Kevin W. IRWIN. Context and Text: A Method for Liturgical Theology. Revised Edition. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2018. pp. 646 + lxiii. $49.95 pb. ISBN 978-0-8146-8037-7. Reviewed by Stephen S. WILBRICHT, Stonehill College, Easton, MA 02357.

            To study liturgy is to study an event.  To study the event of liturgy demands learning to peel away layer after layer of “texts” that interact with one another in the work of giving praise to God and of uniting God’s people.  For the entirety of his prodigious academic career at The Catholic University of America, Kevin Irwin has touted the adage coined by Prosper of Aquitaine in the early fifth century—ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi (“the law of prayer grounds the law of belief”)—as a primary method for crafting liturgical theology.  As an attempt to expand the discipline of liturgical studies beyond the investigation of ancient liturgical sources and the historical development of rites, Irwin’s seminal 1994 work Context and Text: Method in Liturgical Theology, argues that rigorous observation of the “way” in which the Church prays provides the most reliable means for defining what the Church believes.  A further contribution of this method is Irwin’s addition of the words lex vivendi to Prosper’s maxim (now to be read as “lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi”), suggesting that Christian prayer serves to form Christian living.

            Now, with more than of a quarter of a century’s worth of additional teaching, research, and writing to help “sharpen the pencil” (a phrase often heard by his students), Irwin provides a hefty expansion of his original work in this revised edition.  The original text, just shy of 400 pages, now fills nearly 650 pages, with such a lengthy bibliography that a reader is instructed to access it online!  Therefore, reading Context and Text requires a personal investment, not only because of its price ($49.95), but also because of the time and concentration necessary to sift through the landscape of this book.  However, it must also be stated that this is an investment that every liturgical theologian, and indeed, theologians in general, would do well to make.  Context and Text is an extremely helpful work that keeps theology from becoming a merely abstract reality, for the liturgy is the arena for theology enfleshed.

            The book’s introduction istitled “New Contexts,” and here Irwin attempts to outline the many changes and discoveries (scholarly and otherwise) that have reshaped liturgical theology in the intervening years since its first publication.  Indeed, the liturgical world, as well as the world at large, have changed greatly over the last twenty-five years.  Among the various “new contexts” that Irwin identifies are the overall decline in religious affiliation, the rampant success of unbridled individualism in American, and the pick-and-choose attitude of contemporary worshippers creating the phenomenon of what Irwin calls the “Worship Mall.”  Irwin also identifies several important “contexts” within Catholicism itself, such as the appearance of second and third generation of liturgical books since their original publication after the Second Vatican Council, the search to define the true meaning of active participation in liturgical celebrations, and debates over who has proper authority of the liturgy.  Irwin brings all of these into theological focus and unity when he writes:  “For the liturgy to occur in its depth and breadth requires a number of things among the gathered assembly, including preparation, attentiveness, participation in words, music, and actions, as well as silence.  But for the liturgy to shape, form, and reform us in the numerous and varied ways that only the liturgy can do requires an admission of our need for God and one another in the communion of the church and how that always affects what we do in worship” (lviii).

            Just as the original version of Context and Text is comprised of three parts that serve to introduce Irwin’s method, apply it to various sources of liturgical “texts,” and propose ways in which a theology drawn from the liturgy can serve as both an ecclesiological critique and a challenge for spirituality, the revised edition follows the same structure.  However, one of the most pronounced differences is the appearance of a chapter on “Sacramentality,” which had formerly been a topic covered in Irwin’s chapter on “Symbol.”  This reflects the author’s concentration on this theme since the early 2000s and introduces a lens for interpreting liturgy that runs through the entire book.  Thus, after his first two chapters on “Tradition” and “Method,” Irwin begins Part II (“Context Is Text: Theology of Liturgy”) with his conviction that sacramentality must be recaptured in the Catholic symbolic imagination.  He writes:  “Sacramentality is a principle that is based in part on the goodness of creation, the value of human labor and productivity, and the engagement of humans in the act of worship…It is a worldview that invites us to be immersed more and more fully in the here and now, on this good earth, and not to shun any of our fellow creatures of and on this good earth” (125).  Based on this understanding of sacramentality, it will come as no surprise that Irwin refers often to Pope Francis’s 2015encyclical Laudato Si’.

            Although greatly expanded and updated with contemporary theological sources, chapters four, five, and seven (on “Word,” “Euchology,” and “Arts” respectively) remain much the same as in the first edition.  Irwin has added a chapter on “Time” (chapter five) that is particularly helpful in demonstrating how liturgical remembrance (“anamnesis”) is key to liturgical celebration, an admission that will greatly please defenders of ecumenism.  From exploring the dating of particular feasts to assessing the role the sun and the moon play in celebrating the hours of the day, this chapter demonstrates in a wide variety of ways how “liturgical ‘time telling’ is about our reappropriation and experience of the paschal mystery in communion of the church according to the rhythm of days, weeks, feasts, and seasons” (405).  This chapter, in particular, is especially helpful for those who wish to study liturgical theology from the viewpoint of inculturation.  It suggests that the contexts for liturgical celebration always transcend our limited understanding of time and space.

            Part Three of the book, originally titled “Text Shapes Context: Liturgical Theology,” has been changed to “Ongoing Texts and Contexts.”  While continuing to focus on “Doxology” and “Spirituality,” Irwin upholds a particularly ecumenical thrust as a primary goal of all theology and suggests that this work is never finished.  He states:  “These chapters are meant to be open-ended ‘works in progress’ and invitations to dialogue, collaboration, and cooperation across denominational lines” (506).  Thus, even though the pages of this book are decidedly “Catholic,” Irwin’s overarching concern is that good liturgical theology must contribute to the unity that is heralded by Christ and is a sign of the dawning of God’s Kingdom.  In the Catholic world today, in which there exists much division over the translation of liturgical texts and how liturgical rites should be celebrated, these final two chapters serve as an important reminder that the dying and rising of Christ, celebrated as the very heart of liturgy, is the proper and necessary framework for Christian living in general.  Thus, Irwin concludes:  “One of the purposes of the celebration of the liturgy is not to get the rite ‘right.’  One of the ultimate purposes of the liturgy is nothing less that to get life right.  Or, until the kingdom comes for us communally and personally, it is to get life less wrong” (625).  Such is the purpose for every facet of Christian theology.

            One note regarding the format of this book deserves particular attention.  In the first edition of Context and Text, references appear as endnotes to each chapter.  Now, in the revised edition, they appear as footnotes.  Irwin often uses these footnotes as opportunities to tell the story behind the story and provides the reader with many clues for further research.  The publishers at Liturgical Press are to be commended for this simple change in style. 

            When Context and Text was first published in 1994, it made a very important contribution to the academic discipline of liturgical studies.  The second edition will surely do likewise.  Such confident assessment is based on two basic reasons.  First of all, Irwin’s method articulated in this book demonstrates clearly the importance of basing theological claims upon what the liturgy actually “says.”  In turn, this dictates that sacramental theology must not divorce itself from liturgical theology.  Secondly, and just as important, Irwin’s work reminds us of the need to be attentive to the overall context in which liturgy is celebrated.  Worship is so much more than words on a page; it is a living, evolving event oriented toward the eschaton.  In Irwin’s words, “[E]ach and every time we engage in the sacred liturgy it is always a new event—a new event of salvation, redemption, and reconciliation with God and one another (among many other things), a new event of our communal growth in holiness and of our communal self-transcendence” (xv).  What words could better describe the work of all theology?