The following was a talk given in 2009 at the Father Alexander Schmemann symposium in which individuals like Father Robert Taft gave talks in memory of Father Alexander Schmemann and his legacy in the field of Liturgical Theology. Dr. David Fagerberg gave a talk on what it means to understand Schmemann and his legacy. His thesis is based on two ambiguous terms in his title. First he discusses the "west" and what that means. Secondly, he talks about "the cost of understanding Schmemann" and this leads to seven points he would make based on Fr. Alexander's Journals. The following is the audio of the talk which was given at St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theology Seminary in 2009. Just like Dr. Fagerberg is grateful for a man he has never met before so to am I grateful and indebted to Fr. Alexander, a man I never met but I owe my life to with his writings. His contribution and revival to the field of Liturgical Theology has given me life. What it means to live out liturgy in our lives is based on making Christ your starting point. Christ is all and in all:
The following is the introduction of the talk transcribed from the talk:
"I am grateful for this opportunity to make a small repayment of a debt I owe to a man I never met, but who had a life-changing impact on my vision. I first met the works of Fr Alexander through Fr Aidan Kavanagh, who would become my thesis director. Fr Aidan was on leave from teaching when I arrived at Yale, so I begged him for a directed readings course. He agreed on the condition that we read everything we could by Schmemann, for he was just finishing the Hale-Seabury lectures that would become his book, On Liturgical Theology. So in those first weeks of my first semester studying under him, we went through most of Schmemanns material together, and I tell people that I spent the rest of my graduate studies trying to get the number of the bus that hit me. I had come as a systematician, with scalpel in hand, ready to dissect a liturgical cadaver to see the makeup of its internal organs, and Kavanagh introduced me to a thinker for whom liturgy was life. Kill it, in order to study it, and one would not be able to watch liturgy at work. Wrestling with Fr Alexanders concept of liturgical theology changed everything for me, and I am thankful to be able to express my gratitude to the man I never met by standing at a podium in this institution to which he was so devoted.
I have left two intentional ambiguities in my title. The first is the word "west"—"understanding Schmemann in the west." I wont distinguish the Roman Catholic Church from Protestant ecclesial communities. I do not plan to specify whether this word indicates ancient Roman practicality, medieval university scholasticism, post-Enlightenment secularized culture, or a modern, low grade anti-ecclesiastical prejudice in those academic theologies independent from the Church. I will, however, mention three conceptual uses of the term that I detect, and find in this example. Orthodox scholars frequently note that a certain approach to the sacraments (along with the Latin language by which it was taught) came to Russia from the west; they mean the word geographically here. The result is called the "Western captivity" of Orthodoxy, and here they mean something that altered Orthodoxy's ecclesiastical cultural identity. And this captivity is denounced as "a deeply 'westernized' theology. ,.."1 Here the word is used pejoratively to describe something no longer orthodox. So "west" means geographical origin, or certain changes in Orthodox liturgy and theology, or something unorthodox, even if it can be found in Orthodox history. Almost every Orthodox theologian I've ever read or spoken to recognizes what is "western" when he or she encounters it, and here I am going to see how close I can come to articulating their tacit understanding. A western Christian myself, the defendant might have unique insights into the charge. I am less interested in finding out what the west has missed, than why it has missed it.
The second ambiguous term in the title is the word "cost"— "the cost of understanding Schmemann." There may be similar or parallel costs also demanded of the Orthodox Church to understand Schmemann, but I am concentrating here on the west. The term comes to me from another of my mentors, Paul Holmer, who liked to comment, "You cannot peddle truth or happiness. What a thought cost in the first instance, it will cost in the second." Whatever it cost Irenaeus to think recapitulation, it will cost us to understand recapitulation. I want to explore what it would cost the west to understand what Schmemann thought liturgical theology is, but I leave it ambiguous whether that cost is a forfeit or an addition, a letting go or a picking up—a sacrifice of some categories, or embracing larger ones. A term has different meanings in different language games, so even as the west hears Schmemann say "leitourgia" or "lex orandi" it must still pay the hermeneutical fee of listening to the grammar behind his words, namely, an Orthodox grammar. This causes me to be tentative in my approach, for as a Roman Catholic I am outside his Eastern Orthodox world. But my hope is that the contours of an object might be felt from both the inside and the outside, and I have tried to feel what Schmemann is describing without altering its shape. One final note: I have already presented my understanding of Schmemann's concept of liturgical theology in my book, and will avoid the tedium of simply summarizing it. Instead, I hope to locate this paper upon a source that was not available to me at that time, Schmemann's subsequently published Journals"...
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