On Ritual Knowledge

Abstract

The study of ritual forms of religious expression is, in many respects, still in its infancy. This is largely due to the greater attention given by religionists to the narrative and mythic forms of religious expression. Despite the pioneering work of Victor Turner and others much remains to be done in identifying the character and structure of ritual action. To this task many disciplines may contribute their own perspectives and lines of inquiry. My own field is that of Systematic Theology and it is precisely by way of this engagement and commitment that I have become interested in the study of ritual. In order to give an account of the nature and method of theological reflection, I found it necessary to give some account of the field of imaginative forms within which the data of theology (scripture, tradition, etc.) are to be located. While in my Introduction to Theology I concentrated most upon narrative forms of the religious imagination, it was clear then, and has become even more clear since, that ritual forms are also basic to theological reflection. This is especially the case if one acknowledges the unity of theology and ethics (as in the theology of Karl Barth) or of theory and praxis (as in liberation theology). Ritual is above all a pattern of action, and the more theology concerns itself with action (praxis, ethics) the more carefully it will have to attend to the patterns of action displayed in ritual. The danger in this move to a consideration of ritual forms is that these will be simply subsumed under the better known mythic or narrative forms so familiar to us through the study of literature, anthropology of religion, or biblical criticism. When this happens, ritual becomes simply an illustration of that which is known or manifested through myth. Such a move is formally analogous to the Reformation insistence on the priority of Word to Sacrament-a priority which may or may not be dogmatically appropriate but which ought not to be made the a priori basis for an understanding of ritual generally.