First Things attracts smart readers. The discussion of how we should present and read the bible in worship has been very interesting, bringing out some interesting differences.
For example: chanting scripture vs. studied efforts to read the bible with nuanced emphasis.
While a graduate student in the 1980s, I attended Christ Church in New Haven, a high Anglican parish that featured a great deal of sacramental punctiliousness. The implied theology of worship was best described as a commitment to the objectivity of grace—ex opere operato.
In the liturgy at Christ Church, the Old Testament reading was read aloud in a plain, unadorned, and almost monotone style. The Epistle and Gospel readings were chanted in accord with an assigned trope. This approach fit with the implied theology. We encounter God and fall under his regime of grace by virtue of his ordination of the Church (word and sacrament) as his instruments of salvation, not by virtue of our faith or the faith of the Church’s ministers.
My few years at Christ Church were very important for my spiritual development. I was an inwardly confused young man, eager to become faithful, but mostly pagan in my sensibilities. Worshipping amidst the incense and listening to the chants had the effect of making my experience of Christ more impersonal, which was exactly what I needed, because it brought home to me of a very, very important Christian truth, one greatly emphasized by St. Augustine in his polemics against the Pelagians: It’s not about me.
As my own theological studies became more advanced, I did not so much change my mind as come to see that this Augustinian insight works in tandem with rather than against a deeper personal engagement with the truths of the faith.
The objectivity of grace overcomes our inwardly turned concern about ourselves, not by uncoiling us from within, but by ignoring us. Christ’s death on the cross is like a spear thrust into the self-enclosed ego. But we don’t die. Instead we are released from our self-inflicted bondage to sin, and once we’re able to straighten ourselves we can turn to face Christ. The objectivity of grace frees us to enter into the proper subjectivity of faith.
This interplay of objective and external grace with subjective and internal faith is the reason why Catholicism can combine an almost mechanical understanding of sacramental grace with a strong emphasis on inner moral and spiritual renewal. Many forms of Protestantism manifest a similar combination, typically throwing emphasis on the forensic objectivity of Christ’s saving death (an Evangelical analogue to the objectivity of grace in the Catholic view of the sacraments), while at the same time expecting a born again experience within the believer.
All this is a long way of getting to my point. Chanting, it seems to me, provides a proper way of throwing emphasis on the objectivity of grace. A personally appropriated recitation, all the more interior if memorized, strikes me as a fitting expression of the freedom for which Christ has made us free, which after all is the freedom to enter into fellowship with him.
So which is best? Neither. Both can be done poorly. In our therapeutic culture there is always the danger of smaltzy, overly dramatic reading. And one should not underestimate the ways in which our bureaucratic culture can lead to the soul-numbing feeling that the lector is going through the motions as the scriptures are chanted. And both can be well done. Which way to go, it seems to me, requires good pastoral judgment.
December 29th, 2010 | 12:44 pm
thank you for your wisdom. your post reminds me of c. s. lewis’ essay “on church music.”
relatedly, i once stopped going to the noon mass at st. mary’s church in new haven not because it was aesthetically impoverished, but because it was too beautiful for the state of my soul then…. it might still be.
only later did i learn that st. augustine had once come to the same conclusion and acted the same way.
December 29th, 2010 | 1:00 pm
I will say that chanting can be extremely dramatic when well done. As an example, I call upon Vespers for Great Friday, which includes several readings from the Old Testament, including the Parting of the Red Sea and the drowning of Pharaoh’s army; and the Three Youths in the Fiery Furnace (both are typoi of baptism). Both readings include segments that are in fact true songs: Exodus 15, the “Song of Moses”; and Daniel 3:52-90, the “Hymn of the Three Young Men”. In both instances, the reader begins the periscope using the normal plainchant, but upon reaching these songs, switches to one of the eight tones of the Octoekos (a more elaborate and formal chant). This separates the songs from the rest of the reading, and magnifies their dramatic impact.
The key point, however, is the drama is the Church’s drama, not the reader’s drama–in the same way that an iconographer must work within a specified canon of composition, style and color, so, too must the reader, setting aside his ego in the process.
As to which is more difficult, reciting or chanting, I acknowledged in an earlier thread the danger of “going through the motions” in chanting, and outlined the extensive preparations, both practical and spiritual, which one ought to follow prior to reading. That said, I believe it is much more difficult to recite well than to chant well, while it is equally easy to do both very badly indeed.
December 29th, 2010 | 5:08 pm
Having had a several-years-long discussion with my wife, I’d be interested in others’ perspectives on Christian funerals. Should the style be “personal” (a lot about the person, in other words) or “impersonal” (mostly about the person’s Savior and Church, not much about the person)?
December 29th, 2010 | 6:07 pm
“Should the style be “personal” (a lot about the person, in other words) or “impersonal” (mostly about the person’s Savior and Church, not much about the person)?”
Liturgy is never personal, because it is never about “us”, but about God. I haven’t been to many Roman Catholic funerals, so I cannot comment there, but in Greek Catholic and Orthodox funerals, just about everything is prescribed, from the texts to the music to the gestures and rituals. There is no eulogy, and the whole funeral service unfolds in three distinct parts–first at the home of the deceased or funeral parlor, where the body is laid out, people pay their respects, and the initial blessings are given; second, at the church, where the body is deposited in the nave, before the Royal Doors of the sanctuary, at which most of the prayers, hymns and litanies are sung; and finally, at the gravesite, where a final round of prayers is offered, the family and friends of the departed say farewell, and all join in singing the hymn “Eternal Memory” three times:
Eternal memory,
Eternal memory.
Blessed repose
And eternal memory!
Blessed repose,
And eternal memory!
The atmosphere of the funeral service (Panachida) is not mournful, but neither is it celebratory. It has been described by many as “bright sadness”: we, the living, are saddened by our separation from the departed, but we are gladdened by the thought that death is no longer a permanent separation from God or from the body, but merely a sleep, “in a place where there is no pain, nor sighing, nor mourning, but light everlasting”. When we sing “Eternal memory”, it is not a prayer that WE remember the deceased, but that God always recall him to mind, so that he will indeed live forever.
December 30th, 2010 | 5:40 am
[...] the purpose of the above First Thoughts post on Bible Reading is to discuss chanting versus monotone versus dramatized reading, the above quote struck [...]
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