Letter and Spirit by Scott Hahn

(New York: Image, 2005), 171

"Scripture is for liturgy and scripture is about liturgy. The liturgy, likewise, proclaims the scriptures even as it interprets and actualizes them." (34)

Following Dei Verbum and the Catechism, we can think of Divine Revelation as a stool supported by the three legs of Scripture, Tradition, and Magisterium. Understanding the relationship between these three did not come quickly to me from reading DV. This book has been especially helpful for better understanding the relationship between the first two, Scripture and Tradition. The key insight is that the liturgy "is the principal instrument of the Church's Tradition" (133). With this understanding, we should study and live the liturgy and scripture side by side. This has been helpful in understanding and articulating The Case for a Lectionary Bible.

Key Terms:

  • Economy (oikonomia, dispensatio): the principle governing all creation as well as all the events of salvation history, the wise arrangement by stages, whereby the mystery that is Christ is brought to fulfillment
  • Typology: the study of types, or prefiguring signs between the Old and New Testaments
  • Mystagogy (mystagogia): "a doctrine of the mysteries" or "doctrine of the sacraments"; the oral or written explanation of the mystery hidden in the scriptures and celebrated in the liturgy. Mystagogy is to liturgy what exegesis is to scripture.
  • Anamnesis: Remembrance means to recall by making present, re-actualizing, re-presenting, real presence.
  • Parousia: literally "presence, coming, arrival, or advent", but specifically Christ's return in glory at the end of time.

Notes


Contents


Introduction

Chapter 1: Our Nearness to the Ancients

Summary: The liturgy is the habitat of the scriptures, and we are near the ancients when we interpret scripture liturgically.

  • Life of Anthony illustrates the process of the reception of the canon: "the ordinary place of biblical interpretation was the church, and the ordinary time was the liturgy; the church's liturgy is the natural and supernatural habitat of the church's scriptures". (9)
  • This is true of both the early Church and ancient Israel: "Biblical religion is liturgical religion, and its sacred texts are primarily liturgical texts." (10)
  • "Liturgy is our very place of interpretive nearness to the ancients." (11)
  • This book: "I hope to demonstrate the living relationship between scripture and liturgy, and how this relationship enables both, together, to draw believers, as active participants, into the divine drama of salvation history." (12)

Chapter 2: Defining Terms

Summary: The Emmaus story shows the relationship between the Bible and liturgy, and Jesus' method uses economy, typology, and mystagogy.

  • Economy (oikonomia, dispensatio): the principle governing all creation as well as all the events of salvation history (16), the "wise arrangement by stages, whereby the mystery that is Christ is brought to fulfillment" (17).
  • Typology: the study of types, or prefiguring signs between the Old and New Testaments (20)
    • Danielou: prophecy is "the typological interpretation of history." (22)
    • Typological exegesis presumes the idea of the divine economy: the very events of sacred history were fashioned by God as material signs. (23)
    • "Typology depends upon scriptures literal-historical sense" (24)"
  • Mystagogy (mystagogia): "a doctrine of the mysteries" or "doctrine of the sacraments"; the oral or written explanation of the mystery hidden in the scriptures and celebrated in the liturgy (25)
    • Mystagogy is to liturgy what exegesis is to scripture. (26)

Chapter 3: The Unities of Scripture and Liturgy

Summary: Scripture and the liturgy are united materially in that both are about the other, and formally in that scripture took its final form for the sake of the liturgy.

  • "Scripture is for liturgy and scripture is about liturgy. The liturgy, likewise, proclaims the scriptures even as it interprets and actualizes them." (34)
  • Material: "Scripture is about liturgy, and liturgy is about scripture." (34)
  • Formal: "Scripture took its final form—it was canonized—for the sake of the liturgy." (34)
  • Ferguson on the canon: "Use determined canon ever but as much as canon eventually would determine use." (49)

Chapter 4: Covenant: The Bond of Unity

Summary: The bond between scripture and liturgy is the *covenant*.

  • Walter Bruggemann: "Biblical faith is essentially covenantal in its perception of all reality." (54)
  • A covenant creates a family bond where none had previously existed. Scriptural covenants represent a familial bond between God and human beings. (55)
  • "As the canon is integral to the keeping of a covenant, so the liturgy is essential to the ratification and renewal of the covenant." (59)
  • Creation is the cosmic covenant. The seventh day is God's great oath. Hebrew for swearing a covenant oath shava comes from the word for seven sheva (60)
  • In the Exodus, Moses was as much a giver of liturgy as of law (63)
  • The Kingdom covenant with David establishes the everlasting throne of his son (64)
  • "Covenant is the recurring typos—the trademark of God—evident at every stage of histor yand every exploration of cosmology." (69)

Chapter 5: "In Your Hearing": Liturgical Proclamation of the Word

Summary: Scripture is the announcement of the Word of God; liturgy is its actualization.

  • Lk-04: Jesus announced his mission in the midst of the liturgy, something was actualized in the liturgical proclamation: "this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing" (73)
  • Biblical religion has always required the proclamation of God's word within the assembly of God's people: "Faith comes from what is heard." (73-74 cf Rom-10)
  • "The church publicly proclaims the scriptures in the liturgy because they are the documents of the covenant, which is solemnly renewed in the ritual worship of God's people." (80)
  • "Scripture conveys the divine word in a way that is analogous to sacramental efficacy...Scripture's authority is thus an extension of Christ's own authority." (81)
  • Origen: "Why do you think there is less guilt to have neglected God's word than to have neglected his body?"
  • "Paulinus tells us that, in the fourth century, every Tabernacle had two compartments—one for the Eucharist, and another for the Bible, since each is, in its own way, the supernatural food of our souls." (190)
  • The book is a means to an end: the presence of the living Word in the midst of the believing assembly." (86)

Chapter 6: The Persistence of Memory: Anamnesis and Actualization

Summary: Key to the keeping of the covenant is its remembrance via repetition in the liturgy.

  • Key to the keeping of a covenant was its remembrance via repetition. (90)
  • "Do this in remembrance [anamnesis] of me." (91, cf. Lk-22, 1 Cor-11)
  • Remembrance [anamnesis] means to recall by making present, re-actualizing, re-presenting, real presence. (92)
  • Blessed James Alberione: "The liturgy is the actualization of the Bible." (92)
  • "The liturgy draws the believer into the drama of the divine economy, not as a spectator, but as a participant." (93)
  • Danielou: "The sacraments are simply the continuation in the era of the Church of God's acts in the Old Testament and the New. This is the proper significance of the relationship between the Bible and the liturgy. The Bible is a sacred history; the liturgy is a sacred history." (94)
  • "Liturgical worship rises to God's glory, but redounds always to the benefit of those who offer fitting worship." (97)
  • "God's word, when it is proclaimed in the liturgy, establishes the kingdom of heaven on earth." (99, it constitutes and reveals it)
  • The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church: "It is above all through the liturgy that Christians come into contact with scripture." (100)
  • Cavalletti: "Typology makes the listening to the Word today capable of creating a link with past history and what is still the object of hope." (101)

Chapter 7: Proclamation and Parousia

Summary: Parousia is the coming of Christ, which occurs in the Mass.

  • Parousia is literally "presence, coming, arrival, or advent", but specifically Christ's return in glory at the end of time (106)
  • The ancients saw the parousia of Chrsit in the liturgy, what Catholic theology expresses as the "real presence" or "substantial presence" of Jesus Christ. (110-111)
  • Whenever the New Testament speaks of Christ's coming, it also speaks of his judgment. The eucharistic parousia is Christ coming in power to judge. (117)
  • Sacrosanctum concilium identifies three modes of Christ's presence in the Mass: the eucharistic species, the person of the priest, and in his word (120)
  • Pierre Jounel: the liturgical reading of the gospel is "in fact, a theophany, an appearance of Christ" (120)

Chapter 8: Where Tradition Lives

Summary: The liturgy is the place where tradition lives, where memory lives, and where the church is most alive. It is the principal instrument of tradition.

  • Tradition is divine revelation in its transmission through time, one of two distinct modes of the transmission of the gospel of Christ alongside scripture (125). Tradition is the teaching of the apostles that preceded even the writing of the New Testament (126).
  • The liturgical rite is itself a proclamation of the gospel of Christ, not only in words, but also in action; and the actions themselves are an essential part of the transmission and content of the gospel. (127)
  • Memory is the faculty that tells us who we are (129), and the liturgy is the memory of the church (130).
  • lex credendi, lex orandi: "The law of prayer is the law of faith: the Church believes as she prays." (132)
  • Congar: the liturgy "is the principal instrument of the Church's Tradition" (133)
  • "The truly great repository of lex credendi is the lectionary...The cycles of liturgical readings, in both synagogue and church, employed typology to convey certain ideas about the divine economy...Because of the lectionary's unfolding, the weeks, the seasons, and the years would tell a unified, continuous story and, in the process, teach doctrine...'The catechism of the Jew is the calendar.' That is no less true of the Christian...Thus the lectionary ensures the perpetual remembrance of God's covenant with humankind." (135-136)
  • "In its choice of biblical texts for the liturgy, the Church provides a living interpretation of the Scriptures." (137)
  • Dom Prosper Gueranger: "It is in the liturgy that the Spirit who inspired the Scriptures speaks again: the liturgy is Tradition itself at its highest degree of power and solemnity." (140)
  • Scripture must be read with the church. (142)
  • Stanley Hauerwas: sola scriptura is "a heresy rather than a help precisely because it assumes tha the text of Scripture makes sense separate from a Church that give sit sense." (142)
  • Robert W. Jenson: "The slogan sola scriptura, if by that is meant apart from the creed, teaching office, or authoritative liturgy, is an oxymoron." (196)
  • Pius XI: The liturgy is the primary organ of the magisterium. (142)
  • Congar: The liturgy is the principal instrument and the privileged locus of tradition. (142)

Chapter 9: Apocalypse and Mystagogy

Summary: The heavenly worship of Revelation is the definitive consummation of the covenant.

  • Congar: the liturgy is "woven out of scriptural texts and allusions" (149, Scripture in the Mass)
  • Revelation makes little sense apart from the liturgical worship of God's covenant people (151). It shows the definitive consummation of the covenant (154).
  • The church's earthly liturgy actualizes the heavenly liturgy on earth. (152)
  • The human person was created for the sake of worship. (156)

Chapter 10: Etched in Memory

Summary: The word explicates the sacraments. The sacraments actualize the word.

  • "Form-critical study has led us to discern a liturgical form of scripture and the liturgical purpose of the canon." (162)
  • "The literal sense of the entire biblical canon is the divine economy; the historical truth of the economy follows a typological pattern of promise and fulfillment; and the divine meaning, which was hidden for ages in mystery, is what Christ reveals mystagogically and sacramentally in the New Covenant." (163)
  • The Catechism's criteria for interpreting scripture: be attentive to the content and unity of the whole Scripture, read within the living Tradition of the Church, and be attentive to the analogy of faith or coherence of truths (CCC 112-114, cf. ~Ignatius Catholic Study Bible)
  • We always start with the literal sense of scripture: "Classic Christianity celebrates the fullness of the historical sense of scripture, even as it professes Christ's transcendence of history." (165)
  • Reading scripture tends toward the Eucharist. Scripture leads its reader to a communion with the holy. (168)
  • "The word explicates the sacraments. The sacraments actualize the word." (172)

Topic: Lectionary

Source

Created: 2024-12-09-Mon
Updated: 2025-03-14-Fri