A Liturgy of Creation: Creation and Christian Formation, Part 2

So, how is creation formative? Creation is formative because it is liturgical and liturgies are formative. I will need to unpack that a bit and I will do that with help from James K. A. Smith and some of the categories and structures that he puts forward in his book, Desiring the Kingdom. In Smith’s paradigm we are "liturgical animals," that is, affective and desiring creatures who are primed to receive the world in its wholeness often more through our heart or gut than through our head. Smith does not mean to create hierarchies though in which head and heart are pitted against each other but instead to challenge a developed over-reliance within certain camps of the Christian community on a cognitive-heavy "worldview" focus that works both from and towards a truncated anthropology. Smith, echoing Augustine, argues that we are first affective creatures. We are lovers before we are thinkers and because of this the shaping of our loves, or desires, is a central task to any effort in Christian formation. But how do we train our hearts? How do we orient our gut to desire the good and the beautiful? How are we made to love God?

Smith argues that our affections are formed as we enter into "liturgies" that position us towards a particular end, towards a particular love. When we participate in a community’s embedded collection of activities or practices we are precognitively oriented towards that which the community loves. We are, over time, formed to desire what that community desires simply by entering into its liturgies of embedded communal practices.

So, liturgies in this way, are formative. And as we consider the task of Christian formation we must rightly weigh the formative pressures of the many cultural liturgies and the gospel-denying stories that they take us up into. To effectively take hold of the task of Christian formation then means to give much more intention to the shaping of the heart than we have recently become accustomed. In order to get to the heart and its affections the practices of Christian liturgy come sharply to the fore.

Perhaps, based on Smith’s summarized argument above, we might be persuaded to concede a certain gravity to Christian liturgy – that is, gathered Christian worship – that we had not granted previously. And I think that is good. I quite agree. In fact, my argument from here seeks to inhabit the paradigm that Smith has put forward. The communal and regular practices of the Christian liturgy are central to Christian formation. I am arguing that creation is similarly formative because it too is a liturgy.

Part 3 to come…