LITURGY OF THE NAME AND LITURGY OF THE BODY. NOMINALIST AND CORPORATIST DIMENSIONS OF ORTHODOX LITURGY AS THEY STAND IN RELATION TO REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY

Abstract

This study aims to situate the concept of political representation within the context of liturgical theology. Representation is the act of making another present. “Faithful” representation requires being touched and changed by the intelligent activity of the represented. This is afforded by the communication. The “name” is the word which draws persons into the further exchange of words. It is the lasting presence of another’s communicative action in my life. The sustenance of communication is underwritten by calling upon each other’s “name” and thereby inviting each other into further conversation. By “hallowing” the name, I let another person stay with me not just as a nominal presence of the “name” but as an impact upon me of everything that “comes with the name” – burdens and debts, glory and infamy, sin and punishment. To “hallow the name” is to proceed to the corporal sharing in that which the name refers to. In this case, it leads to “mutual indwelling” and “mutual witness” – the relationship whose parties can say to one another things like, “I am you and you are me”, “You are my code of conduct”. In this article, I hypothesize that “hallowing the name” and “breaking of bread” comprise the dialectic of the communion, comprised of the nominalist liturgy of the “word” and the corporatist liturgy of the “bread”. The “liturgy of the word” is the exchange of names – the faithful receive the teaching, the word of God, and hallow the Name of God, the exchange that ends in the baptism in the Name of God (receiving of the true new name of the faithful) and the “liturgy of the bread” is the exchange of “what goes with the name” – the faithful give up the sin which goes with the name of Adam, and receive immortality which is associated with the Name of Jehovah, the exchange whose acme is the Eucharist, our intake of the Body of God and God’s intake of us into God’s Body. I contend that this tension between the liturgy of the name and of the body can illuminate the tension between the nominalist and corporatist dimensions of representation in contemporary representative democracies.