Sacramentality Renewed

Tracing developments in sacramental theology over the past twenty-five years, this study explores a growing ecumenical dynamism in both the academic study of sacramentality and its centrality in pastoral applications. But how does ecumenical excitement in a renewed discovery of sacramental theology fit with different theologies of church and different pastoral beliefs and practices? How does the universality of academic accessibility in the form of an expansive ecumenical sharing of perspectives meet the particularities of pastoral reality and ecclesial polity? Arguing in favor of fruitful ecumenical conversation, this book also focuses on the crucial interaction of ecclesiology, liturgical practice, and sacramentality, which raises the need for a creative tension between the particularities of a given ecclesial system and the catholicity of Christian sacramentality. Using Anglican sacramental theologies and Anglicanism as vehicles of exploration, this study contributes to an overview of the state of the field of sacramental theology in the twenty-first century while challenging the assumption that one size fits all. In sacramental theology, as in other important areas of Christian life, unity in diversity may be the basis for authentic lived sacramentality.

Tracing developments in sacramental theology over the past twenty-five years, this study explores a growing ecumenical dynamism in both the academic study of sacramentality and its centrality in pastoral applications. But how does ecumenical excitement in a renewed discovery of sacramental theology fit with different theologies of church and different pastoral beliefs and practices? How does the universality of academic accessibility in the form of an expansive ecumenical sharing of perspectives meet the particularities of pastoral reality and ecclesial polity? Arguing in favor of fruitful ecumenical conversation, this book also focuses on the crucial interaction of ecclesiology, liturgical practice, and sacramentality, which raises the need for a creative tension between the particularities of a given ecclesial system and the catholicity of Christian sacramentality. Using Anglican sacramental theologies and Anglicanism as vehicles of exploration, this study contributes to an overview of the state of the field of sacramental theology in the twenty-first century while challenging the assumption that one size fits all. In sacramental theology, as in other important areas of Christian life, unity in diversity may be the basis for authentic lived sacramentality.

Introducing readers to the contemporary field of sacramental theology, this volume covers the biblical and historical foundations, a survey of the state of the discipline, and a collection of constructive essays representing major themes, practices and approaches to sacraments and sacramentality in the contemporary world. The volume starts with a set of foundational essays that offer broad introduction to the field of sacramental theology from contemporary scholars, analysing a number of historical figures in order to illumine and inform contemporary sacramental theology. The second part of the volume is dedicated to a series of essays on sacramentality, and includes attention to elements of space, time, ritual action, music, and word, all as aspects of what Christians have termed “sacramental” reality. The third set of essays includes attention to each of the seven practices that have most commonly been termed “sacraments” in Christian traditions: baptism; eucharist/Lord's Supper; confirmation; confession, forgiveness and reconciliation; marriage; ordination; and anointing. The final part of this volume features scholars who are working on sacraments in conversation with contemporary academic disciplines: critical race theory, queer theory, comparative theology, and disability studies.

Drawing on performance studies and sacramental and liturgical theology, Ruthanna B. Hooke develops a theology of proclamation grounded in the body’s experience of preaching. The author explores the claim that preaching is a sacramental event of communion with the triune God by comparing the steps involved in voice production with the fourfold shape of the Eucharist. This comparison yields a description of preaching as an event of self-offering that allows space for the humanity of the preacher and as an encounter with the Holy Spirit that is communal and prophetic. Preaching draws participants into Christ’s dying and rising, and hence into a mode of power known in vulnerability. Calling hearers into the eschatological event of the resurrection, preaching inherently moves toward proclamation on political and ethical issues. Hooke uses this theological framework to offer ways of preaching on environmental crisis and on racism. The author calls preachers to embodied engagement with preaching and describes a way for preachers to bear witness to Jesus Christ not only in the content of their proclamation, but in their way of being in the preaching event.

Fewer subjects have generated intense debate in Christian thought and practice than sacraments. A reductionist view of the term "sacrament" often causes this debate and engenders tension between the so-called "sacramental" and "non-sacramental" churches largely based on whether one views the Water Baptism and the Lord's Supper as ordinances or as sacraments (means of encountering God). Drawing from the theological view that Christ is the primordial sacrament of the encounter with God, this book posits that all believers are sacraments of an encounter with God. This claim has ecumenical import. Conversion, Baptism, the Lord's Supper, the Empowerment, Gifts, and Fruit of the Spirit, Worship, Testimonies of Triumphs or Sufferings, Eschatological Hope, etc., enable believers to manifest the Spirit. Pentecost inaugurated all believers as both macrocosmic and microcosmic sacrament(s). The notion of sacramentality of believers intersects with the theological triad of Orthodoxy, Orthopraxy, and Orthopathy.

One of the most influential works in the debate over the concept and definitions of liturgical theology, Context and Text by Monsignor Kevin W. Irwin is now available in a completely rewritten, new edition. In light of the historical, theological, and pastoral mandates of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Context and Text is both a proposal for and an example of an investigation of the Church's liturgical praxis from a liturgical-theological perspective. This second edition, which includes an expanded introduction, covers: · new liturgical and ecclesial contexts resulting from newly promulgated liturgies · further research in methodfor liturgical studies · consideration for changes in the cultural contexts in which people celebrate the liturgy. Besides brand-new chapters on time and sacramentality, and additions to the chapter on the arts, this edition also considers the “ongoing ‘texts and contexts’ of the liturgy as always a new event in the life and ongoing discussion of liturgical theology within Christianity.

This book is based on the principle that the liturgy is the enactment of “the work of our redemption” through the raising up, acknowledging and revering elements of the cosmos, the earth, and our “fellow creatures” in our common home. It is inspired by Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si (On Care for Our Common Home) (in its entirety, not “just” the sections on the Eucharist and liturgy) because it presents a world view and requires respecting and caring for all creatures who share this planet. It is illuminated by research into the history of sacramental theologies and the contemporary context of concern for the environment. In effect, there is no such thing as one Roman Catholic theology of the sacraments, and ‘more often than not differing contexts in the life of the church and the world required differing contents for sacramental theology. The author argues that concern for the environment is a traditional Catholic premise based on the goodness of creation and that God is creator of “heaven and earth.” He also argues that an ecological approach to sacramental theology can help to understand underlying factors and principles in the enactment of the liturgy of the sacraments about how and where God is discovered in the world in general and in the liturgy and sacraments in an intense and focused way through engagement with all who dwell in our common home.