Ecclesiology and Ethics

Ecclesiology and Ethics The Difficulties of Ecclesial Moral Reflection Ame Rasmusson The inter-relation between ecclesiology and ethics has been a central ecumenical concem of recent years. The World Council of Churches' study of this subject during the 1990s had as its background an attempt to heal the long-standing division between two historic streams of the ecumenical movement - Faith and Order, and Life and Work. In other words, it sought to integrate the questions of justice, peace and care of creation with the quest for visible unity. Two "overarching convictions" guided this study: (1) "that ethical reflection and action... are intrinsic to the nature and life of the church"; and (2) "that ecclesiology and Christian ethics must stay in close dialogue, each honouring and learning from the distinctive language and thought forms of the other".' The idea of a close relationship between ecclesiology and ethics is related to developments in contemporary theology and ethics. The wider context of the WCC report is formed by historical, political, social and cultural changes which have been important for church and theology in the late 20th century. This article deals with that broader context. I shall begin by discussing the historical and political conditions that created the modem discipline of ethics, including Christian ethics, and gave it a special form which has made the idea of an ecclesial ethics difficult. Much of the recent concem with ecclesiology and ethics is an attempt to liberate Christian ethics from this captivity to the "modem ethical project".^ In the second part, I will outline some basic characteristics of ecclesial moral reflection, as developed by some of its most influential and controversial proponents, especially John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas and John Milbank. The clear contrast between their work and the "modem ethical project", both in substance and form, has elicited a good deal of criticism; and in the third part I will discuss one example of this critique, in order to clarify some of the difficult issues that an ecclesial ethical reflection encounters. The emergence of the nation-state and the rise of modern ethics Modem thought tends to see religion as one sphere of society, alongside politics, economics, science, family, morality and so on. Moreover, the religious sphere is primarily situated in the "private" part of society. This has to do both with the general differentiation process of modem society and the rise of the modem nation-state. • Ame Rasmusson is associate professor in theology and ethics in the Department of Religion, Umea University, Umea, Sweden. 180 ECCLESIOLOGY AND ETHICS although some of its sources can be traced back much further.^ Here I want only to point to the correlation between the modern privatized understanding of religion and the emergence of the modem state's claim to absolute sovereignty."* To make people into Germans or French or Swedes, for whom their own nation-state is sovereign and their own nationality is primary, other particular and traditional identities and loyalties - for example, to region, kin, estate or church - had to be made secondary to the state. The centralization of power in the absolutist state, with its struggle against the public power of the church, was a necessary step in the formation of modern nation-states. As Ernst Troeltsch writes: Absolutism fused the peoples into nations and imbued them with this feeling for the state. But by levelling the old social structure based on states, and by radiating a secular and rationalistic spirit, absolutism ended by pulverizing the peoples into individuals.^ This intimate connection between the supremacy of the nation-state and the autonomy of the individual demonstrates the close relationship between liberal theory and the emergence of the nation-state. By reducing the person to an abstract individual in the name of freedom, liberal philosophy gave legitimacy to the struggle of the state against alternative loyalties and especially the church. As sociologist Zygmunt Bauman writes: "Man as such" was, of course, a code name for a human being subordinated to, and moved by, one power only - the legislating power of the state; while the emancipation that had to be performed so that "the essence" could shine in all its pristine purity stood for the destruction or neutralization of all pouvoirs intermediaires - "particularizing" powers sabotaging the job the "universalizing" power of the modem state strove to perform.^ So if the state .is to have supremacy, religion must be privatized. William Cavanaugh has tried to show how the modem concept of religion as a sort of universal human impulse is an outgrowth of this.^ When religion becomes universal in this way, it also becomes separated from its particular existence in the church and is made into something inner. Its social and institutional forms are increasingly seen as particular extemal expressions of a universally present inner reaUty. At the end of the 17th century another change occurs: religion comes increasingly to be seen as a system of beliefs. In this process. Protestantism especially changed its self-understanding from a socio-theological practice that could not be distinguished from its bodily and social manifestation in the church to a set of basically private and subjective convictions and experiences which individuals have. During the 16th and 17th centuries, the idea was prominent that the unity of religion is necessary for the unity of the state. It is not important which religion this is, so long as its extemal form is one. For Thomas Hobbes only national churches subordinated to the state should be allowed. However, once the population has intemalized the supremacy of the state and the privatization of religion, it is possible to accept religious pluralism, and the church can easily coexist with the state's claims of absolute supremacy. This process of differentiation can also be traced in the making of modem ethics. Both the privatization of religion and the general critique of tradition make it seem necessary to develop an ethics separate from religion and custom - that is, an ethics built only on reason. Ethics is thereby simultaneously universalized and individual181 THE ECUMENICAL REVIEW ized: if it is founded on reason alone, it is in principle available for anyone without training, and it is universal because we have a common human reason. In this way the modem ethical project is also part of the emergence of the modem nation-state. The state, which represents neutral reason and the universal, thereby liberates the individual from the claims of particularist religions and other traditions. But it is important to see that this claim to universality is always qualified by the supremacy of the nation-state. The interests of the nation-state, although often legitimated by universal claims, stand above genuinely universal interests or values. Liberal moral and political theory have always found it difficult to make sense of the moral status of nation-states and national borders. Since most, if not all, are the results of wars, it is difficult to fmd a rational justification for them; and most recent moral philosophy and theology simply take existing nation-states and their boundaries for granted. The territorial domain of modem nation-states then becomes no more than fate or contingency, similar to being bom more or less talented.^ In practice" however, the nation-state has been the primary social context for liberal theory; thus, it is evident that the liberal principles of justice and equality are secondary to the primacy of the nation-state. This is seen especially clearly in immigration policy. In this connection we also find a complex and manifold relationship between the rise of the modem research university as an instmment of the state and the development of philosophical ethical theory. Taking control of education was one element of the privatization of religion, and this included freeing the university from the church. Philosophy replaces theology as the queen of the sciences (though it soon loses that role), describing itself as a neutral and universal discipline in contrast to the particularity of theology. This process began in Pmssia after the defeat by Napoleon. Berlin university became the model for a development which we have come to take for granted. German idealism became the ideological instmment defending this process under the name of freedom. As Randall Collins says, "with the characteristic enthusiasm of academics conflating their intellectual conquests with the topics that they are studying, they made this spirit of freedom into the ground of the universe".^ When ethics thus makes claims to represent its own autonomous sphere, the question becomes how theology should be related to ethics, or how theological ethics (if it exists) relates to philosophical ethics. Many different answers have been given; my point here is only to hint at the situation that made this question seem inevitable. However, the separation is not only between theology and ethics. Christian ethics also tended to become something separate from Christian discipleship, spirituality or holiness. If ethics should be neutral - independent of religion, custom and politics - and concem only universal obligations, it can deal only with right and wrong, not with who we should be and what sort of life we should live. Moreover, the very ideas of discipleship and holiness conflict with modem notions of individual autonomy or the more romantic goal of realizing our self or our inner potential. In various and often contradictory forms, these concepts have dominated modem Westem thought and institutions, although many counter-movements have arisen both in philosophy and in theology. Now, however, there are cracks in the picture. This has many different political, economic, cultural and religious reasons, which we cannot go into here. Globalization and increasing pluralism have transformed the intemal and extemal situation of nation-states. In philosophy, confidence in a neutral moral reason has largely disappeared, and the abstract and formalistic character of much modem 182 ECCLESIOLOGY AND ETHICS ethics has been widely criticized. Secularization, understood as differentiation and the weakening of ties between established Protestantism and the political elites, has also changed the situation of the churches. What is disappearing, says Lewis Mudge, "is the entire cultural synthesis that gave 'religion' that privatized, cmtch-for-those-interested-in-such-things role in the first place. What the churches are losing in this cultural change, then, is a niche - a set of assumptions conceming their own nature and funcAccording to Mudge, the early ecumenical theologians simply assumed a Christendom model, in which the church influences societies through "high-level consultation with govemments"." The mid-20th century model of the "responsible society" also tended to assume that the nation-state project - in the form of the welfare state is the basic framework for ecumenical social theology. In the 1960s the idea grew that reform was not enough. Radical stmctural changes, even revolution, were needed. Behind the rise of the New Left in the West and various socialist and Marxist movements in parts of the third world lay a conviction that a new society was on the verge of coming. The question was whether the churches would be on the side of the progressive forces or on the side of the reactionaries. The content of the church's analysis and action was given by the progressive social movements or social theory. Ethics tended to become irrelevant to the extent that it sought to do more than tell us that we should be on the right side. But the new society did not come. The future again seemed more open, which reopened a place for ethics. So did the increasing importance of human-rights language. Eor some time the political theologies that emerged during the 1960s continued to try to ally Christianity with the so-called New Social movements. But insofar as these movements increasingly amalgamated with the established political culture, more and more theologians are looking to the church as the basic carrier of the Christian social witness. This, then, is a major context for the growing discussion of the relationship between ethics and ecclesiology in ecumenical Protestantism.'^ The church as a place for moral reflection and formation There have always been critical counter-currents in Christian theology. Here I will focus on the work of three such theologians - John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas and John Miibank - who have obviously influenced the WCC report. Part of the reason for their increasing influence is their energy and brilliance, but it is also evident that the new situation as we have described it makes their proposals more understandable in the wider theological context. Yoder formulated his basic perspectives already in the 1950s. Although he was active in the ecumenical movement, and often wrote in direct dialogue with its concems,'^ it is only relatively recently that his writings have been widely influential. The increasing disestablishment of Christianity has made his dissenting "non-Constantinian" ecclesial perspective somewhat more intelligible and relevant. In this section I \yill draw freely on his writings, as well as those of Hauerwas, Miibank and the philosopher Alasdair Maclntyre, who has influenced them, in order to explain how one might see the church as place for moral reflection and formation.'"* It is important to see that ecclesial ethics in the form pursued by Yoder and Hauerwas radically questions the modem ethical project. But while they do not accept the modem understanding of religion, the supremacy of the nation-state or the constmc183 THE ECUMENICAL REVIEW tion of the discipline of ethics, neither do they want to re-establish some form of mediaeval Christendom. They believe Christian faith makes universal claims, but its nature and the way it sees God's relationship to the world make it understandable that there are different understandings of ultimate reality. Moreover, the relationship between the church and the Enlightenment and liberal society is complex. Yoder and Hauerwas represent historically dissenting Christian traditions which preceded and participated in the formation of a liberal and pluralistic society. Although especially Hauerwas is very critical of existing liberalism, there are ways of construing liberalism which they might support. Generally they are more critical of Protestant liberalism than of liberal society as such.'^ Because they question key assumptions in liberal society, they also question the modem ethical project. They do not try to relate ethics as commonly understood to the church or to develop an altemative ethical theory for moral decision-making. That would assume that there is something called "ethics" as a specific and clearly distinguishable area of reflection, and that there are different theories on how to do this reflection. We have seen how this assumption was created. However, from the perspective of "ecclesial ethics" (really a misnomer) one might say that it is a mistake even to talk about the relationship between ecclesiology and ethics, for if this approach is correct you cannot talk about Christian ethics without talking about the church and vice versa. The WCC report cites Hauerwas's words that the "the church does not have a social ethic; the church is a social ethic".'^ This is basic for understanding this perspective. The church does not just provide an ethical theory, perspective or set of pronouncements. It is in its own life an ethics and a politics (and there is no sharp distinction between ethics and politics). This presupposes a "high" ecclesiology, although it can be developed in very different ways: the high church Anglo-Catholic theology Milbank pursues is quite different from Yoder's Radical Reformation ecclesiology. What is common is the corporate character of the church, expressed in such language as "people of God", koinonia, "body of Christ", "covenant people", "household of faith". It is this character of the church which makes it also into a place for moral fomiation. That the church is place for moral formation and discernment means that the church, with its common practices, symbolic world and moral training, is a prerequisite for right Christian discemment. In the WCC report we read: "Thus in speaking of the 'ethos of the household of faith' we mean the way of life, the distinctive pattems of thinking, feeling and acting, which characterize those who live within that 'household'."'^ Ethical discemment thus requires training, the shaping of character. And this is a communal process. Ethics is then nothing else than discipleship, sanctification, spiritual life, or however one wants to describe the Christian life. It has to do with the whole of life and not with specific universal duties, and no sphere of life is outside of it. In this sense Christian ethics is inevitably a theological ethics (in contrast to autonomous ethics); it is embedded in the whole network of Christian convictions, practices, rituals and dispositions. But it is not an application of a theological theory or dogmatics. One does not first have a doctrine or a principle, which one then applies. Doctrines are implied in the concrete faith-practice. It is a sort of grammar that helps when people do not know how to talk or act. And conversely, the practice is implied in the Christian discourse. When 184 ECCLESIOLOGY AND ETHICS one has learned to describe a situation adequately one knows what to do. Decisions we seem forced to take are often descriptions that we do not have satisfactory descriptions for. We do not know how to relate them to our own stories and the story of our community. Hauerwas writes: Morally the most important things about us are those matters about which we never have to make a "decision". Thus non-violent persons do not have to choose to use or not to use violence, but rather their being non-violent means they must use their imaginations to form their whole way of life consistent with their convictions.'^ This is not just a theoretical issue. Our descriptions are closely related to the sort of life we live. The basic question, then, is "What sort of community should we be?" The answers to that question determine "What should we do?" The life of the church is constituted by a set of social practices such as worship, witness, works of mercy, discipling and communal discernment (which in its turn consists of various sub-practices).'^ The first three of these tell us something about what the church is for; the last two describe practices necessary for maintaining this sort of life. Communal discernment is of course another name for ecclesial ethical reflection. In the Christian understanding these practices receive their meaning from the place of the church in God's purpose for the creation. The internal goods of these practices are then the glorification of God and the fulfilment of God's creational and saving purposes. These practices are social in the sense of requiring cooperation. What I do is not only my private concern. It affects other people. As a consequence, this perspective makes no sharp division between personal and social ethics. Moreover, these practices are carried by institutions. But while the institutional context is necessary in order for the practice to be sustained over time, it is also a chief source of the corruption of practices. "Virtues" can then be described as those human qualities or moral skills which must be exercised in order to sustain the practices. If the practices require cooperation, this shows that the virtues - and thus the formation of character - are a communal concern, not something apart from "social ethics". Moral rules can be seen furthermore not as applications of general principles but as prohibitions of acts that would destroy the practice itself. The rule "do not touch the ball with your hand" is constitutive of the practice of soccer, just as the rule "do not commit adultery" is constitutive of the practice of marriage. A moral rule thus gains its intelligibility from the community's social practices and describes the outer limits. Rules also function as guides for beginners for example, learning children. The practice of casuistry, says Hauerwas, is the process by which a tradition tests whether its practices are consistent (that is, truthful) or inconsistent in the light of its basic habits and convictions or whether these convictions require new practices and behaviour. In fact a tradition often does not understand the implications of its basic convictions. Those implications become apparent only through the dayto-day living of a people pledged to embody that narrative within their own lives.^° Christian moral traditions are thus not static. Christianity may be seen as an ongoing tradition in which the faithful continually discuss how to live the life to which they are called. Because the church has lived and lives today in many different and always changing cultural and social contexts, diversity and conflict are part of the church's ordinary life. It is not a closed world for itself, but lives in complex and varying rela185 THE ECUMENICAL REVIEW tions with that which is not the church. Different parts of the church may take different courses. However, this emphasis on the value of diversity should not be construed as a kind of tolerance rooted in scepticism about moral, religious or other truth claims or in claims about the equal value of all such beliefs. There are moral heresies, and these are found not only outside the church. The church that forms people can also malform them, to use an expression from the WCC report.^' But while any practice of ecclesial formation is full of risks, from the perspective of this type of ecclesial ethics, the answer to ecclesial malformation is not the liberal language and practice of tolerance, but the Christian understanding and practice of sin and forgiveness, the importance of internal prophetic criticism, and the love that looks for what is best for one's sister and brother. Ecclesial moral discernment is then more a social process than a theoretical enterprise, although critical reflection is of course a crucial part of the process. Ethical, theological and hermeneutical theories and methods cannot take the place of the social process, nor can they warrant the process afterwards. To put it starkly, Yoder and Hauerwas place "church" where most academics place "theory", "epistemology" or "hermeneutics". This ecclesial process is complex, talcing place on many different levels, from the personal, through the local churches and various higher levels, to the universal church. There is another sense in which discernment is not primarily a theoretical process. The skills of discernment can be described as a virtue. They require moral training. This is why Hauerwas talks about the importance of saints for ethics. We learn more from, say, a Desmond Tutu than from moral theorists. Of course, there is a dialectical relationship, but the theorists are more dependent on the saints than vice versa. This approach obviously stands in contrast to the normal view of ethics as a sort of decision theory. To be able to make the right moral decision one must learn a method for analyzing ethical dilemmas and applying relevant principles. In principle, this is a method anyone can use: the ethicist is, in this sense, exchangeable. By contrast, in an ecclesial ethical reflection the moral formation of the community and its individual members are part of the discernment process. A central component of this process is that ethics is first of all a question of learning to see rightly. We live in the world we see; therefore, how we see reality is allimportant. And learning to see rightly is not only an epistemological but also a moral question. From a Christian perspective one learns to describe Christianity by being initiated into the communal Christian faith-practice, which forms understanding, dispositions and emotions. This happens through participation in worship, through learning the categories and narratives of the Christian faith, through taking part in the common practical life of the community, for example the service of others. This conflicts with the assumption that ethical issues are out there for everyone to see, that descriptions are more or less neutral facts that have to be related to one's values. Consider the example of a Hamas activist blowing up an Israeli bus. Israelis describe this as terrorism, Hamas as self-defence against an occupying power. The very words "terrorism" and "self-defence" are amalgams of the descriptive and the normative. So are words like "courage", "faithfulness", "treachery", "brutality" words that constitute our moral language. Moreover, behind the Israeli and Hamas descriptions lie radically different stories and symbolic worlds. The two sides see 186 ECCLESIOLOGY AND ETHICS political reality in radically different ways, and they therefore live in different worlds. Neither a utilitarian nor a Kantian analysis helps here, nor is the situation clarified by an ethical method that begins with some universal value such as justice or human dignity. Both sides agree that justice should be done, but what justice is depends on which world they see. One might therefore say that this account implies a sort of naturalism, in the sense that our ethics is dependent on how we construe the world. Yoder's Christian ethics is meaningful only if Christianity as he construes it is true. Like Hauerwas and Milbank, Yoder does not accept the modem placement of theology in a category separate from theoretical knowledge, the modem dualism between revelation and reason, faith and knowledge. We have seen that this was part of the marginalization of the church in the modem state. "Religion" has to do with the personal life; and theology is an analysis of the faith of the church, which does not make claims of theoretical knowledge. Thus when Yoder questions Reinhold Niebuhr's realism, he does so because he challenges Niebuhr's understanding of reality. Yoder builds his theology on the claim that the crucified Jesus is an "adequate key to understanding what God is about in the real world" and if this is true it has immense practical consequences. To follow Jesus does not mean renouncing effectiveness... It means that in Jesus we have a clue to which kinds of causation, which kinds of community-building, which kinds of conflict management, go with the grain of the cosmos, of which we know, as Caesar does not, that Jesus is both the Word (the inner logic of things) and the Lord ("sitting at the right In other words, Yoder reads reality theologically. A kind of metaphysics, embedded and implied in an ecclesial discourse-practice, creates a framework for historical, social and political interpretation and practice. He is thus not defending some blind obedience to mles, nor the idea that ethics and politics can be directly derived from scripture. But the church thinks and lives within this Christian discourse-practice (or so it should), even though it also employs knowledge derived from many other sources.^^ This theological account cannot simply be read off the surface of history, because the trinitarian understanding of reality is implicit in it, but Yoder thinks it can generate new readings of history and social and political reality whose fruitfulness can be tested "empirically". He offers many examples, though one would have wished that he had developed them more. Yoder does not think that we can develop from this a general theory that provides a handle on history and its direction and thus calculate what would be effective political action. This is not a deficiency in his "theory"; it is intrinsic to his Christian metaphysic that this type of calculation is impossible. Yoder is therefore critical of social and political theories (like Marxism, liberal social engineering, much economic theory) that assume a clearly discemible and manageable relationship between cause and effect, so that if we have enough information and power we can move society in the "desired" or "necessary" direction. This idea tends to make "effectiveness" itself into a moral value ("responsibility"), so that the means are justified by the ends to which they are used. In contrast, Yoder defends the final inseparability of means from ends. Others have taken this further, perhaps further than Yoder would have liked. For example, philosopher Nancey Murphy and scientist George Ellis seek in their ambitious book On the Moral Nature of the Universe to integrate natural science, social the187 THE ECUMENICAL REVIEW ory, ethics and (primarily) Yoder's theology, and demonstrate its empirical meaningfulness and fruitfulness.^^ Sitnilarly, Hauerwas's work may be understood as an example of what happens when one tries to read American liberal society in the light of Christian convictions. "If I am anything, I am a 'rationalist'," Hauerwas writes, "just to the extent I have tried to show that Christian convictions do in fact provide the skills necessary to help us see the world as it is."^^ Milbank and some other theologians have recently named their approach "radical Orthodoxy", and in a programmatic text they say that they are attempting to reclaim the world by situating its concems and activities within a theological framework. Not simply returning in nostalgia to the pre-modem, it visits sites in which secularism has invested heavily - aesthetics, politics, sex, the body, personhood, visibility, space - and resituates them from a Christian standpoint; that is, in terms of the Trinity, Christology, the church and the euchadst.^^ The most influential example of this is Milbank's Theology and Social Theory, in which he shows how the emergence of a secular domain is closely related to the rise of the absolute state and the new conception of the secular sphere as the space for pure power, pure instrumentality. This is often described not as a specific and contingent cultural development, but as a liberation of the natural - which means that the secular is understood as the natural. Milbank argues that the secular, far from being "natural", is in fact historically constituted and thus contingent. And it is precisely by imagining politics as a sphere of pure power that the new discipline of political science is given an object to study. The point is that political science, sociology and economics are not only empirical disciplines but also carriers of political, moral and theological understandings of reality. They represent the self-description of modemity, the theology of modemity and its main actor, the nation-state. If this is correct, then sociology or political science cannot depict "reality" in a neutral way.^'' For theology to build on sociology, understood as dispassionate analysis, is to betray its own task. Theology can of course leam much from sociology, but it cannot give sociology or any other social discipline a privileged position. Again, this is important, because what is understood as possible, as "realism", depends on how one sees the world, which in tum is related to one's cotnmunal practice. An altemative discourse-practice helps the moral imagination and vice versa.^^ This makes ecclesiology so theologically important. Therefore, Milbank can say that "theology has to reconceive itself as a kind of 'Christian sociology': that is to say, as the explication of a socio-linguistic practice, or as the constant re-narration of this practice as it has historically developed."^^ An altemative socio-linguistic practice provides possibilities to see the world from another perspective. For Milbank this includes a counter-history that critically rereads history with the help of the perspective and the categories provided by the narrative of Jesus Christ and its continuation in the church. This requires a counter-ethics, which describes the practice of the church in its continuity and discontinuity with its ancient and modem context. Milbank deals, among other things, with the Christian understanding of love and forgiveness, the reconciliation of difference and virtue, and the conviction that peace, not violence, is the first and final reality. Such a rereading of history and such a counter-ethics involves a counterontology, a trinitarian ontology or metaphysics of the cross of Christ which makes 188 ECCLESIOLOGY AND ETHICS peace final. This gives Milbank a perspective from which he can deconstruct the agonistic ontologies that permeate both modem and post-modem thought.-'^ The debate To describe the "ecclesial ethics" of Yoder, Hauerwas and Milbank in this way shows why it is highly controversial, not least because of their critique of modem liberal society and of "mainline" Protestantism (which is in fact the tradition out of which Hauerwas and Milbank write). I will look at one example of the criticism their work has encountered, that of Lewis Mudge. Mudge took part in the WCC study and his book The Church as Moral Community sets the ecclesiology and ethics report in the context of the wider theological discussion.^' While Mudge carries on an ongoing debate in this book with especially Hauerwas and Milbank, it should be noted that he is himself a defender of the idea of the church as a moral community. However, he tries to think out of a basic, though not uncritical, sympathy with Protestant liberalism. (The drafters of the WCC report itself included people with a range of views, including some who were closer to the Yoder, Hauerwas and Milbank perspective than to Mudge.) Mudge criticizes Hauerwas and Milbank for not being sociologically realistic enough, suggesting that they often sound as if the church "were a total cultural environment" (p.77), and that the Christian story or tradition could be similarly totalistic. Moreover, because the church is described as the true politics, "the expected historical fulfilment must in some way involve a cultural Christianization of the world" (p. 151). Consequently, a true politics will be intelligible only in the framework of a full theological language that excludes secular people and people of other religions. But Christians are themselves much more part of the secular world than this language allows for. Most of us today "exist in a multiplicity of cultural environments, and engage in several different occupational and familial practices, each with its own symbolism, logic, customs, and the like. Pluralism enters our personhood" (p.77). Living in several different cultures, with permeable boundaries, we become "multiple selves". Thus we need guidance on how to live with this complexity, trusting that God is at work not only in the church, but in everyday life. "'Ecclesiology' maps only part of the setting for the faithful life" (p.77). Theologically, Mudge speaks of "a sacramental transfiguration of everyday life" which "engenders a capacity to discern how and where the Holy Spirit is at work in the world as [Christians] know it" (p.81). It is precisely in this process that the congregation is formed: Its members bring to it elements of culture and society that, in the power of the Spirit, form a kind of mosaic of the face of Jesus Christ: not the appearance of the historical personage, but the recognizable pattern of Jesus' presence in history understood as sign and sacrament of the fulfilment of God's intention for humankind (p.83). What can be said about Mudge's critique (acknowledging that the positions of Yoder, Hauerwas and Milbank are not identical)? First of all, regarding Mudge's charge of "Christianization", if he means by that (1) that all are called to become disciples of Christ, and (2) that what they think about the good common life is what is good for everyone (just as a liberal wants a liberal society, a social democrat a social democratic society, etc.), then he is right. They are not radical pluralists. But this is not a very interesting conclusion. It is more telling that Mudge finds this a problematic, 189 THE ECUMENICAL REVIEW even fatal conclusion. However, none of them develops a general theory of the good society. They are not in a position to do that. They represent a dissenting minority, and write from that perspective. So they want a society that is open for dissent.-'^ Moreover, for theologians who place peace in the centre of their theological vision, it is crucial to promote as much as possible the existence of real political dialogue. Mudge is of course right that the church is not a total environment, and he quite correctly describes the situation of Christians in a modem society. While Hauerwas and Milbank would not disagree (though one might wish they addressed this issue more directly), that does not in itself answer how the church and Christians should cope with this situation. The relationship between church and society or church and culture cannot be discussed in general. Hauerwas and Milbank agree with Mudge that church, society and culture are not monolithic units and that church and theology are formed also by sources outside the church. As theologians Milbank and Hauerwas consistently draw from all sorts of sources: "radical orthodoxy mingles exegesis, cultural reflection and philosophy in a complex but coherently executed coUage".^^ They do not argue for a withdrawal from the world, nor do they think of the church as a separate space. The church exists and must act in an alien space that is determined by others. It has to use the language, resources and tools that are at hand, but which it does not determine or control. It is thus not a matter of a relationship (of, say, contrast or correlation) between discrete and distinct wholes. Christian identity and practices are formed in constant piecemeal engagements with others. Christians adapt, reuse, transform, criticize and rearrange elements taken from "outside". They also "invent" or "discover" their own elements. There is thus no general way of describing the relationship between "church" and "world"/"culture"/"society". Christians relate not to society in general but to this or that practice of a specific society and culture.^'^ One might, with Mudge, legitimately wish for a more adequate theological articulation of this process and God's presence as Creator in it. But since Mudge has not provided an account of how this process is theologically disciplined (though I do not think he disagrees about the need for it), he risks saying only that we cannot be too critical of the society we happen to live in. The type of language Mudge uses has been, in many different versions, common for politically and culturally established churches. The usual assumption is that one's own society and culture - or the part of it which one identifies with - is basically decent and good. Inevitably, one will then be suspicious of dissenting minorities. An interesting discussion of this issue would involve not the type of general arguments Mudge uses, but a treatment of, say, Hauerwas's analysis of health care or of how we should relate to people with disabilities or the privatization of much church life in a liberal society like the USA, or Milbank's analysis of modem social theory. What is correct, insightful, unrealistic or wrongheaded about this or that, and why? In other words, we need a much thicker analysis than Mudge provides to be able to develop an interesting argument. Regarding the criticism of lack of realism, it is also illuminating to see the social and political significance which Hauerwas especially gives to the small acts, everyday life and local existence of churches and Christians. This perspective also determines the way Hauerwas does theology and ethics. He does not want to describe an ideal church, nor develop from the ordinariness of the church a separate systematic theology or ethical system. Instead, theology and ethics should "help us see the significance of 190 ECCLESIOLOGY AND ETHICS the everyday and the sacredness of the ordinary... those ordinary tasks are the most determinative political challenge to our culture".^^ His writings therefore deal with such concrete events. This furthermore underscores the importance of the ordinary saints for Christian ethics, because they give material for ethical reflection. He attributes the poverty he sees in much Christian ethics to the tendency of Christian ethicists to make denominational and social justice committees rather than local churches their primary context for theological work. Consequently, they get caught in the politics of nation-states and fail to see and understand the riches of ordinary church life.^^ Moreover, is it sociologically meaningful to talk about ecclesial formation without specifying the distinctiveness of the church more strongly than Mudge seems ready to do? Mudge questions the sociological realism of Hauerwas's and Milbank's understanding of the church, especially for liberal Protestantism. But one could also question the sociological realism of Mudge's approach. If the church is not the primary identity-forming unity, other forces will take its place. Mudge laments the privatization of the Christian faith-practice that has resulted from the rise of the modem nation-state. Hauerwas and Milbank agree and this is also a reason why they stress the relative independence of the church. If ethics as ecclesial formation has to do with people being formed by the retelling of the Christian story and by common congregational practices, some basic confidence must exist in the common Christian tradition and practices. Mudge seems to agree, both in general, when he says that "little of that vision can be fulfilled unless faith communities can enact some sort of principled moral coherence" (p.7O), and regarding "mainline Protestantism" in particular, when he says that in its "thin" traditions public ways of thinking are likely to predominate to the point of making the terminology of religious formation largely ritualistic and perfunctory" (p.89). One might further ask what ecclesial formation can mean in the context of European national churches (formally established or not) such as the Nordic "folk churches", which include the general pluralism of the society to an even greater extent. One thing that happens when ecclesial identity and formation are weak is that formation becomes primarily a question of social location. The social strata to which people belong are more determinative than the church.^^ If the churches are to practise independent moral formation, what practical and social consequences will this have for actual church life? Moral life and thinking, like all human life and thinking, are by nature bodily and social, depending on social context both at the micro- and macro-level. And the micro-level is directly more important than the macro-level. This has to do with such elementary matters as the frequency and intensity (the amount of emotional energy invested) of interaction. If church life consists of no more than an hour of weekly worship, with a low level of interaction, the degree of possible formation will be low. The process of "social transfiguration" Mudge describes simply needs a more frequent and thicker interaction. True, "the heart of Christian moral formation... lies in worship" (p.81), but this worship must be embedded in a broader network of common practices. If not, other types of interaction - family, work, peer-groups - will be much more powerful. In the sort of church life Yoder presupposes, the church is primarily a people with a specific identity. The family is more a function of the church than the church is something besides the family or a support to the family. This means that "church" consists of many different forms of ecclesial interaction within various networks on several 191 THE ECUMENICAL REVIEW levels, creating a higher degree of intensity than one finds in the typical mainline Protestant church that Mudge assumes. It also presupposes that the church is visible and that it has borders (even if fluid) and some structures of authority and discipline. This looks different in different church traditions. But without this type of church life, Mudge's talk about "a sacramental transfiguration of everyday life" (p.81) and the discernment of the Spirit's work in the world easily becomes only a legitimation of actual lack of ecclesial formation. This is also related to a final dilemma: the disunity of the church. According to an old ecumenical adage associated with the Life and Work movement, "doctrine divides and service unites". The WCC report says that "it is... an empirically verifiable observation that commitment to and working for particular moral causes creates community among people",^^ citing the WCC's conciliar process on justice, peace and the integrity of creation (JPIC) as an example. One might also mention the struggle against abortion-on-demand, which has created unprecedented community between Roman Catholics and evangelicals. To mention these examples indicates that, even if there is much truth in the statement quoted from the WCC report, it is also partly a chimera. People from very different church backgrounds can indeed unite around common moral and political struggles, but these very struggles can also intensify existing divisions and create new ones. Common struggle creates unity if there is agreement on what justice is, but Christians disagree about the basic issues. The authors of the report of course recognize this possibility. But the problem is deeper than just different moral positions. There has always been diversity, leading to sharp, even deadly conflict in the church as a result of different traditions and varying cultural contexts. But the situation today can increasingly be described not as diversity, but as fragmentation. As the WCC report says: "Diversity used to be considered acceptable and containable because there was a universal framework of theological understanding acknowledged by the whole church. Now the universal framework of Christianity itself is under radical attack." And the authors of the report acknowledge that they do not know how to keep the conversation going or what it means to talk about ecclesial accountability in such a situation. "We suspect that one reason for our dilemma is lack of confidence about the nature of our faith at the centre."^' Nowhere is this lack of confidence clearer (as Mudge recognizes) than in Protestant liberalism. Without some common coherent framework, the churches will increasingly reflect only differing social locations. There is no easy answer to this. But there is at least some hope in the fact that the different Christian traditions have certain common central practices, especially baptism, eucharist, worship and works of mercy, which entail at least some elements of a common understanding of reality and Christian practice which may keep the conversation going. The challenge is immense if it is true, as the WCC report suggests, that "if the churches are not engaging these ethical issues together, then none of them individually is being fully the NOTES ' For an introduction and the reports of the three consultations of this study, see Thomas F. Best and Martin Robra, eds, Ecclesiology and Ethics: Ethical Engagement, Moral Formation and the Nature of the Church, Geneva, WCC Publications, 1997. 192 ECCLESIOLOGY AND ETHICS ^ This account is condensed and simplified; for a more detailed version see Ame Rasmusson, "Histodcizing the Historicist: Ernst Troeltsch and Recent Mennonite Theology", in Stanley Hauerwas, et al., eds. The Wisdom of the Cross: Essays in Honor of John Howard Yoder, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1999, pp.213-48; "Kristen Social Teologi och Modemitetens Villkor: Fran Ernst Troeltsch till John Milbank", Tidsskrift for Teologi og Kirke, vol. 68, 1997, pp.243-71. ^ Here the formation of Christendom is important; cf. John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel, Notre Dame IN, Notre Dame UP, 1984. ^ On the emergence of the modem state, see Anthony Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence, Berkeley, Univ. of Calif. Press, 1987; Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States, A.D. 990-1992, Oxford, Blackwell, rev. ed. 1992; Martin Van Creveld, The Rise and Decline of the State, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1999. 5 Ernst Troeltsch, Religion in History, Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1991, p.244. ^ Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodern Ethics, Oxford, Blackwell, 1993, p.82. ^ William T. Cavanaugh, '"A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House': The Wars of Religion and the Rise of the State", Modem Theology, vol. 11, 1995, pp.397-420. ^ Cf. for example John Rawls's attempt to extend the idea of the original position to relations between nations, consequently seeing historically determined national borders only as "contingencies and biases of historical fate"; A Theory of Justice, Cambridge MA, Harvard UP, 1971, p.378; see also on these issues Charles Taylor, Reconciling the Solitudes: Essays on Canadian Federalism and Nationalism, Montreal, McGill-Queens UP, 1993; Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice, New York, Basic Books, 1983, ch. 2; and On Toleration, New Haven, Yale UP 1997. ' Randall Collins, The Sociblogy of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change, Cambridge MA, Harvard u p 1998, p.656. '° Lewis Mudge, The Church as Moral Community: Ecclesiology and Ethics in Ecumenical Debate, Geneva, WCC, 1998, p.39. " Ibid., p.49. '^ The development since the 1960s of the infiuential and trend-setting theology of Jlirgen Moltmann is a good example of what I have been describing; see A. Rasmusson, The Church as Polis: From Political Theology to Theological Politics as Exemplified by JUrgen Moltmann and Stanley Hauerwas, Lund, Lund u p 1994. '^,Cf. John Howard Yoder, The Royal Priesthood: Essays Ecclesiological and Ecumenical, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1994. ''' Cf. Alasdair Maclntyre, After Virtue, London, Duckworth, 1981; Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy and Tradition, Notre Dame IN, Notre Dame UP, 1990. But both Milbank and Hauerwas are critical of how Maclntyre sees the relation between philosophy and theology; cf. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, Oxford, Blackwell, 1990, ch. 11. '5 Cf. A. Rasmusson, The Church as Polis, ch. 12. '^ Ecclesiology and Ethics, p.5, quoting The Peaceable Kingdom, London, SCM Press, 1984, p.99. '^ Ecclesiology and Ethics, p.43. '^ Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom, p. 125. " One could categorize the practices that constitute the church in many different ways; this list follows Nancey Murphy, "Using Maclntyre's Method in Christian Ethics", in Murphy et al, eds. Virtues and Practices in the Christian Tradition, Harrisburg PA, Trinity Press International, 1997, pp.33-38. ^ Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom, p. 120. ^' Ecclesiology and Ethics, pp.61-63. ^^ John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2nd ed. 1994, p.246. ^^ Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom, p. 11. ^'' Nancey Murphy and George F.R. Ellis, On the Moral Nature of the Universe, Minneapolis, Fortress, 1996, esp. ch. 8; Nancey Murphy, Reconciling Theology and Science: A Radical Reformation Perspective, Kitchener ON, Pandora, 1997; for a critique see Roland Spjuth, "Is Ethics also among the Sciences?", Conrad Grebel Review (forthcoming). ^^ Stanley Hauerwas, "Failure of Communication or a Case of Uncomprehending Feminism", Scottish Journal of Theology, vol. 50, 1977, p.232. ^^ John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward, eds. Radical Orthodoxy, London, Routledge, 1999, p.l. ^^ On this see Alasdair Maclntyre, After Virtue, Margareta Bertilsson, Slaget om det Modema, Stockholm, Symposion, 1987; Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American Social Science, Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1991; Arthur J. Vidich and Stanford M. Lyman, American Sociology: Worldly Rejections of Religion and Their Directions, New Haven, Yale UP, 1985; Robert Nelson, Reaching for Heaven on Earth: The Theological Meaning of Economics, Savage MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 1991. 193 THE ECUMENICAL REVIEW ^^ See my analysis of Troeltsch's moral imagination in relation to state, power and war, and its consequences for his understanding of the first world war; "Historicizing the Historicist", loc. cit. ^' Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p.381. 30Cf. iWJ.,ch. 12. 3' Page references in the subsequent paragraphs are to this book. ^^ For an interesting treatment of this, cf. Stephen L. Carter, The Dissent of the Governed: A Meditation on Law, Religion and Loyalty, Cambridge MA, Harvard UP, 1998. ^^ Milbank, et al., eds. Radical Orthodoxy, p.2. ^'^ See further Rasmusson, The Church as Polis, pp.210-30. ^^ Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, "Why Resident Aliens Struck a Chord", Missiology, vol. 19, 1991,p.424. ^* Stanley Hauerwas, Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World and Living in Between, Durham, Labyrinth Press, 1988, p. 129. ^^ A. Rasmusson, The Church as Polis, ch. 8. ^^ Ecclesiology and Ethics, p.4. p "" Ibid., p.29. 194