There is a growing body of Catholic theology which might be termed ‘creative orthodoxy’. It is solidly, but unselfconsciously, built on orthodox Catholic theology, and therefore (not ‘but’) is able to draw freely on a wide variety of schools of thought and theological and extra-theological traditions, the ensuing synthesis producing something new. These two books are good examples. Roch Kereszty's graduate text is a detailed historical survey of the Catholic Eucharistic tradition and the Mass, engaging critically but also eirenically with the Protestant tradition, with theories of transsignification and with contemporary pastoral concerns in the celebration of the Eucharistic liturgy. Draško Dizdar offers us ‘a kind of lyrical liturgical catechesis and mystagogy’ in which his basic framework is a ‘creative dialogue’ between the widely differing scapegoat theology of René Girard (via James Alison) and the Temple model of Margaret Barker. The results of both studies are interesting and often surprising. Stylistically they could not be more different. Kereszty maintains a sober (though not dry) tone; Dizdar's text is possibly the most unvaryingly enthusiastic book I have ever read, and simply abounds in italics and exclamation marks! Kereszty is aiming at a graduate audience (though not exclusively, as he says); Dizdar is addressing any Catholic who wants to (re-) connect faith and life, liturgy being, in his view, the connection between the two. He roots himself here firmly in the Eastern Christian principle of liturgy as theologia prima.
Kereszty begins his historical survey with an overview, rather too cursory, of pagan sacrifice, though he makes the interesting point that earth cults are from death to death, whereas sky cults lead from death to life. Dizdar discusses pagan sacrifice in detail, after Girard, but this is in order to show how radically different Christian sacrifice is – God's gift to us. Kereszty propounds a strongly Eucharistic Sitz-im-Leben for the New Testament. (This is also where we encounter his idiosyncratic Greek transcription, adding h to denote long vowels). He includes a useful parallel presentation of the Institution narratives, although he is a little inclined simply to favour scholars who advance his views and to be rather summary with those who don’t. His treatment of John shows an engagement with modern ‘eye-witness/community’ schools of exegesis (p. 51).
After a liturgical reading of Revelation, Keresty surveys the Fathers. St. John Damascene's emphasis on Eucharistic transformation as our transformation provides an entry for what Kereszty clearly sees as the high point of Latin Eucharistic theology in Augustinian Platonism, which enabled opinions to co-exist in the Church: ‘Even the extreme symbolist believed that the symbol of bread and wine participates in the reality of the body and blood of Christ. On the other hand, even the extreme realist knew that Christ is present in and through sacramental signs so that one cannot literally touch, or even less chew on his body. Both were also aware that the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ causes the building up of the Church as the body of Christ’ (p. 131).
Enter Aristotle, and, according to Kereszty, the decline began. While acknowledging the importance of Aquinas’ philosophy of substance (including for modern science – see n. 28), Kereszty misunderstands him as focussing on God's ability to change bread into ‘any body’ (ibid.). Aquinas is positing existential change, not essential – as Herbert McCabe says, ‘it (the Eucharist) now belongs to a new world’ (God Still Matters, p. 119).
Kereszty's point, though, is that the direction of Eucharistic theology, especially from the late Middle Ages away from the symbolic and ecclesial, was a factor in the Protestant revolt. He acknowledges the recovery of the ecclesial body by Luther and also Calvin's sense of communion with Christ's sacrifice, while noting the fatal drift towards ‘spiritualisation’ and Luther's opposition of Mass and God's grace. Clearly he wants to initiate a real dialogue with Protestants, and while recognising the Scriptural and patristic ressourcement of Trent, feels that Trent's separate treatment of sacrifice and sacrament leads to a disconnection in ‘average’ post-Tridentine theology (although this does not seem borne out by the sacrificial primacy of pre-Vatican II Eucharistic catechesis). After this Congarian historical treatise, Kereszty converges with Dizdar in making a systematic presentation of the Mass.
Dizdar is phenomenological, beginning with the Mass which we experience and opening it up, and then using this as the foundation for broader considerations of liturgical time and space, whereas liturgical time is one of Kereszty's starting points. Both are concerned to express the absolute primacy of God as the ‘doer’ and Christ as the celebrant (Dizdar draws heavily on Ratzinger). His sacramental theology begins with the image of the birthday party as the ritual of the liturgy which is a birthday, the sacrament being one's life (p. 69). This is an appealing analogy, but it risks reducing the Christian Sacraments, which take place within and only within rituals, in spite of their effects in our lives. This seems to confuse res and sacramentum. To be fair, Dizdar probably sees our lives as analogical to the primary Sacraments of Christ and the Church. But he doesn't make this entirely clear.
On liturgical space, the two books are again complementary. Also, following Barker's idea of Christ restoring the First Temple as a microcosm of the new creation (symbolised by Genesis), Dizdar applies this to his conception of liturgical space. However, he is not uncritical of Barker, and his defence of the Deuteronomic Reform is a valuable and original piece of work.
Interestingly, Kereszty sets the uniqueness of Christian sacramentality not in monotheism versus pantheism – he makes up for his cursory treatment of pagan sacrifice in ch.1 with a conception of pagan nature as diaphanous transcendent rather than pantheistic (p. 177). Rather, Christians – even instead of Jews with the centre of sacrifice in Jerusalem – are freed by the ‘personal space’ of the Risen Christ: the Christian church building takes its sacred character from assembly, but for that reason must be appropriate to the mystery.
Kereszty's approach to Word and Sacrament is strongly ‘both and’, comparing ‘a number of contemporary theologians’ (presumably they know who they are) with Clement of Alexandria and Origen in juxtaposing but not connecting Word and Sacrament. Communion fulfils Word; but to disengage from the Word reduces the Mass to subjective sentimentalism (a point also made by Chauvet in Symbol and Sacrament, where he speaks of ‘phantasmagoria’). Also, modern devotion to the Tridentine Rite is for Kereszty the superficial mystique of arcanity – one might question his spirit of dialogue here! While acknowledging that the Offertory is late (a point made forcefully by Jungmann, and leading to the liturgical changes of Vatican II), Kereszty makes a strong connection between the Tridentine and Eastern rites in the ‘joyful anticipation’ of their offertories. He insists that the bread is not annihilated by being transformed – which builds a valuable bridge with Protestants – and he will have no truck with arguments about the exact point at which Eucharistic change ‘happens’. In sum, Kereszty upholds a balance/tension of real presence and real sign: his appendix on ecumenical implications of the study could be a very useful resource for ecumenists.
There is some real spiritual food in Kereszty too: for example, he says for the Mass truly to work from the perspective of the Resurrection, we must renounce the dream of infinite earthly happiness, allowing the Resurrection to be our peaceful centre even when suffering eclipses Resurrection joy. Dizdar tends to neglect such darker realities, and I suspect that many English-speaking readers will prefer Kereszty's sober prose to Dizdar's boundless enthusiasm, language of chaos and cosmos rivalry, violence and scandals, abundant dramatic quotations (e.g Heinrich Zimmer's ‘the most important things cannot be talked about’). And there are philosophical reasons for objecting to his heavy use of post-modern/psychoanalytic puns (‘From the Mist of Abel to the (s)Myth of Cain’, p. 62) or Mother – Me-As-Other and Father as Far-Other. Surely, all these show is that one word is coincidentally similar to another. A literary conceit, but it proves nothing. On the other hand, what about the parables of Jesus: riddles, challenges, literally, things ‘thrown in the way’? We do not have to agree with Dizdar's reading of these words to accept his invitation to enter into the realm of the imaginary and unconscious, which has more influence on our passive intellect and thus on our ability to philosophize rationally than we would sometimes care to admit.
The greatest strength of the book is its imaginative and symbolic power and appeal to bodily experience (even though some of his diagrams, e.g. that of the Eucharist on p. 85, are not so easy to follow). I can personally witness to its pastoral usefulness. I have been teaching a small group of people seeking Christian initiation in our parish; most of them have had relatively little educational opportunity. So when explaining the Mass, the challenge was to keep it attractive and simple, without ‘dumbing down’. Dizdar notes how, beginning Mass with the Sign of the Cross, we touch head, belly/womb and then lungs, with all the emotional and psychological significance these have. Making it so ‘real’ quickly engaged the group, and made it easy then to communicate the healing power of the Rite of Penance. Without agreeing with all of his conclusions, I would strongly recommend Sheer Grace as a catechetical text.
Both books, I suggest, have a lot to offer in the urgent task of re-evangelising Western Christians: Kereszty's, for its balance, solidity and ecumenical potential, and Dizdar's not only for its imaginatively (if sometimes wacky) liturgical catechesis, but for what it could do for the liturgy. Clear, ‘rational’ theology alone is insufficient for making interesting and attractive a liturgy which is often, in practice, very boring, especially for the young. If some of Dizdar's ideas were applied to liturgical practice, there might be a real possibility of recovering liturgical ‘mystery’ in a way wholly free of social and political conservatism.
