Descensus Christi ad Inferos: Christ’s Descent to the Dead

The narrative of Christ’s descent was nearly omnipresent in the early Church. Yet a change of Latin vocabulary from “descensus ad inferos” (Christ’s descent to the dead) to “descensus ad inferna” (Christ’s descent into hell) prompted a change in what was proclaimed. The earlier stratum portrayed Christ preaching to those who, while on earth, did not hear the word of God, while the latter described the reconciliation of sinners. The author here considers the vitality of this creedal statement and what is lost when the descent is absent from Christian experience

\u3ci\u3eAttolite Portas\u3c/i\u3e, ‘Open Up, You Doors!’: Liturgical Narrative and Christ’s Descent

From the New Testament to late antiquity the narrative of Christ\u27s descent to the dead – preaching the good news there, and, in some accounts, baptizing them – was received and, by the fourth and fifth centuries, nearly omnipresent in paschal theology.Neither faith nor baptism exempts any Christian from death, but the waters of baptism, as Paul wrote to the Romans (6:3-4), wed believers into a community of faith in which mysteries are celebrated and transitions marked, enabling believers to face sickness, catastrophe, dying, and death with eyes wide open. Christ\u27s descent to the dead deepens God\u27s life in us

On the U.S. Aversion to Ritual Behavior and the Vocation of the Liturgical Theologian

This three-part essay reflects on the vocation of liturgical theologians in a culture in which there is a general antipathy toward the influence of religious rituals on personal formation and decision-making.1 Part ι considers a few foundational nineteenth-century authors of the American Renaissance for reflections on the aversion to Christian ritual behavior. Part 2 takes up the sermons of a few nineteenth-century revivalist preachers. Part 3 suggests five challenges to liturgical theologians who teach and think in the complex social and religious environment of the United States

On ‘Chrism’ and ‘Anti-Christs’ in 1 John 2:18-27: A Hypothesis

This inquiry studies 1 John because it has the most explicit testimony in the New Testament to initiation by anointing and the unique word χρίσμα, chrism. Chrism was — and in some churches still is — an ointment whose name is rooted in the verb χριειν, to anoint. Critical studies have amply demonstrated that the title Christ had theological carriage in the first century, but rarely, if ever, has it been suggested that the theological title also had liturgical bearing. It seems almost too blithe a suggestion to posit that those who became members of the body of Christ, the Anointed, in some of those earliest communities might themselves have been anointed with chrism, marked with oil as the anointed Messiah himself had been; if anything, in academic literature the denial of anointing as initiation (without baptism) is long-standing and, by some, vociferous; against this academic tradition, this essay hypothesizes that the community of 1 John and the passage about anointing with chrism in 2:18-27 might indeed reflect a rite of initiation, proposing an indication as to why the rite did not survive in the tradition

Heresy and Heortology in the Early Church: Arianism and the Emergence of the Triduum

The Triduum, the three-day liturgy of Easter — from Holy Thursday evening through Easter Sunday — has been so common an experience of the Christian liturgical year that it is difficult to imagine a time when the Triduum was not. But for at least the first three centuries of Christian worship, this annual celebration of Easter was only one rite, a single grand annual assembly of confessors, and soon-to-be confessors, embracing the life of God incarnate in Jesus Christ and in the members of the community. The theology of this unitive rite took in all aspects of the redemption wrought in the human life of the Son of God, from his conception to his death and resurrection. The whole incarnate life of Jesus of Nazareth was celebrated and entwined in the one liturgy embracing the entire paschal mystery. Though historians have for some time recognized the emergence of the Triduum in the fourth century as a historical phenomenon, the theological and christological contexts of this major liturgical shift of antiquity have never been directly addressed. What theological need, one might ask, prompted the emergence of the Triduum? What void did the paschal mystery fill in its newly extended three-day annual celebration that had been absent in the unitive paschal rite at the earliest stratum of Christian worship