Theology Of Ritual In Jewish And Early Christian Worship

Religious rituals are corporate symbolic actions in which people engage when they worship. The theological principle underlying ritual worship is that our principal access to the spiritual is through the outward and visible. Even the most spiritual ideas must be expressed in outward words or actions, which are almost necessarily symbolic. Love, for example, is expressed by symbolic words and actions, that is, by ritual acts. For Christians the supreme example of this outward and visible expression of spiritual reality is the incarnation of Christ, the Word made visible and tangible. One of the most ancient ritual practices which we know of is the common meal held by a family or clan, not simply to assuage hunger, but to commune with the divine powers outwardly symbolized by the food which was eaten. Primitive theological reflection on this ritual suggested either that the divine powers were guests at the meal, or that the powers were the hosts. A third theory suggested that the divin…