Narrative and Communitarian ethicists will point out that ethical virtues are developed as repeated actions--practices--produce habits that are either virtues of character or vices. The practices are community-based or community-defined. The relationship between these and the narratives a community tells is in that the narratives illustrate the practices and locate them in a larger moral story. Following are several different persons' suggestions about practices, and though Martin Luther is our starting point, the discussion of practices in contemporary ethics really develops in the 1980s and since.
Martin
Luther, in Ulrich S. Leupold, ed., Hymns
and Liturgy, Vol. 53 of Luther's
Works, ed. Helmut T. Lehman (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1965), pp.
61-90)
Luther is known
for his territorial understanding of the Church. But he entertained three kinds of divine
service: the Mass in Latin, a common mass in German for the laity and those who
did not believe or were not yet Christians, and a third, which he described as
follows and in a way that fits with the Anabaptist or believers' church vision
for the Church. I have added italics for
the Christian practices Luther noted.
The third kind of service should be a truly
evangelical order and should not be held in a public place for all sorts of
people. But those who want to be
Christians in earnest and who profess the gospel with hand and mouth should sign their names and meet alone to pray, to
read, to baptize, to receive the sacrament, and to do other Christian works. According to this order, those who do not
lead Christian lives could be known,
reproved, corrected, cast out, or excommunicated, according to the rule of
Christ, Matthew 18. Here one should also
solicit benevolent gifts to be
willingly given and distributed to the poor, according to St. Paul's example,
II Corinthians 9. Here would be no need
of much and elaborate singing. Here one
could set up a brief and neat order for baptism
and the sacrament and center
everything on the Word, prayer and love
(as quoted by M. Cartwright's introduction to Yoder's Royal
Priesthood, p. 25, see below).
John
H. Yoder
Definition:
In Yoder's Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community before the
Watching World (Nashville: Discipleship Resources, 1992), practice is
'a visible community action that is morally normative or authoritative because
it is derived from the work of Jesus Christ in relation to the Holy Spirit and
God the Father in the New Testament. It
is God's gracious action in which humans participate and is commanded as
mandatory, but it is not rigid or legalistic: it can be carried out in
different ways indifferent contexts.
Because the normative practices are not invisible, hidden mysteries, but
visible community practices that a secular sociologist could observe and study,
each has a dimension--like feeding the hungry as a normative part of the Lord's
Supper in the New Testament (1 Cor. 11.20-33)--that can be commended to secular
society as ethically normative' (Glen H. Stassen and David Gushie, Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in
Contemporary Context (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Pressy, 2003), p.
122).
Normative
practices are: baptism, the Lord's Supper, calling out the
gifts, the rule of Christ (making peace with one's antagonist) and the rule of
Paul (community decision by respectful attention to the leading of each
member).
In 'Sacrament as
Social Process: Christ the Transformer of Culture' (in The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical (Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), later expanded in Body Politics: Five Practices of the Christian Community before the
Watching World, Yoder argues that five Christian practices are also
relevant for the world at large. The
five practices Yoder considers in these writings are: fraternal admonition, the universality of charisma, the Spirit's
freedom in the meeting, breaking bread, and induction into the new humanity. These practices 'are not ways to administer
the world; they are modes of vulnerable but also provocative, creative presence
in its midst. That is the primordial way
in which they transform culture' (p. 373).
Yoder sees these social practices of the Church as 'evangelical' (public
news that is good) and eschatological: 'It is an a posteriori political practice that tells the world something it
did not know and could not believe before.
It tells the world what is the world's own calling and destiny, not by
announcing either a utopian or a realistic goal to be imposed on the whole
society, but by pioneering a paradigmatic demonstration of both the power and
the practices that define the shape of restored humanity. The confessing people of God is the new world
on its way' (p. 373).
About these five
apostolic practices, Yoder says:
1.
Fraternal
admonition
(Mt. 18.15-18) entails: (a) remitting (forgiveness, reconciliation); (b)
discernment ('binding and loosing'), and participants who 'harmonize' (two or
three witnesses). Yoder sees this as the
'law of Christ' in Gal. 6.2. 'A process
of human interchange combining th emode of reconciling dialogue, the substance
of moral discernment, and the authority of divine empowerment deserves to be
considered one of the sacramental works of the community' (p. 362).
2.
The Universality
of Charisma
Ephesians uses 'fullness of Christ' to describe every
member of the body (church) having 'a distinctly identifiable, divinely
validated, and empowered role' (p. 363).
1 Corinthians [12] sees every member bearing a 'manifestation of the Spirit
for the common good', and this means that greater value is ascribed to the less
honoured members of the body (p. 363).
Romans [12] sees each body member having a grace.
3.
The Spirit's
Freedom in the Meeting
Paul shows the Corinthians 'how to hold a meeting in
the power of the Spirit. Everyone who
has something to say can have the floor, with only a relative priority being
given to the mode of prophecy because it speaks 'to improve, to encourage, and
to console.' The others 'weigh' what the
prophet has said' (p. 363).
4.
Breaking Bread
'…the Eucharist is an act of economic ethics' (p.
364). It takes place at the common meal
and entails 'believers actually sharing with one another their ordinary
day-to-day material substance' (p. 365).
Thus it goes beyond being a symbol: it 'in actual fact … extends to a
wider circle the economic solidarity that normally is obtained in the family'
(p. 365). It is a practice that makes
people members of the same family through truly sharing material substance
together.
5.
Induction into the
New Humanity
'Baptism inducts people into a new people, and one of
the distinguishing marks of this new people is that all prior given or chosen
definitions of identity are transcended' (p. 367). So 2 Cor. 5.16, 17; Gal. 3.28.
These five
apostolic practices:
1.
are
each 'wholly human, empirically accessible' practices (not esoteric) but are
also acts of God ('What you bind on earth is bound in heaven') (p. 369).
2.
'constitute
the believing community as a social body' (p. 369).
3.
'can
function as a paradigm for ways in which other social groups might operate' (p.
369). The believers' church tradition
need not be separatist but can function as a paradigm for culture ('Christ
transforming culture'). 'People who do
not share the faith or join the community can learn from them. 'Binding and loosing' can provide models for
conflict resolution, alternatives to litigation, and alternative perspectives
on 'corrections.' Sharing bread is a
paradigm, not only for soup kitchens and hospitality houses, but also for
social security and negative income tax.
'Every member of the body has a gift' is an immediate alternative to
vertical 'business' models of management.
Paul's solidarity models of deliberation correlate with the reasons that
the Japanese can make better cars than Detroit.
It was not by accident or whim that I could use as labels the modern
secular handles 'egalitarianism,' 'democracy,' and 'socialism,' although each
of these terms needs to be taken in a way different from their secularistic and
individualistic usages' (p. 370).
4.
'are
by nature 'lay' or 'public' phenomena' (p. 370). That is, they are not religious or ritual
activities, and so are (point 3) translatable.
5.
'are
enabled and illuminated by Jesus of Nazareth, who is confessed as Messiah and
as Lord. They are part of the order of
redemption, not of creation…. The
standard account of these matters had told us that in order for Christians to
be able to speak to others we need to look less to redemption and more to
creation, or less to revelation and more to nature and reason' (p. 370). 'In the practices I am describing (and the
thinking underlying them), the apostolic communities did it the other way
around' (371).
6.
'none
of these practices makes the individual the pivot of change. The individual is in no way forgotten or relativized;
nothing could be more particularly tailored to measure than the notion of every
member's possessing (or being possessed by) a distinctive charisma. Nothing empowers more potently than saying
that in the meeting everyone can take the floor. But no trust is placed in the individual's
changed insights (as liberalism does) or on the believer's changed insides (as
does pietism) to change the world. The
fulcrum for change and the forum for decision is the more independence of the
believing community as social body. The
dignity of the individual is his or her uniqueness as a specific member of that
body' (p. 371).
7.
'none
of these five practices was revealed from above or created from scratch; each
was derived from already existent cultural models. Table fellowship, baptism, and the open
meeting were not new ideas, yet in the gospel setting they have taken on new
meanings and a new empowerment' (p. 371).
8.
These
practices make thinking of ethics in terms of some consistent moral discourse
(e.g., deontological, consequentialist, etc.) difficult. 'Methodological analysis is helpful to
illuminate problems of structure, but it is not the prerequisite for the
community's right or capacity to reason morally' (p. 372).
9.
'the
apostolic model transcends some other dichotomies as well': e.g., revelation
and reason, Protestant and Catholic, radical and liberal (p. 372).
In other essays,
Yoder spoke of marks of the Church (notae). Michael Cartwright (following Ross Thomas
Bender, The People of God: A Mennonite
Interpretation of the Free Church Tradition (Scottdale, PA: Herals Press,
1971): 142-145)) presents the following useful chart to understand these
practices in terms of their meaning, sacramental form, process, and underlying
anthropology.
|
Nota or Practice
|
Meaning for Me
|
Sacramental Form
|
Meaning in Terms of
Process
|
Underlying Anthropology
'To Be Human Is …'
|
|
Bind and Loose
|
Forgiveness
Reconciliation
|
Fraternal
Admonition
Conversation
|
Discernment
|
To
arise out of and to produce moral community
|
|
Love the Brothers and
Sisters
|
Sharing
|
The
Supper
|
Covenant
Celebration
|
To
share 'food' with others
|
|
Teach
|
Homologia
|
Scripture
(tradition)
|
Testing
|
To
take up anew one's history
|
|
Follow Christ
|
Imitation
Participation
|
The
Plow Left Behind
|
Forsaking
|
To
forsake the good for the best
|
|
Serve
|
Servanthood
|
The
Basin
The
Cross
|
Suffering
|
To
subject my freedom for the need of my brother or sister
|
|
Praise God
|
Reaffirmation
|
Psalter
|
Recital
|
To
give thanks
|
|
Make Disciples
|
Witness
|
Baptism
|
Adding
to the Church
|
To
join a voluntary covenanting community
|
|
Greet the Brothers and
Sisters
|
Unity
|
Kiss
Sandal
and Satchel
|
Mobility,
'as you go' cosmopolitanism
|
To
keep widening one's experience of Christian fellowship
|
Alisdair
MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd
ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 187:
Definition:
A practice is (quoting MacIntyre) 'any coherent and complex form of socially
established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that
form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards
of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form
of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and the
human conceptions of the ends and good involved, are systematically extended.'
James
McClendon, Ethics: Systematic Theology,
vol. 1 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1986).
Definition:
Practices resemble a game like chess or football: they have as necessary
elements a goal, an allowed means, rules
and the intention of really participating in the practice' (Stassen &
Gushie, Kingdom Ethics, p. 123). Quoting McClendon: 'The rules are not
arbitrary additions we might very well discard…. It is exactly the rules that constitute' the
practice (McClendon, Ethics, p.
163). McClendon further states that 'many
virtues have their home in connection with particular practices whose pursuit
evokes exactly those virtues' (McClendon, p. 169). 'The lives of those who do engage in these
practices must have at least enough continuity and coherence to permit the formation of those virtues and sustaining of those intentions--in a
word, their lives must take a narrative form,' particularly an embodied
narrative like a drama (p. 123, quoting McClendon, p. 171).
Michael
Cartwright, 'Practices, Politics, and Performance: Toward a Communal
Hermeneutic for Christian Ethics,' (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1988).
Cartwright opposes
an objectifying of Scripture, which is rather to be understood as part of an
ongoing process of communication in particular communities and traditions. This communication, moreover, is not via such
constructs as modes of moral discourse, which are too abstract, but the
practices, politics (community organisation and life), and performances of real
communities. He is interested in a
prescriptive use of Scripture with respect not to rules but practices of the
Church, with the contemporary Church engaged in a living dialogue with earlier
Church practices. One can observe better
and worse 'performances' of those Scriptural practices.
L.
Gregory Jones and Stephen Fowl, Reading
in Communion: Scripture and Ethics in Christian Life (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 1991).
Jones and Fowl see
hermeneutics as political, and therefore one's community--its interests and
resources--will guide interpretation. This
means that one must be careful about the politics and practices of a community
in which Scripture is read (and they are thinking firstly of the academy versus
the Church). In the Church, where we
practice baptism (an affirmation of friendship with God and not the world) and
the Lord's Table (where we practice fellowship and hospitality to the
stranger), we might (there are, note, bad performances of these Scriptural
practices) be able to read Scripture over against ourselves.
Verhey,
Allen. The Practice of Piety and the Practice of Medicine: Prayer, Scripture,
and Medical Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Calvin College and Seminary, The Stob
Lectures Endowment, 1992).
Verhey,
Allen. 'Scripture and Ethics: Practices,
Performances, and Prescriptions.' In Christian Ethics: Problems and Prospects. Ed. Lisa Sowle Cahill and James F.
Childress. Cleveland: Pilgrim Press,
1996): 18-45.
Allen Verhey notes
James Gustafson's concern in the 1970's that there was little literature on the
relationship between Biblical studies and Christian ethics. Since then, much attention to the two has led
to a consensus of opinion (Birch and Rasmussen, Furnish, Hays, Ogletree,
Sleeper, Spohn, Verhey): 'a recognition of the great diversity within
scripture, an acknowledgment that judgments about the unity or 'wholeness' of
scripture are not simply given with the text, an affirmation of attention to
the particular historical contexts of particular texts, an appreciation of the
necessity of other sources in addition to scripture for reflection about the
moral life and for contemporary moral judgments, a refusal to authorize a
'prescriptive' use of scripture (that is, appeals to scriptural rules to settle
directly a concrete question of what should be done today), and a recognition
that the Christian community provides the context for reading and using
scripture' (21). Two developments are
calling this consensus into question: the 'turn to literary criticism in
reading scripture,' including the turn from text to reader, and the turn to social
location--the reader's community (pp. 22f).
Overall, Verhey (who is part of this consensus) defends the consensus
not over against those calling it into question but by appreciating the new
attention to readers and community, which brings with it the new emphasis on
the prescriptive use of Scripture and a community's performances of scriptural
practices.
The practice of
prayer is seen as a performance of scripture.
It is closely associated with the community's reading of scripture, is
'learned in Christian community, and it is learned not only as an idea but as a
human activity that engages one's rationality, and which focuses one's whole
self on God' (p. 29). Practices have an
internal good, and in the practice of prayer this is attending to God. 'Given our inveterate attention to ourselves
and to our own needs and wants, we frequently corrupt the practice. We corrupt prayer whenever we turn it to a
means to accomplish some other good than the good of prayer, whenever we make
of it an instrument to achieve wealth, happiness, health, or moral
improvement. In learning to pray, we
learn to look to God; and after the blinding vision, begin to look at all else
in a new light' (p. 29). 'In learning to
pray, we learn as well certain standards of excellence that belong to prayer
and its attention to God, standards of excellence that are 'appropriate to'
prayer and 'partially definitive' of prayer: dispositions of reverence,
humility, gratitude, hope, and care (attention to our neighbour as one related
to God) (pp. 29f). 'These standards of
excellence form virtues not only for the prayer but for daily life--and for the
reading of scripture' (p. 30). There are
various forms that this practice takes: 'invocation and adoration, confession,
thanksgiving, and petition' (p. 30). Invocation and adoration entail
remembering God, which leads to repentance. Thanksgiving
entails gratitude to God and 'can train readers [of scripture] to stewardship
of their gifts, including scripture and the skills to read it. It trains readers to share their gifts, to
use them in service to the community, without the conceit of philanthropy. The conceit of philanthropy divides the
community of readers into two groups, the relatively self-sufficient
benefactors (or scholars) and the needy beneficiaries of their interpretative
skill' (p. 31). Prayer thought of as
magic to get what we want is the opposite of prayer as hope and care.
Verhey also looks
at reading scripture as a practice. The
good internal to this practice is remembering and owning this past as theirs, as 'constitutive of identity and determinative
for discernment' (p. 32). In learning
this, 'Christians learn as well certain standards of excellence 'appropriate
to' and 'partially definitive' of this practice--three pairs of virtues for
reading scripture: holiness and sanctification, fidelity and creativity,
discipline and discernment' (p. 32).
He also looks at
the practice of moral discourse. Its
good is also 'remembrance, and its form is evangelical, remembering and telling
'the gospel of God'' (p. 34). This
discourse was practised through moral deliberation, discernment (which will
include prayer and reading scripture) and memory (pertaining to the community's
identity, perspectives, fundamental values, commitments).
Jonathan
R. Wilson, Gospel Virtues: Practicing
Faith, Hope & Love in Uncertain Times (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity
Press, 1998).
Wilson sketches
the practices for Christian virtue ethics as follows (44f):
1.
Not
merely human activities but engage the grace of God
2.
Embody
and extend Christian virtues
3.
Have
a history.
In this book,
Wilson looks at the virtue of faith as the Christian way of knowing, with the
attendant practice of education; the virtue of hope as the Christian way of
being, with the attendant practice of worship; and the virtue of love as the
Christian way of doing, with the attendant practice of hospitality.
Glen
Stassen, Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus
in Contemporary Context (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003).
Stassen and Gushee
discuss the understanding of practices for Yoder, MacIntyre, and McClendon and
follow McClendon’s description (pp. 122-124). They approach Christian practices
through the Sermon on the Mount, noting
that it is today a neglected portion of Scripture for Christian ethics. This was not always so: in the early Church,
the Sermon on the Mount was the most quoted part of Scripture for Christian
ethics. The reason for this is that it
is typically seen as idealistic, and so a practical ethic needs to be drawn
from elsewhere. The command to do what is taught in the Sermon on the
Mount in 7.12ff is overlooked, and the antitheses of Mt. 5.21-48 are viewed as
more descriptive of everyone's actions than as proscriptive for Christian
disciples (and the rest of humanity).
But Stassen points out that Matthew's triadic structure of Jesus'
sayings here point out that each antithesis has a (1) description of traditional righteousness, (2) a vicious cycle whereby one is caught in
sin, and (3) some transforming
initiatives which might get one out of the vicious cycle and beyond
traditional righteousness to practice Kingdom ethics. This looks as follows (p. 142):
|
Traditional
Righteousness
|
Vicious
Cycle
|
Transforming
Initiative
|
|
1.
You shall not kill
|
Being
angry, or saying, You fool!
|
Go,
be reconciled
|
|
2.
You shall not commit adultery
|
Looking
with lust is adultery in the heart
|
Remove
the cause of temptation (cf. Mk. 9.43-50)
|
|
3.
Whoever divorces, give a certificate
|
Divorcing
involves you in adultery
|
(Be
reconciled: 1 Cor. 7.11)
|
|
4.
You shall not swear falsely
|
Swearing
by anything involves you in a false claim
|
Let
your yes be yes, and your no be no
|
|
5.
Eye for eye, tooth for tooth
|
Retaliating
violently or revengefully, by evil means
|
Turn
the other cheek, give your tunic and cloak, go the second mile, give to
beggar and borrower
|
|
6.
Love neighbor and hate enemy
|
Hating
enemies is the same vicious cycle that you see in the Gentiles and tax
collectors
|
Love
enemies, pray for your persecutors; be all-inclusive as your father in heaven
is
|
|
7.
When you give alms,
|
Practicing
righteousness for show
|
But
give in secret, and your Father will reward you
|
|
8.
When you pray,
|
Practicing
righteousness for show
|
But
pray in secret, and your Father will reward you
|
|
9.
When you pray,
|
Heaping
up empty phrases
|
Therefore
pray like this: Our Father …
|
|
10.
When you fast,
|
Practicing
righteousness for show
|
But
dress with joy, and your Father will reward you
|
|
11.
Do not pile up treasures on earth (cf.
Luke 12.16-31)
|
Moth
and rust destroy, and thieves enter and steal
|
But
pile up treasures in heaven
|
|
12.
No one can serve two masters
|
Serving
God and wealth, worrying about food and clothes
|
But
seek first God's reign and God's justice / righteousness
|
|
13.
Do not judge, lest you be judged
|
Judging
others means you'll be judged by the same measure
|
First
take the log out of your own eye
|
|
14.
Do not give holy things to dogs, nor pearls to pigs
|
They
will trample them and tear you to pieces
|
Give
your trust in prayer to your Father in heaven
|
There is an Old
Testament, particularly an Isaianic, background to Jesus' Kingdom
teaching. They look at Isaiah as a
background for Jesus' teaching on the Kingdom (Is. 9.1-7; 11; 24.14-25; 25;
31.1-32.20; 33; 35; 40.1-11; 42.1-44.8; 49; 51.1-52.12; 52.13-53.12; 54; 56;
60; 61-62). They identify seven 'marks
of God's reign' which are relevant for Kingdom ethics:
'Deliverance
or salvation occurs in all seventeen
deliverance passages in Isaiah; righteousness/justice
occurs in sixteen of the passages; peace
in fourteen; joy in twelve; God's
presence as Spirit or Light in
nine (and God's dynamic presence is implied in all seventeen). These five characteristics of the reign of
God are remarkably consistent in the deliverance passages. We may conclude that these are
characteristics of God's delivering action as
described in Isaiah. In addition,
healing occurs in seven
passages. It may be seen as a mark in
its own right, or as part of the themes of peace and restoration of outcasts to
community, since major infirmities caused people to be treated as
outcasts. Return from exile occurs in nine passages. Therefore, these also may be key ingredients
in the reign of God as prophesied by Isaiah' (p. 25).
Thus Stassen and
Gushee argue that Jesus' Kingdom teaching (as seen particularly in the Sermon
on the Mount) is marked by characteristics of the Kingdom derived from Isaiah,
and that this teaching formed the practices of Christian discipleship. Christian ethics needs to focus on
practices--'not merely ideals, and not only rules or principles that ought to
be done, but practices that are actually and regularly done, embodied in
action' (487). Referring to Mt. 7.12-27,
they conclude that, ‘according to Jesus,
there is no authentic Christianity, discipleship or Christian ethics apart from
doing the deeds that he taught his followers to do’ (p. 486, italics
theirs; cf. Mt. 28.16-20). Their review
of the book in the final chapter offers a list of concrete practices taught by
Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and further developed to apply to today (pp.
487-488).
*'Disciples
develop a holistic ethic of character, attending critically to their passions
and loyalties, way of moral reasoning, perceptions and basic-conviction
theological beliefs; they live humbly before God, mourn what is wrong in
themselves and the world, surrender themselves to God, hunger and thirst for
God's delivering justice, offer compassionate action, forgiveness, healing and
covenant steadfastness to those in need, give their whole self over to God,
make peace with their enemies and persist and even rejoice under persecution
(Mt. 5.3-12…);
*'Disciples
ground their moral decisions and way of life in biblical authority, reading the
entire canon as Jesus did--through a prophetic grid that heightens emphasis on
God's grace, the moral aspects of Old Testament law, the content of
righteousness as deeds of justice, mercy and love, and an awareness of the
inner wellsprings of all action (Mt. 5.17-20…);
*'Disciples
practice Jesus' teaching in the context of belief in the grand biblical
narrative, especially the account of the inbreaking kingdom within which Jesus
undertook his ministry; this account of God's character, will and action in
history then grounds the development of particular moral principles, rules and
judgments within the situations presented by life (Mt. 5.17-20…);
*'Disciples
read Jesus' moral teaching not as high ideals, hard sayings, counsels of
perfection or evidence of our sinfulness, but as concrete instruction for
living; they focus where Jesus did, on the particular transforming initiatives
that enable disciples to break humanity's vicious cycles, which block obedience
to the will of God the Creator and Redeemer.
*'Disciples
do not murder or bless violent killing; instead, they humble themselves, take
peacemaking initiatives and act to prevent violence in personal, social,
national and international life (Mt. 5.21-26, 38-48…);
*'Disciples
value life at it vulnerable beginning and vulnerable end, acting to prevent
abortion, embryo destruction, reproductive cloning, narcissistic genetic
modification and euthanasia (Mt. 4.21-26...);
*'Disciples
honor God's intentions for male-female relations by treating one another with
respect, encouraging mutual submission and a gospel/kingdom focus in gender
relations and confining the expression of genital sexuality to celibate
singleness or monogamous covenant marriage (Mt. 5.27-30…).
*'
Disciples understand marriage as a binding covenant, marry wisely, seek reconciliation
in times of marital conflict, divorce with extreme rarity, and guard and honor
the joyful permanence of their marriages (Mt. 5.31-32…).
*'Disciples
live out delivering love and justice in every relationship, especially with
regard to the most vulnerable, the excluded, outcast, powerless and oppressed
(Mt. 5.43-48…).
*Disciples
speak truthfully rather than deceptively or dishonestly; they keep covenant and
live in truth, withholding it only in rare moral emergencies under conditions
of social evil (Mt. 5.33-37…).
*Disciples
work for justice in race relations and economic life, living in relative
economic simplicity, avoiding idolatrous acquisitiveness, consumerism, greed
and injustice and feeding the hungry and poor as both a personal and social practice
(Mt. 6.19-34…).
*Disciples
exercise creation care in numerous ways, such as energy conservation, limiting
family size and resource use, supporting public transit and appropriate
government regulation (Mt. 6.19-34…).
*Disciples
practice almsgiving, fasting and prayer without seeking human recognition for
their piety; they pray in a manner designed to deepen their commitment to, and
participation in, God's reign (Mt. 6.1-18; 7.6-11…).
*'Disciples
retain their distinctiveness as Christ-followers while graciously engaging the
world with a pioneering, pastoral, service-oriented and transforming presence
(Mt. 5.13-16; 7.6-12…).
*'Disciples
study, reflect upon and obey the teachings of Jesus, and seek to train others
to do the same (Mt. 7.12-27…).'
Practices
and Worship: Stanley
Hauerwas and Samuel Wells, eds., The
Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers,
2004).
The book's
contributors explore ethics as worship in the sense that worship constitutes
and points to a number of moral practices.
Hauerwas’s major contribution to Christian ethics was to emphasise the
relationship between the stories we tell and the virtues we hold. This matter shows that ethics is not
universal but peculiar to a particular community. Similarly, the practices of a community
define the community over against other communities. Thus a character ethic of narrative and
virtue can be related to a community ethic that defines the community in terms
of its practices. What follows is an
outline of the contents of this lengthy work, which offers an overview of just
what practices and related virtues are considered in this approach to Christian
ethics.
1.
Meeting
God and One Another:
- Gather:
social and political significance
- Greet
God and one another
- Confession
of sin: reconciliation
- Celebration
of forgiveness and other blessings, often musically: Christian
understanding of the arts and modern communication.
2.
Re-encountering
the Story: Scripture as written text and as performed and enacted Word.
Issues in this chapter: authority, justice, truth,
description.
- Reading:
rehearsing identity, practising character
- Preaching:
naming and describing.
- Listening:
authority and obedience
- Deliberating:
justice and liberation
- Discerning:
politics and reconciliation
- Confessing
the faith and reasoning in tradition
3.
Being
embodied. After sermon and before
sharing of food. What does Church as
living as one body mean?
- Baptism:
with respect to abortion and cloning.
- Marriage:
shared embodiment.
- Intercession
(for poverty, response to scarcity)
- Sharing
of the peace: practices necessary to maintain trust and sustain the Body.
4.
Re-enacting
the Story:
Preparation and consumption of eucharistic food.
- Preparation:
1.
Offering:
treasuring the creation
2.
Participating:
Working toward worship
3.
Remembering:
offering our gifts
- Forces
at the altar:
1.
Invoking:
Globalization and Power
2.
Breaking
Bread: Peace and War
- Eating:
1.
Receiving
communion: euthanasia, suicide, and letting die
2.
Sharing
communion: hunger, food, genetically modified foods
3.
Eating
together: friendship and homosexuality
- Conclusion
of the meal:
1.
Being
silent: time in the Spirit
2.
Being
thankful: parenting the mentally disabled
3.
Washing
feet: preparation for service
5. Being
Commissioned
a.
Being
blessed: wealth, property and theft
b.
Bearing
fruit: conception, children and family
c.
Being
sent: witness
Kevin
Vanhoozer, 'Theology and the Condition of Postmodernity,' in The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern
Theology (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 24):
Christians have a
mission to postmodernity, their own understanding of the shape of living. Mary Midgley says, 'The devolution of Wisdom
into Knowledge into Information may be the supreme source of degeneration in
the postmodern society' (Wisdom,
Information, and Wonder: What is Knowledge For? (London: Routledge, 1991), n.p.). Christians and postmodernity agree that
knowledge is not disembodied. 'What is
needed, therefore, is a translation of the Gospel that goes beyond conveying
propositions--a translation that would concretize
the Gospel in individual and communal shapes of living. Proclamations of the Gospel must be
accompanied by performances that embody in new situations the wisdom and love
of God embodied in the cross' (24).
[And, I would insist, one of the practices that is essential is the
interpretation of concretely situated, authoritative texts for the wisdom and
love of God embodied in the cross to be known.]
Conclusion:
These different
views offer a wealth of ways to proceed in trying to think of Christian ethics
in terms of practices. By attending to
the different ways of thinking of practices and ethics, one might gain some
clarity for discussing moral practices not only in theory but in regard to
specific practices. Practices are, of
course, only one way to think of Christian ethics, but they are a very
important way. One outcome of this
overview is to realize that ethics is not a matter of discovering categorical
imperatives but the peculiarities of unique communities—such as Christians.
[1] Frederick Coplestion, S.J. A History of Philosophy: Volume 8 Modern
Philosophy: Bentham to Russell; Part II: Idealism in America
[2]
For Peirce, James, and the Instrumentalist view, see Copleston's summary in
Vol. 8.2, pp. 123f:
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