillebeeckx, OP, but also, to an extent, Karl Rahner, SJ.28 Having briefly detailed the broad movement of 20th century personalist thought, I turn now to exploring Ormond

Rush’s hermeneutical principles of Vatican II.

1.2. Theological Hermeneutics of Vatican II

In properly developing a theology in line with Vatican II and the theologians who receive the council, it is first necessary to articulate hermeneutical principles of the council. I draw on the hermeneutical principles of Vatican II articulated by Ormond

Rush, SJ. In his 2004 text, Still Interpreting Vatican II, Rush argues that three

24 See section 2.2. 25 Doyle, “Advance of the Church,” 73, table 1. 26 Doyle, “Advance of the Church,” 74. 27 Doyle, “Advance of the Church,” 74, table 2. 28 Doyle, “Advance of the Church,” 74, table 2, 84.

hermeneutical principles ought to be employed in interpreting Vatican II.29 His 2019 text,

The Vision of Vatican II, builds on his earlier work by describing twenty-four principles, categorized as hermeneutical, theo-logical, or ecclesiological.30 The hermeneutical principles of both texts are helpfully summarized in his 2020 article, “Conciliar

Hermeneutics.”31 I will first lay out the basic points of theological hermeneutics and then describe Rush’s threefold hermeneutical principles of the authors, texts, and receivers.

1.2.1. The Basics of Theological Hermeneutics

According to Rush, “principle” broadly means, “The succinct articulation of any authoritative judgment by an ecumenical council regarding an element of Christian faith and ecclesial life.”32 In other words, Vatican II made certain judgments “to reevaluate, renew, and reform contemporary Catholic life, for the sake of the pastoral effectiveness of its mission in the second half of the twentieth century.”33 The intentions of Vatican II in making these judgments is articulated as, according to Rush, the reconfiguration and realignment of “various dimensions of doctrine and church life” by creating a “balance between two aspects of doctrine or church life.”34

In developing hermeneutical principles of Vatican II, Rush draws on insights from philosophy and from literary and historical studies. From the discipline of philosophy,

29 Ormond Rush, Still Interpreting Vatican II: Some Hermeneutical Principles (New York/Mahwah, N.J: Paulist Press), 2004. 30 Ormond Rush, The Vision of Vatican II: Its Fundamental Principles (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press Academic, 2019). 31 Ormond Rush, “Conciliar Hermeneutics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Vatican II, ed. Richard R. Gaillardetz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 94-112. 32 Rush, Vision of Vatican II, xiv. 33 Rush, Vision of Vatican II, xiv. 34 Rush, Vision of Vatican II, xiv-xv. In The Vision of Vatican II, Rush formulates principles in pairs of terms, e.g., the “Pastoral/Doctrinal” principle.

Rush takes the “hermeneutical triad of understanding, interpretation, and application.”35

According to Rush, “Hermeneutics proposes that all human understanding is embedded in one’s historical situation (context, culture, worldview, gender, etc.). … Hermeneutics, therefore, reminds us that whenever we comprehend (understand) a text, a person, or an event, we come to such understanding because we are able to make sense of it (interpret it) as meaningful for our particular circumstances (apply it).”36 This hermeneutical triad unfolds “from ‘the whole’ to ‘the part’ and back to ‘the whole’ again” in an ongoing process, or circle or spiral, increasingly broadening one’s horizon of understanding.37

Drawing on literary and historical studies, Rush proposes a hermeneutics of the authors

(who communicate), the texts (the medium), and the receivers (of the communications).38

Receivers of the council should understand and apply Vatican II on the basis of the mutually interpretative event of the council (hermeneutics of the authors) and the documents of the council (hermeneutics of the text).

Among the various theological principles of Vatican II theologians have proposed, hermeneutical principles hold higher hermeneutical priority than “theological” principles, which hold higher hermeneutical priority than “ecclesiological” principles.

Hermeneutical principles inform the way that the hermeneutical circle is employed in investigating and describing theological and ecclesiological principles. “Theological” principles hold hermeneutical priority over “ecclesiological” principles insofar as they are specifically concerned with the primacy and centrality of divine initiative in revelation.

35 Rush, Still Interpreting, x. 36 Rush, “Conciliar Hermeneutics,” 95. 37 Rush, Still Interpreting, x. 38 Rush, Still Interpreting, x.

For instance, according to Rush, Dei Verbum’s personalist theology of divine revelation acts “as a kind of megaprinciple” that “conditions all the other principles of the vision of

Vatican II,” including ecclesiological principles.39 This is a theological point stemming from Vatican II’s notion of a “‘hierarchy’ of truths” (Unitatis Redintegratio 11). As the

Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) states, “The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them”

(234).40 Following this reasoning, after exploring Rush’s hermeneutical principles, the next section will elaborate a further hermeneutical principle of Vatican II—what I identify as an “East-West principle.” After articulating Rush’s hermeneutical principles and the East-West hermeneutical principle, I analyze Dei Verbum’s theology of divine revelation, which is fundamental for the theologies of chapters three and four.

1.2.2. A Threefold Conciliar Hermeneutic

A hermeneutics of the authors seeks to reconstruct the event that was Vatican II, its world, and the intentions of the authors of the final documents of Vatican II.

According to Rush, a hermeneutics of the authors begins with “the world behind the text”: “The cluster of historical situations out of which the text emerges,” which is retrieved through the use of the “historical-critical method.”41 In other words, “The texts the bishops finally produced emerged out of a very historically conditioned event, and any attempt to understand them properly must take that complex history into account.”42

39 Rush, Vision of Vatican II, 40. 40 All citations of the CCC are taken from Catechism of the Catholic Church: With Modifications from the Editio Typica, 2nd ed. (New York: Doubleday, 2003). 41 Rush, Still Interpreting, 1. 42 Rush, “Conciliar Hermeneutics,” 96.

From there, the council can be understood “as an event of reception.”43 By “event,” Rush

“[means] the original historical gathering called Vatican II” beginning with “the calling of the council by Pope John XXIII in 1959” through “the concluding ceremony” on

December 8, 1965.44 “Reception” “[means] an interpreters’ or group of interpreters’ hermeneutical activity of making sense of people, events, traditions, or text,” so that the reality being received becomes “one’s own.”45 Reception involves decisions regarding selection that lead to “determinations of continuity and discontinuity.”46 Vatican II was an event that sought to receive “the living tradition,” divine revelation, in order to “restate the church’s self-understanding” and “rejuvenate” “its ecclesial mission.”47

A hermeneutics of the authors encompasses what may be described as the “spirit” or “mind” of the council. Rush states, “The ‘spirit’ of the council can be understood in a double sense: (1) as the ‘mind’ of the council, and (2) as the ‘Holy Spirit,’ who, it was believed, was fashioning that common mind according to the mind of God.”48 By “the mind of the council,” Rush means, “What emerged from all the speeches, written submissions, drafting and voting, as the final ‘intention’ of the assembled bishops as a single but diversified conciliar body.”49 In discerning the “spirit” or “mind” of the council, attention must be paid to the final documents promulgated by the council.

A hermeneutics of the texts seeks to describe the “letter,” the final documents, of

Vatican II through synchronic intratextual approaches and synchronic and diachronic

43 Rush, Still Interpreting, 1. 44 Rush, Still Interpreting, 2-3. 45 Rush, Still Interpreting, 3. 46 Rush, Still Interpreting, 3. 47 Rush, Still Interpreting, 3-4. 48 Rush, Still Interpreting, 26. Rush develops a theology of the Holy Spirit working through Vatican II in the fourth chapter of Still Interpreting Vatican II, “A New Pentecost: A New Pneumatology,” 69-85. 49 Rush, “Conciliar Hermeneutics,” 97.

intertextual approaches. According to Rush, “A synchronic viewpoint examines relationships at the same time; a diachronic viewpoint examines relationship through time.”50 In other words, “diachronic can be taken to mean “looking to the historical origins over time of the text,” while “synchronic” means a “present focus on the text in its present form,” or the text “as is.”51 “Intra-textual refers to the relationship of linguistic units (words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters) within a single conciliar document.”52

Intratextual study of a document entails analysis of genre, rhetoric, style, and structure.

“Inter-textuality refers to the relationships of such linguistic units and single documents to all the other documents of Vatican II and their linguistic units.”53

Intertextual study of the documents of Vatican II means giving hermeneutical priority to the four Constitutions—Sacrosanctum Concilium, Lumen Gentium, Dei Verbum, and

Gaudium et Spes—as hermeneutical keys to Vatican II. Even among the constitutions, argues Rush, there is a hermeneutical priority: “Since Dei Verbum deals with the fundamental datum of the Christian faith – God’s personal self-revelation to human beings in Christ through the Spirit, and its witness in scripture and tradition – it must have a hermeneutical priority over the constitutions that deal with the Christian realities emerging from that primary revelation – the church and its worship.”54 Further, LG and

GS are mutually interpretative, despite LG being a “dogmatic” constitution and GS being

50 Rush, Still Interpreting, 40. 51 Rush, Still Interpreting, 35. 52 Rush, “Conciliar Hermeneutics,” 103. 53 Rush, “Conciliar Hermeneutics,” 103. 54 Rush, “Conciliar Hermeneutics,” 104. This is also based on the priority of theological over the ecclesiological principles. When employing intertextual interpretation, care must be taken because, for example, Nostra Aetate, the Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, ought to be used to interpret Dei Verbum, since the former discusses divine revelation occurring through other religions and the latter does not.

a “pastoral” constitution, because they focus on and emphasize different aspects of the church: LG corresponds to the church ad intra and GS corresponds to the church ad extra. Finally, the principle of intertextuality refers to the diachronic approach of interpreting the conciliar documents in light of the whole Christian tradition: “scripture, creeds, teachings of previous councils and popes, as well as theological, spiritual, and liturgical texts.”55

As noted, the “spirit” (the event) and “letter” (the documents) of the council are mutually interpretative. Hence, Rush’s “the council/the documents” principle: “The documents of Vatican II must be interpreted in the light of the historical event (the council) that produced them, and the historical event must be interpreted in the light of the official documents that it promulgated.”56 This is particularly true regarding the ideological tensions present at Vatican II that resulted in the juxtaposition of different approaches within the conciliar documents. According to Rush, the process of arriving at the “mind” of the council and “ecclesial unanimity was achieved at that particular time through the retention of conflicting attitudes.”57 In other words, there were two types of tension at work during Vatican II: “An ideological tension within the conciliar body, as various groups jostle in a power play for influence; and a theological tension among the bishops regarding how to evaluate the ‘old’ and ‘new’ frameworks for presenting

Christian beliefs and practices.”58 Thus, there was a division between a vocal and

55 Rush, Still Interpreting, 47. 56 Rush, Vision of Vatican II, 3. 57 Rush, Still Interpreting, 27-28. 58 Rush, “Conciliar Hermeneutics,” 99.

influential minority of 10 to 15 percent of the bishops that generally drew on neoscholastic theology and a majority that generally drew on ressourcement scholarship.

The resulting compromise between the two positions juxtaposes the views of each within the documents, sometimes side-by-side.59 Drawing on Otto Hermann Pesch’s work, Rush states, “The compromise arrived at preserves a ‘contradictory pluralism’ that deliberately sets in tension two positions, leaving the issue open for future synthesis.”60

Rush calls this a “task of reception”: “Vatican II hands over to future interpreters the creative task of reception, that is, finishing off the job of arriving at a new synthesis that could not be achieved at the time.”61 The council articulated certain trajectories that allow the reconstruction of its “common mind” and, “in this sense, ‘the council’ is more than its final documents … [and] the spirit is more than the letter.”62 Thus, “It is the role of the interpreter to extrapolate these trajectories indicated in the council debates and final texts and bring them to synthesis.”63 Hence the need for a hermeneutics of the receivers.

According to a hermeneutics of the receivers, Vatican II requires ongoing, faithful reception of the “spirit” and “letter” of the council, without which the meaning of Vatican

II is not carried forward. Rush states that the “hermeneutical reception of Vatican II … is the process within the receiver(s), from the perspective of their particular context, of attempting to understand, interpret, and apply the Council and its documents.”64 In receiving Vatican II, it is necessary to consider the “vision” of the council:

59 Rush, “Conciliar Hermeneutics,” 99. 60 Rush, Still Interpreting, 28. Rush cites Otto Hermann Pesch, Das Zweite Vaticanische Konzil: Vorgeschichte-Verlauf-Ergebnisse-Nachgeschichte (Würzburg: Echter Verlag, 2001), 150-54. 61 Rush, Still Interpreting, 29. 62 Rush, “Conciliar Hermeneutics,” 102. 63 Rush, Vision of Vatican II, 8. 64 Rush, Still Interpreting, 55.

The bishops of Vatican II committed their vision to writing in sixteen texts. … Through the dynamic nature of writing, of texts, and of reading, we have access to the conciliar vision—through hermeneutical reception. The council documents project a world in front of the text, and that world is a proposed way of being church in the face of the rest of humanity and ultimately before God. This projected world is what could be called ‘the vision of Vatican II.’ The dominant features of how the council imagined the church need to be brought to synthesis; receivers in new contexts must, however, reimagine and apply that vision for their own time and place. The conciliar vision requires reception for its realization.65

Put differently, “The original authors (the Bishops of Vatican II) require involvement by the receiver(s) of the Council for communication of meaning to be realized. In that sense, the receiver is a co-creator of the meaning of what is communicated. Hence that appropriated meaning could legitimately go beyond original authorial intention.”66

Reception of Vatican II and its vision is a creative, ongoing process of determining the meaning of the council through discernment of the “spirit” and “letter” of the council in light of one another and the whole Christian tradition.

Reception of Vatican II includes three further elements. First, on the basis of the conciliar vision, the whole church, all of the people of God, are called to receive the conciliar vision. Thus, all of the faithful “are now part of the council’s history, because it is they who will live it (or resist it).”67 Drawing on DV 8, Rush states, “There is a wide circle of voices and authorities within the contemporary church who are to participate in that comprehensive reception and assessment by the whole people of God (the sensus fidelium, theologians, and the episcopal magisterium).”68 Second, because the entire body of the faithful are called to receive and realize the vision of Vatican II and because the

65 Rush, Vision of Vatican II, 28. Rush cites Paul Ricoeur, “The Hermeneutical Function of Distanciation,” in From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 75-88. 66 Rush, Still Interpreting, 55. 67 Rush, “Conciliar Hermeneutics,” 109. 68 Rush, “Conciliar Hermeneutics,” 109.

Catholic Church is now “‘a world church,’ a communion of local churches,” “the contexts within which Vatican II’s vision are received throughout the world are now theoretically endless.”69 Despite the fact that the historical context of Vatican II was the

1960’s, the council ‘thought’ in a “historically conscious way” that allowed it to “leave a blueprint for addressing” future problems of the world and being “ever attentive to ‘the signs of the times’ (GS 4).”70 Third, “Reception involves selection,” which means that each receiver will find relevance in different elements of the conciliar vision because each interprets and understands it from within their own context.71

In continuing the task of receiving Vatican II and discerning its meaning, personalist thought serves a key hermeneutical function because it was widely drawn on and developed by Catholic thinkers before, during, and after the council. The thread of personalism as key for the reception of Vatican II will be picked up in section 2.2. The next task, in section 2.1., is more directly concerned with applying Rush’s hermeneutical principles in exploring the basic geographical-theological orientations of Vatican II,

Semmelroth, and Corbon. The findings from exploring these orientations shall be employed in proposing a further hermeneutical principle of Vatican II, the East-West principle.

69 Rush, “Conciliar Hermeneutics,” 107. Rush draws the idea of “a world church” from Karl Rahner, “Basic Theological Interpretation of the Second Vatican Council,” in Theological Investigations, Volume 20 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1981), 77-89. 70 Rush, “Conciliar Hermeneutics,” 107-8. 71 Rush, “Conciliar Hermeneutics,” 108.

CHAPTER 2

EASTERN AND WESTERN THEOLOGIES AND DEI VERBUM ON REVELATION

In receiving Vatican II, the present study proposes a new synthesis of specific

Eastern and Western theologies. The present study also proposes that a theology of God’s revelation of self grounded in personalist thought opens the way for the church to listen anew to God’s word. In working toward these proposals, this chapter is divided between analyses of the geographical orientations of the theologies under study and the personalist theology of divine revelation of Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine

Revelation, Dei Verbum. The first section is guided by the question, “What does it mean to say that ‘the Church must breathe with her two lungs’?”1 Toward answering this question, I will first analyze the geographical orientations of the theologies of

Semmelroth, Corbon, and Vatican II. I then propose the East-West hermeneutical principle of Vatican II. The second section is guided by the question, “What are the implications of a personalist theology of divine revelation?” I will first briefly describe the propositionalist model of revelation, which Vatican II left behind. I will then analyze

Dei Verbum’s account of divine revelation structured around the journalistic “reporters’ questions.” Where the East-West principle serves a hermeneutical function for the proposed synthesis of theologies, the analysis of Dei Verbum prefigures the theologies of the following chapters.

1 John Paul II, “On Commitment to Ecumenism: Ut Unum Sint” (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, May 25, 1995), 54, http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp- ii_enc_25051995_ut-unum-sint.html.

2.1. “The Church must breathe with her two lungs!” (John Paul II): Eastern and

Western Theologies

Because of the proposed synthesis of Eastern and Western theologies, it is important to describe in basic terms the geographical orientations of the theologies of the primary sources of this thesis: Vatican II, Otto Semmelroth, SJ, and Jean Corbon, OP.

This section will, first, explore the geographical-theological orientations of Semmelroth and Corbon. Then, the geographical orientation of Vatican II will be explored. Where

Vatican II and Semmelroth largely hold Western perspectives, Corbon may be seen to hold an Eastern theological and liturgical perspective rooted in Western theological and liturgical traditions. Finally, these findings will allow for the articulation of a conciliar principle of the complementarity with distinction between Eastern and Western theologies. Thus, the synthesis of these theologies is shown to be a synthesis of Eastern and Western theologies. Despite the differences in their basic orientations, the similarities between Semmelroth and Corbon are more important: they shared a love for and commitment to the church, they sought to advance and further the vision of Vatican II, they expressed their theologies in personalist language and categories, and they maintained the primacy of the initiative of God in revelation for theology.2

2.1.1. The Geographical-Theological Orientations of Semmelroth and Corbon

It may be observed that French theologians, particularly those associated with the ressourcement movement such as Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, and Marie Dominique

Chenu, tend to draw on the Eastern theological tradition more than German theologians.3

2 Many of these points of similarity will be elaborated throughout the present study. 3 This observation comes from Dennis Doyle.

This observation is borne out with the two theologians currently being studied, Otto

Semmelroth and Jean Corbon. By all accounts, Semmelroth was a German theologian whose theology is drawn from and primarily engages Western sources and theologians.

He was born in Bitburg, Germany, in 1912.4 He received his doctorate in theology from the University of Bonn and he taught dogmatic theology at the Philosophical and

Theological College of St. George University, in Frankfurt. He passed away in 1979.

On the other hand, Corbon’s geographical-theological orientation is much more complex. He was both an Eastern and Western, “a bi-ritual,” Byzantine Rite and Roman

Rite, theologian.5 He was originally French, as a native of Paris, and he received his theological training from Western institutions. Later, he became inculturated, as it were, into Eastern Christianity in a way that allowed him to draw from both Eastern and

Western theologies. As Corbon states in The Wellspring of Worship, “Our guide will be the experience of the Church… illumined by the Bible and the Fathers. This means that the book is also ecumenical. Each ecclesial tradition will be able to recognize itself in the common, undivided tradition. … I have tried to remain on the original level at which the liturgies of both East and West embody the Christian liturgy.”6 Koovayil asserts,

Strictly speaking, Corbon is not an Eastern theologian by birth, neither is he an exclusively Western theologian, yet he is both, and thus, both groups can claim him. Even the philosopher theologians, who do not give much care for Eastern theology, cannot but appreciate his initiative. His theology is an organic whole

4 The following biographical details come from the back inside book jacket of Otto Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype of the Church, trans. Maria von Eroes and John Devlin (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963 [German orig. 1950]). For a sense of the development of Semmelroth’s theology throughout his life, see Dennis M. Doyle, “Otto Semmelroth, SJ, and the Ecclesiology of the ‘Church as Sacrament’ at Vatican II,” in The Legacy of Vatican II, ed. Massimo Faggioli and Andrea Vicini (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2015), 203-25; idem, “Advance of the Church.” 5 Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 6, 119-30. 6 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 13; emphasis mine.

with its centre the mystery of the Trinity which was hidden for ages. … … We cannot but accept that the theology he presents proves to be a medium of dialogue between the two lungs of the Church.7

Therefore, Corbon’s theology, including that of The Wellspring of Worship, ought to be considered in light of his geographical orientation as both Eastern and Western.

Corbon’s biographical details shed further light on his geographical-theological orientation.8 He was born in Paris in 1924. He studied at the minor seminary of Conflans, in Paris, where he obtained a Bachelor degree in Secondary Education from the Faculty of Humanities. At seventeen, he joined the Society of Missionaries of Africa (White

Fathers) in North Africa and completed his education from 1946-51 in Thibar and

Carthage, Tunisia. He went on to obtain a licentiate degree in Scripture from the

Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome with his thesis, Voir la Face de Dieu dans l’Ancien

Testament: Position d’un Problème, being directed by A. Robert Dyson, “a renowned

American Jesuit Scholar in Old Testament.”9 Corbon then studied Arabic at La Manouba, in Tunisia. Beginning in the summer of 1956, during “an extended stay at Rayak in the

Greek Melkite seminary,” Fr. Corbon became exposed to Eastern liturgical and theological traditions and “discerned his ‘definitive oriental vocation.’”10 He left the

White Fathers, “was incardinated into the Greek Catholic-Melkite Eparchy of Beirut in

1959,” and joined the Third Order of the Dominicans in 1960. During his time “in Beirut he made a detailed study of the early Fathers of the Church which strongly influenced his spiritual and theological life.” According to Koovayil, during this same time, until he

7 Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 80-81. 8 The following biographical details are drawn from Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 16-19. 9 Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 16. 10 Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 17.

passed away in 2001, Fr. Corbon “gave the best of himself,” becoming “passionately fond of [the] theological and spiritual Oriental traditions, [and working] relentlessly for the re-discovery of the profound unity that underlies that rich diversity. Lebanon became the center of his manifold ministry: catechetical renewal, teaching of theology and liturgy, spiritual direction, ecumenical relations, publications, etc.”11

Corbon’s theological and liturgical roots are in the traditions of the Latin West: during the first thirty-two years of his life, he lived, thought, studied, and celebrated the liturgy and sacraments in the context of the Latin West; his theological training occurred prior to Vatican II; and he studied in a minor seminary, a neoscholastic institution. After discerning his oriental vocation, Corbon joined the Dominicans; became inculturated in the Eastern tradition, liturgy, and theology; studied the Fathers of the church, a ressourcement;12 and became passionate about the Eastern traditions and ecumenism.

Corbon may be identified as an Eastern theologian in a conditioned sense: “Although he shared much of the mentality of the Eastern theologians, he developed his own distinctive theological approaches.”13 As Koovayil asserts, Corbon was both Eastern and Western.

Regarding the geographical-theological orientation present in The Wellspring of

Worship, I follow Koovayil’s lead. She states, “In this work Corbon combined his knowledge of the scriptural-patristic tradition with an intimate understanding of Eastern liturgical spirituality.”14 She also states, regarding Corbon’s terminology, “In Liturgie de

11 Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 17. 12 Koovayil states, “When Jean Danielou, Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, Marie-Dominique Chenu, Henri- Marie Feret, Louis Bouyer, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Joseph Ratzinger, and others were the eminent theologians of the ressourcement movement in the West, Jean Corbon emerged as their follower on Eastern soil.” Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 83. 13 Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 17. 14 Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 28.

Source, he rescinds from even those philosophical terms which were commonly used by the Fathers – essence and hypostasis – to explain the mystery of the Trinity. … Although

Corbon avoids the philosophical terms, he utilizes many of the theological terms of the

East.”15 Further, Koovayil maintains that “Corbon’s style is ambiguous. He deliberately avoids the rational approach of academic theological writings in favour of a more contemplative style. Whereas the Scholastic method employs linear and logical reasoning, he favors an Eastern style of circular thinking, founded on symbols and images.”16 Corbon’s writing style is at once rich, complex, difficult, foreign particularly to Western readers, poetic, vague, and lacks sufficient notation.

Corbon’s text also presents elements of Western theology. For example, Peter C.

Sanders views Corbon strictly as an Eastern theologian and, thereby, attributes to Corbon a theological position which Corbon did not hold: “Corbon is writing out of the context of an exclusively ‘economic’ Trinity.”17 On the contrary, before ever discussing the revelation of Godself as Trinity in the economy of salvation, Corbon makes such statements as, “Of the bosom of the Father, those hidden depths from which the river of life was to flow out at the beginning of time,…;” “For this God [the Father], who is the creative source of all that exists, is eternally a source within the Trinity itself;” “Before all the ages…;” “…before the world was;” “The communion within the Trinity is a river of life….”18 In other words, the “river of life” (Rev 22:1-2) first takes shape within the

15 Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 23. 16 Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 23. 17 Peter C. Sanders, “Pneumatology in the Sacramental Theologies of Geoffrey Wainwright, Jean Corbon and Edward Kilmartin,” Worship 68, no. 4 (July 1994): 332-52, at 339. 18 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 30-1. Cf. Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 32.

life of the immanent Trinity before being poured out and revealed in the economy of salvation.

In Corbon’s text, I observe a use of Western sacramental theology to articulate his

Eastern theology of liturgy. First, though, Corbon cautions against what he refers to as the “cultural temptation,” but this must be properly understood. The “cultural temptation” is the use of philosophy for theology that “consists in listing the visible and tangible components of celebrations [‘sacramental signs’] and then interpreting them in the light of cultural criteria.”19 The issue is a myopic perspective: “Were we to limit ourselves to this category [the idea of sign], we would imprison ourselves in the celebration without any hope of escape.”20 That is, the “cultural temptation,” is “myopic” due to “not [taking] the wellspring as the point of departure.”21 Corbon identifies this “temptation” with thinkers, in antiquity or in modern times, who follow Aristotle and Plato and Plotinus.

However, Corbon’s view of the “cultural temptation” should not be misunderstood. He is open to this approach to theology: its methodology (“the drawback here is not the attempt as such”), its resultant identification of the elements of a sacrament (“the list of a cistern’s contents is not without its interest”), and its practical implications (“all these various approaches… [are] not without pastoral consequences”). Hence, Corbon is open to this approach to theology, so long as one “[takes] the wellspring as the point of departure” and does not lose sight of it.

Corbon explicitly situates his theology of liturgy within the Western discussion of sacramental causality. He sees his theology as responding to theological discussions of

19 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 132. 20 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 25. 21 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 132-33.

sacramental efficacy and causality: “It is possible that a certain type of sacramental theology, the legitimate heir of long centuries of reflection, plays a distorting role in this area. For a long time now, and especially since the sixteenth century, the West has given a privileged place to the idea of efficacy or causality in the sacraments.”22 In response to

Western theologies of sacramental causality, he proposes his conception of “synergy”:

“‘Synergy’ … is a classical term in patristic theology. It represents a faith inspired effort to go beyond the rational categories of causality (whether coordinate or subordinate). …

It is not possible from that point on to think of the sacraments in terms of sacred things or causalities.”23 Hence, Corbon’s theology may be carefully considered in light of Western sacramental theology.

I observe that Corbon explicitly draws on Western sacramental terminology in describing his theology of liturgy. Corbon describes Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan River in the following way,

“Then Jesus appeared: he came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John” (Mt 3:13). He comes to the human in order to be “immersed” in it, with a baptism that extends even to his death. When Jesus appears, the mystery of love that has taken human form in him permeates the sign in which it expresses itself: the river of life, ‘kept hidden through all the ages’, becomes one with the river Jordan. The lowliest and most derisory among the rivers of the world at that time becomes a sign that carries the mystery within itself. Jesus is baptized in the water—that is the sign; the reality manifested is that henceforth the flesh and time, man and the world, are permeated by the Word of life, who has clad himself in them forever.24

Corbon uses the Western sacramental terms “sign” and “reality” to describe Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan River. Elsewhere, he states, “The mystery of God’s kenosis in the sacraments urges us… to make our signs authentic and to respond in faith: only through

22 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 24-25; emphasis mine. 23 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 38n4, 136. 24 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 40; emphasis mine.

this synergy does a sacrament exist.”25 Here three elements can be observed: “the mystery of God’s kenosis” corresponds to the term “reality” (res), “authentic signs” corresponds to the term “sacramental sign” (sacramentum), and “faith,” the human response to “the antecedent energy of the Spirit,”26 corresponds to both “reality and sign”

(res et sacramentum).27 Finally, Corbon repeatedly describes Christ’s body—of which he states, “there is but a single body of Christ that is a great and unique sacrament”28—as

“the reality.”29 Hence, Corbon is not opposed to drawing on the threefold distinction of a sacrament as sign, reality and sign, and reality that originated in Western Christianity.

Corbon drew upon Western sacramental theology to express his insights into an Eastern theology of liturgy.

Corbon’s theology in The Wellspring of Worship presents a complex synthesis of

Eastern, scriptural, and Western theologies. The theology of the text is grounded in biblical revelation and primarily concerns Eastern insights into liturgy, which are sometimes expressed through Western sacramental terminology. Therefore, as Koovayil says, Corbon’s theology may be drawn on as “a medium of dialogue between the two lungs of the Church.”30 I draw on Corbon’s theology for my thesis to supply an Eastern vision of liturgy that is complementary with the Western vision of the church as sacrament in the theologies of Vatican II and Semmelroth and propose that these different

25 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 139; emphasis mine. 26 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 139. 27 I elaborate on the threefold terminological distinction of a sacrament in section 4.1.2. 28 Cf. Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 96. 29 Cf. Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 94, 99, 101, 106-7, 151, passim. 30 Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 81.

visions may be brought to an ecclesiological synthesis. Next, I shall describe the geographical orientation of Vatican II and then the basic idea of the East-West principle.

2.1.2. The Geographical-Theological Orientation of Vatican II

The geographical orientation of the theology of Vatican II may basically be described as Western but open to global perspectives. John O’Malley describes the geographical orientation and perspective of the council as Eurocentric:

What is striking about Vatican II is not any prominent role played by “the new churches” of former colonies but its dominance by Europeans. The leading figures were almost exclusively from the Continent, and those few who were not, like [the American Jesuit John Courtney] Murray or Paul-Émile Léger, archbishop of Montreal, were European in the broad sense. The council was even more deeply Eurocentric in that the issues it dealt with originated in the history of Western Europe. … Europe, its concerns and the legacy of its history, provided the framework within which Vatican II operated.31

However, according to O’Malley, “In revisiting that history and tradition the council was engaged sometimes, maybe not always wittingly, in transcending its European determinations. … Of direct import, of course, were the council’s specific recommendations for adaptation to local customs and cultures. … Such explicit openness and adaptation … occurred just often enough to signal that a wider vista was trying to break through.”32 This is essential for the continual process of reception and development of the vision and teachings of the council because it means that the “theoretically endless”33 number of contexts of reception of Vatican II can already find starting points in the texts of the council.

31 O’Malley, Vatican II, 13. 32 O’Malley, Vatican II, 13-14. 33 Rush, “Conciliar Hermeneutics,” 107.

As an example of a Eurocentric but open stance, the Decree on the Catholic

Eastern Churches, Orientalium Ecclesiarum (OE), states that Eastern and Western

“individual churches” differ in liturgical rite, ecclesiastical tradition, and in spiritual tradition but, by virtue of being “equally entrusted to the pastoral guidance of the Roman

Pontiff, … are of equal rank” (3). In other words, as Richard Gaillardetz and Catherine

Clifford put it, “This decree did not fully address the concerns of many of the Eastern bishops; it remained, in many ways, a Western document about the Eastern churches.

Nevertheless, Orientalium Ecclesiarum brought new prominence to the place of the

Eastern churches in the Roman Catholic communion” and “[provided] an orientation to guide” this communion.34 However, a yet more open and engaging perspective can be discerned in the liturgical celebrations of Vatican II and the Decree on Ecumenism,

Unitatis Redintegratio (UR).

Despite OE’s primarily Western perspective, Vatican II demonstrated an authentic appreciation for the liturgies of the East and an openness to all that they had to offer to the Latin West. During the course of the council, this was manifested in and developed through the celebration of the mass in the different liturgical rites of the Catholic Church.

O’Malley states, “[The] working sessions, … in which documents were presented, discussed, emended, and voted on, … began with a Mass at nine in the morning. Since the Masses were sometimes celebrated in rites other than the so-called Latin or Roman, the only rite familiar to many bishops, they provided attendees with an informal

34 Richard R. Gaillardetz and Catherine E. Clifford, Keys to the Council: Unlocking the Teaching of Vatican II (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), 134, 190-91.

education in liturgy.”35 The importance of the celebration of Eastern liturgical rites during Vatican II is made clearer by Gaillardetz and Clifford,

Many of the bishops who attended the council had had little, if any, practical contact with the Eastern churches and were largely unaware of their distinctive theological and liturgical heritage. … One should not underestimate the practical impact of the conciliar practice of celebrating the Eucharist daily during the council sessions, on a rotating basis in the different liturgical rites of the churches. For many of the bishops, this was their first exposure to the already existing diversity of liturgical rites in the Catholic communion of churches.36

The daily celebrations of the mass not only had an educative impact on the bishops, it also bore fruit in the positive tone of UR regarding the traditions of the Eastern churches and the importance of their heritage for the Latin West. UR states, “Everyone knows with what great love the eastern Christians celebrate the sacred liturgy, especially the eucharistic mystery. … Everyone should realize that it is of supreme importance to understand, venerate, preserve and foster the rich liturgical and spiritual heritage of the eastern churches in order faithfully to preserve the fullness of christian tradition” (15).

Drawing on the axiom lex orandi, lex credendi, “the law of prayer establishes the law of belief,” it can be suggested that the liturgical practices of the council informed the beliefs of the council.

2.1.3. The East-West Principle

The “spirit” and the “letter” of Vatican II together lead directly to the formulation of the principle of complementarity with distinction between the traditions, liturgies, and theologies of Eastern and Western Christianity. Further, while both Eastern and Western perspectives present distinctive visions of the Christian mystery, owing to a difference in

35 O’Malley, Vatican II, 24. 36 Gaillardetz and Clifford, Keys to the Council, 133-34.

sources, emphases, language, starting points, or other, when analyzed in conjunction, both may be seen to indicate more fundamental points of agreement that present the possibility of a new synthesis. This principle, therefore, calls for cooperation between the two leading to deeper and fuller communion and joint comprehension and living out of the mystery of the faith for all Christians.

In terms of the respective theological traditions of East and West, UR expresses the basic idea of the East-West principle in the following terms:

In the study of revealed truth east and west have used different methods and approaches in understanding and confessing divine things. It is hardly surprising, then, if sometimes one tradition has come nearer to a full appreciation of some aspects of a mystery of revelation than the other, or has expressed them better. In such cases, these various theological formulations are often to be considered complementary rather than conflicting. With regard to the authentic theological traditions of the Orientals, we must recognize that they are admirably rooted in holy scripture, are fostered and given expression in liturgical life, are nourished by the living tradition of the apostles and by the works of the Fathers and spiritual writers of the east; they are directed toward a right ordering of life, indeed, toward a full contemplation of christian truth. (17; emphasis mine)

However, the East-West principle does not stop at noting a complementarity between these theological traditions, UR also exhorts “Catholics [to] avail themselves more often of the spiritual riches of the eastern Fathers which lift up all that is human to the contemplation of divine mysteries” (15). UR continues, “It must be remembered that, from their very origins, the churches of the east have had a treasury from which the church of the west has drawn largely for its liturgy, spiritual tradition and jurisprudence”

(14). This is not only a powerful endorsement of the richness of the Eastern theological tradition but should also be read as a call to understand, interpret, and apply the Latin

Western tradition, and, in the case of the present study, particularly Vatican II, in light of the Eastern theological tradition.

Therefore, the East-West principle ought to be understood and applied not only in relation to the event and documents of Vatican II but also in its reception. In his 1995 encyclical letter On Commitment to Ecumenism, Ut Unum Sint, Pope John Paul II gave expression to the complementarity with distinction inherit in the relationship between

Eastern and Western Christianity in his famous metaphor: “The Church must breathe with her two lungs!”37 This metaphor neatly expresses the East-West principle: The churches and traditions of the East and West ought to be seen as complementary, distinct, and equal dialogue partners called by the Father to jointly “breathe” the one Spirit of communion as the one Body of Christ.

The CCC may be considered as an example of receiving the East-West principle of Vatican II because it is itself to be interpreted as a text of the reception of Vatican II:

John Paul II states, “This catechism will make a very important contribution to [the] work of renewing the whole life of the Church, as desired and begun by the Second Vatican

Council.”38 The CCC “breathes” through the two lungs of the church by incorporating not only the writings of bishops broadly from the Latin West but also by incorporating the theology of Jean Corbon. As noted above, Koovayil states, “We cannot but accept that the theology [Corbon] presents proves to be a medium of dialogue between the two lungs of the Church.”39 This is a reference not only to John Paul II’s metaphor but also to the

CCC.

37 John Paul II, “Ut Unum Sint.” 38 Pope John Paul II, “Apostolic Constitution on the Catechism: Fidei Depositum,” in Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1-7, at 3. 39 Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 80-81.

To begin with, the fourth part of the CCC, “Christian Prayer,” was written by Jean

Corbon. Joseph Ratzinger writes,

After having resolved to add a distinct fourth part on prayer to the first three, we looked for a representative of Eastern theology. Since it was not possible to secure a bishop as author, we settled upon Jean Corbon, who wrote the beautiful concluding text on prayer while in beleaguered Beirut, frequently in the midst of dramatic situations, taking shelter in his basement in order to continue working during the bombardments.40

Further, while the second part of the CCC was written by Bishops Medina of Chile and

Karlic of Argentina,41 Cassian Folsom states,

The liturgical section of the new Catechism (CCC 1066-1209) has a much different feel to it than the sacramental section (CCC 1210-1690). … The basic source for the sacramental section is the Roman Catechism of St. Pius V, and therefore has an obviously western ethos. The basic source for the liturgical section, on the other hand, is Fr. Jean Corbon and his book, The Wellspring of Worship; this section breathes a different air than many of us are accustomed to because much of its vocabulary comes from ‘the other lung’ of the Catholic Church, that is, the eastern lung.42

Koovayil affirms Folsom’s findings and notes that Corbon had a considerable influence on the entire CCC.43 As Scott Hahn has said, “The Church has given [Corbon’s] words a doctrinal authority held by very few theologians in all of history.”44

As a continuation of the spirit of Vatican II and one of the most authoritative ecclesial texts since those of Vatican II, the CCC is instrumental in carrying forward the vision of Vatican II. With the liturgical and sacramental heritages of East and West,

40 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and Christoph Schönborn, Introduction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 23. 41 Ratzinger and Schönborn, Introduction to the Catechism, 23. 42 Cassian Folsom, “The Holy Spirit and the Church in the Liturgy,” Homiletic and Pastoral Review 96, no. 7 (April 1996): 15-23, at 15. 43 Corbon’s influence may also be seen in articles 556, 649-701, 722-25, 731-41, 1680-83, and 1690. Koovayil cites Christoph Schönborn, “Apport d’une sensibilite orientale aux documents de l’Eglise catholique,” POC 52 (2002), 127-36. Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 22, 22n50, 162-65. See also section 3.2.3. 44 Scott Hahn, foreword to Jean Corbon, Path to Freedom: Christian Experiences and the Bible, trans. Violet Nevill (Cincinnati: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2004.), v.

respectively, standing side-by-side as complementary and distinct and with the complement of Corbon’s Eastern vision of prayer, the CCC demonstrates the ability of the church to breathe with both lungs. On the other hand, the CCC, in turn, calls for a reception that goes beyond itself. Further, the East-West principle calls not only for a vision of the church wherein the churches, traditions, theologies, and liturgies of East and

West are complementary, distinct, and equal, but, even more, it calls for a new synthesis.

The East-West principle, as a principle of the vision of Vatican II, calls for the one church, the one Body of Christ, to “breathe” deeply, with both lungs, the same air, the same Spirit of communion.

It is this understanding of the East-West principle that underlies the argument of the present study, as particularly presented in chapter four, and it can be expressed as: the

Western sacramental theology articulated by Vatican II and Otto Semmelroth and the

Eastern theology of liturgy of Jean Corbon are complementary and both may be developed through a synthesis with each other. Having explored the geographical- theological orientations of Semmelroth, Corbon, and Vatican II, and having proposed a the conciliar East-West hermeneutical principle, I turn now to analyzing Dei Verbum’s theology of divine revelation.

2.2. Dei Verbum on Revelation

2.2.1. What Dei Verbum Left Behind: Propositionalism

The neoscholastic theology of anti-modern Catholicism took an approach to divine revelation called the propositionalist model of divine revelation. This model of revelation was dominant in preconciliar dogmatic seminary manuals, Vatican I’s

Dogmatic Constitution, Dei Filius, and in the initial draft on divine revelation, titled “On

the Sources of Divine Revelation,” prepared in advance of Vatican II by a preparatory commission. The propositionalist approach to divine revelation emphasizes the perspective of revelation as the words of God spoken to human beings and formulated as objective, dogmatic, and discrete truth statements or propositions. Based on this understanding, faith is understood as an intellectual assent to these propositions of truth, the church is understood as the guardian of the deposit or collection of these truth statements, and the church’s magisterium is understood as the ultimate authority of the interpretation of revelation. Further, the propositionalist approach tends to view Scripture and Tradition as distinct sources of revelation.

The initial draft document on divine revelation of Vatican II was voted on by bishops with a majority voting to withdraw the document, but not enough for the necessary two-thirds majority. The document was withdrawn after an intervention by

Pope John XXIII and a new, mixed commission was established to rework the initial draft. Otto Semmelroth was appointed as a peritus to a subcommission in the drafting process,45 and in this way he played a part in the drafting of Vatican II’s document on revelation, the final version of which would be called the Dogmatic Constitution on

Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum. DV expresses a much different vision of revelation from the neoscholastic, propositionalist vision of the initial draft.

2.2.2. Dei Verbum on Divine Revelation

In analyzing and describing Dei Verbum’s theology of revelation, I draw on the journalistic tradition of asking and answering the “reporters’ questions” of who, what, when, where, why, and how. This investigative style gives structure and clarity to the

45 Ratzinger, “Divine Revelation,” 162.

manifold characteristics attributed to divine revelation by Dei Verbum: revelation is simultaneously personal, relational, and dialogical; christological, pneumatological, and trinitarian; theocentric; communional and soteriological; temporal and spatial; protological and eschatological; historical and contemporary; ecclesial, scriptural, and traditional; and sacramental and liturgical. The following analysis of these key characteristics prefigures the ecclesiology of the next two chapters.

The first two questions are taken together: “Who is involved in the occurrence of divine revelation?” and, “What is the content of divine revelation?” The opening article of the first chapter of DV, “Divine Revelation Itself,” states, “It pleased God, in his goodness and wisdom, to reveal himself and to make known the mystery of his will (see

Eph 1:9), which was that people can draw near to the Father, through Christ, the Word made flesh, in the holy Spirit. … The most intimate truth thus revealed about God and human salvation shines forth for us in Christ, who is himself both the mediator and the sum total of revelation” (2). Those involved in the occurrence of divine revelation are divine and human persons. God is identified as a person and is revealed to be a Trinity of persons, Father, Son, and Spirit. In the preceding article, DV is said to be addressed to

“the whole world” (1), later in the document, it is stated explicitly that divine revelation is intended for “all peoples” and “all generations” (7). Therefore, all of humanity is implicated in a personal way and is viewed as cooperating in the occurrence of revelation. Finally, DV states, “God, who creates and conserves all things by his Word

(see Jn 1:3), provides constant evidence of himself in created realities (see Rom 1:19-

20)” (3). Thus, while the point is not elaborated, all of creation participates in the mystery of the occurrence of divine revelation.

Regarding the second question, the above quotation of DV 2 makes it clear that the content of divine revelation is first and foremost the person of God. God reveals

God’s very self, especially in the person of Jesus Christ. Later, DV refers to “a single sacred deposit of the word of God” (10). Based on this, Ronald D. Witherup points out that the deposit of truth also forms a part of the content of revelation.46 Still, the “deposit of faith” is first of all concerned with divine and human persons: it has its source in God,

“the … divine well-spring;” it is subject to the authority of Christ and the guidance of the

Spirit; and it serves the purpose of “the salvation of souls” (DV 9, 10).

Based on these answers, three further points need to be made. First, in taking divine and human persons as its starting point and by taking the person of God as the content of revelation, DV effected a fundamental paradigm shift from a propositionalist to a personalist model of divine revelation.47 As Joseph Ratzinger stated in a commentary published shortly after the council, “We can see again here how little intellectualism and doctrinalism are able to comprehend the nature of revelation, which is not concerned with talking about something that is quite external to the person, but with the realization of the existence of man, with the relation of the human ‘I’ to the divine ‘thou.’”48 Hence, divine

46 Witherup refers to “a deposit of divine truths,” but there is no basis for describing the content of the deposit in the plural form, since DV’s articulation of the content of the deposit is only referred in the singular: “a single sacred deposit of the word of God,” and, “this sole deposit of faith.” Ronald D. Witherup, The Word of God at Vatican II: Exploring Dei Verbum (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2014), 31. 47 Cf. Rush, “Principle 7: Revelation/Faith,” in Vision of Vatican II, 39-53; Richard R. Gaillardetz, “Revelation,” in Cambridge Companion, Gaillardetz, 155–74; idem, “Two: What is Divine Revelation?,” in By What Authority? Foundations for Understanding Authority in the Church, revised and expanded edition (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press Academic, 2018), 19–34; Gaillardetz and Clifford, Keys to the Council. 48 Joseph Ratzinger, “Chapter I: Revelation Itself,” in Vorgrimler, trans. William Glen-Doepel, 3:170-80, at 175.

revelation is personal. The rest of the discussion of Dei Verbum’s theology of revelation may be understood as following from this paradigm shift.

Second, the content of revelation is found in the person of Jesus Christ, “the sum total of revelation.” DV’s presentation of revelation, according to Ratzinger, is christological but not one-sidedly christocentric: “Christ stands in the center as the mediator…; he enfolds us in the dimension of the Spirit, and our being in him means at the same time that we have been led to the Father.”49 Thus, the content and deepest mystery of revelation can be identified as the Trinity of persons, Father, Son, and Spirit.

Hence, revelation is christological, trinitarian, and pneumatological.

The third point is that God is the primary actor in the occurrence of revelation. In a meeting or encounter between persons, it is contingent on each person to freely make themselves known, revealed, and vulnerable to the other person. Because God is “the invisible God” (DV 2), the occurrence of revelation is contingent upon God’s freely made decision to reveal of self and become visible to human persons; and, “in his goodness and wisdom,” God does freely reveal of self. However, God takes humanity as cooperators in the occurrence of divine revelation. Hence, revelation is theocentric: in matters of faith, which are developed based on divine revelation, the consistent starting point and point of emphasis must be God’s initiative and will.

The third question is, “What is divine revelation?” If the content of revelation is a person, the person of God addressed to human persons, what does this make revelation itself? DV provides an answer, “By this revelation, then, the invisible God (see Col 1:15;

1 Tim 1:17), from the fullness of his love, addresses men and women as his friends (see

49 Ratzinger, “Revelation Itself,” 172.

Ex 33:11; Jn 15; 14-15), and lives among them (see Bar 3:38), in order to invite and receive them into his own company” (2). DV presents, in the words of Ratzinger, “an understanding of revelation that is seen basically as dialogue.”50 The invisible God takes the initiative and comes to humanity, not as a ruler, conqueror, or even as a superior, but person-to-person in a dialogical relationship wherein both parties receive each other as friends and companions. God chooses to reveal of self in a manner consonant with the limited, time-bound, and embodied nature of humanity, “the creature of dialogue.”51 In other words, God acts according to human nature in revealing of self in a personal manner that unfolds in the course of dialogical relationship. Hence, revelation is dialogical and relational.

Therefore, it is contingent upon humanity to freely respond to God’s call and invitation by actively receiving God’s revelation of self in the course of their mutual dialogical relationship. Dei Verbum states, “‘The obedience of faith’ (see Rom 16:26; compare Rom 1:5; 2 Cor 10:5-6) must be our response to God who reveals. By faith one freely commits oneself entirely to God.” (5). Humanity’s response of faith to God’s invitation entails a total commitment of self—body, mind, and soul. Toward the end of aiding and enabling the faithful response of human persons, God imparts grace and sends both the “Son, the eternal Word,” and “the Spirit of truth” (DV 4, 5). If Christ is the incarnation, and thereby the mediator, of the person of God, then the Holy Spirit is the person of the Trinity who “moves the heart and converts it to God, and opens the eyes of the mind … [and who] constantly perfects faith by his gifts” (DV 5).

50 Ratzinger, “Revelation Itself,” 171. 51 Ratzinger, “Revelation Itself,” 171.

The fourth question regarding DV’s theology of divine revelation is, “Why would

God reveal of self and why would human persons respond in faith?” It is “the mystery of

[God’s] will” that humanity “draw near” in friendship and companionship, but this is so that people may “become sharers in the divine nature” (DV 2). In growing in relationship with God through dialogue, humanity participates in God’s own life, which is salvation itself. The process of sharing in the divine life is called divinization or deification and it has for its goal communion between divine and human persons. Vatican II, through DV, proclaims to “the whole world … the summons to salvation” (1). This summons to salvation is the message conveyed by and the person of Jesus Christ who “revealed that

God was with us, to deliver us from the darkness of sin and death, and to raise us up to eternal life” (DV 4). By cooperating with the Spirit, all human persons are enabled to respond in faith to God’s invitation to communion while still on earth and, thereby, partake of the salvation of God’s own life. Hence, the purpose and goal of divine revelation is communional and soteriological.

The fifth and sixth questions, taken together, are, “When and where does God reveal of self to humanity?” According to DV, divine revelation unfolds through the economy or history of salvation (2). In setting revelation within the context of the economy of salvation, DV demonstrates that revelation is simultaneously temporally conditioned and transcendent: revelation is simultaneously historical and contemporary, protological and eschatological.52 In a similar way, God’s revelation occurs within space but is not bounded by it: the Word of God is present in all of creation (DV 3). However,

52 For a discussion of Vatican II’s protology and eschatology, see Rush, “Principle 11: Protological/Eschatological,” in Vision of Vatican II, 109-37.

while God, as infinite, takes the initiative and becomes visible and present within time and space, because of finite human nature, people are limited in their ability to receive

God’s revelation. God, “in his goodness and wisdom,” reveals of self in a manner consonant with social, dialogical human nature. God takes the initiative, becomes present in time and space, and dialogues with humanity in certain privileged and concrete ways, including by gathering a people, through a Son, in written words, and through the Spirit.

Protologically, revelation “looks back,” so to speak, to the origins of God’s revelation in the act of creation, in the time of promises to Abraham, Moses, and the prophets, and, most of all, to the completion and perfection of God’s saving revelation in the person of Christ, especially in his Paschal Mystery (DV 3-4). Christ, the mediator of revelation, “fulfilled in his own person and promulgated with his own lips the Gospel”

(DV 7). The Gospel was entrusted to the apostles, by Christ or the Spirit, and they committed it to writing and entrusted it to their successors, the bishops (DV 7). Then

Christ, “[drawing] all people to himself,” ascended to the Father, from where he continues to be present to humanity (DV 17).

God’s continual presence of self to humanity may thus be encountered in a special way through scripture and tradition, but only authoritatively and faithfully within the church. For instance, article 9 of DV, which discusses the unity and interconnectedness of tradition and scripture, is bracketed, as it were, by two significant statements on the relationship between the church and revelation: “God, who spoke in the past, continues to converse with the spouse of his beloved Son. And the holy Spirit, through whom the living voice of the Gospel rings out in the church—and through it in the world—leads believers to the full truth and makes the word of Christ dwell in them in all its richness”

(DV 8); and, “Tradition and scripture make up a single deposit of the word of God, which is entrusted to the church” (DV 10). By setting God’s revelation of self in scripture and tradition within the context of the church and by describing the church as the medium of the ongoing dialogue between God, through Christ and the Spirit, and humanity, DV establishes the church, the entire people of God (8, 10), as the privileged and concrete place or locus of encounter with God within history and today until the eschaton. Hence, divine revelation is ecclesiological, scriptural, and traditional.

On the other hand, revelation is also eschatological, it “looks forward.” DV states,

“Sacred tradition, then, and the sacred scripture of both Testaments, are like a mirror, in which the church, during its pilgrim journey here on earth, contemplates God, from whom it receives everything, until such a time as it is brought to see him face to face as he really is” (7). Through the ongoing course of salvation history, the pilgrim church,

“advancing towards the plenitude of divine truth,” has been entrusted with preserving,

“[growing] in insight,” living out, and proclaiming God’s word “through the contemplation and study of believers,” religious experiences, and through the “unique interplay between the bishops and the faithful” (DV 8, 10). During this historical, eschatological journey, the church must always, in Ratzinger’s words, “take up an attitude of listening, an attitude in which the Church transcends itself, for it is not there for its own sake, but only to lead to him to whom all honour is due, God the Lord.”53 In other words, the emphasis must remain on God’s saving will, actions, and words, for the church “receives everything” from God.

53 Ratzinger, “Divine Revelation,” 162.

The final, seventh, question is, “How is divine revelation expressed?” The key point here is that revelation, as a form of communication, must be consonant with divine nature. While God reveals of self in time and space according to human nature, revelation must be expressed in a mode established by God and unique from other forms of communication. In this regard, two points may be drawn from DV, which may be articulated as a twofold mode of expression of divine revelation. First, DV article 2 states,

“It pleased God… to reveal himself and to make known the mystery (sacramentum) of his will…, which was that through Christ, the Word made flesh (per Christum, Verbum carnem factum), people can draw near to the Father, in the Holy Spirit, and thus become sharers in the divine nature” (2; emphasis mine).54 Ratzinger comments,

We have a sacramental view, which sees law and grace, word and deed, message and sign, the person and his utterance within the one comprehensive unity of the mystery. The idea of mystery in the Epistle to the Ephesians… should echo here: this idea includes the universality of salvation (‘unite all things in him’, i.e., Christ; 1:10), the unity of mankind in the one Christ, the cosmic dimension of what is Christian, the relation of revelation to history, and finally its Christological centre. For the mystery of God is ultimately nothing other than Christ himself—it is the person (Col 1:27).55

The person of Christ, the Word made flesh, is the sacramental realization of the will of

God that humanity be saved. Without explicitly calling Christ a sacrament, DV identifies

Christ as sacramental.

Article 4 extends the sacramentality of Christ to his “saving work” by identifying him again as the Word made flesh (“Iesus Christus…, Verbum caro factum”). Further, the total reality of the person of Christ is sacramental: “Everything to do with his

54 The Latin text may be found at vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat- ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_lt.html. Translation amended following Abbott, Documents of Vatican II. 55 Ratzinger, “Revelation Itself,” 171.

presence and manifestation of himself was involved in achieving this” (DV 4). DV also makes it clear that there is only one mystery of God’s revelation. The word “mystery”

(Latin “mysterium”) occurs five times in DV (2, 15, 17, 24, 26). According to article 15, the mystery is that of human salvation. Article 24 makes clear that the “mystery” is Christ himself, “mysterio Christi.” Hence, there is only one mystery/sacrament of God’s revelation and salvation for humanity: the person of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh.

All “created realities” (DV 3), too, are sacramental insofar as they participate in the sacramentality of Christ. The concluding article of DV extends the sacramentality of

Christ and his work to the church by connecting the one Christ-mystery with the church’s celebration of the “eucharistic mystery (mysterii Eucharistici)” (26). As Ratzinger states,

“The Church can fundamentally only be a sign because and insofar as it lives from Christ, who is himself the sign and content of revelation, … which alone gives power and significance to all the other signs and testimonies.”56 Hence, the first mode of expression of divine revelation is sacrament.

Second, Dei Verbum states, “The pattern (oeconomia) of this revelation unfolds through deeds and words which are intrinsically connected (fit gestis verbisque intrinsece inter se connexis): the works performed by God in the history of salvation show forth and confirm the doctrine and realities signified by the words; the words… proclaim the works, and bring to light the mystery (mysterium) they contain” (2; emphasis mine). Ratzinger comments, “The Council desired to express again the character of revelation as a totality, in which word and event make up one whole, a true dialogue which touches man in his totality, not only challenging his reason, but, as

56 Ratzinger, “Revelation Itself,” 176.

dialogue, addressing him as a partner, indeed, giving him his true nature for the first time.”57 The Christ-mystery of divine revelation is a holistic, total unity of “deeds and words” drawing the whole human person—body, mind, and soul—and the whole of creation into God’s personal invitation to salvation.

The full importance of the above statement of DV 2 can only be grasped when it is considered in light of Vatican I’s Dei Filius, which refers to the connection between the mysteries (“mysteriorum ipsorum nexu inter se”).58 In contrast, DV refers to only one mystery, the Christ-mystery. There is not a connection between this singular Christ- mystery, there is a con-nection within, an inner-con-nection, or an inward unity

(intrinsece connexis) of the mystery. There is the inter-con-nection of words and deeds through which the one Christ-mystery is brought about. Words and deeds having an intrinsic connection is nothing other than an “event.” Thus, the personal, sacramental reality of the Christ-mystery is brought about by the event of the Christ-mystery: “his words and works (verbis et operibus), signs and miracles, but above all his death and glorious resurrection from the dead, and finally his sending of the Spirit of truth” (DV 4).

Article 17 extends the event of the Christ-mystery to the church,

For when the fullness of time had come (see Gal 4:4), the Word became flesh (Verbum caro factum)…. Christ established on earth the kingdom of God, revealed his Father and himself by deeds and words and by his death, resurrection and glorious ascension, as well as by sending the holy Spirit, completed his work. Lifted up from the earth he draws all people to himself…. This mystery (mysterium) was not made known to other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the holy Spirit (see Eph 3:4-6, Greek text), that they might preach the Gospel, foster faith in Jesus Christ and the Lord, and

57 Ratzinger, “Revelation Itself,” 172. 58 Constitutio Dogmatica: Dei Filius, Libreria Editrice Vaticana (April 24, 1870), http://www.vatican.va/content/pius-ix/la/documents/constitutio-dogmatica-dei-filius-24-aprilis-1870.html.

gather the church together (Ecclesiam congregarent). (emphasis mine)59

Having ascended, Christ, with the Father, sends the Spirit to continue the work of salvation for humanity. The Spirit continues this work by indwelling human persons and the human community of the church (DV 5, 8). In the church, the person of the Holy

Spirit brings about, “events,” the Christ-mystery through the inter-con-nection of preaching, fostering faith, and gathering the church together.

How might this eventing of the Christ-mystery by the power of the Spirit in and through the church be expressed? Analyzing DV, David Farina Turnbloom emphasizes that revelation is an embodied, ongoing process of listening to God’s Word. As Christ did, so the church is called to do as well: “For two millennia, Christians have baptized, visited those in prison, built sacred spaces, healed the sick, written hymns, and fed the poor. These deeds are no less meaningful than the letters written by St. Paul, the

Johannine literature, or the conciliar deeds. Through all of these deeds, the word of God has been and continues to be written through human bodies.”60 Turnbloom arrives at two conclusions. First, “We must learn to encounter God’s Word in the liturgical worship

(i.e., the words and deeds) of the church. … In the unity of word and deed, we encounter what St. Augustine famously called ‘visible speech.’ In liturgical worship, our bodies become the manifestation of God’s Word.”61 Second, “Liturgical worship is also a form of embodied listening whereby we turn our entire being (body and mind) toward the God who is calling.”62

59 Translation amended following Abbott, Documents of Vatican II. 60 David Farina Turnbloom, “Visible Words of a Verbose God,” Liturgy 31, no. 1 (January 2, 2016): 3-9, at 5. 61 Turnbloom, “Visible Words,” 6-7. Turnbloom cites Augustine, Against Faustus the Manichean, 19.16. 62 Turnbloom, “Visible Words,” 8.

What are divine words and deeds that are intrinsically connected by the power of the Spirit other than liturgy? The power of the Spirit events the Christ-mystery as liturgy, which Christians are called participate in by embodying and listening to the total, personal reality of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. If, by the power of Christ, all creation and the church participate in the sacramentality of the Christ-mystery, then so too by the power, working, and indwelling of the Holy Spirit the Christ-mystery is evented as liturgy through all creation and especially through the church. Further, liturgy is simultaneously temporally conditioned and transcendent. As John F. Baldovin states,

“The liturgy is revelation in the sense that it actualizes God’s saving acts for us and is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. … Liturgy, by means of anamnesis as well as the various elements in the cycle of celebration (week, day, year), enables us to appreciate and appropriate God’s saving acts for us and impels us toward responding to those acts by the way we live our lives, all this in expectation of God’s eschatological victory.”63

Hence, based on an analysis of DV, liturgy may be proposed as the second mode of expression of divine revelation.

The paradigm shift undertaken from a propositionalist model of revelation in the initial draft document, “On the Sources of Divine Revelation,” to a personalist model of revelation in Dei Verbum allowed the church to listen to and receive anew the mystery of

God’s revelation of self as Trinity of persons. DV freed revelation from the confinement of discrete, definitive statements, which limit personal expression. Rather than paralyzing the church in the infinite, ineffable “mystery” of God’s self, DV opened the church to

63 John F. Baldovin, “The Future Present: The Liturgy, Time, and Revelation,” Liturgy 31, no. 1 (January 2, 2016): 19-25, at 24; emphasis mine.

encounter the person of God and thereby more fully manifest God. In doing so, the mystery of God’s revelation of self can speak anew to human persons in and through the church by God’s chosen modes of expression, sacrament and liturgy.

In chapter one, I described the basic background points of personalist thought and theological hermeneutics. In chapter two I have considered the geographical-theological orientations of Semmelroth, Corbon, and Vatican II, articulated an East-West conciliar principle, and analyzed Dei Verbum’s personalist theology of divine revelation. The next task of the present study is to explicate the theologies of Semmelroth and Corbon in chapter three. Finally, the findings of the first three chapters will be brought together in chapter four, which is concerned with synthesizing the Eastern theology of liturgy of

Corbon with the Western sacramental theology of Semmelroth toward articulating the ecclesial principle of the church as liturgy-sacrament of the Trinity.

CHAPTER 3

THE THEOLOGIES OF OTTO SEMMELROTH, SJ, AND JEAN CORBON, OP

The third chapter of the present study is concerned with explicating the theologies of Otto Semmelroth, SJ, and Jean Corbon, OP. Where much of Semmelroth’s theology may be described as a Western sacramental ecclesiology, much of Corbon’s theology may be described as an Eastern theology of liturgy. Where Semmelroth had an important impact on the sacramental ecclesiology of Vatican II, particularly Lumen Gentium,

Corbon played a critical role in the formulation of the theology of liturgy of the

Catechism of the Catholic Church. Taken together, their theological insights into the nature of the church suggest a way toward a new ecclesiological synthesis. This chapter proceeds by first analyzing and describing the sacramental ecclesiology of Semmelroth, his personalist notion of “consciousness,” and briefly describing the relationship between his theology and that of Vatican II. In the second section, I analyze and describe

Corbon’s theology of liturgy as it is presented in The Wellspring of Worship, his notion of a “vision of faith,” and I situate Corbon’s theology of liturgy in relation to Vatican II, the liturgical reform, Sacrosanctum Concilium, and the Catechism.

3.1. Semmelroth’s Sacramental Ecclesiology

3.1.1. “Um die Einheit des Kirchenbegriffes”

Otto Semmelroth’s “Um die Einheit des Kirchenbegriffes” (orig. 1957) summarizes the sacramental ecclesiology he developed earlier, particularly in Die Kirche

als Ursakrament (orig. 1953),1 which was itself prefigured by the marian ecclesiology of

Urbild der Kirche: Organischer Aufbau des Mariengeheimnisses (orig. 1950).2

Semmelroth’s 1957 article develops his sacramental ecclesiology through a discussion of three images of the church: people of God, mystical body of Christ, and bride of Christ.

Drawing on a personalist notion of “consciousness,” the primary focus of his article is the articulation of a unifying ecclesial concept. Semmelroth holds that it is necessary to seek out such a unifying ecclesial concept—for the purpose of integrating, unifying, reconciling, and complementing the various, seemingly contradictory, and partial notions of the church he found expressed in revelation—on the basis that the faithful are called to live out and realize the church “by conscious and personal decision,” and not only by the unconscious reception of grace.3

Semmelroth uses the notion of “consciousness” as the lynchpin of his unifying ecclesial concept: “This designation of the Church as the ‘primordial sacrament’

(Ursakrament) is not simply another ‘notion of the Church,’ but consciousness

(Besinnung) of the supernatural ontology (übernatürliche Ontologie) expressed

(ausdrückt) in the statements found in revelation regarding the Church.”4 In other words, if one properly maintains an attitude of consciousness, perception, or psychological awareness of the nature of the church, it becomes possible for one to bring together and

1 Otto Semmelroth, Die Kirche als Ursakrament, 2nd ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Josef Knecht/Carolusdruckerei, 1955). 2 Otto Semmelroth, Urbild der Kirche: Organischer Aufbau des Mariengeheimnisses (Würzburg: Echter, 1950); ET Mary, Archetype. 3 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 136-37. 4 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 137. Translation amended. The German third edition reads, “Diese Wahrheit von der Kirche als Ursakrament bedeutet nicht eigentlich einen ‘Kirchenbegriff’ neben anderen, sondern Besinnung auf die übernatürliche Ontologie, die sich in den der Offenbarung geläufigen Aussagen über die Kirche ausdrückt.” Semmelroth, “Einheit des Kirchenbegriffes,” 317-36. Cf. Doyle, “Otto Semmelroth, SJ,” 218-19; Doyle, “Advance of the Church,” 66.

unite the various partial notions of the church—particularly those relating to the two aspects of the church that are its “meta-empirical-divine-interior” and its “social-human- exterior”—under one ecclesial concept. This ecclesial concept rises to the level of a principle and “is not simply another ‘notion of the Church’” precisely because it is consciousness of the church, rather than an image, simile, analogy, etc.

According to Semmelroth, this supernatural ecclesial ontology, or the nature of the church, is expressed (ausgedrückt) by the concept of sacrament, because, as the church has taught, the essence of a sacrament is to bind together a complex of realities, interior and exterior, human and divine, in the relation of sign to signified and of cause to effect. Hence, Semmelroth’s principle of the church as Ursakrament. This ecclesial principle functions like the human soul, which gives living unity to the multiplicity of the body by inwardly permeating and unifying all of the various parts of the body. In this way, the church is a sacramental reality.

Semmelroth goes on to explain that the significance of the church as sacrament is derived from its institution by Christ, who alone can establish a sacramental reality.

Hence the significance of the church as Ursakrament: “If the Church is a sacrament, she makes visible and incarnate our community of grace with God and we consequently obtain grace from God, not in any unmediated way, but rather we — men of flesh and blood ourselves — grasp it in the material form it has received from God, in the form which is the Church, in the life which is essential to her.”5 Semmelroth “[states] unequivocally that there is no question here of erecting an eight sacrament next to the traditional seven,” because the church is an objective, “enduring,” and “permanent”

5 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 138.

institution compared to the “passing actions” of the seven sacraments.6 However, the seven sacraments and the church belong together because, by his work, Christ gives “an inner, supernatural vitality” to the church, who “dispenses the individual sacramental actions … by virtue of this supernatural vitality.” From there, Semmelroth proceeds to demonstrate how the church as Ursakrament unifies the various, partial ecclesial notions by drawing on a classic threefold distinction of sacrament. This methodology is explored in section 4.1.2., when I compare Semmelroth’s sacramental ecclesiology to Corbon’s liturgical ecclesiology.

3.1.2. Revelational and Ecclesial “Consciousness”

I now turn to more closely analyzing Semmelroth’s notion of “consciousness.”

His use of this category is a personalist move. When one takes persons as primary for one’s study, when one views persons as somehow determinative of reality, a new way of perceiving reality becomes possible. Viewing reality through the lens of personal

“consciousness” is a critical, fundamental methodology Semmelroth employs throughout his theology. At the beginning of “Um die Einheit des Kirchenbegriffes,” Semmelroth describes his theology as an “[attempt] to investigate the mystery-laden essence characteristic of our Church.”7 He goes on to state, “The sources of revelation express the true mystery of the Church only in images and analogies.”8 Thus, it is the mystery of the church that led Semmelroth to his investigation of the nature of the church: “A mystery, if it is to be believed, must be at least partly comprehensible.”9 This “consciousness,”

6 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 139. 7 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 130. 8 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 131. 9 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 130.

grounded in mystery as its inspiration, has two components: it is consciousness (1) of the church (2) derived from revelation.

Semmelroth’s notion of consciousness found broader expression in his earlier

Mary, Archetype of the Church. There, he states that the church holds an “essential

[mediatory] function in the process of salvation,” “between Christ and grace.”10 He goes on to state, “The divine idea is realized in the Church and… the Church functions for man’s redemption according to the pattern of this idea.”11 The mediatory function of the church based on the “divine idea” led Semmelroth to state that the church is “the center of God’s plan of salvation, the economy of salvation in its concrete form.”12

Semmelroth’s notion of consciousness is integrated with the goal of the whole of theology: “The object of theology… is a dynamic presentation of the economy of salvation, a continual sanctification.”13 Thus, he states,

What God’s Will creates was first planned by His Intellect, revealing His individual mysteries to us in such a way that we seek the connecting links binding the many individual parts into a harmonious whole. The links are there to be found and God does not create according to whimsy; He creates according to an inner meaningfulness. His revelation to us is imparted to a living, active mind made in His image. … What we have said implies nothing more than the theologian discovers, among the individual parts of the history of salvation which he is treating, the unifying ground-principle of the part upon which he is presently working. He then binds this to the ground-principles of other parts and so brings about a higher unity. Reigning supremely above all—uniting and integrating all—is the final and supreme idea of God, the all-embracing Eidos, the one which embraces the meaningful multiplicity of creation and the economy of salvation.14

For Semmelroth, reality is determined by the mystery of the mind and will of the person

10 Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype, 12-13. 11 Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype, 13. 12 Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype, 24. 13 Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype, 13. 14 Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype, 14.

of God. The ultimate source of Semmelroth’s notion of consciousness is the mystery of

God’s will ordered according to the divine intellect, the mind of God.

In sum, Semmelroth’s methodological consciousness seeks to grasp the “idea of

God”: the inner unity, integration, harmony, meaning, and order given to the multiplicity of reality by the will of God, which is determined by the mind of God. When applied in an investigation of the nature of the church, a theologian will seek, first, to investigate the various aspects of divine revelation and the economy of salvation. Secondly, the theologian brings together the various aspects of revelation and the economy of salvation under the central, mediatory, and concrete manifestation of the mystery of God, the church. Having brought together these revelational aspects in the central mystery of the church, the theologian then, thirdly, articulates a “unifying ground-principle.” This unifying ground-principle “functions like the soul, which gives living unity to the multiplicity of the human body by permeating and uniting all the sundry parts of the body.”15 Thus, Semmelroth’s notion of consciousness may be described as an endeavor of human consciousness seeking to faithfully fathom divine consciousness, which expresses itself through revelation and the economy of salvation, through the mediatory consciousness of the church. Semmelroth’s principle of the church as Ursakrament “is not simply another ‘notion of the church.’”

3.1.3. Semmelroth and Vatican II

The theology Semmelroth developed in the 1950’s and early 1960’s prefigured and influenced the theology that was to take shape during Vatican II. In October 1963,

Semmelroth was appointed a peritus for Bishop Volk of Mainz. He was involved in

15 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 137.

subcommittees on Dei Verbum, the collegiality of bishops, Gaudium et Spes, and Lumen

Gentium. According to Doyle, “What stands as Semmelroth’s most important contribution to the Council is the impact he had on Lumen Gentium… through his work on the concept of the church as a sacrament.”16 Doyle identifies four ways Semmelroth’s unifying principle of the church as sacrament influenced and is reflected in the final text of Lumen Gentium: first, Semmelroth’s influential Die Kirche als Ursakrament stood in the background; second, Semmelroth worked on drafts of the German Schema, which directly impacted the 1963 draft of LG; third, during the council, Semmelroth responded to American Joseph Clifford Fenton’s challenge against the concept of church as sacrament; fourth, Semmelroth wrote a number of commentaries connecting the parts and the whole of LG to the concept of the church as sacrament.17 Doyle concludes, “Among several important contributors, including especially Karl Rahner, when it came to the introduction of the Church as sacrament to the 1963 draft as well as to the decision to place yet more emphasis upon the concept during the final year of drafting, it was Otto

Semmelroth, SJ, who stood the tallest.”18 Through Semmelroth’s various roles in relation to Vatican II, his theology stands as an essential contribution to the reception of Vatican

II, particularly its sacramental ecclesiology.

16 Doyle, “Otto Semmelroth, SJ,” 203. 17 Doyle, “Otto Semmelroth, SJ,” 204; idem, “Advance of the Church.” For an example of Semmelroth’s commentaries see Otto Semmelroth, “Chapter VII: The Eschatological Nature of the Pilgrim Church and Her Union with the Heavenly Church” and “Chapter VIII: The Role of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, in the Mystery of Christ and the Church,” in Vorgrimler, trans. Richard Strachan, 1:280-96. 18 Doyle, “Otto Semmelroth, SJ,” 220.

3.2. Corbon’s Theology of Liturgy

Jean Corbon’s Liturgie de Source (ET, The Wellspring of Worship) is a masterpiece of liturgical, spiritual theology presenting a deep and balanced trinitarian theology. His theology of liturgy offers a complementary Eastern perspective to a

Western theology of sacrament. In describing Corbon’s theology of liturgy, I shall first describe his basic terminology. Then, second, I describe his conception of “liturgy.”

Third, I describe his notion of a “vision of faith,” which is comparable to Semmelroth’s notion of “consciousness.” Fourth, I situate Corbon’s theology in relation to Vatican II, postconciliar liturgical reform, Sacrosanctum Concilium, and the Catechism of the

Catholic Church.

3.2.1. The Wellspring of Worship

A first term, and one of the most basic, of Corbon’s theology in The Wellspring of

Worship is “energy” (en-ergon), which is an Eastern term used by the Fathers of the church to articulate the nature of Jesus Christ.19 The term corresponds to “work” (ergon) or “operation” but holds more meaning: “Energy” “is the life-giving power of the living

God and more particularly that of the Holy Spirit. When the energy of man is brought into play by the Spirit and linked to the energy of God, there is a ‘synergy’…. The liturgy is essentially a synergy of the Spirit and the Church.”20 A second term is “synergy,” which means much the same as “cooperation.”21 It means “literally: ‘joint activity’,

19 Corbon states, “Being true God and true man, Jesus has two wills (contrary to the Monothelite heresy) and two operations, or ‘energies’ (contrary to the Monoenergist heresy), which de facto are in unison, but freely so and without confusion.” Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 100n. 20 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 17, 76n6; Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 142. 21 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 100n. According to Koovayil, “synergy” is originally a scriptural term. Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 150.

combined energies. This classical term of the Fathers attempts to express what is novel in the union of God and man in Christ and, more specifically, what is novel in the energy of the Holy Spirit that permeates the energy of men and conforms them to Christ. The full realism of the liturgy and of our divinization has its source in this synergy.”22 For

Corbon, a person is to be understood in their entirety and holistically, hence, “energy” and “synergy” can be understood as likewise holistic.23

“Kenosis,” a third term, comes from Phil 2:7 and means “self-emptying.” This term expresses “the properly divine way of loving: becoming man without reservation and without calling for recognition or compelling it.”24 Corbon uses the term “kenosis” to describe God’s acts of creation, the incarnation, and “the self-emptying of the Spirit in the Church.” Human persons are called to kenosis that they might receive God.

“Epiclesis” is a fourth term. For Corbon, the epiclesis is the most important point in the celebrations of the church. “Epiclesis” means “‘calling down upon’. It is an ‘invocation’ addressed to the Father that he would send his Spirit on the Church’s offering so that this may be changed into the Body of Christ. The epiclesis is the central moment in every sacramental anaphora; it is that which gives the Christian liturgy its new and distinct efficacy. … The epiclesis is the vehicle of the mightiest synergy of God and men, both in the celebration and in the living out of the liturgy.”25 Finally, Corbon has a deeply theological conception of time. A key aspect of time for Corbon is “moment” (kairoi), which it is not temporal in the sense of earthly or, as he puts it, “dead” time.26 Rather, the

22 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 18. 23 Cf. Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 91, 167. 24 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 17-18. 25 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 17. 26 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 18-19, 58-59nn1–4.

concept is intended to express the depth of the unfolding of the events of the economy of salvation. For example, the Cross and Resurrection are distinct but “inseparable.”

Having explained Corbon’s basic terminology, I will now explicate his theology of liturgy. For Corbon, before all else, “liturgy” is first and foremost the “event” of the mystery of Christ: “Before being a celebration, the liturgy is an event. … The all- embracing event of Christ is far greater in its breadth and depth and constitutes ‘the mystery’.”27 Corbon structures his text based on this insight. He first discusses, in part one, the event of the mystery of the liturgy and then he describes the concretization of the mystery in celebration, part two, and in life, part three.

The ultimate source of the liturgy is the Father within the immanent Trinity.

Corbon’s symbol of “the river of life” (Rev 22:1-2), which expresses the mystery of the liturgy, finds its source with the immanent Trinity: “The one, adorable Trinity is a communion of Father, Son, and Spirit. Here we find life in its eternal outpouring; the river of life … is an energy of love at work before the world was.”28 Creation, or “the beginning of time,” and “the time of promises” mark the first and second phases of the coming of the river of life in time and space. The incarnation of Jesus begins the third phase, or “the fulfillment of time,” with “the coming of the river of life in our flesh” by the synergy of the Spirit and Mary.29 With the “hour” or “moment” of the Cross and

Resurrection, the river of life becomes “liturgy”:

On this day of birth the river of life becomes LITURGY as it spreads out from the tomb and reaches us in the incorruptible body of Christ. Its wellspring is no longer the Father alone but also the body of his Son…. If it be true that the drama of history is the interplay of God’s gift and man’s acceptance of it, then the drama

27 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 25, 204. 28 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 30-31. 29 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 38, 44, 48.

reaches its climax, and its eternal beginning, on this day, because these two energies are now joined together forever. … It is this covenant between his two energies, the divine and the human, that makes the risen Christ the inexhaustible wellspring of the liturgy.30

With the resurrection, divine and human energies are forever united in Christ and, for

Corbon, this is the “first manifestation” of the liturgy. Henceforth, the mystery of Christ becomes event, it “does not pass away” because it “occurred ‘once and for all’”: “the economy of salvation takes the form of liturgy.”31

Following the resurrection, Christ’s ascension marks “the end of a relationship to

Jesus that is still wholly external. … It marks the beginning of an entirely new relationship of faith and of a new time: the liturgy of the last times.”32 The ascension “is a progressive movement” and “the new space for the liturgy of the last times.”33 In

Corbon’s vision, with Christ’s ascension to the Father, the one mystery of the liturgy takes the form of the heavenly liturgy: “In his Ascension Christ celebrates [the liturgy], eternal and life giving, in the presence of the Father.”34 According to Corbon, heaven and earth are “co-inherent.”35 “The liturgy essentially involves action and energy; the heavenly liturgy tells us of all the actors in the drama: Christ and the Father, the Holy

Spirit, the angels and all living things, the people of God (whether already enjoying incorruptible life or still living through the great tribulation), the prince of this world, and the powers that worship him.”36 The heavenly liturgy consists in a twofold movement, an

“ebb and flow,” a “movement of return” to the Father and a movement flowing forth

30 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 54-55. 31 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 56. 32 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 60. 33 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 61. 34 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 115. 35 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 63. 36 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 64.

from the Father.37 Thus, the liturgy of the last times also takes the forms of the

“sacramental liturgy” and the liturgy, that is, the synergy, of the Spirit and the church.

In ascending, Christ draws all with him by the power of the Spirit in a movement of return to the Father. In turn, the joint “work” of Christ and the Father, together “the wellspring,” in the heavenly liturgy is to pour out the “the river of life”—revealed to be the Spirit in the “utter transparency” of the church—upon humanity, in the body of

Christ, the church.38 The “sacramental liturgy” is an expression of the sacramental energies or divinizing actions of Christ, since the ascension, of “pouring out the river of life—the liturgy—on men in his body, which is the Church.”39 Corbon expresses this process of divinization of humanity through the symbol of Christ’s transfiguration. The divinizing energies “[emanating] from the body of Christ, [are] the multiform energies of the Spirit who gives life.”40

The church is brought about by the pouring out, the kenosis, of the Spirit, through the joint action of Christ and the Father, upon humanity: “On this Pentecost day the Spirit turns a little ‘remnant’ of ‘poor’ men and women into the Church.”41 For Corbon, the terms “church” and “eschatology” are almost interchangeable: “The two comings—of the

Church and the last times—are simultaneous, for the Church is essentially

‘eschatological’, that is, it belongs to the last times; it marks the appearance of the fullness in the emptiness of our earthly time and thus inaugurates the completion of that fullness through expectation of it. … The liturgy, now spread abroad in our world by the

37 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 64-67. 38 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 62, 83-85, 96-97. 39 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 96. 40 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 94. 41 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 74, 84-85.

gift of the Spirit, has henceforth an ecclesial, that is, eschatological, form.”42 The church is the “embodiment” of the liturgy and the “event” of “manifestation” of the Spirit.43

From the “moment” of Pentecost, “the economy has become liturgy because we are in the stage of response and of the synergy… of Spirit and Church.”44 Corbon states, “In the

Church the Holy Spirit, our humanity, and the humanity of the incarnate Word are inseparably united. It is this ‘energy’ of the New Covenant that is henceforth the ‘liturgy’ and gives existence to the Church…. The liturgy is therefore not a component of the mystery of the Church; rather, the Church is the liturgy as this presently exists in our mortal humanity. The Church is as it were the human face of the heavenly liturgy.”45

Corbon draws on the scriptural images of the church as bride of Christ and body of Christ to hold in tension the christology and pneumatology of the church:

The mystery of the liturgy as transfiguration shows… two coherent symbolisms for the joint mission of the Word and the Spirit. Insofar as the Church is the body of Christ, she is one with him; insofar as she is his bride, she is distinct from him. … The Church is a bride, or pure receptivity toward her Lord, because the Holy Spirit lives in her by his energies, his personal kenosis. Then, being one with the Spirit, the Church becomes fruitful, bearing the “whole” body of Christ. We cannot apply deductive reasoning to such symbols. We can only accept them and by means of them share in the mystery of the trinitarian communion that was kept hidden through all the ages and is revealed today in the Church.46

When the human energy of the church is activated in response to the energy of the Holy

Spirit, the two energies are united: “the Spirit and the Church become one in an astounding ‘synergy’: the liturgy.”47 The “multiform” energies “emanating from the body of Christ” expressed as the synergy of the Spirit and the church are threefold. Corbon’s

42 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 78. 43 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 74-75, 85. 44 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 17. 45 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 75-76. 46 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 111. 47 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 100.

threefold synergy of Spirit and church are discussed in section 4.1.1., when I draw a comparison between the theologies of Corbon and Semmelroth.

Before considering Corbon’s notion of a “vision of faith,” his theology of liturgical celebration should first be briefly detailed. For Corbon, the celebrations of the church—i.e., the generally accepted notion of “liturgy”—are “moments” wherein “the event of Christ becomes the event of the Church assembled here and now.”48 A celebration is also the “time, place, and center” of the concretization of the mystery of the liturgy. Local churches “manifest, concretize, and communicate their unity in catholicity” by celebrating the one heavenly liturgy. The church is the event of the mystery of Christ, it is liturgy: “The manifestation of the mystery of the Church as the eternal liturgy at the heart of history is of fundamental importance for a truthful implementation of all relations in the Church, from the pastoral sphere to ecumenism. … At her foundation everything in the Church is liturgy: unity in faith and communion in love, ministries and mission, prayer and the sacred canons. The liturgy is the source.”49 Celebration is also

“the center from which the light of the mystery radiates into the world…. It ‘focuses’ the energies of the transfiguration and applies them to a particular human situation here and now.”50 Corbon uses the term “ecclesial celebrations” to mean “the liturgy proper,”

48 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 117. 49 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 120-21. 50 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 121.

distinguished from “subliturgical gatherings for worship.”51 He also refers to the celebration of the sacraments as “sacramental celebrations.”52

3.2.2. A “Vision of Faith”

Having described Corbon’s theology of liturgy, I will now describe his notion of a

“vision of faith.” Corbon’s “vision of faith” is deeply personalist. He states, “Our guide will be the experience of the Church: an experience at once liturgical and spiritual, personal, and communal and is illumined by the Bible and the Fathers.”53 In this way, it may be said that Corbon sought to channel the collective faith-consciousness of the church. Where Semmelroth’s notion of consciousness concerns revelation in general and the church, Corbon’s notion of vision of faith is first christological and pneumatological:

“‘In the measure of our faith’ … the Spirit will make the body of Christ known to us until it fills our entire field of vision.”54 The energy of the Spirit “purifies our hearts” to see the

“reality” of Christ.55 This is then extended to the church: “Now that the Church has become a reality at Pentecost, the same pattern holds.” Where Semmelroth’s notion of consciousness is more intellectually theological, Corbon’s notion of vision is more spiritually and contemplatively theological. In other words, where Semmelroth seeks comprehension of the divine “idea,” Corbon seeks spiritual discovery of the mystery:

“We will be engaged less in a learned inquiry than in a prayerful discovery of the

51 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 121n. 52 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 131-78. Corbon describes each of the seven sacraments through the methodology of epicletic mystagogy, that is, each sacrament is described in light of its unique epiclesis. 53 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 13. 54 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 106. 55 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 102-3.

wellspring of worship.”56 However, while their approaches are distinct, their ultimate goals and the underpinnings of their notions are much the same.

Just as Semmelroth linked his notion of consciousness with sacrament, so

Corbon’s notion of a “vision of faith” is particularly linked to the sacramental aspect of his theology. The transfiguration of Jesus, for Corbon a sacramental symbol, “was not a change in Jesus. … Christ ‘was transfigured… by manifesting to his disciples what he in fact was; he opened their eyes and gave these blind men sight’. The change is on the side of the disciples.”57 In liturgical celebrations, the “constant” elements, as Corbon calls them, “are signs only because the mystery transfigures them from within; then they serve to lead us into the liturgy.”58 The “transfiguration” of a human person’s “vision”—or a human person’s ability to “see” the “reality” of the body of Christ—“is measured by the faith of the human recipient.”59 For Corbon, “faith” is the meeting of “two freedoms”: humanity “[being] truly ourselves”—human energy—in synergy with “the antecedent energy” of the Holy Spirit.60

The vision of faith is more than visual or intellectual sight, for being a human

“means ‘being a body’, an organic and coherent whole”: “body, soul, and spirit.”61 In describing the celebration of the sacraments, Corbon states, “We must move… from the mystery as revealed to us in the economy of salvation to its concretization in the liturgy.

… When the signs split open they become transparent, and the water can stream out.

56 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 13. 57 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 92. Corbon cites Saint John Damascene, Second Homily on the Transfiguration (PG 96:564C). 58 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 125. Corbon identifies eight “constants”: assembly, ministers, the word of God, the word of the Church, symbolic actions, song, space, and time. 59 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 94. 60 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 108, 136, 138. 61 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 91, 167.

This clarified vision that first reaches to the mystery and then, from within, sheds light on its signs is the vision of faith.”62 When one faithfully responds to the energy of the Spirit, one’s entire being becomes “transfigured”—i.e., one receives the divinizing energies of

Christ, i.e., the Spirit—and one is able to perceive the reality of the body of Christ, particularly through the signs of celebrations.

Since Corbon’s “vision of faith” is connected with his sacramental theology, it may be suggested that his notion is in line with and builds on advances achieved in theology of sacrament that preceded his theology. Very broadly speaking, in the past several centuries, Catholic Church teaching and theology have tended to follow the axiom lex orandi, lex credendi.63 In the 20th c., theologians were able to achieve significant advances in theology of sacrament, particularly christologically and ecclesiologically. Semmelroth was one such theologian.64 However, this was done by, essentially, inverting the axiom: lex credendi, lex orandi. Rather than beginning with the seven sacraments and the liturgical celebrations of the church, theologians started to begin with the mystery of God’s revelation of self as person and found it expressed sacramentally in the person of Jesus Christ and the community of the church.65

These advances in the theology of sacrament were well-developed and established by the time Corbon wrote The Wellspring of Worship, so he was able to draw on and apply them in developing his own theology of liturgy. For instance, in describing the

62 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 136; emphasis mine. 63 Cf. Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 24-25. 64 The number of theologians who could be included here is quite substantial and broadly includes the French ressourcement theologians and the German church renewal theologians. 65 This is in line with the analysis in section 2.2. of Dei Verbum’s account of revelation, which maintains the primacy of divine initiative. Cf. Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 24-25.

liturgy, Corbon begins “with the hidden reality, the liturgical mystery,”66 the lex credendi, and not with “liturgical phenomena,” the lex orandi. However, where Western theologians tend to develop and emphasize sacrament, Corbon tends to develop and emphasize liturgy.67 Therefore, Corbon’s personalist notion of a “vision of faith,” as a sacramentally rooted notion, is to be understood in light of the advances in theology of sacrament. Corbon’s innovations are in then applying this “vision of faith” primarily to liturgy and, secondarily, sacrament is then expressed in light of liturgy.

Semmelroth’s “consciousness” allowed him to and perceive the meaning of

“sacrament,” applied to Christ and the church, in a new light. Similarly, Corbon’s

“vision” allowed him to perceive “liturgy” in a new light. Hence, both of them made the strikingly similar and critically important methodological move of getting outside of the

“business as usual” framework of the traditional seven sacraments and liturgy by drawing a perception of reality as determined by the person of God. This methodological approach allowed them to make the further move of categorizing the church under a single overarching term, Semmelroth’s Ursakrament and Corbon’s heavenly liturgy, and particularly associate the church with either the saving work of Christ or of the Spirit.

Where “consciousness” is the lynchpin of Semmelroth’s principle of the church as

Ursakrament, “vision of faith” may be said to be the lynchpin of Corbon’s theology of liturgy and church: “The Church is as it were the human face of the heavenly liturgy.”68

66 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 24. 67 As observed in section 2.1.1., Corbon situated his theology of liturgy in the stream of Western sacramental theology. 68 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 76.

On the other hand, Corbon’s notion of a “vision of faith” is a novel theological development because it is not a vision of the mystery, rather, it is a vision that begins within the mystery and, from that space, the signs reveal the mystery in a new light. This

“vision” is the most fundamental insight underlying Corbon’s theology in The Wellspring of Worship: “My purpose in this book is to help readers rediscover the unity of liturgy and life in Christ and not be satisfied with the mere parallelism or even divergence they mistakenly think exists between the two. … In this book… we shall be contemplating the mystery of the liturgy from within.”69 For, there is only “the one mystery of the Christ.”70

In terms of sacrament, Corbon states, “Some people imagine that Christ, as sacrament of human salvation, is ‘up there’; and that the Church is another sacrament, ‘down here’; and, finally, that there are the sacraments of the Church, which are celebrated from time to time. This schema, I suspect, is one of the reasons for the divorce of liturgy and life.

No, there is but a single body of Christ that is a great and unique sacrament.”71 Therefore, one of the most critically important insights of Corbon’s theology is that the two “levels” of heaven and earth, or the “two levels in the mystery of Christ,” are “co-inherent,” they

“are within each other.”72

Such a shift in vision that views heaven and earth as co-inherent is not as simple as focusing on the liturgicality or sacramentality of a particular aspect of the faith. Rather, it means being faithfully aware of the permanent and simultaneous inter-con-nectedness of all reality—everyday life, celebration, and Trinitarian communion in heaven—in the

69 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 13, 15. 70 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 204. 71 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 96; emphasis mine. 72 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 63, 81; emphasis mine.

one reality and event of the mystery of Christ; even if at a certain point one is engaged in analyzing one of these more closely than the others.73 Put differently, one may consciously perceive reality from a specific point of view, from within a specific space, so to speak. If one begins with the lex orandi, or the earthly notion of liturgy and sacraments and occupies the space within it, one is within an earthly perspective from which one may look at the mystery, or the lex credendi. But what happens when one’s perception of reality shifts from within an earthly perspective to within the mystery?

What happens when one not only takes the lex credendi as the starting point, but places one’s perspective within it? Further still, what happens when one recognizes that one’s perspective can shift back and forth between that of the earthly and that of the mystery?

Then the perceived, apparent dis-con-nect between earth and the mystery or heaven is shown to be a matter of the placement of one’s perspective. The ability to perceive reality in this way is possible by faithful reception of the person of “the Spirit [who] will make the body of Christ [‘the reality’] known to us until it fills our entire field of vision.”74

3.2.3. Corbon, Vatican II, Liturgical Reform, Sacrosanctum Concilium, and the

Catechism

Having detailed the essential components of Corbon’s theology of liturgy and his

“vision of faith,” I turn now to situating Corbon’s theology in relation to Vatican II,

Sacrosanctum Concilium, postconciliar liturgical reform, and the theology of liturgy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Following the earlier discussion of Rush’s

73 Semmelroth similarly states, “Nor may these two realities, the dynamic reality of the individual sacraments and the static reality of the permanent Church, be separated too much from one another. They belong together because of an inner, supernatural vitality given by the work of Christ.” Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 139. 74 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 106.

hermeneutical principles, in section 1.2.2., I maintain that Corbon’s theology in The

Wellspring of Worship ought to be understood as a reception of Vatican II. This understanding is supported by several pieces of evidence. First, according to Koovayil,

“[Corbon] served as theologian-interpreter to non-Catholic observers at the Second

Vatican Council.”75 Having been present at and experienced the historical event of

Vatican II, Corbon would have learned from the council and this would have shaped his thought. Second, Corbon’s The Wellspring of Worship may be read as engaging the texts of the council. For example, regarding the iconography of Christ’s ascension found in

Eastern and Western churches in the first millennium, Corbon approvingly cites Lumen

Gentium: “The organic way in which Vatican II’s Constitution on the Church is developed is consistent with this iconographic tradition.”76 As Koovayil states, “It is astounding to notice that he tries to explicate the theology of Vatican II in a more remote way standing in the first millennium and using the theology of the undivided tradition.”77

Third, Corbon sought to position his theology of liturgy in response to the liturgical reform—in his words, “the liturgical springtime” or “liturgical renewal”78—being implemented in the wake of the council. Therefore, Corbon’s theology of liturgy is a reception of Vatican II.

As a reception of Vatican II and response to the liturgical reform, Corbon’s theology presents an interpretation of Vatican II and its implementation. Massimo

75 Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 18, 84n4. Koovayil also notes that Corbon met with Yves Congar and Henri de Lubac during the council. 76 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 61n8. This is the only instance in the text of Corbon explicitly and directly engaging the texts of the council. 77 Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 133. 78 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 13, 15.

Faggioli argues for the close connection between Vatican II, its vision of the liturgy, and the liturgical reform: “I assert that a deeper understanding of the new conception of liturgy developed at Vatican II, and in the post-Vatican II liturgical renewal, is the first step toward seeing the profound implications and the real implementation of Vatican II and of seeing what its implementation means.”79 Because of Corbon’s unique geographical-theological orientation as both an Eastern and Western theologian, because of the novelty of his vision of the liturgy, and because the essentials of his theology of liturgy are present in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, his theology ought to be received, in turn, as a key contribution to the meaning of Vatican II. This leads to the necessity of describing the relationship between Corbon’s theology of liturgy and liturgical reform, Sacrosanctum Concilium, and the CCC.

In situating Corbon’s vision of liturgy in relation to the broader reception of the liturgical reform, I identify it as largely in line with the “recatholicising the reform” agenda or model articulated by M. Francis Mannion.80 This model emphasizes the spiritual and aesthetic aspects of liturgy instead of being concerned with further structural change to Catholic worship for the time being: “The recatholicising agenda is primarily committed to a vital recreation of the ethos that has traditionally imbued Catholic liturgy

79 Massimo Faggioli, True Reform: Liturgy and Ecclesiology in Sacrosanctum Concilium (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), 16. 80 Following the theological methodology pioneered by Avery Dulles of delineating various theological “models,” Mannion identifies five distinct agendas regarding liturgical reform: advancing the official reform of the liturgy; restoring the pre-conciliar liturgy; reforming the official reform; inculturating the reform; and recatholicising the reform. Mannion identifies Avery Dulles’s The Catholicity of the Church (1985) as representing the position of the recatholicising model. Regarding Dulles’s text, Mannion states, “When the Church is truly Catholic, it is characterised by a high Trinitarian consciousness; it reaches into the very depths of the human soul; it engages profoundly the spiritual heritage of historic Christianity; and its vision is centred on the glory of God and the coming of the Kingdom.” M. Francis Mannion, “The Catholicity of the Liturgy: Shaping a New Agenda,” in Beyond the Prosaic: Renewing the Liturgical Movement, ed. Caldecott Stratford (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), 11-48, at 24. See also John F. Baldovin, Reforming the Liturgy: A Response to the Critics (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2008).

at its best – an ethos of beauty, majesty, spiritual profundity and solemnity.”81 In parallel,

Corbon states that “leaders of the liturgical renewal” are confused by the distinction between liturgy and liturgical celebration, leading them to “focus their entire effort on the celebration and its forms and expressions, the life of the assembly, the text and movements, the singing and active participation of all. It is necessary, of course, that attention be given to all of these; but sometimes they forget what is being celebrated, as if it could be taken for granted. … The channels have been repaired, indeed, but what about the fountain?”82 Corbon’s theology is concerned with a “rediscovery” of the source—the

“fountain” or “wellspring,” the life of the Trinity—of the mystery of the liturgy.

In considering the relationship between Corbon’s theology of liturgy and that of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, each presents a certain understanding of “liturgy” and, prima facie, the two appear to be contradictory, particularly considering the relationship between “liturgy” and the church. In describing

“liturgy,” SC begins with the economy of salvation (5-6), then describes Christ’s presence and activity in the liturgy (7), discusses the “earthly liturgy” and the “heavenly liturgy” (8), and describes liturgy in the life of the church (9-13). In considering the relationship between the “earthly” and “heavenly” liturgy, SC conveys a sense of distance and distinction between the two: “In the earthly liturgy we take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims” (8). This sense of distinction and distance stands in contrast to

81 Mannion, “Catholicity of the Liturgy,” 27. 82 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 24; emphasis mine. Further, Mannion cites Corbon as an Eastern representative that might be drawn on to advance the recatholicising model. Mannion, “Catholicity of the Liturgy,” 31n77, 47n77.

Corbon’s insistence that heaven and earth are co-inherent. Because heaven and earth co- inhere, Corbon insists that “the heavenly liturgy is not a different liturgy that either parallels or serves as exemplar for the liturgy we think of as ours in earthly time.”83

While according to SC liturgy is the “summit” and “source” of the activity of the church,

“the sacred liturgy is not the church’s only activity,” and, “the spiritual life… is not limited solely to participation in the liturgy” (10, 9, 12).84 In contrast, Corbon states, “At her foundation everything in the Church is liturgy: unity in faith and communion in love, ministries and mission, prayer and the sacred canons. The liturgy is the source.”85

How are the two notions of liturgy to be reconciled? It is a matter of difference in perception of reality that determines the different notions of liturgy. The perception of reality assumed by SC is such that liturgy is taken primarily as “earthly” (at least from the perspective of the church). From within the space of an “earthly” understanding of liturgy, SC looks at the “heavenly liturgy,” almost as if at a distant and foreign object. To make this point clearer, Baldovin espouses a similar perspective, “The heaven to which

[Russian Orthodox theologian Alexander] Schmemann is referring is not a place but a dimension of reality. Perhaps it could be compared to the parallel worlds constructed by writers like C. S. Lewis in The Chronicles of Narnia or Philip Pullman’s trilogy, His

83 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 62n. 84 According to Faggioli, “SC 8… is where the liturgical constitution becomes visibly unaffected by the accusations of ‘panliturgism,’ that is, of absorbing the whole life of the Church in its liturgical dimension. SC 9 is a clear statement against the accusation of ‘panliturgism’ moved by the opponents of the liturgical movement well before Vatican II.” Faggioli, True Reform, 70. Without explicitly using the term “panliturgism,” Jungmann conveys the same idea: “In the next articles, 9-13, the relation of the liturgy to the totality of ecclesial life… is elucidated with a calm sense of reality. This elucidation was recognized to be necessary in view of exaggerated assessments of the liturgy on the one hand, as if they were identical with the life of the Church, and on the other hand, in view of activistic misunderstanding, which intended to ascribe to it only a marginal function.” Josef Andreas Jungmann, “Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy,” in Vorgrimler, trans. Lalit Adolphus, 1:1-87, at 14-15. 85 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 120-21.

Dark Materials, in which, as if through a veil, we get a glimpse of an alternative world.”86 For SC, “liturgy” is primarily a ritual, a “sacred action” or “public worship”

(7). In other words, even while beginning with the economy of salvation, SC operates within the schema of lex orandi, lex credendi.

In Corbon’s “vision of faith,” as discussed above, there is no such distinction or parallel between the “earthly liturgy” and the “heavenly liturgy,” in fact, “liturgy” is the one mystery of the event of Christ actualized by the Spirit, which may be expressed in different forms. Corbon’s vision of liturgy transcends the limitations of occupying the space of the “earthly.” Neither is there the danger of the mystery or the heavenly becoming detached from the lived experience of human persons because the one liturgy

“is celebrated at certain moments but lived at every moment.”87 Furthermore, Koovayil writes about the “harmony and interdependence of both lex orandi and lex credendi” in

Corbon’s overall writings.88 Thus, for Corbon, there is no issue in identifying the essence, life, and activity of the church with liturgy. Both SC and Corbon put forward legitimate versions of the one Christian vision of “liturgy,” and both may find ample legitimation in the “sole deposit of faith” (DV 10).

As I explained in section 2.1.3., Corbon’s vision of liturgy is present in the

Catechism of the Catholic Church. According to Koovayil, Corbon not only wrote the fourth part, he also served as an editor for the entire work, he was “an influential advisor”

86 Baldovin, “Future Present,” 21; emphasis mine. Baldovin cites Alexander Schmemman, Introduction to Liturgical Theology, trans. A. E. Moorhouse, 2nd ed. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1975); idem, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom, trans. P. Kachur (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1988). 87 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 204. 88 Koovayil notes that Corbon follows the traditional order of the axiom, lex orandi, lex credendi, in “L’Esprit Saint dans la liturgie byzantine.” Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 238-39.

for Part Two, “The Celebration of the Christian Mystery,” and “he was asked to oversee

Part Two as a whole.”89 Here, then, two questions arise. First, how are Corbon’s contributions to the CCC to be understood? Koovayil provides an answer,

Since it is promulgated by the Pope, its value cannot be reduced to the views of individual theologians or theological schools. … Corbon’s theology is thoroughly built upon the rock foundation of the deposit of faith of the Church. He did not add anything to it but took from it and presented it in a different way, in a manner acceptable to both East and West. Thus, the ideas of Corbon reflected in the texts of the Catechism are already in the patrimony of the Church, specifically of the early Church.90

A second question may be considered: Does the “vision” of the CCC first reach to the mystery and then, from within, shed light on the celebration of the liturgy or is it placed within an earthly notion of liturgy? Prima facie, the CCC allows for both versions of the liturgy put forward by SC and Corbon at the same time. That is, ample legitimation for both versions may be found in the content. The CCC states, “Liturgical catechesis aims to initiate people into the mystery of Christ (It is ‘mystagogy.’) by proceeding from the visible to the invisible, from the sign to the thing signified, from the ‘sacraments’ to the

‘mysteries.’ … This Catechism… will present what is fundamental and common to the whole Church in the liturgy as mystery and as celebration…” (1075). The CCC is here saying that “liturgical catechesis” proceeds from the lex orandi to the lex credendi, but then it says that it will begin with the mystery of the liturgy and then proceed to celebration of the liturgy. This stands in contrast to Corbon’s approach, “We cannot take the liturgical signs as our sole starting point and conclude to an unknown signified.”91 A

89 Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 163, 165. 90 Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 164-65. 91 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 136.

reconciliation of the two notions of liturgy would be difficult to articulate strictly based on the content of Part Two of the CCC.

Therefore, it is critical to understand the content of Part Two in conjunction with its structure and headings, and in light of the structure and content of the CCC as a whole. For instance, the section on the liturgy (as both mystery and as celebration) is titled “The Sacramental Economy.” The CCC states, “It is therefore important first to explain this ‘sacramental dispensation’…. The nature and essential features of liturgical celebrations will then appear more clearly” (1076; emphasis mine). Even while allowing for an earthly conception of liturgy and quoting at length from SC, the CCC attempts to influence the perspective of the receiver toward understanding liturgical celebrations in light of the mystery. Ultimately, as with any text, the CCC and its meaning must be received. The reception of the CCC is determined by the perception of reality of the receivers, and their perception of reality depends on the space within which they place their perspectives, whether consciously or unconsciously. Still, through the conjunction of its content, structure, and headings, the CCC may be seen to clearly indicate that the earthly notion of liturgy ought to be grasped from within the mystery of the liturgy; thereby offering attentive and aware receivers the opportunity to approach the liturgy faithfully and consciously first from within the mystery and then understand the celebration of the liturgy more clearly.

In this chapter, I have described the essential points of the theologies of Corbon and Semmelroth. Semmelroth’s fundamental methodological consciousness led him to articulate the unifying principle of the church as Ursakrament. Semmelroth’s sacramental ecclesiology had a clear impact on the ecclesiology of Vatican II, particularly Lumen

Gentium. Corbon’s “vision of faith” led him to understand the liturgy first and foremost as the event of the mystery of Christ. In turn, Corbon insists on the co-inherence of earth and heaven, meaning that at all times and in all places the heavenly liturgy is suffusing earthly existence, especially in liturgical, ecclesial celebrations of the sacraments. Where

Semmelroth understands the most fundamental essence and nature of the church to be sacramental, Corbon understands the most fundamental essence and nature of the church to be liturgical. Where Semmelroth’s unifying, structuring sacramental ecclesiology found expression in Lumen Gentium, Corbon’s Eastern theology of liturgy remarkably found acceptance and authoritative legitimation within Western Catholicism in the

Catechism. I turn now to the task of comparing, complementing, and synthesizing the theologies of Semmelroth and Corbon.

CHAPTER 4

THE TRINITARIAN FORM OF THE CHURCH: CHURCH AS LITURGY-

SACRAMENT OF THE TRINITY

The task of this final chapter is to bring together and synthesize the background points, insights, and principles articulated in the prior chapters. In doing so, I first draw a comparison between the theologies of Corbon and Semmelroth by demonstrating that each employs distinct and specific methodology, which are centrally important to their theologies, and these methodologies may be compared. The comparison I draw indicates a way toward a synthesis of their theologies. Then, I describe the tensions between their theologies and suggest how they can be seen as complementary. In the final section, I will synthesize the Western, sacramental, and christological theology of Semmelroth with

Corbon’s Eastern, liturgical, and pneumatological-trinitarian theology in articulating the trinitarian form of the church: the principle of the church as liturgy-sacrament. In conclusion, I seek to demonstrate that the concept of the church as the priestly people of

God, by virtue of having been initiated into the church through baptism and confirmation, is the communal expression of the principle of the church as liturgy-sacrament.

4.1. A Comparison

In this section, I draw a comparison between the theologies of Semmelroth and

Corbon based on a similar, central, and methodological move made by each. I will first explore Corbon’s notion of a threefold liturgical synergy of Spirit and church and demonstrate that his notion corresponds to the threefold function of sacrament articulated

by Thomas Aquinas. This threefold function of a sacrament is, in other words, what a sacrament brings about. I will then explore Semmelroth’s method of describing the concept of the church as Ursakrament in “Um die Einheit des Kirchenbegriffes” through the threefold terminological distinction of a sacrament. This threefold terminological distinction demonstrates what a sacrament brings together. Thus, these two central methodological moves of each theologian are distinct but related.

4.1.1. Corbon’s Threefold Synergy of Spirit and Church

Regarding the functions of sacrament, Aquinas states, “As a sign a sacrament has a threefold function. It is at once commemorative of that which has gone before, namely the Passion of Christ, and demonstrative of that which is brought about in us through the

Passion of Christ, namely grace, and prognostic, i.e. a foretelling of future glory.”1 A sacrament holds a threefold function corresponding to past, present, and future.

Participation in a sacrament makes one present with Christ through commemoration, actualizes Christ in oneself through demonstration, and gives one a foretaste of communion with God through prognosis.2

Corbon articulates a threefold synergy of Spirit and church: a synergy manifesting the body of Christ, a synergy transforming human persons into the body of Christ, and a synergy of communion between God and humanity. Corbon states, “The light of the transfiguration is single in its mystery but threefold in its radiation, according to the three times of the economy of salvation that the body of Christ experiences.”3 In other words,

1 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ, vol. 56, The Sacraments: 3a. 60-65, ed. David John Bourke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), III.60.3. Cf. ST, III.73.4. 2 Cf. Kevin W. Irwin, The Sacraments: Historical Foundations and Liturgical Theology (New York/Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2016), 99-100; Baldovin, “Future Present.” 3 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 101.

the central idea of Corbon’s theology of liturgy in The Wellspring of Worship, his threefold synergy of Spirit and church, corresponds to past, present, and future. This threefold synergy of the Holy Spirit and the church directly corresponds to the threefold function of sacrament articulated by Aquinas. Corbon does not provide the source(s) of his idea, but the resemblance is unmistakable meaning that even if Corbon did not derive the notion from Aquinas, the comparison holds.4

Corbon’s synergy of manifestation corresponds to the past or the fullness of time.

In this synergy, the energy of the Holy Spirit manifests the body of Christ to the church through a commemoration or anamnesis of the event of Christ. In memorializing the event of Christ, the person of Christ is manifested and “we then become… contemporary with the hour of Jesus,” the Paschal Mystery of Christ.5 Through this synergy, the church is prepared to receive and “see” Christ when it commits to receiving the Spirit, who purifies hearts.

Corbon’s synergy of transformation corresponds to the present or last times. The energy of the Spirit demonstrates or actualizes Christ for the church in the present time.

In this synergy, the energy of “the Holy Spirit accomplishes in us the passage of Christ from the present world to the life of the Father,” and, in doing so, the church is

4 According to Koovayil, “The triple-role of the Holy Spirit is vivid in the epiclesis of the liturgy of Basil which reads: ‘[We]...beseech Thee and implore Thee, in the good pleasure of Thy goodness, that Thy Holy Spirit may come upon us, and upon these present gifts offered unto Thee, and bless them, and sanctify them, and offer them.’ Corbon claims that his vision of the threefold energy of the Holy Spirit in the Eucharist has its roots in this epicletic prayer.” The Eucharistic Prayer of Basil, as described by Koovayil, does not give a sense of past, present, and future. In any case, the comparison I make holds. Koovayil, Corbon’s Theology, 125-26; the emphasis is hers. For the Eucharistic Prayer of Basil of Caesarea, Koovayil appears to cite, Corbon, “L’Esprit Saint dans la liturgie Byzantine,” Proche Orient Chretien 48 (1998), 38- 62. For Corbon’s claim she cites, Corbon, “La crise d’dentité du Prêtre et la tradition orientale: Eléments de réflexion – II. Principes de discernement,” Proche Orient Chretien 22 (1972), 50. 5 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 101. Cf. CCC 1099-103.

transformed “into the glorious body of the Lord,” i.e., the Spirit divinizes humanity.6 In this synergy the church appeals the Father to send the Spirit to transform them into

Christ, that is, this synergy is particularly associated with epiclesis.

Corbon’s synergy of communion corresponds to prognosis, foretaste of future glory, or the fulfillment or consummation of time. In this synergy, the energy of the Spirit and of the church “are bound together in the closest possible synergy because they entrust themselves to one another in a single mission of love.”7 It is from this synergy that the faithful of the church, the “sacrament of the communion between God and men,” having been baptized and confirmed, look with hope to the future, share in the priesthood of

Christ, and receive their mission to bring the Spirit to the world that humanity might be brought into communion with God.8

When the “energy” of the humanity of the church receives and is united to the energy of the Spirit, there is a threefold synergy of divinization expressed as liturgy: the

Spirit manifests Christ to the church, the Spirit actualizes Christ in the church, and the

Spirit gives a foretaste of communion with the Trinity. Hence, for Corbon the church is essentially liturgy, “In the Church the Holy Spirit, our humanity, and the humanity of the incarnate Word are inseparably united. It is this ‘energy’ of the New Covenant that is henceforth the ‘liturgy’ and gives existence to the Church…. The liturgy is therefore not a component of the mystery of the Church; rather, the Church is the liturgy as this presently exists in our mortal humanity. The Church is as it were the human face of the

6 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 107, 102. Cf. CCC 1104-7. 7 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 102. Cf. CCC 1108-9. 8 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 109. Corbon argues for the inseparability of baptism and confirmation.

heavenly liturgy.”9 When the members of the church faithfully cooperate or synergize in the liturgy with the energies of the Spirit, the Spirit brings about within the church the fullness of the salvation of Christ as simultaneously past, present and future.

4.1.2. Semmelroth’s Threefold Aspects of the Church as Sacrament

In the history of theology, it has been common practice to describe a sacrament as a sign (sacramentum) of a sacred thing. Augustine was the first to use the term res to identify the reality signified by the sacramental sign. Since about the twelfth c., the term res et sacramentum, both reality and sign, has been used to designate both the sacramental sign and reality taken together.10 The sacramentum tantum, meaning sacramental sign only, is the visible, tangible reality that serves to signify a reality present beyond itself; e.g., in the celebration of the eucharist bread and wine are sacramental signs. The res et sacramentum is a symbolic reality immediately signified by the sacramentum and which signifies, in turn, the ultimately signified res; e.g., the body of

Christ is signified by bread and the wine and in turn signifies grace. The res tantum, the reality only, is the reality ultimately signified but which does not signify anything further; i.e., grace or communion with God.11 The threefold terminological distinction of a sacrament continues to be used by contemporary theologians.12

9 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 75-76. 10 Cf. Irwin, The Sacraments, 81-82, 106. 11 For instance, Aquinas says of the Eucharist, “There are three things we can think of in this sacrament: that which is the sign only (sacramentum tantum), the bread and the wine; that which is thing and sign (res et sacramentum)[, the true body of Christ (scilicet corpus Christi verum)]; that which is thing only (res tantum), namely, the spiritual effect [grace].” Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ, vol. 58, The Eucharistic Presence, ed. William Barden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), III.73.6. The text does not render an English translation of “scilicet corpus Christi verum.” 12 E.g., Mark Searle, Called to Participate: Theological, Ritual, and Social Perspectives, ed. Barbara Schmich Searle and Anne Y. Koester (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2006).

In “Um die Einheit des Kirchenbegriffes,” Semmelroth draws on the threefold aspects of a sacrament to describe how his conception of the church as Ursakrament works. He states, “Three things pertain to (gehören) the occurrence (Zustandekommen) of a sacrament. … A genuine symbol or sign [sacramentum]…. [A] token reality… made by

God a guarantee and cause of the divine grace symbolically represented in the sign itself

[res]. And finally the human person must bring to the symbolic sign that disposition whereby the notion ‘reception of the sacrament’ will be given its full meaning [res et sacramentum].”13 Semmelroth links each aspect of a sacrament with a different ecclesial notion in order to demonstrate that each notion corresponds to a particular aspect of the one sacramental reality of the church.

The first ecclesial notion that Semmelroth discusses is people of God, which corresponds to sacramentum. Semmelroth states, “The Church so conceived is nothing less than the outward sign of a tremendous sacrament.”14 As the people of God, the church is the “meeting point” of encounter between God and humanity, it is the

“context,” “sign,” location of human salvation. As a sacramental sign, the church “must necessarily point beyond herself, or better, point through her visible exterior into a hidden divine interior of which she is the incarnation and expression.”15 The church has salvation

“somehow imprinted (bildhaft dargestellt) in her visible structure.” The “work” of Christ

“is physically represented” in the church as the meeting of two “poles,” a divine-human encounter.

13 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 140. Translation amended. 14 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 141. 15 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 142.

By his work, Christ initiated and enabled the “redemptive dialogue” between God and humanity and this occurs in two phases. In the first phase, the Word is sent by the

Father, there is an encounter between the Word and Mary, and Mary receives God’s

Word. The second is an ongoing phase or dialogue wherein Christ “utters with His sacrifice the response of humanity to the Father,” but humanity must receive and respond, as Mary did, and “make Christ’s sacrifice their own.” Semmelroth thus found

“imprinted” in “the life of the Church” two “poles,” “which join in the work of redemption”: “And the essential life of the Church consists in the two poles, the one representing Christ, the other representing humanity, meeting one another on their own account.”16 In an anticipation of Vatican II’s universal call to holiness, Semmelroth locates this polar encounter in the church in the meeting between the priest, representing

Christ, and the community, representing Mary.17 In the life of the people of the church is to be found imprinted as a sacramental sign the saving work of Christ.

The second ecclesial notion is the mystical body of Christ, which corresponds to res, or as Semmelroth puts it, “the salutary power of this sign.”18 The mystical body of

Christ image of the church represents the real mystical union with Christ, “a supernatural union which is not the work of man, but which is infused as the grace of God into the human will to effect a meeting.”19 Semmelroth states, “The ‘Mystical Body of Christ’ directs our attention more to the intangible reality of grace…; it urges us to consider that intangible substance with which God gives a new spirit to the human community of the

16 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 143. 17 Cf. Doyle, “Otto Semmelroth, SJ.” 18 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 143. 19 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 144.

Church, constituting it thereby a ‘mystical body.’” The church is “the embodiment of grace, the mystical Body of Christ Himself, and in a certain way the God-Manhood

(Gottmenschentum) of Christ, the archetype and model (Urbild) of all sacramentality, extended in space and time to all men.”20 The church is the graced community signified by its constitution as the people of God.

The church as the bride of Christ is the third notion of the church discussed by

Semmelroth, and corresponds to res et sacramentum. Because the church is the place of divine-human encounter, according to Semmelroth, “The visible sacramental sign is the exterior form of an inner reality which is a harmony of two poles.”21 One “pole” corresponds to the person of God and the other to human persons. Jesus Christ has effected the divine guarantee of encounter: “It is then infallibly certain that God will not deny to man who comes to him in the sacrifice of Christ that return sacrifice of himself which we call grace. This is not because God is obligated to us men, but rather to his Son whom he caused to become man in fulfilment of a promise and whose sacrifice he has accepted as a pledge for us all.”22 Therefore, humanity must also bring “a consciously open attitude before God” and thereby bring about the divine-human encounter.23 Hence, the image of the church as a bride: “What God gives to the Church makes this society of men into the Mystical Body of Christ. And what the human persons give, if they are in the Church in the full sense implied by membership, makes the Church a bride which

20 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 144-45. 21 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 145. 22 Otto Semmelroth, Church and Sacrament, trans. Emily Schossberger (Notre Dame, IN: Fides Publishers, 1965 [German orig. 1959]), 98. 23 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 145.

encounters the Lord in love.”24 The church is called to take up a consciously open, receptive attitude to God’s saving work that its visible reality might actually signify and effect the grace of God. Having been imprinted with the saving work of Christ, the church signifies the divine-human encounter, which in turn signifies the grace of God.

Each of these ecclesial notions, people of God, mystical body of Christ, and bride of Christ, point to a different aspect of the one reality of the sacrament that is the church.

Semmelroth would later articulate the unifying function of the church as sacrament as encompassing a diversity of partial notions of the church in his commentaries on LG.25

The method of applying the threefold distinction of a sacrament to the church may also be employed to demonstrate that the many, diverse, and partial notions of the church each correspond in some way to the work of Christ. I will draw on Semmelroth’s methodology below to articulate a threefold synergy of Christ and the church.

I have demonstrated a comparison between Corbon’s threefold synergy of Spirit and church and Aquinas’s threefold function of a sacrament and between Semmelroth’s concept of the church as Ursakrament and the threefold distinction of a sacrament. On the basis of these comparisons, I suggest that the work or energy of Christ, in and through the church, may be described as a constitution, that is, a bringing together, and may be expressed by the term “sacrament,” and that the work or energy of the Holy Spirit, in and through the church, is an actualization, a bringing about, and expressed by the term

“liturgy.” I next turn to demonstrating that the theologies of Semmelroth and Corbon are complementary before articulating a synthesis of their theologies.

24 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 145-46. 25 See 60n17.

4.2. Complementing the Theologies of Semmelroth and Corbon

Whereas Semmelroth’s theology may be seen to emphasize the sacramental, christological, and protological aspects of the church, Corbon’s theology emphasizes the, liturgical, pneumatological, and eschatological aspects of revelation and the church.26

How are the two theologies to be understood as complementary? I first turn to demonstrating that Semmelroth’s theology is inherently open to being complemented by a liturgical, eschatological, and pneumatological ecclesiology. I then articulate the emphases and tendencies in Corbon’s The Wellspring of Worship and suggest how these might be complemented.

In his 1957 article, Semmelroth described the church as a “static,” “permanent,” and “enduring” “reality,” but he also said of the church as sacrament, “This principle functions like the soul, which gives living unity to the multiplicity of the human body by permeating and unifying all the sundry parts of the body.”27 It was this idea of the church as a sort of living organism, or body, that was taken up in his 1959 Church and

Sacrament and further developed. There, he identifies the church, “living and real,” and its saving actions as actualized by the “life functions” of the dynamic set of relationships within the church.28 The life functions and relationships of the church, as the sacramental body of Christ, are actualized by all three divine persons:

Since the Holy Spirit, in the power of grace, animates the body of the Church as a soul, therefore man’s entering into the Church anew in the sacraments—if he brings to the encounter the proper disposition—is at the same time an immersion

26 Brian Flanagan has noted a connection between pneumatology and eschatology and between christology and protology, and though he doesn’t explicitly use the term “protology,” it nonetheless conveys his point. Brian P. Flanagan, “The Word and Spirit Co-Instituting the Church,” in Cambridge Companion, Gaillardetz, 196-210, at 206-7. 27 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 137. As seen in section 3.1.2., this statement is grounded in Semmelroth’s notion of “consciousness.” 28 Semmelroth, Church and Sacrament, 36.

into the living union with God, that is, into grace. … The Church is God’s will to save, made visible by the institution of Christ. The individual sacramental acts gather man into the life sphere of the Church. Once brought in, man receives the grace-full life of the community with the Triune God, who exists in the Church as its life principle. As the source sacrament, the Church is a sign of the gracious God, as the body is a sign of the soul that animates it. When one is admitted into the body of the Church, he immerses himself in the life of God which permeates the whole body of the Church, as was demonstrated by storm and fire on the day of Pentecost.29

Christ protologically established the church but, ever since Pentecost, the life-giving, vivifying power of the Spirit actualizes the church as the body of Christ by continually re-presenting Christ to the people of God, especially in sacramental celebration. In other words, the Trinity is the “life principle” of the church. Hence, I draw on Corbon’s theology of liturgy to supply the pneumatological, vivifying element actualizing the “life functions” of the church.

The interconnectedness of liturgy, pneumatology, and eschatology is deeply rooted in Corbon’s theology. It is my assessment that this interconnectedness is largely the result of the impact and weight carried by Corbon’s central idea of the triple synergy of the Holy Spirit and the church. This assessment is based as much on the intratextual structure of The Wellspring of Worship as it is on its content. For instance, in chapter eight, “The Holy Spirit and the Church in the Liturgy,” at the very end of Part One,

Corbon states, “It is the liturgy with its threefold process of deification [Part One] that we are now going to consider in celebration [Part Two] and in life [Part Three].”30 The

Wellspring of Worship builds toward and flows from Corbon’s pneumatological-ecclesial synergy.

29 Semmelroth, Church and Sacrament, 86. 30 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 112.

For Corbon, “The full realism of the liturgy and of our divinization has its source in this synergy [of the Spirit and the Church].”31 Hence, the church, the “embodiment” of the liturgy, is brought about on the day of Pentecost by the outpouring and kenosis of the

Spirit, ushering in the last times and making the church “essentially eschatological.”32

The weight and impact of Corbon’s pneumatological-ecclesial synergy gives the impression that Christ is left to give the Spirit and be given by the Spirit to humanity:

“How does the synergy of the Spirit and the Bride act in the sacraments being celebrated so that we experience the transfiguration of the body of Christ?”33 But is not “Christ always present in his church” in a direct and personal way so that he “always associates the church with himself” (SC 7)? While Corbon does recognize a christological synergy, the idea is only used to explain the nature of Jesus Christ as “true God and true man”34 and remains undeveloped.

Further, Corbon emphasizes liturgy over sacrament. For instance, he says, “The sacramentality of the Church means that in her everything is the joint energy of the Spirit and of the humanity that he transfigures. This synergy constitutes the liturgy.”35 This statement, by itself, is accurate and not problematic until it is considered in light of another statement: “At her foundation everything in the Church is liturgy.”36 Taken together, these statements mean that the church is fundamentally liturgical, ecclesial sacramentality explains or mediates ecclesial liturgicality, and, therefore, ecclesial

31 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 18. 32 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 74, 78. 33 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 131. 34 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 100n. 35 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 112. 36 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 120-21.

sacramentality is not given equal weight compared with ecclesial liturgicality. This tendency to emphasize liturgy over sacrament might be balanced somewhat by noting that one of the primary ecclesial images used by Corbon is body of Christ, which is sacrament. Corbon, however, identifies the economy of salvation only with liturgy: from the “moment” of Christ’s resurrection “the economy of salvation takes the form of liturgy,” and from the “moment” of Pentecost “the economy has become liturgy.”37 Thus,

Corbon’s tendency to emphasize the liturgy may be identified as liturgo-centrism. This has significant consequences for the rest of his theology, including emphasizing his pneumatology and eschatology, particularly concerning the church.

To make this last point clearer, Corbon’s tendency toward liturgo-centrism leads him to express a relationship between liturgy and sacrament that, if taken to an extreme, could result in a subordination of sacrament to liturgy. An analogy may be drawn on: the identification of the Spirit as the Spirit of Christ or the identification of Christ as the

Christ of the Spirit is correct, but these identifications lend themselves to certain emphases, which may lead to effectively subordinating one to the other. Corbon is correct in saying that sacrament mediates the pneumatological-ecclesial synergy that is liturgy, he is correct in identifying the economy of salvation with liturgy, and he is correct in emphasizing the eschatology of the church. However, since the central idea of Corbon’s theology is the triple synergy of Spirit and church, a balance and a synthesis may be reached by articulating a comparable notion of the synergy of Christ and the church carrying equal weight. The resulting synthesis may be expressed as the trinitarian form of

37 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 56, 17.

the mystery of the church: the church as Christ’s sacrament and the Spirit’s liturgy, the church as liturgy-sacrament. It is to the articulation of this synthesis that I now turn.

4.3. A Synthesis: The Trinitarian Form of the Church

4.3.1. The Fundamental Methodology: Consciousness Within the Mystery

Since the synthesis to be effected is distantly and dimly intelligible within the space of an earthly notion of liturgy and sacraments, I draw on Semmelroth’s notion of

“consciousness” and Corbon’s notion of “vision of faith” in turning to a personalist perception of reality. That is, a perception that takes as its starting point the conviction that reality is determined by the mystery of the person of God as Trinity. Such a perception of reality opens the way for God, revealed in the unfolding of the economy of salvation and manifested in and through the church, to dialogue with attentively listening human persons. Hence, the underlying methodology of this final, synthetic section may be described as consciousness reaching to the mystery, and from within that space, seeking a deeper understanding of the nature and essence of the church.

At Vatican II, Cardinal Ernesto Ruffini put forward a challenge to the concept of the church as sacrament on the basis that it conflicts with the proper sense of “sacrament” reserved for the seven sacraments.38 However, to say that the church is a sacrament is not to say that there is an eighth sacrament over and against the seven sacraments, for “there is but a single body of Christ that is a great and unique sacrament,”39 and it is from the

“inner, supernatural vitality” of the work of Christ that the church and the seven sacraments belong together.40 Nor is the notion of the church as liturgy an exaggeration

38 Doyle, “Advance of the Church,” 67. 39 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 96. 40 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 139.

locating the church either in heaven or on earth and thereby disconnecting the experiences of the people of God from the mystery of God. On the contrary, to say that the church is liturgy is precisely to recognize that “the ‘kingdom of heaven’ is already here in our midst and within us.”41 Further, church as liturgy does not minimize or do away with the need for proclamation of the Gospel, fostering faith in Jesus Christ, catechesis, prayer, witness etc. Rather, the conception of the church as liturgy is precisely the recognition that all these events of celebration and life are inter-con-nected by the power of the Holy Spirit as manifestations of the one Christ event. Understanding the principle of the church as liturgy-sacrament depends on the act of faithfully, consciously placing one’s perspective within the mystery of God’s revelation through the persons of

Christ and the Spirit.

4.3.2. Distinguishing Between “Liturgy” and “Sacrament”

If the concept of the church as liturgy-sacrament is dimly intelligible or comprehensible on the level of an “earthly” notion of liturgy and sacrament, then a new articulation of the meaning of liturgy and sacrament should be drawn from within the mystery. As Corbon saw, with his “vision of faith,” “liturgy” primarily expresses the event of the mystery of Christ. However, because of his tendency toward liturgo- centrism, “sacrament” needs to be properly distinguished from “liturgy.” I draw on

Corbon’s expression of Christ’s body as “the reality” in identifying “sacrament” as primarily expressing the reality of the mystery of Christ.

To return to the analysis of Dei Verbum in section 2.2.2., divine revelation is the dialogical relationship initiated by God, whereby humanity is invited into relationship.

41 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 62-63n11.

The relationship between God and humanity rises to the level of communion in and through the church. Salvation consist in communion between divine and human persons.

Divine-human relationship is summed up as the mystery of Christ. The mystery of Christ is expressed through sacrament and liturgy. Therefore, “sacrament” expresses the reality of divine-human relationship while “liturgy” expresses the event of divine-human relationship. The sacramental work or energy of the person of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, constitutes, brings together, God and humanity in relationship.42 When human persons cooperate with Christ, the reality of divine-human relationship is sacramentally signified. Hence, sacrament expresses Christ’s energies bringing humanity into relationship with God. Because the Christ-mystery is brought about through the interconnection of word and deed, it is brought about as an event and expressed as liturgy. In liturgy, the energy of the person of the Spirit, indwelling human persons and the human community of the church, actualizes the event of the relationship between God and humanity. In this way, liturgy expresses the Spirit’s energies bringing humanity into relationship with God.

When human persons respond in the faith of the church to the sacramental energies of Christ and the energies of the Spirit in liturgy, the reality and event of divine- human relationship is constituted and actualized, effecting divine-human communion.

Sacrament and liturgy, as the twofold mode of expression of divine revelation, are co- principles of God’s revelation of self as Trinity and, thereby, co-principles of the church.

42 From here on, when appropriate, I adopt Corbon’s use of the terms “energy” and “synergy,” rather than the corresponding terms “work” and “cooperation.” Semmelroth’s theology is in agreement with this move because he describes the term “cooperation” in light of the patristic term “synergos,” i.e., “synergy.” Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype, 64.

Taken together, both liturgy and sacrament express the new relationship of God with humanity in and through the church. Having described the personalist notion of consciousness within the mystery and proposed distinct meanings of liturgy and sacrament, I turn now to articulating the concepts of the church as sacrament of Christ and as liturgy of the Spirit.

4.3.3. Co-Principles of the Mystery of the Church: Church as Liturgy-Sacrament of

Trinitarian Communion

I now apply Semmelroth’s methodology of distinguishing three aspects of the church as sacrament in articulating a threefold synergy of Christ and the church, which comparably corresponds to the threefold synergy of Spirit and church articulated by

Corbon. Where Corbon describes the energies of the Spirit as having the effects of manifestation, transformation, and communication, I suggest that the energies of Christ have the effects of signification, mediation, and realization. According to Semmelroth, the church is constituted as a sacrament because of Christ, “She is the power, founded by

Christ.”43 Having been founded by the protological, saving energy of Christ, the church has been established or constituted by “an inner, supernatural vitality given by the work of Christ.”44 Christ, the archetype (Urbild)45 of all sacramentality, has sacramentally constituted the reality of the church by his redeeming energy.

Christ’s constitution of the church as sacrament, flowing from the total unity of his personhood as God-human, is one reality but his energy is threefold. The first constitutive energy of Christ is that of signification, constituting the sacramentum of the

43 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 137. 44 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 139; emphasis mine. 45 For Semmelroth’s theology of typology, see Semmelroth, Mary, Archetype.

church: Christ “imprinted,” “typed,” or “pictured” (bildhaft dargestellt) his redeeming energy onto the visible reality of the church, the people of God, thereby constituting the church as a sacramental sign. The second constitutive energy of Christ is that of mediation, constituting the res et sacramentum of the church. Having imprinted the people of God as a sacramental sign, the church has been constituted by the energy of

Christ as his body, as the place of encounter with God. In the body of Christ, the encounter of the divine-human “poles” has been made possible by the mediatory energy of Christ, who secured the divine guarantee of encounter, and this encounter occurs when humanity takes up a disposition of faith. The third constitutive energy of Christ is that of realizing the church as a sacramental sign of the ultimate reality, the res. Christ has constituted the church as the community of the grace of God: “The Church, above all, leads men to grace by incorporating them into herself as members of a Body which lives by the breath of the Holy Spirit. For she is, as a society founded by Christ, herself the embodiment of grace, the mystical body of Christ Himself, and in a certain way the God-

Manhood (Gottmenschentum) of Christ, the archetype and model of all sacramentality, extended in space and time to all men.”46

When the human energy of the church is united to the Christ’s energy in synergy, the result is a threefold divinization, expressed as a sacramental reality: by the synergy of signification, the church becomes a sacramental sign; by the synergy of mediation, the church becomes the body of Christ; and by the synergy of realization, the church becomes the community of the grace of God. The church becomes the sacramental

Christ-reality. The constituting, divinizing work is Christ’s with the human energy of the

46 Semmelroth, “Integral Idea,” 144-45.

church cooperating in synergy with Christ’s energy, but the ultimate signified reality is the person of God. The church is Christ’s sacrament of communion with God. This is what is meant by the concept of the church as sacrament of Christ.

Having become the sacramental-Christ reality, humanity is led to and enabled to enter into relationship, into communion, with God by the energies of Christ in and through the church. By the synergy of signification, the church has been imprinted as the image of Christ, enabling humanity to encounter the person of Christ. By the synergy of mediation, having become the body of Christ, the church is the place wherein humanity enters into relationship with Christ. By the synergy of realization, having been imprinted in the image of Christ’s body, the church is the community of divine-human relationship, a communion of people by the grace of the Trinity. The church as sacrament expresses the reality of Christ’s redeeming energies bringing humanity into relationship with God.

Since Pentecost, the Holy Spirit has indwelled the church, bringing humanity into relationship with God through the liturgy, the actualization of the mystery of Christ. As

Corbon held, liturgy—whether heavenly, celebrated, or lived—is the synergy of the energies of the Holy Spirit and humanity in the body of Christ, the church, eventing the

Christ mystery. The result of the synergy of the Spirit and the church is a threefold process of divinization, expressed as liturgy: in the first synergy, the Spirit manifests

Christ to the church by a commemoration of the paschal mystery; in the second synergy, when the church calls on the Father to send the Spirit (epiclesis) the Spirit effects the passage of Christ in the church transforming it into the body of Christ; and in the third synergy, the Spirit enables the church to participate in the communion of the Triune God.

By cooperating in synergy with the energies of the Spirit in the liturgy, the church

100

becomes the Christ event, that is, the event of human communion with God. In the liturgy, the actualizing, divinizing work is the Spirit’s with the energy of the church cooperating with that of the Spirit, and what is ultimately brought about, evented, is communion with God. The church is the Spirit’s liturgy of God. This is what is meant by the concept of the church as the liturgy of the Spirit.

The church, as both an event by the Spirit and a reality by Christ, is already a communion of persons while not yet the fulfilment of communion. The church is Christ’s sacramental reality and the Spirit’s liturgical event of the Christ-mystery drawn to the

Father and sent in mission to the world. The church is protologically brought together by the fullness of the total event and reality of the person of Christ. The church is also continually eschatologically brought about in the last times by the total event and reality of the person of Christ. The church already participates in the fullness of divine communion, but does not yet participate in the fulfilment of divine communion. In the fullness of time, Christ’s sacramental energy imprinted the people of God into the body of Christ that they might participate in Christ’s mystical body: “For it was from the side of Christ as he slept the sleep of death upon the cross that there came forth the wondrous sacrament of the whole church” (SC 5); “The church is in Christ [as (veluti)] a sacrament—a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of the unity of the entire human race” (LG 1).47 In the last times, the energy of the Spirit in the liturgy actualizes the church as the pilgrim people of God called to receive God’s offer of salvation, like a spouse, that they might participate in communion with God: “When the

47 Translation amended following the translation found at http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen- gentium_en.html.

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work which the Father gave the Son to do on earth… was completed, the holy Spirit was sent on the day of Pentecost to sanctify the church continually and so that believers might have access to the Father through Christ in the one Spirit. … The Spirit and the Bride both say to Jesus, the Lord, Come!” (LG 4).

While distinct, the energies of Christ and the Spirit cannot not be separated, let alone be said to operate within a specific period of the economy of salvation: “The universal church is seen to be ‘a people made one by the unity of the Father, the Son and the holy Spirit’” (LG 4). The church is already “a people made one” and continually “a people made one” by the Trinity. The salvation of humanity consists in being brought into communion with God the Father by encountering Christ and the Spirit. Christ encounters humanity by the energy of the Spirit and the Spirit encounters humanity by the energy of Christ. The church was not only protologically constituted by the sacramental energy of Christ, it was also actualized by the energy of the Spirit as the embodiment of the liturgy. In the last times—until the fulfilment of time when Christ will be “all in all”—Christ’s sacramental energy needs to be continually re-activated by the

Spirit’s energy in the liturgy—heavenly, celebrated, and lived—so that the church can continually be constituted as the body of Christ, as the Christ-reality.

When the church joins its energy to that of Christ and the Spirit, they are led to communion with the Father and then sent in mission by the Spirit and Christ. When the church is consciously understood as the sacrament of Christ and the liturgy of the Spirit, the church is seen to be the trinitarian form of God’s presence in the world. While the energies of Christ, the Spirit, and humanity are all distinct, when humanity, prompted by the Spirit, takes up a disposition of faith and encounters God in the church, the body of

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Christ, they are all united in a single synergy. The humanity of the church, the people of

God, become the sacramental reality and the liturgical event of the Christ-mystery, the relationship with God wrought by Christ and the Spirit, when they join their energy to the inseparable energies of Christ and the Spirit in a single synergy: the church as liturgy- sacrament. The church as liturgy-sacrament is the baptized and confirmed people of God,

God’s priestly people.

4.3.4. The Faithful of the Church as Liturgy-Sacrament: Baptism, Confirmation, and the

Common Priesthood

Having reached to the mystery of God’s revelation of self and, from within that space, attempted to understand the mystery of God’s presence in the church through liturgy and sacrament, I turn now to a consideration of how the faithful of the church are enabled to participate in the fullness of the relationship with God that is the Christ- mystery. The church as liturgy-sacrament is the “‘people made one by the unity of the

Father, the Son and the holy Spirit’” (LG 4). The human community that is the church is

God’s presence in the world expressed as liturgy and as sacrament. That is, the church is the priestly people of God, the sacramental presence and liturgical event of God’s offer of salvific communion to humanity. The common priesthood of Christ expresses the common character sealing each person of God to the whole communion that is the church and to Christ, the Spirit, the Father, and the world.

Human persons are initiated—sacramentally constituted and liturgically actualized—into the communion of God’s chosen people by the joint energies of Christ and the Spirit. The process of initiation into the mystery of the church occurs through

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reception of the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and eucharist.48 According to

Lumen Gentium, “The sacred character and organic structure of the priestly community are brought into being through the sacraments and the virtues” (11). The first two sacraments thus described by LG are confirmation and baptism. By baptism and confirmation, one is imprinted or imaged with the character of Christ and anointed with the seal of the Spirit, thereby enabling the fullness of cooperating in synergy with the sacramental energies of Christ and the liturgical energies of the Spirit. One is then enabled to experience the fullness of relationship with God and, in turn, invite others into this fullness. Through the celebration of the sacraments of baptism and confirmation, the church becomes the priestly people of God.

Baptism marks the beginnings of a new relationship with God and the church:

“The fruit of Baptism, or baptismal grace, … [includes] birth into the new life by which man becomes an adoptive son of the Father, a member of Christ and a temple of the Holy

Spirit. By this very fact the person baptized is incorporated into the Church, the Body of

Christ, and made a sharer in the priesthood of Christ” (CCC 1279). By baptism, one is particularly oriented to cooperate with energies of the person of Jesus Christ:

“Incorporated into Christ by Baptism, the person baptized is configured to Christ.

Baptism seals the Christian with the indelible spiritual mark (character) of his belonging to Christ” (CCC 1272). The “seal” is said to be a symbol of the Spirit, similar to anointing, whereby “‘the Father has set his seal’ on Christ and also seals us in him” (CCC

698). Baptism is “called ‘the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit’”

48 While recognizing the centrality and significance of the eucharist, particularly in this context as a sacrament of initiation, I reserve discussion of this sacrament for another time.

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(CCC 1215). Having been sealed by the person of the Spirit in the person of Christ as an adopted child of the Father, one is enabled and committed “to serve God by a vital participation in the holy liturgy of the Church and to exercise their baptismal priesthood by the witness of holy lives and practical charity” (CCC 1273).

When one comes to the church to be initiated into the mystery of Christ by sacramental celebration of baptism, by faith—whether one’s own or that of the parents and together with the faith of the church—one’s energy is brought into play by the antecedent energy of the Spirit; resulting in the synergies manifesting Christ, transforming one into Christ, and communicating Christ to oneself. Through washing in the baptismal waters by the energy of the Spirit, represented as the seal of the Spirit, one is enabled to receive the energies of Christ. In the same liturgical movement, the sacramental energy of Christ synergizes with that of the person come to be baptized thereby signifying by imprintation into the mediatory body of Christ that one is enabled to receive the reality of God’s grace and communion. Having received the character of the person of Christ, one is more fully disposed to cooperate in synergy with the energies of the Spirit. Inseparably united, the energies of the Spirit and of Christ initiate the person of faith into the priestly community of God, ordering and deputing one as an agent of

Christ and the Spirit in celebration and life. Baptism thus represents the beginning of the cooperation of the priestly people of God in synergy with Christ and the Spirit, the church as liturgy-sacrament.

The relationship of the faithful to God and the church in baptism is “perfected” by reception of the sacrament of confirmation: “By the sacrament of Confirmation [the faithful] are more perfectly bound to the church and are endowed with the special

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strength of the holy Spirit. Hence, as true witnesses of Christ, they are more strictly obliged both to spread and to defend the faith by word and deed” (LG 11; emphasis mine). According to Corbon, confirmation is the sacrament wherein Christ “hands over his own personal Spirit and engraves or imprints the Spirit on the hearts of those to whom he has just been united forever.”49 Where baptism is particularly associated with the reception of the person of Christ, confirmation is particularly associated with the reception of the person of the Spirit: “Be sealed with the Gift of the Holy Spirit” (CCC

1300).50

The seal of baptism indicates the more complete seal of the Spirit by anointing with oil in confirmation: “The symbolism of anointing with oil also signifies the Holy

Spirit, to the point of becoming a synonym for the Holy Spirit. … Christ (in Hebrew

‘messiah’) means the one ‘anointed’ by God’s Spirit. … Jesus is God’s Anointed in a unique way: the humanity the Son assumed was entirely anointed by the Holy Spirit.”

(CCC 695). The seal of the person of the Spirit “marks our total belonging to Christ” and

“perfects the common priesthood of the faithful” (CCC 1296, 1305). Confirmation is the sacrament of the fullness of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the human person and the church. In perfecting what was begun in baptism, confirmation marks the faithful of the church for the fullness of celebration and service in the name of the Trinity, that is, for the common priesthood of God.

Where in baptism the energies of the Spirit dispose the faithful recipient to receive Christ, in confirmation the Holy Spirit is more so the one given by Christ and

49 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 167. Cf. CCC 739, 1304. 50 Cf. Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 166-67; Timothy R. Gabrielli, Confirmation: How a Sacrament of God’s Grace Became All About Us (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2013), 74-77.

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received by the confirmand. The energies of Christ, represented by his official minister, and the energies of the faithfully disposed confirmand synergize through the anointing with oil, which signifies the sealing of the confirmand with the gift of the person of the

Holy Spirit, thereby mediating the encounter between the confirmand and the Holy Spirit, and ultimately realizing the fullness of the indwelling of the Spirit within the confirmand.

The Spirit and the confirmand are brought together within the context of the entire liturgical movement of the sacramental celebration, wherein the energies of the church and the Spirit in their manifestational, transformational, and communicative synergy actualize the sacramental energies of Christ constituting the confirmand as a temple of the Spirit. The confirmand, having become a “Christian,” having become a member of the people of God anointed with the Spirit of Christ, has been marked as “[totally] belonging to Christ” (CCC 1296).51 Having been baptized and confirmed by the energies of the Spirit and Christ, the person of faith is enabled to take part in the fullness of relationship with God because of having been incorporated in the fullness of the communion of God and humanity expressed through liturgy and sacrament that is the church as the priestly people of God.

The priestly people of God is the communal expression of the trinitarian form of the church, the church as liturgy-sacrament. That is, the priestly people of God is the liturgical event and sacramental reality of the Christ-mystery, God’s will and offer of salvific communion to humanity. It is as the priestly people of God that the energies of the church synergize with the energies of Christ and the Spirit, thereby becoming the church as sacrament of Christ and liturgy of the Spirit. Having been washed in baptismal

51 Cf. Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 167.

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waters by the Spirit and anointed with the oil of confirmation by Christ—thereby receiving the fullness of the persons of Christ and the Spirit—the community of human persons is sacramentally, indelibly imprinted with the character of Christ and the seal of the Spirit into the priesthood of Christ and they are thereby “enabled to celebrate the liturgy” (CCC 1119). For “in a liturgical celebration the Church is servant in the image of her Lord, the one ‘leitourgos’; she shares in Christ’s priesthood (worship), which is both prophetic (proclamation) and kingly (service of charity)” (CCC 1070). While Christ is

“the Lord, high priest taken from the midst of humanity” (LG 10), the Spirit “is the master of prayer” and “the Church’s living memory” (CCC 741, 1099). “In the liturgy the

Holy Spirit is teacher of the faith of the People of God and artisan of ‘God’s masterpieces,’ the sacraments” (CCC 1091). The work of Christ Jesus sacramentalizes the reality of the Christ-mystery and the work of the Holy Spirit actualizes the liturgy- event of the Christ-mystery: “It is Christ who is seen, the visible image of the invisible

God, but it is the Spirit who reveals him” (CCC 689). It is as the priestly people of God that the church cooperates with the ongoing work of both Christ and the Spirit.

The keynote of the priestly people of God, as Semmelroth saw following Vatican

II, is to be found in sacrifice: “Priesthood is essentially tied up with sacrifice.”52 Robert J.

Daly provides a robust Trinitarian conception of sacrifice that is consonant with the present attempt to illuminate the notion of the priestly people of God as the communal expression of the church as liturgy-sacrament from within the space of the mystery of

God’s revelation. He states,

52 Otto Semmelroth, “The Priestly People of God and Its Official Ministers,” in The Sacraments in General: A New Perspective, ed. Edward Schillebeeckx and Boniface A. Willems, trans. John Drury (New York/Glen Rock, NJ: Paulist Press, 1968), 87-100, at 89.

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First of all, Christian sacrifice is not some object that we manipulate; it is not primarily a ceremony or ritual; nor is it something that we “do” or “give up.” For it is, first and foremost, something deeply personal: a mutually self-giving event that takes place between persons. Actually it is the most profoundly personal and interpersonal act of which a human being is capable or in which a human being can participate. It begins in a kind of first “moment,” not with us but with the self- offering of God the Father in the gift-sending of the Son. Christian sacrifice continues its “process of becoming” in a second “moment,” in the self-offering “response” of the Son, in his humanity and in the power of the Holy Spirit, to the Father and for us. Christian sacrifice continues its coming-to-be, and only then does it begin to become Christian sacrifice in our lives when we, in human actions that are empowered by the same Spirit that was in Jesus, begin to enter into that perfect, en-spirited, mutually self-giving, mutually self-communicating personal relationship that is the life of the Blessed Trinity.53

This personalist conception of sacrifice as an interpersonal act, event, or encounter of mutual self-giving may be seen to correspond with Corbon’s concept of “kenosis.” As seen in section 3.2.1., “kenosis” means “self-emptying.” Corbon states, “Kenosis is the properly divine way of loving: becoming man without reservation and without calling for recognition or compelling it. … Our divinization comes through the meeting of the kenosis of God with the kenosis of man; the fundamental requirement of the Gospel can therefore be stated as follows: we shall be one with Christ to the extent that we ‘lose’ ourselves for him.”54 Hence, Corbon identifies Christ’s cross not with sacrifice but with kenosis: “The invisible consonance of Annunciation and Cross is to be found in the kenosis of the beloved Son. … Only this Man-God, in whom death finds no complicity with itself, can enter into the thickest darkness of death; that is what happens in the kenosis of the Cross.”55

53 Robert J. Daly, “New Developments in the Theology of Sacrifice,” Liturgical Ministry 18, no. 2 (Spring 2009): 49-58, at 51-52. 54 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 17-18. 55 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 47, 50.

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In light of these findings, sacrifice may be understood as kenotic and kenosis may be understood as sacrificial: the self-giving of sacrifice as a self-emptying and the self- emptying of kenosis as a self-giving. This is significant, first, because “sacrifice” describes the Father’s act of self-giving of his Son and the Son’s response of self- offering, while Corbon uses kenosis to also describe the activity of the Spirit: “For in the last times it is the Spirit himself in person who is sent and given. Pentecost produces the

Church because the Spirit of Jesus here begins his ultimate kenosis of love. Henceforth the Church is the ‘event’ that manifests him.”56 Sacrifice as kenosis presents a way of speaking of the “sacrifice” of the Spirit in and through the church. Moreover, kenosis as sacrifice presents a more participatory and comprehensively trinitarian notion of divine- human encounter whereby the people of God take up their priestly vocation in giving of self by emptying of self as a participation in the kenoses/sacrifices of the persons of the

Trinity throughout the economy of salvation.57 Hence, the term “sacrifice” may be understood to mean an event of mutual self-giving through mutual self-emptying between persons.

Kenotic sacrifice expresses both personal and communal energies. Personally understood, the energies of each person are activated as a sacrifice of self. Communally, sacrifice is “a common activity” by the “active subjects” of the church as the priestly people of God: “The communal nature of the priesthood which becomes operative in a sacramental ritual embraces the whole People of God.”58 The energies of the priestly

56 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 85. 57 For instance, “The Father ‘gives away’ his Word and his Breath, and all things are called into being. … In this beginning the living God experiences his first ‘kenosis’.” Also, “[The Father] gives himself by giving his only Son in his Spirit.” Wellspring of Worship, 32-33, 38. 58 Semmelroth, “Priestly People,” 93.

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people of God are those of the entire church giving of itself by emptying of itself expressed as sacrifice. First and foremost, though, sacrifice expresses the energies of the

Trinity in the economy of salvation, in celebration, and in life, bringing about salvation by inviting humanity to relationship. The priestly people of God participate in and synergize with the sacrificial energies of the Trinity because they have been initiated into the church.

By their sacrifice, the priestly people of God are called to manifest the Trinity in celebration and in life, thus realizing and actualizing the Christ-mystery. Lumen Gentium states, “Therefore, all the disciples of Christ… should present themselves as a sacrifice, living, holy and pleasing to God (see Rom 12:1)” (10). The fullest expression of priestly sacrifice is the sacramental celebration of the eucharist: “Taking part in the Eucharistic sacrifice, the source and summit of the christian life, [the faithful] offer the divine victim to God and themselves along with him” (LG 11). The priestly faithful are to participate in and witness to divine sacrifice by their whole selves throughout their entire lives: “By the reception of the sacraments, by prayer and thanksgiving, by the witness of a holy life, self-denial and active charity” (LG 10). Uniting the energies of their sacrifice to those of

Christ and the Spirit in liturgical celebration, particularly in sacramental celebration, the priestly people are continually reconstituted by the energies of Christ and actualized by the energies of the Spirit and then sent in mission to the world.

Sacrifice as an event of mutual self-giving through mutual self-emptying between persons is a way of describing the dialogical relationship between God and humanity.

From time immemorial and until the eschaton, God has not ceased sacrificing of self in inviting humanity and all creation to share in God’s communion. In the present last times,

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God is continually at work drawing and sending humanity into communion by the energies of Christ and the Spirit through sacrament and liturgy. The human community of the church, the priestly people of God, is the sacramental sign and liturgy of the reality and event of the Christ-mystery.

In their sacrifice, the priestly people of God cooperate with and unite their energies to the energies of Christ, signifying, mediating, and realizing divine communion:

“The priestly People of God is the ‘universal sacrament of salvation’ … [reaching] out to mankind in every sacramental action—to draw them into the holy and priestly sphere where God’s salvific will takes historical shape.”59 In the same act of sacrifice, the priestly people of God cooperate with and unite their energies to the energies of the

Spirit, manifesting, transforming, and communicating divine communion: “Through the kenosis of the suffering members of Christ the eternal liturgy thus permeates our world as a leaven of immortality that causes the last times to ‘rise’ toward their completion and fulfillment.”60 The church, the priestly people of God, is Christ’s sacramental sign and the Holy Spirit’s liturgy of divine communion. The church is the form of trinitarian communion: liturgy-sacrament.

59 Semmelroth, “Priestly People,” 92-93. Semmelroth cites Lumen Gentium, 48, 1, 9; Ad Gentes, 1, 5; Gaudium et Spes, 42, 45. 60 Corbon, Wellspring of Worship, 205.

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