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The primacy of liturgy in Christianity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2020

BRUCE ELLIS BENSON Open the ORCID record for BRUCE ELLIS BENSON [Opens in a new window]
BRUCE ELLIS BENSON*
Affiliation:
School of Divinity, University of St Andrews, KY16 9JU, UK
*
e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

I argue that liturgy is primary to the Christian faith. By ‘liturgy’, however, I do not mean merely what happens on Sunday morning. Instead, I distinguish between ‘intensive’ and ‘extensive’ liturgies, those that occur when the body of Christ meets together and when that body disperses. All of this together constitutes Christian liturgy. My thesis is not that practice is more primary than theory, for that presupposes the possibility of drawing a sharp line between them – an impossible task. Rather, liturgy is a variety of embodied cognition through which we know God and our neighbours. Theology is something that arises from our liturgies and is itself liturgical in nature. We may believe the Nicene Creed, but saying it aloud is performative in nature. I end by examining the relation of phronēsis and theōria in Aristotle and then consider the way Heidegger uses this distinction to argue that ‘know-how’ (Verstehen) is the most basic kind of human knowledge.

Type
Original Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 58 , Issue 1 , March 2022 , pp. 61 - 78
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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