Response to Hans Ulrich: The Future and Way of Anglican Ethics

Among its notable virtues is the engaging irony with which Hans Ulrich’s paper accomplishes the task proposed for his contribution. In a deft and arresting manner, he extrapolates diverse futures from the diverse models (or ‘ways’) of theological ethics currently undertaken within the German setting, chiefly those of Protestant ethics and of Lutheran ethics—both purportedly within ‘the Reformation heritage’. His treatment of the topic is equally illuminating in its constructive and critical aspects.

His presentation of the Lutheran ‘way’ of theological ethics, as exemplified by the work of Gerhard Sauter, Bernd Wannenwetsch, Oswald Bayer, and, naturally, himself, leaves us in no doubt that here lies ‘the future of ethics within the Reformation heritage’, and, unless I am mistaken, the future of Christian ethics, and, indeed, the future of ethics tout court. Conversely, his presentation of the Protestant ‘paradigm’ leaves us in no doubt that its ‘future’, its ‘theological’ model, and its Reformation pedigree are all counterfeit—more deceptive than truthful, more pretence than reality. (This is achieved not least by Ulrich’s generous use of inverted commas!)

As my remit is to respond to Ulrich’s paper and the proposed topic from within the Anglican strand of the Reformation heritage, I shall briefly suggest the extent to which the future and the way of Anglican ethics accords with the future and the way of Lutheran ethics. I shall, however, take my theological points of reference directly from the English Reformation, from (what may be called) Tudor public theology—that is, the theology of the Tudor prayer books, official Bible translations and homilies, laws, and doctrinal articles, ¹ without invoking any current interpretative tradition(s). The following remarks offer a mere indication of the distinctive nuances of Tudor public theology in their implications for the way and future of ethics within the Anglican tradition.

Let me begin by observing that the determining logic of Anglican moral theology (my shorthand for this Reformation tradition) that orders and focuses theological discussion of a range of issues, is the Lutheran logic: the logic of ‘the “future” of God’s faithfulness in His ongoing work and regiment, according to His promising word and its fulfilment by our living in Christ’. ² ‘The “future” of God’s faithfulness’, we would merely add, is continuous with the past of his faithfulness, with his past work of vindicating and rescuing his lost creatures through the death, resurrection, and exaltation of Jesus Christ.

Ulrich presents the logic of this future as the ‘grammar’ of ‘a particular dramatic coexistence and cooperation of God and human beings’, ³ described as the drama of ‘God’s releasing salvation’, ‘a metamorphosis’, ‘the transformation of one’s life-form (repentance, justification and sanctification)’. ⁴ As one would expect, the drama comprehends the ongoing struggle of the Spirit against the flesh and the continual overtaking of the Old Adam by the New; but, crucially for Ulrich, this drama is played out pre-eminently as a communal reality, in and through the common practices composing the church. From their animating centre in ‘the worshipping church’, the practices of the ‘the nova creatura’, the Christenmensch, comprise a worshipping (witnessing) presence within the social and institutional contours of ‘the world’, in various forms of ‘subjection to the needs of the neighbour’, including the subjection of iustitia civilis.

In Anglican moral and political theology too, the drama of salvation, of the overtaking of the Old Adam by the New, features prominently as a dynamic personal, social and institutional reality, primarily visible in common practices; but the drama entails a more pronounced duality of secular and ecclesial authorities and practices than Ulrich’s account of the Christian ethos here implies, despite his reference to ‘God’s twofold regiment’. By Anglican theological standards, the Lutheran concept of the world’s secularity as ‘not provid(ing) a source for living within God’s work’, while profoundly true, does not quite convey the lingering potency of evil in the passing aeon of vitiated creation, nor, I would add, the moral ambiguities of the institutional responses to it, with which ethics must reckon. Although Anglican moral theology can conceive of the secular practice of public or political judgement as expressing the unity of God’s judgement and mercy in his providential sustaining of sinful and disordered human community (and so can recognise worshipful public judgment), it, nevertheless, situates this practice at a further remove from the church’s core practice of communicating God’s redeeming and sanctifying justice (her public worship). ⁵ Ulrich’s account of the Lutheran grammar appears to recognise no serious tensions between the various vocational practices of ‘Christian citizenship’, the various forms of ‘solidary neighbour-love’ ⁶ : most especially, between ‘the praxis of social justice within everyone’s daily life’ and the specific vocational practices of political jurisdiction or public judgement.

At the same time, Ulrich does show us something of the subtle faces of the ideological deception pervading our sinful human self-understanding and communication, lurking in the generic concepts of the Protestant paradigm—a paradigm equally familiar outside of the German context. The deception is discernible in the (informally) controlling concept of the abstractly free and responsible subject constituted by the faith-relation, and in related notions of enriching ethical pluralism, the communicative norm of open-ended exchange not ‘necessarily aiming at articulated common judgements’, ⁷ the intrinsic rationality of ethical dispositions, manifested in such common, ‘public’ ideas as human dignity, equality, secular political culture (and, inopportunely overlooked by Ulrich, universal human rights). Compounding the deception is the employment of Reformation theological vestiges to buttress and to foster these rational manifestations of ‘our common nature’ embedded in the homogenising culture of liberal, secular pluralism. Such is the ideological enterprise that constitutes for Ulrich the future of Protestant ethics.

Much as I appreciate Ulrich’s critical insights into the Protestant paradigm, I remain somewhat uncertain about how this impressive and indispensible critical undertaking fits into his understanding of Lutheran ethics as the grammar of the ‘new life’, concerned with those common, visible practices given in the reality of God’s work and promise, and, as well, with the ongoing ‘proving’ (self-certifying) of this grammar in the various ‘worldly’ vocations of Christian citizens. Is the undertaking, perhaps, an intellectual aspect of the corporate practice of repentance, which involves interpreting the Scriptural illumination of the nature of moral self-deception within the sinful human community?

My problem arises in part from the double reference of the term ‘grammar’—to the inherent logic of a particular linguistic praxis and to the second-order study of this logic—which binds ethics so closely to ethos, inquiry to practice. For the study of grammar surely formalises a pattern inherent in linguistic use (albeit, it does so interpretatively, making decisions about best practice); whereas Christian practice, as Ulrich emphasises, is given by the work and promise of God which transcends and comprehends human practice, informing it from beyond it. Included in God’s work of renovation which is in some sense complete, past, presupposed by his future, is the historical formation of the Scriptural writings and Canon: the authoritative witness to all God’s dealings with the world and to the adequate human response, comprising the absolute horizon of the Christian ethos and of ethical reflection. The subjection of ethical reflection to the Scriptural witness offers, to my mind, a critical and constructive theological distance from all particular, concrete elements of communal practice, including prevailing hermeneutical and moral disciplines. Ulrich appears to affirm the indispensability to Lutheran ethical grammar of this subjection and the distance it offers, declaring that ‘God’s work is communicated by His liberating word’ which ‘has to be heard, understood and received continually’. ⁸

The Anglican ethos and Anglican ethics recognise this subjection in a number of ways, but nowhere more than in the practice of common worship: in the regular liturgies of matins, evensong and communion. This is crucial, because for Anglican, as for Lutheran ethics, common worship is the core, paradigmatic communal practice of the nova creatura, which discloses renewed moral agency and action to be a structured response to, and communication of, God’s gracious Word of judgment and promise in Jesus Christ. Distinctive of Anglican worship, especially of the daily services of matins and evensong, is the extent to which it is a congregational listening to and rehearsing of the words of Scripture: in lengthy, sequential readings of biblical books in their canonical order, and in (sung or said) psalms, canticles, responses and prayers taken out of Scripture. Thus, Anglican worship testifies that all good works of the faithful, including the work of preaching, have to wait on God’s self-revelation through his chosen voices. ⁹

The church’s liturgies also show that God’s commandments spoken through these chosen voices disclose the moral implications of all his judgments and action recorded in Scripture; and, moreover, they display our Saviour’s interpretation of God’s commandments within the whole of his earthly life as the hermeneutical key to the totality of divine commandments, and so to the Bible as the external rule of Christian action. ¹⁰ Lutheran ethics concurs in situating the ethical locus of God’s communication of his work ‘in His commandments and [their] fulfilment in Jesus Christ’. ¹¹

The future of the Anglican ethos, and of Anglican ethics, then, is the way of walking in God’s law as bearing his promise, and it is within this way that diverse vocational practices may be explored and tested.