An Pagan Ethical Vision
Introduction
In this essay I analyze Timothy Sedgwick's Sacramental Ethics. I shall show that his ethic has no concept of incarnation as in John 1:14, nor does he have a concept of God's trancendence. As such, his approach to God has some similarities to what I have called the "ecstatic" view of God in that the ecstatic view also lacks a doctrine of incarnation. In the ecstatic view, however, God transcends the world and is only known in ecstasy. Sedgwick's god, however, is never transcendent. For all intents and purposes, his god is the world. As a consequence, his ethic becomes a pagan ethic since his ethical norms come from and lead to the world. I shall show this.
Since Sedgwick lacks a sense of God's transcendence, he does not belong to the liberal school, the followers of Schleiermacher. Apparently, he belongs to what has been called "postliberalism." This school can be identified by three characteristics: 1. Narrative as the primary interpretative category for the Bible. 2. The hermeneutical primacy of the world create by the biblical narratives over the world of human experience. 3. The primacy of language over experience.(1) As we shall see, Sedgwick claims that language has the power to dissolve and recreate reality, and further, the source of his ethic is the eucharistic drama which has its foundation in the biblical narrative. In that sense, his thinking is that of postliberalism. In other essays, I shall discuss postliberalism, beginning with the important text by Lindbeck which I read some years ago.(2)
I choose Sedgwick's Sacramental Ethics for several reasons. First, he is a respected theologian and ethicist within the Episcopal Church. He has not only contributed to the ethical debates of recent years, but he has also served on the faculty of Episcopal seminaries. For many years he was at Seabury Western, and he now teaches ethics at Virginia Theological Seminary. As a result, he has played a key role in educating a generation of Episcopal priests. Furthermore, his Sacramental Ethics is well written, relatively consistent in its application of fundamental principles, and logically complete in that he lays a foundation and builds upon it. Therefore, it is an ideal text by which to understand how the failure to affirm God's divine command affects ethics and the moral life.
The Four Fundamentals of Sedgwick's Ethics
Worship, Language, Reality, and Ethics
Sedgwick's approach to ethics can be understood in terms of several fundamental realities. There is what he calls "reality," the "world," "creation," or "life." These terms are frequently used interchangeably to designate existence. There is also the Christian worshipping community which is in relation to reality or life. There is the language of the worshipping community. Finally, there is ethics which emerges from worship as it relates worshippers to all of life. We may now discuss these four factors in greater detail, starting with the worshipping community.
In worship, the Christian congregation recites the mythic biblical story in the liturgy of Word and sacrament. This recital creates, effects, dissolves, and reconstructs the worshipper's relation to reality. This is due to the nature of language. According to Sedgwick, language is not a matter of describing reality, or propositions corresponding to reality, as if reality is "out there" prior to language. Rather, language gives reality shape and form. The language of worship even creates reality. Sedgwick draws on John Dominic Crossan at this point and quotes him as follows.
Reality is the world we create in and by our language and our story so that what is "out there," apart from our imagination and without our language, is as unknowable as, say, our fingerprints, had we never been conceived. ... I am claiming that what we know is reality here together and with each other."(3)
Within the Christian community, language has two functions, mythic and parabolic. Sedgwick again draws on Crossan.
In The Dark Interval Crossan emphasizes two functions of language: mediating and reconciling the diverse and conflicting experiences that constitute human life, and challenging such mediation and reconciliation in order to thrust the hearer back into the diverse and conflicting experiences themselves. The first function of language is mythic; the second function is parabolic.(4)
The primary text for Christian faith and worship is Scripture. Scripture is both mythic and parabolic. For example, the first creation story is mythic, harmonizing chaos and order. The second account mediates between good and evil. Mediations of opposite and irreducible elements is one of the functions of the biblical narratives. "All of these narratives relate events that bring to consciousness irreducible opposites that constitute the fundamental experience that we have as humans in the world."(5)
The parables of Jesus are examples of parabolic language. Such language thrusts the listener out of his or her ordinary frame of reference. They dissolve the world in order to recreate it with mythic language. Both these functions of language occur in worship, and by means of language, worshippers are both reconciled to and put at odds with the world.
For Christians, the language of worship centers in Jesus Christ, especially the eucharist. This is the paschal mystery, and the narration of the passion of Jesus Christ takes a four fold form. The form is acknowledgement of God, opening and offering of ourselves, experience of grace, and the formation of a community of faith in love which embraces the whole of the world in all its travail. These are Word, offertory, Great Thanksgiving, communion and dismissal.(6)
As worshipper are transformed by the language of worship (grace) their relationship to the world changes. They become different (conversion). They are shaped by the liturgy and the life of the church (formation). As this happens worshippers experience new possibilities, new perspectives, new ways of acting and doing. This produces a conflict, a discrepancy, between the world of worship and the world of daily life. Ethics results from this discrepancy. It is the moral effort to bring the whole of reality into organic relation with reality as known and experienced in worship.
Christian ethics arises in the discrepancy between the sense of a redeemed life, celebrated in worship, and the actual relations that constitute daily life. The task of ethics then is to envision the Christian life in terms of the particular relations and conflicts of daily life. In this way practical moral reasoning whether systematic or more like the folk wisdom of a people seeks to sanctify daily life by relating it to God. Ethics is sacramental as it signifies and deepens the meaning of Christian faith in the world.(7)
When Sedgwick uses the term "envision," he means seeing life in terms of the four fold form of the paschal mystery. From this perspective, the whole of life is a gift in which one acknowledges God, offers oneself to others and to life, is enabled to love, and thereby forms a community of love which incarnates the paschal mystery. Ethics, ethical reflection, grounded in worship, enables one to go about enacting this four fold form in daily life.
Once Sedgwick has laid the groundwork for his ethics, he then discusses particular ethical matters such as sexuality, the use of power, issues of justice, peace, and war. Before investigating specific ethical content, however, I will now explore the theological aspects of Sedgwick's thought. Once that is done, his specific ethical observations can be seen to fortify the contention that his ethic has no concept of God's transcendence or Speech. Once this is seen, it will be possible to bring to light the profound limitations and contradictions that lie within this ethical vision.
God is Reality Transformed by Worship
God's Transcendence and Incarnation Denied
In my opening paragraph, I claimed that Sedgwick's ethical vision can be understood in terms of four factors. None of those factors was God. I did this because I do not believe God in a trinitarian or incarnational sense has any role to play in Sedgwick's ethic. Of course, as a Christian ethicist, Sedgwick must begin with God. On the first page of the text he states, "Christian ethics must begin with God, specifically the question of how we come to know God and God's purposes." One or two lines further he says, "Most fundamentally, Christian ethics is concerned with the Christian life, with how we are to discern God in our lives in light of Jesus Christ, and, in turn, how we are to form our lives in order to express and deepen our relationship with God."(8) In spite of the affirmation of "God's purposes," and the claim that we are "to discern God in our lives in light of Jesus Christ," I shall now show that Sedgwick does not understand God in any trinitarian and christological sense.
The core of Sedgwick's ethic is the worshipping community. He describes how language transforms the person in worship and thereby relates the worshipper to reality. But worship does not relate the person to God as distinct from reality. Worship relates the person to reality as synonymous with God. This is decisive for Sedgwick's ethic. He never distinguishes between God and reality, or between God and the world. He never describes how God might differ from reality, creation, or life. Were he to do so, he would have to discuss Trinity and Christology.(9) But he does not. They are not discussed because they are not needed. They are not needed because Sedgwick conflates God, life, reality, and world. This reduction is so critical to the whole of Sedgwick's ethics that I will present the evidence for this in some detail. I begin with Sedgwick's understanding of Scripture, the text of the worshipping community.
All of these [biblical] narratives relate events that bring to consciousness irreducible opposites that constitute the fundamental experience that we have as humans in the world.(10)
This indicates the parabolic, the use of language to reverse expectations and place the hearer again more centrally in the experiences that animated the myth in the first place. What is distinctive about parables as such is that they do not attempt reconciliation but leave the hearer in the fundamental tension of life itself.(11)
Parables raise to consciousness the primordial experiences that constitute our life in the world by raising the contradictions between our experience in the world and the accepted myths. In contrast to myth, parables restore before us, they raise to consciousness, the irreducible opposites that constitute the primordial experiences we have of ourselves in the world.(12)
In these quotations Sedgwick consistently avoids the claim that the biblical language is the objective Word of God which relates believers to a transcendent God. Rather, the biblical language relates worshippers to the "fundamental experience," the "fundamental tension of life," that we have "in the world." Its real object is not God, but our "experience in the world," our "primordial experiences" that constitute our "life in the world." In short, the language of Scripture and worship do not bring us to God as distinct from reality, rather, they relate us to "life," to the "world," and "experience."
Here is another quote.
Worship confirms and deepens previous insights while challenging the status quo. In this sense worship and daily life mirror each other, although the reflections never fully coincide. The end of such worship, however, is not intellectual insight. Worship mediates reality, both mythically and parabolically, and thereby brings the participant into relationship with reality, what Christians call God.(13)
Here "reality" is equated with "God," or more precisely, "what Christians call God." The phrase "what Christians call God," means that God is reality shaped by Christian worship. Other communities, Hindu, Moslem, or pagan, would understand reality differently since their worship shapes reality in other forms. In other words, no ultimate truth claim is made by the phrase "what Christians call God."
Further, given that the language of worship shapes and creates reality, to say that "worship and daily life mirror each other," and that worship "brings the participant into relationship with reality, what Christians call God," is to fuse "God," "daily life," and "reality." In fact, "God" is simply reality or daily life as shaped by the worship of a religious community.
Worship is mythic as it mediates between the worshiper and reality; it is also parabolic as it dissolves the taken for granted attitudes and perceptions that distance the self from reality. In other words worship mediates reality and relates us to God as it expresses and challenges our relation to reality and, in turn, celebrates and effects that relation.(14)
Again, relating to reality and relating to God are the same since relating to God occurs as worship "expresses and challenges our relation to reality."
Worship expresses the way the world 'is,' and thereby draws the participant into relation with reality. It also challenges taken for granted attitudes and beliefs about the world that distance individuals from reality. Worship not only expresses the meaning of an individual's life but challenges that life and places the person into a new relation to the world. As individuals worship they are thereby drawn into relationship with God.(15)
Here the term "world" is made synonymous with the term "reality," and of course, with the term "God."
Through our passion which is to say the suffering of the limits of our life and ultimately of death itself is the only means of passage from death to acceptance and reconciliation of our life in the world. In worship this movement to reconciliation is effected as self concerns are displaced and individuals offer themselves to God. In such offerings the worlds of individuals are opened and enlarged, and they experience the sense of grace by which they are reconciled to the world and impelled to care and embrace the world.(16)
Here "world" and "God" are synonymous. As "individuals offer themselves to God," their worlds are "opened and enlarged." They experience the "grace by which they are reconciled to the world and impelled to care and embrace the world." Here offering oneself to God is equivalent to being reconciled to, caring for, and embracing the world, rather than being reconciled to God who is distinct from the world. Consistent with this passage, subsequent passages will show that grace for Sedgwick is a quality of the world, discovered by offering oneself to the world.
The paschal mystery is that precisely in our suffering the particulars of life and inevitably death, the ultimate mystery of life is encountered, whether it is called God or being or some other name. This encounter requires a no or a yes. .... If our encounter ends in an embrace and yes, we are transformed and cannot help but love the world and even lay down our lives for the world. Such is the journey of faith, signed and effected in worship.(17)
Here encounter with the "ultimate mystery of life" is equated with an encounter with "God or being or some other name." This implies that "God," "being" or any other name for existence, are the same.
For Christians the ultimate parable is Jesus' crucifixion. The Messiah, the bearer of God's reign, was crucified. The conclusion could only be that this was not the Messiah. Crucifixion was after all a sign of judgment and rejection. This shock, however, became a revelation. The folly of the cross confirmed the folly of the parables themselves. The disciples experienced here in and through the crucifixion the risen Lord. ... The death of Jesus destroyed all of their remnant hopes for the kingdom they had envisioned; instead they encountered God and so God's reign in this man Jesus as they ate together and he embraced the cross. No wonder, as Crossan says, that the "cross replaced the parables and became in their place, the supreme Parable."(18)
This passage is interesting. The disciples experienced the events of Jesus' crucifixion as a parable, a shock that became a revelation. Classically, Jesus Christ revealed God because God the Son was incarnate in him to act and save. Not so here. All that is needed is the very human life of Jesus which, in its ugly end, produces a shock that transforms reality. Jesus' life, not God the incarnate Word active in that life, reveals.
The passage mentions the "risen Lord," a term traditionally referring to God miraculously raising Jesus from the dead. But that idea is not intrinsic to the passage. Rather, as the disciples ate their final supper with Jesus, and as he embraced the cross, it came to pass that "in and through the crucifixion" they met the "risen Lord." The term "risen Lord" is reality transformed by the shock of the crucifixion. It is not the bodily personal presence of the risen Christ overcoming death and encountered as subsequent to and distinct from crucifixion. That is why the "risen Lord" was met "in and through," rather than "subsequent to and distinct from," the crucifixion. In sum, the shock of the crucifixion, and the reciting of it today, create revelation, rather than God the Word in union with the person of Jesus revealing a transcendent God.
Occasionally, Sedgwick will use traditional language, but his usage makes it clear that his underlying perspective is anything but traditional.
In worship the paschal faith is enacted. The people do more than remember or recall the story of Jesus. In worship they enact the movement of Jesus' life. In hearing the word of God they know that by their own power they do not constitute life. All of life is dependent upon the range of relations, known and unknown, that constitute the world. In response worshipers offer themselves; they open themselves to God as they offer up their sense of sin, concerns and hopes, praise and thanksgivings. In such offering the worshiper experiences the sense of grace, the gratuitousness of life itself. From such grace comes consent and reconciliation and, in turn, reverence and care for the world in all its travail.(19)
In this quotation Sedgwick notes that "faith is enacted" in worship. The "story of Jesus," the "movement of Jesus' life," is also enacted. All we have here is the story and the presumed property of language to create and dissolve reality. Sedgwick does not need a God incarnate in Jesus Christ so that the story of Jesus reveals both God and the human as distinct from each other yet united in one person. That would be Chalcedon. But Sedgwick is not thinking in terms of Chalcedon.
Sedgwick also uses the term the "word of God." What does this "word" say? It says that worshippers "know that by their own power they do not constitute life," and that life is "dependent upon the range of relations, known and unknown, that constitute the world." The message the worshippers hear is about life because life (reality, the world, experience) speaks the Word. The message is not about God as distinct from the world. It is about a life which we cannot constitute. Classically, by the incarnation of the Word, the life of Jesus tells us about life, but also about God since God was incarnate in Christ. Not so here. Here we only learn about life. Once life "speaks," worshippers offer themselves to "God," and in doing so experience a "sense of grace." This grace is not God's Word of forgiveness and command. It is the "the gratuitousness of life itself," i.e., life is grace rather than God distinct from life creating grace. This leads to "reverence and care for the world" rather than reverence for God as distinct from the world.
Further, the term "reverence" carries connotations of worship, adoration, and respect. To reverence the world is not that far from worship of the world. After all, grace itself comes from the world, the "gratuitousness of life itself." This is paganism, the belief that the divine is found within or is the created world. Sedgwick is driven toward paganism by his fundamental assumption that "God" is but another name for reality shaped by worship.
Occasionally, however, Sedgwick appears to imply that God is distinct from the world and therefore not synonymous with reality as transformed in worship.
Or course understandings of God and the Christian life that arise from worship must make sense of the broader experience and understanding of God and the world. In this sense beliefs about God and the world that arise from worship are tested, modified, and confirmed in light of their ability to comprehend reality as a whole.(20)
Here the term "God" is used in conjunction with "world," as if each were different. That possibility is qualified, however, by the statement that beliefs about God and the world are "tested, modified, and confirmed in light of their ability to comprehend reality as a whole." This gives the impression that God and the world are both aspects of one over arching reality, namely, "reality as a whole." In spite of the fact that Sedgwick uses language that has some relation to orthodox Christian thought, the overwhelming thrust of his thought, signaled by a theological failure to introduce Incarnation or Trinity, his view of language and its relation to "reality," and above all, his normal pattern of referring to God as synonymous with reality, make it clear that Sedgwick does not distinguish between God and the world. As a result, he neither claims nor needs the second person of the Trinity as distinct from the world yet incarnate in the person of Jesus. Lacking transcendence, there is no possibility of a transcendent God becoming incarnate to speak his Word. As we proceed, these theological commitments will be consistently verified.
Ethics as God's Command Denied
Sedgwick is, of course, aware of other theological possibilities. He briefly discusses two of them, intellectualism and voluntarism. Intellecutalism discerns morality in the eternal forms which order reality. Plato is its chief proponent. Voluntarism is a form of intuitionism that claims that God directly reveals his will as an ethical command. This position would be closer to the objective position. Sedgwick rejects both these traditions. He makes the following comments.
Voluntarism, with its emphasis on the will and religions faith as a matter of trust, provides a refuge for those disillusioned with reason. But the still, small voice of God is not so clear as the voluntarist tradition would suggest. As the voluntarists often claim, the experience of God is the experience of trust as we come to sense the graciousness, the giftedness of all that is. But this sense of trust does not yield the intuition of what ought to be done in the world.
Both intellectualists and voluntarists fail to comprehend the historical character of human life and the understanding of language as construing experience and orienting and relating us to reality. They both fail to acknowledge what is central to human life: thoroughly historical humans find their being in language. Language mediates reality as it both creates and dissolves the boundaries between the self and the world, as expressed in the understanding of the mythic and parabolic character of language.
Given such an understanding, the Christian moral life is not primarily a determination of specific rules of conduct. Nor is the Christian life a matter of intuitively responding to the will of God. Rather the moral life for the Christian is fundamentally a matter of imagination and interpretation in order to develop a way of life that deepens the relation to God and bears witness to Christian faith in daily life.(21)
Notice that Sedgwick considers the "small voice of God" as heard by the voluntarists to be a sense of "trust" which occurs as we sense the "giftedness of all that is." In other words, trust in the "small voice of God" is really trust in the giftedness of reality, a logical corollary of defining God as reality. Further, consistent with the whole of his thought, he once again states that language does not really relate the self to God as distinct from the world, but to "reality" and to the "world." Even more, he thinks the "voice of God" is given content by the historical conditions in which one finds oneself. This is similar to the ecstatic position which holds that the feeling for the Infinite is given content by historical and social conditions which evolve with time. Finally, Sedgwick does not think the "will of God" takes objective form so that we know "what ought to be done," rather, we are simply shaped by worship to effect a "way of life" in daily affairs.
In certain ways, Sedgwick is similar to Schleiermacher. Just as Schleiermacher defined the relationship to God as the feeling of absolute dependence given form by the message of Jesus Christ, Sedgwick understands the ethical relation to God as the relation to reality effected by the paschal form. Like Schleiermacher, Sedgwick is a monist. He sees God as ground, reality, world, life, and within this all encompassing reality, language functions to dissolve and reconstitute reality. But there is no God distinct from world, life, and reality, and therefore no God from outside the world who can become incarnate as Word to speak ethical commands as in orthodox christology.
Sedgwick's Ethics has Form but not Content
Since Sedgwick cannot envision that God could speak an objective command, his ethics can have no definite content valid in all circumstances. Rather than content, there is only form, the four fold paschal form which is worked out in the concrete historical and social conditions of life. The following makes this quite clear.
Given such an understanding, the Christian moral life is not primarily a determination of specific rules of conduct. Nor is the Christian life a matter of intuitively responding to the will of God.(22)
The purpose of a moral norm is not primarily judicial, rendering final judgment on the morality of specific acts on the basis of immutable moral laws. Rather, norms seek to describe the form of human acts and relations necessary to embody the broader meanings and purposes of life. Deviations from the norm are best not considered narrowly as acts of ignorance or rebellion but as part of a broader conversation about the meaning of human life.(23)
Such a description will not focus narrowly in prescriptions for what ought to be done in specific situations. Rather, ethics must describe how life is to be lived so that it will reflect and deepen the paschal movement in the individual and the community of faith.(24)
For Sedgwick, rather than "specific rules of conduct" or "immutable moral laws," or "prescriptions," ethics "seeks to describe the form of human acts and relations." It is concerned with how life will "reflect and deepen the paschal movement," a movement constituted by the four fold paschal form. In this way, ethics is form alone. It has no immutable laws or specific norms that apply to specific circumstances.
First and Second Commandments Conflated
Love of God Denied
In the objective view, love of God and love of neighbor are different though related loves. They are different because God is different from one's neighbor. For example, in worship, God the Son or Word takes concrete form in word and sacrament. By means of this objectification, worshippers can love God as distinct from all other created things. In this perspective, the great commandments to love God and neighbor make sense. If however, as Sedgwick affirms, God does not speak in worship, and if the form of worship relates worshippers to all of reality, then one does not relate to God as distinct from one's neighbor. Rather, love of God, love of reality, love of neighbor, are all one love. The two fold commandment to love God and one's neighbor collapses into one commandment, the commandment to love all things. This implies that one must love the world, or one's neighbor, with all one's heart, soul, and mind. This, in the biblical view, is idolatry. For Sedgwick, however, idolatry is simply not loving one's neighbor, or not embracing the world in all its travail.
In other words, we atrophy or grow, contract or enlarge as we either accept or reject the gift of life. To accept is to give thanks and to care for our world. To reject is to resent and to demand of the world. The latter response is idolatry, lack of trust that turns the self into the end of life, into a god.(25)
Sedgwick adopts this view because he has only two choices, either to accept and love the world, or to reject the world and love oneself as a god. Just as Sedgwick denies that God can be loved as distinct from the world, he must also deny the distinct action of God as grace. If God is not transcendent, then God cannot be different from matters of fact to speak to them or act upon them. If God did speak or act, that would be intuitionism, a view Sedgwick rejects. As a result, grace is a property of the world itself. It is the world recreated by the language of worship. This can easily be seen by reading the quotations given above.
Now that the foundation has been laid, I will discuss Sedgwick's views on three specific ethical matters, human sexuality, friendship and service, and the use of force. I begin, as he does, with human sexuality.
Sedgwick on Sexuality
The primary image Sedgwick uses to discuss sexuality is gift. Gift lies at the heart of the paschal mystery. One person gives himself or herself to another. The other then responds by self offering as well. These mutual gifts are received, and as that happens, each person is graced to reach out and embrace the other and even the world.(26) As this happens, life reflects the giving and receiving of the paschal mystery. Further, persons are whole persons, with sexuality belonging integrally to the whole self with its wide range of hopes and concerns. Therefore, sexuality cannot be divorced from wider considerations such as caring for the other, for children, and for the world. This has several consequences.
First, sex for sex sake is disallowed since that divorces sex from the whole of life. Secondly, the marriage ceremony is a valid action as it publicly and solemnly affirms the ultimate character of gift as the complete giving of oneself. Since true gifts are given without reserve, marriage entails a life long commitment. Further, sex outside of marriage would appear to detract from the mutuality of two people fully giving themselves to each other.
Sedgwick's Sexual Ethic is Circular Reasoning
It isn't logical for Sedgwick to affirm life long monogamy or faithfulness within marriage. These are absolute norms. He has repeatedly stated that there are no absolute norms or immutable laws. Such norms deny the social and historical character of language and life. When Sedgwick claims that marriage should be life long, his reasoning is completely circular. One term used in this circular reasoning is the concept of "person."
As has been emphasized, the sharpest contrast to the Christian understanding of sexual relationships is an understanding that reduces them to a contract. A contract is a conditional relationship: one gives something for something else. If the exchange cannot be fulfilled or the commodity is used up then the contract is null and void. This is the antithesis of what it means to be a person; hence, if our sexuality is to express and nurture what it means to be a person, we must enter into the relationship with no conditional clause. This is most fully expressed in the commitment to love and care for the other until death.(27)
What is the logic here? It goes like this. If you wish to be a person, then you must love unconditionally which implies you will love and care for the other until death. But what if you are a person who doesn't understand the term "person" in just this way? What if you think you can sexually and unconditionally love several people at once? Or, where does Sedgwick get his concept of person? If he is true to his perspective, he has received this understanding of person through the life and worship of the Christian community. For Christians, to be a person means not reducing relations to a contract which implies a life long commitment for those who marry. Or more simply, if you are a Christian you are a person, and if you are a person you are not contractual but marry for life. This is circular reasoning, tantamount to the statement that Christians marry for life, so marry for life if you are a Christian.
Ethical Form without Content Can Mean Most Anything
But of course, various members of the Christian community may not understand personhood as does Sedgwick. They could claim that persons are socially and historically formed, a view that Sedgwick affirms throughout this text. If this be true, then it readily follows that the traditional concept of person may no longer be relevant. For example, one could observe that biblical persons married for life in order to secure the well being of the children which almost inevitably follow from sexual intercourse. For modernity, however, sexual intercourse is possible without children, and therefore, other forms of intimacy besides marriage should be permissible. There are members of the Christian community who say just that.(28) One could also appeal to the findings of modern psychology which could suggest that the burden of a life long commitment overemphasizes the super ego at the expense of the whole self. Or, one could note that sociobiologists have observed that large male body size in relation to females among mammal species can be positively correlated to polygyny. The higher the ratio of body size of male over female, the greater the degree of polygyny. For humans, that would imply, a result verified by data from virtually all known societies, that humans should be moderately polygynous. Therefore, life long marriage would violate the dispositions of our genetic inheritance.
At this point, what can Sedgwick do? He could suggest worship. But if there is no "voice of God" in worship, why should the words of Jesus, or the tradition, or Scripture, or each other as heard in worship tell anyone that they must be faithful in a life long marriage? In fact, they cannot. There is no voice of God in worship, there is only the four fold paschal from. But does "acknowledging," "offering," "embracing," and "nourishing," offer something substantial? Acknowledging the other, offering oneself, and nourishing and embracing others, allows virtually any combination of partners and acts provided that all are acknowledged, loved, and embraced. Given the great variety of human pleasures and needs as shaped by a bewildering array of cultural forms, all sorts of possibilities become legitimate if ethics specifies only form but not content.
Ethics without Content is Ethics without Form
Sedgwick's Ethic is Impossible
Furthermore, if ethics is form and not content, then the form must remain constant while the content changes according to different cultures, language, and circumstances. For if not, if the form also changes with time and circumstance, then nothing can be said since there is no fixed pattern from which to derive content. But then, one could ask Sedgwick how he arrived at the four fold paschal form? Doesn't that form of Christian worship have content namely the content of being four fold? Isn't that four foldness just as socially and historically conditioned as the specific acts affirmed or forbidden by the "voice of God" in Scripture? Obviously so. Did God command the four fold form of "acknowledge," "offer oneself," "embrace," and "nourish," or is it an artifact of an ancient worshipping community? Without the "voice of God," it is simply an artifact, a socially and historically conditioned practice without eternal warrant. An ethic constructed without the voice of God will have no foundation, no anchor in the tradition, neither form nor content, since both are viewed as a human constructs subject to continued revision. In other words, from a logical point of view, Sedgwick's ethic is impossible since it has no purchase on anything constant.
All of this is a consequence of Sedgwick's identification of God with the world. If however, he were to claim a transcendent God distinct from the world, and if this God could speak his Word in Jesus Christ, then Sedgwick could derive an ethic based upon the Jesus Christ who is the same, yesterday, and tomorrow. But that is impossible for Sedgwick. As a result, logically, his ethic can claim nothing. In the end, as subsequent paragraphs will show, he doesn't do ethics. He simply describes the ethical habits of various Christian communities.
Sedgwick's "Ethic" is Description, not Ethics
Since Sedgwick lacks an ethical anchor, he cannot produce ethical statements. He can only point out that certain persons or communities have upheld various ethical principles or codes. This is description, a branch of anthropology, the scientific study of one aspect of the human species devoid of theological first principles. Consider the following in which Sedgwick appears to be upholding the traditional view of no sex outside of marriage. It can be seen that his "logic" is nothing but circular reasoning or description.
Monogamy is similarly a norm for Christian marriage. Given the limits within human life, all possibilities cannot be realized. ... The desire for sexual intercourse as an end in itself is seldom mutual and self contained. There is no 'last tango in Paris'; the desire and end of human life is more than that of Don Juan. In actual history, given the limits of human life, human insecurity and anxiety, and needs and desires for affirmation, monogamy has been the form and witness to care and love in marriage. At their worst polygamy and adultery have turned the other into chattel; at the least they have threatened to compromise the ability of husband and wife to fulfill their vows to love and care for each other.(29)
In regard to the first sentence in the above quotation, Christian marriage has historically been defined as monogamous, and therefore it follows logically that the sentence "Monogamy is similarly a norm for Christian marriage" is true simply because "Monogamy" is a predicate of the term "Christian marriage." The first sentence is nothing more than a tautology. The second sentence is also tautological since "limits" implies that "all possibilities cannot be realized." In the third sentence, the term "mutual" implies interaction between two persons in which each recognizes the other. Sex as "an end in itself" implies the lack of such recognition. Therefore sex as an end in itself is not mutual and Sedgwick's third sentence is essentially tautological.
Finally, the quotation ends with an appeal to history. Presumably, history can show us that monogamy is best for love and marriage. What is the evidence from history on this? Does Sedgwick present this evidence? He does not. Even if he did, wouldn't his evidence be socially and historically conditioned? Couldn't persons from other cultures reach totally different conclusions? Do Christians really think the lessons of history are so plain that they can be read off from reality? And if so, doesn't this contradict Sedgwick's earlier statements that there is no reality "out there," described by language corresponding to facts, but rather, language creates reality including history? Are there not religions whose rites consist of sexual practices such as prostitution, sacred intercourse, and orgies, and don't these liturgies constitute reality as legitimizing those practices? And is it not obvious, that once reality is constructed by these sexual liturgies, that monogamy would entail a discrepancy, a failure to conform life to reality as dissolved and recreated by these liturgies? Does the above quotation have any real content beyond descriptive or circular statements? None.
Sedgwick's Ethics Can have no Content
All is Socially and Historically Conditioned
Once Sedgwick has "affirmed" the traditional view of marriage with descriptive phrases and reductionistic logic, he then undercuts his position by reaffirming his relativistic assumptions.
Whether or not sexual exclusivity is a necessary condition for the mutuality and generativity of marriage may be questioned. ... Certainly sexual intercourse doesn't have a singular meaning across cultures or even within a culture. The judgment that sexual intercourse should only be expressed within monogamous marriage surely reflects the desire to have children raised within a stable family composed of husband and wife. More recently it reflects the romantic view that sexual intercourse expresses the deepest personal communion between people therefore realizes its full meaning in marriage. Such understandings are historical judgments that reflect an attempt to order a range of goods in human life in order that they may best express and nurture broader meanings. As interpretations of the meaning of human life they cannot be undubitable but can only be developed and argued in terms of the conflicts and relations that form human life.
The purpose of a moral norm is not primarily judicial, rendering final judgment on the morality of specific acts on the basis of immutable moral laws. ... With the development of successful contraceptives the knot between intercourse and procreation was cut.(30)
If these claims are taken seriously, one can hardly escape the conclusion that sex outside of marriage belongs to a way of life that no longer exists. And further, since he is claiming that there are no immutable laws regarding monogamy, it follows that he cannot claim monogamy as a norm. This would seem to contradict his claim that the giftedness of history teaches us the value of monogamy.
Sedgwick's Ethics Cannot Resolve Differences
In a footnote, Sedgwick states the following.
Harrison has argued that given the inordinate expectation for sexual relationship as compensation and support for the isolated male ego in contemporary culture, monogamy only continues to support patriarchy and the broader denial of human sexuality; ... I have been significantly influenced by feminist critiques of patriarchal structures and the call for a mutuality grounded in an embodied sense of the human persons which is always sexual. At the material level, however, as I have tried to argue here, I have significantly reservations about dismissing monogamy as normative for human sexuality.(31)
Harrison is a professor at an Episcopal seminary and member of the Christian community of faith. Since ethics for Sedgwick ultimately resides in the community as transformed by worship, he must follow the four fold form and "acknowledge," "offer oneself," "embrace," and "nourish" the views of Harrison. He is then forced to say that he has been "significantly influenced by the feminist critique of patriarchal structures." In spite of this influence, however, he still has "reservations about dismissing monogamy as normative for human sexuality." His "reservations" amount to nothing. He did not and cannot respond to Harrison's feminist critique. He cannot because he believes that the social and historical character of all norms makes monogamy and everything else subject to continual revision.
Further, neither he nor Harrison have any means of settling their differences since neither one of them has an objective standard which transcends both. Of course, even if such a standard existed, it could well be difficult to reach agreement. But at least a foundation is laid by which conflicts can be resolved. One appeals to a common objective tradition where God speaks. One investigates God's Word, struggles with it, and finally, is obedient to it. Classically, the church has always upheld the belief that Scripture is the Word or "voice of God," words with intelligible content. But if this voice is silenced there can be no resolution to ethical differences since there is no ethical content revealed by a God who transcends individual and community differences.
This concludes Sedgwick's treatment of sexual ethics. I will now return to the matter of idolatry, followed by a few comments on Sedgwick's views on war, the church, and the world. I may be brief as I have already uncovered the fallacies that make his ethic impossible.
Ethics is Personal Command
More on Sedgwick and Idolatry
Ethical statements are personal commands. That is their logic. They are never impersonal or descriptive. It is always "Thou shalt," or "Thou shalt not." For example, there is a difference between the divine "Thou shalt not kill," and the statement, "The Christian community believes that God says 'Thou shalt not kill.'" The first statement presents the personal command of God. The second is a description of a community's beliefs about God's commands. The two are quite different. Sedgwick has eliminated the divine command in favor of descriptions of communities. Therefore, since ethics is irreducibly personal, only two alternative remain for those without the "small voice of God." We must submit ourselves to the "thou shalt" of other persons, or alternatively, we alone command "I will," or "you shall." In short, we will either worship ourselves or worship others. This is the logical consequence of God not being distinct from reality so that God never speaks a binding Word in Jesus Christ.
Further Examples
Description Continued
In chapter seven Sedgwick describes two approaches to the ethics of war. They are the just war theory and pacifism. As the discussion proceeds the reader might begin to wonder if perhaps God might have some opinion on the truth of falsity of these two views. Does God sanction violence, or is there even a God exterior to the world who might command the renunciation of violence? Apparently, Sedgwick's realizes this as well and makes the following comment.
The differences may be stated in theological terms, especially the differing ways in which pacifists and just war advocates see God in relationship to history. It may, for example, be questioned whether conversion and redemption are necessarily tied to the absolute renunciation of the use of force, especially if God is within history or is the structure of history instead of outside or beyond history. But, more fundamentally, I believe that the different stances are grounded in experiences in different communities with distinctive ways of life. In other words, what grounds the differences between pacifists and just war advocates are the experiences of reconciliation and redemption founded with the different communities of faith.(32)
In this quotation Sedgwick shows some awareness that God may transcend history instead of being constricted to history. He states that God may be "within history or is the structure of history instead of outside or beyond history." Were he to pursue these alternatives, God within and or beyond history, he could do some real theology and possibly discover a non reductionistic ethic. He could recognize that God beyond history is associated with God the Father who creates out of nothing, while God the incarnate Son is God acting and speaking to and within history. This would lead to Trinity and Christology. But that is beyond him. His god is immanent within history, or rather, his god is reality as transformed by community worship. Therefore, he will claim that the different views on just war and pacifism lie in their respective communities. That is a stunning assumption. God clearly could have revealed that pacifism is the only moral choice and that all other choices are just plain wrong. Or God could have revealed exactly the opposite. But if God is not distinguished from the world, then so called differences in the divine command are really differences in communities since this worldly realities such as communities are the only things that offer ethical content. As it is, his presumed "ethic" is a description of the obvious fact that some communities have experiences that lead them to affirm pacifism, others do not. Again, this is ethics as description rather than ethics as personal command.
Sedgwick then identifies the just war community with the "magisterial church." He claims this church lacks a broader vision of peace. He discusses this vision, especially in terms of poverty. Like the discussion on sexuality, the discussion is descriptive, not ethical. He will, for example, claim that the "proclamation of the gospel has the power to convict and transform," or that the "dangerous memory of Jesus Christ .... has the power to form Christian community ... "(33) It is the "proclamation of the gospel" which "has the power to convict," the "dangerous memory" that forms. It isn't God distinct from proclamation, yet active in the proclamation of the gospel (similar to the two natures in one person as in Chalcedon), who does these things, but proclamation and memory, both belonging to the world, life, reality.
Without God, A Dilemma
In his final chapter, Sedgwick addresses the topic of the church in the world. This is the goal of his book, the transformation of the whole of reality by the church as it lives out the paschal mystery. As the church sets out to do this, Sedgwick recognizes that it often falls on the horns of a dilemma. The church either withdraws from the world or becomes absorbed by the world.
While on the one hand, the danger confronting the church is the separation of the sacred and the profane, the professed religious life and life in the world; on the other hand, the religion of the church can become a sacralization of the profane, the accommodation to a particular culture and hence its blessing. While the first leads to a spiritualized and often aesthetic Christianity, the second leads to a cultural Christianity with a consequent moralism. In the first case Christian faith is separated from the world; in the second Christianity becomes a part of the world.(34)
This dilemma is a logical corollary of Sedgwick's "theological" assumptions. Since his god is not transcendent, the church cannot relate to God as distinct from the world. The only relation left to the church is to relate to the world, either by withdrawal or absorption or a combination of both. If, however, God were transcendent and could speak, then the real dilemma would be to hear and obey the Word of God in the varied circumstances of life. At times, God's revealed will may go with the world against the church, or vice versa, or for or against both on any particular matter. In either case, one comes before God in love and obedience rather than withdrawing from or being absorbed by the world.
A Pagan Ethic
Sedgwick, however, appears to present another alternative. His goal is a vision of the church as a worshipping community sent forth to transform the world according to the paschal form. The transformation will not take place as envisioned. Exactly the opposite will occur. The church will be transformed by the world. Without transcendence, even a church that withdraws from the world will define itself over against the world and thereby inversely reflect the world. And if it does not withdraw from the world, it will embrace the world. In either case, the church will reflect the world. Even as Sedgwick describes how the church will transform the world he confirms this inevitable result. Here is a concluding comment.
God's grace remains eternally available; the question for humans is whether or not they are willing to acknowledge their dependence and, in light of their experience of grace, to open their lives in order to love the world that surrounds them and calls them to enlarge their embrace. No particular form of life can be substituted for this movement of faith, although faith necessarily forms life's relationships. The particular form of sexual relationships, friendships, work and vocation, and the use of force may vary between cultures and individuals. But in order to express and deepen the paschal movement of Christian faith each such area of life must be formed in such a way that the particular demands of the situation are honored while opening up and calling for a broader participation in creation.(35)
Notice that he speaks of God's grace, but he cannot be speaking of God's command as grace. That would be the "small voice of God." Rather than God, it is the "world that surrounds them" which "calls" Christians to "enlarge their embrace." The world calls, not God. They embrace the world, not the Lord Jesus and the world as two distinct realities. Further, consistent with the whole of his book, ethics has no real content. There is no "particular form of life" since ethical norms "vary between cultures and individuals" in ways which honor the "particular demands of the situation." It is these demands which are "calling for a broader participation in creation" rather than a God who calls.
Paganism is the belief that our norms, loves, and worship come from and lead to the phenomenal world. At first, of course, Sedgwick's ethic will not appear pagan. It will reflect the current norms of the Christian community. His ethic, however, has no real defense against claims such as those of Harrison, that Christians need not be monogamous. Nor will the ethic, for the same reasons, be able to defend itself against a culture that is increasing pagan. Inevitably, surely, relentlessly, Sedgwick's ethic will become pagan for the simple reason that it listens to, embraces, honors, and loves the world. That is paganism, and it spells the end of ethics in any orthodox, classical, or Christian sense.
Footnotes
1. See Alister McGrath, A Passion for Truth. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1996, p. 121.
2. Lindbeck, George. The Nature of Doctrine. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1984.
3. Timothy F. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987, p. 36.
4. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p. 27.
5. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p. 30.
6. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p. 16.
7. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, pp. 32 3.
8. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, pp. 13 14.
9. Sedgwick discusses the relations between language, worship, and reality in chapter 2. At no point in this critical chapter are basic trinitarian and christological ideas introduced.
10. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p. 30.
11. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p. 31.
12. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, pp. 31 2.
13. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p, 32.
14. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p. 34.
15. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p. 44.
16. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p. 44.
17. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p, 89.
18. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p. 32.
19. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p. 106.
20. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p, 15.
21. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p. 34.
22. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p. 34.
23. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p. 76.
24. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p. 80.
25. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p. 65.
26. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, pp. 64 5. Note how Sedgwick ties grace to the gift of creation, rather than grace being an act of God within creation. In other words, one can simply begin with the world as it is and describe the paschal mystery of gifts in that context without dragging in the hypothesis of God.
27. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p. 70.
28. See chapter fifteen of John Shelby Spong's Living in Sin. San Francisco: Harper. 1988.
29. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, pp. 70 1.
30. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p. 71.
31. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p. 76.
32. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p. 97.
33. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p. 96.
34. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p. 103.
35. Sedgwick, Sacramental Ethics, p. 109.
The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.
January,2002
