What Should the Philosophy of Liturgy Do?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47850/RL.2023.4.3.25-36Keywords:
the philosophy of liturgy, Christian philosophy, the Society of Christian Philosophers, Nicholas Wolterstorff, the liturgical turnAbstract
Nicholas Wolterstorff claims that Christian philosophy should bring the Christian faith to bear in discussing topics of mutual Christian interest and concern. He suggests that one of the main areas of such discussion is the philosophical inquiry about liturgy. Wolterstorff’s ideas resulted in the liturgical turn in the analytic philosophy and the blooming of the philosophy of liturgy. In this paper, I evaluate Wolterstorff’s requirement for Christian philosophy in light of the history of the formation of the Society of Christian Philosophers, and I find this requirement to be justified. Then I review the contemporary literature on the philosophy of liturgy and conclude that the majority of works do not meet Wolterstorff’s requirement for Christian philosophy since they do not “bring the faith to bear in discussing topics of mutual Christian concern”. Rather, they represent general philosophical inquiries in epistemology, metaphysics, anthropology, etc., except they use Christian liturgical context for their inquiry. I argue that the philosophy of liturgy should be concerned with the issues of divine-human interaction in the liturgy. Such philosophy would satisfy Wolterstorff’s requirement for Christian philosophy.
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