Feast, History & Parousia
A Theme in Paul Bradshaw & Maxwell Johnson’s "The Origins of Feasts, Fasts, and Seasons in Early Christianity"
Liturgists have long viewed the developments of post-Constantinian liturgy as decadent; as early Christian expectation of the imminent coming of Christ gave way to a Church that began to settle for history and its place as the religion of the Roman Empire. Bradshaw and Johnson in their work The Origins of Feasts, Fasts, and Seasons in Early Christianity present an alternative narrative. There were major developments in the fourth century; but, they should be seen in continuity with what had come before.
For example, in the early Church, Sunday, which did not simply replace the Jewish Sabbath (cf. The Origins of Feasts, 24) came to be recognized as the day of Christian worship, “the key weekly expression of the constant eschatological readiness for the Parousia (παρουσία, meaning ‘arrival’ of an official or delegation, thus theologically, the solemn coming and presence of Christ) which was intended to permeate the whole of a Christian’s daily prayer and life” (Bradshaw & Johnson 13). However, “‘eschatology’ and ‘history’ are not mutually exclusive” (90, also cf. 114), for an expectation of the culmination of history is fundamentally dependent upon a consciousness of history. Christianity is neither an ahistorical philosophical school nor a mythological mystery sect, but a response to God’s saving work in history. As the Church began to expand within culture, there was a greater allowance for this history to be unpacked. And likewise, a pastoral need for its particular moments to be given particular focus so that this saving history and its expected culmination could better in-form the life of the faithful. “Post-Nicene liturgical trends were evolutionary, not revolutionary” (114).
Thus, the general expectancy of the Sunday service eventually consolidated around the realized eschatology of the Paschal Mystery: Sunday became the day of Resurrection. Theologically this is quite natural; but, in the history of liturgical practice, this seems to be the product of the Jerusalem tradition and its unique ability to link salvation history and worship—a historical consciousness that was exported via pilgrimage throughout the rest of the Christian world. Indeed, the Jerusalem “vigil of the resurrection” is the source of the Resurrection theme of Sunday Orthros of the Byzantine tradition (27-28). Sunday did not lose its eschatological meaning; it was simply narrowed down to the Resurrection which is itself eschatological. Thus, though occasioned by emergent Christendom, Bradshaw and Johnson caution against positing a radical dichotomy between the supposedly ‘ahistorical’ focus of the nascent Church and the ‘historicism’ of the imperial Church. This process is better understood as a liturgical unpacking of Salvation History as a cultural occasioned development of implicit theological possibilities.
We see this same pattern in the emergence of the Paschal Festal Cycle as made possible by the Church’s expansion into the public sphere. And again Jerusalem was at the center of this process. In the nascent Church, Pascha (where it was celebrated) seems to have been a commemoration of the whole mystery of Christ or at least of his Passion, Death and Resurrection celebrated as a single memorial. “The liturgical embellishment of the three days [of the Paschal Celebration] with ceremonies that gave particular expression to each of the specific themes is generally thought to have begun in Jerusalem in the late fourth century in response to the crowds of pilgrims who began to flock there and often joined in the celebration of the sacred season in the very place where the events of Christ’s Passion and resurrection were believed to have taken place” (62-63). However, Bradshaw and Johnson are careful to point out that even the most historically conscious liturgical developments such as the Holy Week rites were the product of Jerusalem’s unique sacred geography rather than liturgy-as-historical-reenactment (cf.118-119).
A similar process of unpacking can be seen in the emergence of the Nativity Cycle. Bradshaw and Johnson devote much attention to the complex relationship between Nativity and Epiphany. It seems that these different feasts were celebrated in different places as a commemoration of the coming of Christ; either memorializing the supposed chronological date of his birth or of his emergence into Salvation History at the Baptism and the revelation of his messianic and Trinitarian identity. Due to apparent adoptionist overtones, however, this second emphasis was eventually excluded from Nativity (December 25th) in the Byzantine tradition and became the principle meaning of Theophany (January 6th) (cf. 151). However, the Roman tradition preserves some of the more archaic complexity of themes with Advent (preparation for the coming of Christ), Epiphany (celebrating the Coming of the Magi), and a Feast of the Baptism of the Lord within the octave of Epiphany. Here again, we see a process wherein a festal period of overlapping though theologically related themes are spread out and each individual theme acquires a liturgical ‘space.’
The emergence of the weekly and festal cycles is not an abandonment of eschatological expectation in favor of historicism; but, a culturally occasioned dissemination of the thematically concentrated festal commemorations of the early church. The Church after Constantine finally could unpack its remembrance of Salvation History that has always been central to Christian experience.
Work Cited
Bradshaw, Paul F. and Maxwell E. Johnson. The Origins of Feasts, fasts and Seasons in Early Christianity. Collegeville: Pueblo Liturgical Press, 1997.