Timothy Sedgwick's Sacramental Ethics, 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.
An Pagan Ethical Vision
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.
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)
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.
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."
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.