Liturgical Theology after Schmemann: An Orthodox Reading of Paul Ricoeur, Geoffrey Ready

Very Rev Fr Geoffrey Ready's presentation on "Liturgical Theology after Schmemann: An Orthodox Reading of Paul Ricoeur" by Brian Butcher, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies, University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, 8 March 2018.

Paul Ricoeur and the application of his interpretive lens to the symbolic world of the Byzantine rite
1:01 Where this book sits in the realm of liturgical studies
1:29 Gospel from Saint Mark, the healing of the paralytic
2:10 Saint Gregory Palamas
2:30 At the end of the parable, the paralytic man is told to lift up his bed and to walk
3:05 Saint Gregory compares the encounter of this man to the liturgy. This is what is supposed to happen when we go to church. What is supposed to emerge from the liturgy is like the light from the sun. As light is to the sun, liturgy guides people back to the source. Encounter with the Lord Jesus there is transformation, transfiguration, healing, resurrection (anastasis)
4:24 Fr Alexander Shmemman: "Why is it that what we see in liturgy isn't happening?" Divorce between liturgy itself and liturgical piety, or people's liturgical experience. People were profoundly affected by Shmemman's approach
6:30 Fundamental structure of God's relationship with the world mediated through the liturgical and sacramental experience. Toronto School of Theology
7:33 Aidan Kavanagh profoundly influenced by Alexander Shmemman
9:56 David Fagerberg; Shmemman-Kavanagh-Fagerberg school of liturgical theology; Andrew Louth and modern Orthodox thought
10:45 Liturgy is the 'Trinity's perichoresis kenotically extended to invite our synergistic ascent into deification. God himself revealing himself through his encounter with human beings in liturgy
11:30 Fagerberg: We need a liturgical asceticism. Liturgy assumes a human being is capacitated for worship
13:30 How to be a parent in 2018; How to liturgise in 2018
15:50 What is it about Paul Ricoeur that can be helpful?
16:50 Ricoeur's capable human being (l'homme capable): What makes a human capable? Someone who can speak, act, suffer, recount and be responsible
17:53 David Kaplan on Ricoeur
19:35 Homo adorans (the worshiping human being), Homo Capax Dei (the human person capable of God)
20:12 Ricoeur: "I am grateful for the liturgy for delivering me out of my subjectivity... I become text myself"
21:29 Hermeneutics and a new way of understanding the liturgy. This requires ritual symbolism, ritual selfhood, ritual transformation
23:39 The symbol gives rise to thought. Language emerges from a symbolic structure. Symbols have multiple meanings
27:03 The liturgical self operates on many levels. Ricoeur, ipse and idem: Ipse identifies “who” the self is, idem “what” the self consists of
30:11 Ritual transformation. Liturgy as a form of embodied remembering
32:12 Hermeneutic arc: participation, distanciation, appropriation
32:50 Victor Turner, ritual studies, liminality (liminal state)
35:50 Aristotle's Poetics; Bernard Lonergan's horizons of meaning
36:20 Why is this book different? It provides a framework of tension and paradox
45:37 Father Peter Galadza
46:41 Brian Butcher

Very Rev Fr Geoffrey Ready is Programme Co-Director, Orthodox School of Theology at Trinity College, University of Toronto
https://www.trinityorthodox.ca

Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies
http://www.sheptytskyinstitute.ca/