Liturgical Theology After Schmemann: An Orthodox Reading of Paul Ricoeur by Brian A. Butcher (review)

Brian A. Butcher’s Liturgical Theology after Schmemann is a significant contribution to the ongoing conversation about the direction of liturgical theology in the post-Schmemann era. Butcher is Lecturer and Research Fellow in Eastern Christian Studies in the Faculty of Theology at the University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto. This book seeks to set forth a “first stab” at a liturgical theology that, while recognizing the significance of Schmemann’s liturgical theology, goes beyond it through engaging the language of the Byzantine Rite and its performance with the thought of the French hermeneutical phenomenologist Paul Ricoeur. In the course of its eight chapters, this study sets forth a persuasive case for what the author calls “a new way of ‘seeing’ what transpires in liturgical events, so as to enrich . . . ‘the praxis of faith-life’ ” (3). In doing so, Butcher has written a challenging book that is sure to stimulate further reflection on the possibilities of doing liturgical theology in dialogue with hermeneutics and phenomenology.

Why does Orthodox liturgical theology need Ricoeur? Simply put, Butcher argues that any Orthodox liturgical theology in the West (which I take to mean located in places not ‘historically Orthodox’) “will need to confront the prospect that the liturgy, as what Ricoeur would call ‘a document of human life,’ is susceptible like any text to the crucible of interpretation . . . even in Orthodoxy one cannot abide in a ‘first naiveté’ but must rather assume the arduous itinerary of the ‘interpreting self’” (29). I agree with Butcher. Another way to put the matter is to say that, if liturgical theology is ultimately about the church’s engagement with the world, then the church today needs tools for interpreting its liturgical life that foster that engagement and turn aside a tendency for the church to retreat into a self-referential life as one subculture among many. It seems to me that Ricoeur’s thought as presented by Butcher has the potential to serve the project of liturgical theology in such a way.

This is a complex work whose argument centers on two major themes: the functions of the metaphorical, polyphonic liturgical speech of the Byzantine Rite (Part II) and the construction of the self who is capable of responding to such speech (Part III). Butcher approaches both from the perspective of Ricoeur’s analyses of metaphor and symbol, and Ricoeur’s late work, which addresses the construction of the self. Parts II and III lay the foundation for Butcher’s analysis in Part IV of the Byzantine Great Blessing of the Waters at the Feast of Theophany as an example of the possibilities of the use of Ricoeur’s thought for the critique of Schmemann’s liturgical theology and an argument for the appositeness of Ricoeur as a dialogue partner in the quest for a liturgical theology “after Schmemann.”

Butcher reviews and critiques the major Roman Catholic and Anglican theologians who have engaged Ricoeur’s thought: Joyce Ann Zimmerman and Bridget Nichols. In my view, Butcher is fair to both authors, although I have questions about his critique of Zimmerman’s bracketing of a Christological reading of the Psalms. I wonder if Zimmerman’s stance can be read in light of Roman Catholic theology of Jews and Judaism after Nostra Aetate. In addition, it seems to me that he dismisses too quickly the late Reformed theologian Graham Hughes’ critique (in his 2005 book Worship as Meaning) of what Hughes termed the “church theology” school of liturgical theology, and places a greater confidence in the “resilience of the liturgy, taken as a compound symbol and its remarkable potential to redeploy meaning in the face of doubt and indifference” (41 n. 38) than is perhaps warranted. The effects of disenchantment may well be more significant for liturgical theology than Butcher suggests.

Two questions emerged for me after reading this informative, insightful work. The first has to do with the issue of prophecy...