«Lex orandi [est] lex credendi» is the cry of many but the game of few (to misquote W. K. Clifford). Byzantine dogmatic handbooks consistently quote the words and gestures of the liturgy to demonstrate the Church's profession of faith, whereas those composed from within a Roman theological milieu tend to cite juridical documents and with little reference, if any, to the Missal or Breviary. How, then, can we dare to claim the axiom Lex orandi, lex credendi?
Is this not the very wedge driven between faith and worship, dogmatics and doxology? Or worse, might this not exhibit a dislodging of the fides qua (the personal act of faith) from the fides quae (the ecclesial profession of faith)? It is worth noting that 1 John 4:16, "we have come to know [ἐγνώκαμεν] and to believe [πεπιστεύκαμεν] the love that God has for us," places ginōskō prior to pisteuō, that is, an experiential knowledge before the profession of faith; in other words, St John the Theologian expresses the Christian community's gnoseological, experiential awareness of God's love as being ontologically anterior to "believing."
In contrast, contemporary Catholic 'systematic theology' tends to reduce the act and profession of faith to an epistemological exercise. (The English translation of chapter 1 of Cardinal Müller's Dogmatica Cattolica has "theological epistemology" for «gnoseologica teologica»!)
What, then, is the kernel of this axiom Lex orandi, lex credendi? I would propose that it is rooted in the Christian's experience of the Trinitarian structure of the graced soul. Today's First Reading at Mass has, at Romans 8:14-16,
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of Sonship. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.
St Paul made a similar point in his earlier epistle (I say "earlier" on account of the 'South Galatian' theory of the dating of Galatians) to the Galatian church:
And because you are sons [and daughters], God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" (Gal 4:6).
This is why we 'tradition' the Lord's Prayer so late in the Catechumenate--during the Third Week of Lent--and why it is not 'returned' during the Preparation Rites of Holy Saturday as is the Creed: God as "Our Father" is true only of those who have become partakers in Christ's Resurrection. Hence, at one of His Easter appearances, the Risen Lord said to St Mary Magdalene--
"Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father [τὸν Πατέρα]; but go to My brethren and say to them, I am ascending to My Father [Πατέρα μου] and your Father [Πατέρα ὑμῶν], to My God and your God" (Jn 20:17).
It is for this reason, I would propose, that "Abba! Father!" is in fact the primordial liturgical prayer, and Christians are endowed with new language to address God no longer merely as Creator but as Our Father. As we saw earlier in St Paul's epistles to the Roman and Galatian churches, the indwelling Holy Spirit re-orientates the soul of the believer in such a way that a new relationship to God is forged--one from being merely a creature to participation in the very Sonship of Christ.
Moreover, the motif of the Christian believer of as a "temple" of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 3:16 and 6:19) is not only about the Paraclete's indwelling but about the constitutively liturgical structure of the graced soul. As a temple of the Holy Spirit, the Christian in fact shares in the overflow of the Anointed One's unction such that we are christs within the one Lord Jesus Christ. In the primordial liturgical prayer of "Abba! Father!", the Incarnate Son puts His prayer to His heavenly Father into our mouths.
The Lord's Prayer, the Paternoster, is the next step after a 'primordial' prayer; it is the crystallization of the shared, ecclesial experience of being the Body of Christ. If "Abba! Father!" is the primordial liturgical prayer, then the "Our Father..." is the original liturgical prayer, around which, ultimately, the whole Sacred Liturgy is built.
It follows, then, that the Christian's experience of the Most Holy Trinity--as temples of the Holy Spirit, co-sons and daughters in the only-begotten Son, calling God "Father!"--is fundamentally doxological; subsequently and only subsequently does it become dogmatic, as in the three principal strophes in the Creed: "I believe in God, the Father almighty...and in Jesus Christ...and in the Holy Spirit." More precisely, since it is the Holy Spirit who reminds us of Jesus' words (Jn 14:26) and unites us to Christ (Rom 8:9b), who in turn is the Way back to the Father (Jn 14:6, 9), it follows that the very taxonomy of the Trinity in liturgical prayer (Holy Spirit-Son-Father) is the converse of the taxonomy of the Trinity in the profession of faith (Father-Son-Holy Spirit). It is a diptych that behaves like a mirror: Only in hindsight do we believe in God as Father of the Son and from whom the Holy Spirit proceeds (fides quae), because we have the experiential knowledge (γνῶσις) by the Holy Spirit of the Son who returns us to the Father's embrace (fides qua).
The blasé approach to the Sacred Liturgy now very much in vogue--or, worse, liturgy as a self-celebration of a group--painfully indicates a spiritual malformation which, in turn, yields a formlessness in the act of faith. Conversely, to teach a 'correct' systematic theology apart from a paradigmatic interiority rooted in the Trinitarian life can be nothing other than an 'imposition.'
Otherwise, how can we be a "synodal Church" if 'synodality with the Trinity' is excluded?
