Stephen .

Wilson

Liturgy and Ethics: Something Old, Something New

During the past century, theologians have given an increasing amount of attention to the ways liturgy and morality may relate to one another. The focus on this topic is in evidence in the earliest stages of the liturgical movement in the United States, most notably in the writings of Virgil Michel,1 the founder of The Liturgical Press and Orate Fratres (now, of course, Worship). Since Michel's death in 1938, scholars have continued to discuss this subject with significant depth and breadth. They have done so from the per spective of both liturgical studies and theological ethics. Scholars like E. Byron Anderson,2 Mark Searle,3 Geoffrey Wainwright,4 and James F. White5 have explained the possible connections between corporate worship and morality as part of their work in liturgical

Stephen B. Wilson teaches in the department of theology at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama.
1 Michel wrote numerous works on this topic, including many of the early articles in Orate Fratres. For example, see his "Mass and the Life of Christ/' Orate Fratres 4 (1929) 72-77; "The Liturgy the Basis of Social Regeneration/' Orate Fratres 9 (1935) 536-45'' "Frequent Communion and Social Regeneration," Orate Fratres 10 (1936) 198-200; "Modern Greed and the Mass," Orate Fratres 11 (1937) 322-24; and "Social Justice," Orate Fratres 12 (1938) 129-32. 2 E. B. Anderson, Worship and Christian Identity: Practicing Ourselves, Virgil Michel Series, ed., Don E. Saliers (Collegeville, MN: Pueblo 2003). 3 M. Searle, "The Liturgy and Catholic Social Doctrine," in The Future of the Catholic Church in America: Major Papers of the Virgil Michel Symposium, July 11-14, 1988 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press 1991); "Serving the Lord with Justice," in Liturgy and Social Justice, ed., Mark Searle (Collegeville: Liturgical Press 1980); "Liturgy and Social Ethics: An Annotated Bibliography," Studia Liturgica 21 (1991) 220-35; a n d "Serving the Lord with Justice," in Liturgy and Social Justice, ed., Mark Searle (Collegeville: Liturgical Press 1980) 13-35. 4 G. Wainwright, Doxology: The Praise of God in Worship, Doctrine and Life (New York: Oxford University Press 1980) 399-434 and "Eucharist and/as Ethics," Worship 62 (1988) 123-37. 5 J. White, "Moving Christian Worship towards Social Justice," Christian Century 104 (1987) 558-60 and "Worship and Culture: Mirror or Beacon?" Theological Studies 35 (1974) 288-301.

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studies, while ethicists such as Stanley Hauerwas,6 Bryan J. Hehir,7 Richard A. McCormick,8 Harmon Smith,9 and John Howard Yoder10 have undertaken similar analyses from the perspective of moral theology. Of all the treatments of this topic, one of the most fruitful has been Don E. Saliers's visionary article "Liturgy and Ethics: Some New Beginnings/'11 In this article, which just reached its twenty-fifth anniversary, Saliers states that deliberations about the nature of morality cannot be limited to ethics alone because the "norms and practices in ethics are never simply ethical/'12 With this statement he alludes to the fact that ethics requires a set of practices and a vision of life within which its moral claims can be rendered intelligible. Put simply, morality and ethics require an ethos. The liturgy, in turn, becomes morally significant for the manner in which it helps express the Christian ethos. These considerations lead him to posit a thesis: "The relations between liturgy and ethics are most adequately formulated by specifying how certain affections and virtues are formed and expressed in the modalities of communal prayer andritualaction. The modalities of prayer enter into the formation of self in community/'13 The remainder of the essay consists of a reflection on how liturgy serves to accomplish this task. It states that one of the salient features of communal worship is its ability to foster Christian identity by giving Christians a location in and orientation
6 S. Hauerwas, "The Liturgical Shape of the Christian Life: Teaching Christian Ethics as Worship/' in In Good Company: The Church as Polis (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 1995) 153-68. 7 B. J. Hehir, "The Liturgy and Social Justice: Past Relationships and Future Possibilities,/, in Liturgy and Social Justice, ed., Edward M. Grosz (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press 1989) 40-61. 8 R. A. McCormick, "Scripture, Liturgy, Character and Morality," in Readings in Moral Theology, No. 4; The Use of Scripture in Moral Theology, eds., Charles E. Curran and Richard A. McCormick (New York: Paulist Press 1984) 289-302. 9 H. Smith, Where Two or Three are Gathered: Liturgy and the Moral Life (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press 1995). 10 J. H. Yoder, "Sacrament as Social Process: Christ the Transformer of Culture," Theology Today 48 (1991) 33-44. 11 D. Saliers, "Liturgy and Ethics: Some New Beginnings," Journal of Religious Ethics 7 (1979) 173-89. This essay has been reprinted as part of Saliers's Festschrift Liturgy and the Moral Self: Humanity at Pull Stretch Before God, eds., E. Byron Anderson and Bruce T. Morrill (Collegeville, MN: Pueblo 1998) 15-35. 12 Liturgy and the Moral Self, 16, author's emphasis. 13 Ibid., 17, author's emphasis.

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toward the world.14 It does so in two interrelated ways. First, through its textual components, especially prayer, liturgy helps one see the world in a specifically Christian manner. Saliers notes, "In the very activity of re-presenting and rehearsing features of existence described in the Scriptures, worshippers articulate their fundamental relations to one another and to the world/715 Second, ritual actions serve to embody that which liturgical texts articulate.16 Ritual action serves as an enactment of the vision of life that liturgical texts articulate. The identity fostered by liturgical participation is important for Christian ethics because the Christian life can be characterized by the virtues and affections cultivated by exposure to the rituals and stories of the liturgy. Saliers's use of the language of character and virtue marks an important trajectory to explore in developing our understanding of the liturgy's possible impact on Christian morality because it broadens the scope of ethical inquiry to include the formation of character. In effect, his work demands that we look beyond many common conceptions of ethics (e.g., deontology and consequentialism) in order to find the appropriate conceptual categories for exploring the wider significance of the church's worship. In the remainder of this essay, I will develop his basic insight concerning the relation of liturgy and ethics by drawing on more recent work in virtue theory. In the twenty-five years since the publication of "Liturgy and Ethics: Some New Beginnings," there has been a groundswell in the number of books and articles devoted to the virtues. One of the leading lights in this retrieval has been the moral philosopher Alasdair Maclntyre. Here it is important to note that Saliers's work was influenced by the theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, particularly his 1975 monograph Character and the Christian Life, which was reprinted in 1994. The reprint contains a new Introduction in which he discusses the increased attention given to the virtues in recent scholarship. He argues that one of the most significant factors in this retrieval has been Maclntyre's After Virtue.17 Hauerwas states, "With his virtuoso performance
Ibid., 18. Ibid. 16 Ibid., 19. 17 A. Maclntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 1984).
15 14

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Maclntyre has changed the agenda of contemporary philosophers and theologians by an almost violent redirection of their attention."18 Because of the importance o After Virtue for subsequent developments within virtue theory, I will use this work to develop Don Saliers's initial insights on some of the connections between liturgy and ethics. I will especially draw upon Maclntyre's account of a moral practice in Chapter Fourteen and his discussion of the moral importance of narrative in Chapter Fifteen, supplementing the latter with some insights from Stephen Crites, to describe how the liturgy can provide a context within which Christian virtues can be cultivated.
LITURGY AS A MORAL PRACTICE

The first aspect o After Virtue that I will discuss is its account of a practice. Maclntyre's definition of a practice is rather involved, referring to this type of pursuit as "any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved are systematically extended."19 Owing to the complexity of this formulation, it may prove helpful to explain its constitutive elements. Essentially, practices have four basic characteristics. They are coherent yet complex, social and cooperative, possess internal goods, and have standards of excellence. Understanding each of these four components will allow us to comprehend what a practice is as a whole. When Maclntyre says that practices are both coherent and complex, he means that they have multiple subsidiary elements, yet all of these elements are ordered toward unifying ends. In order to explain this point, it is useful to provide an illustration. As Maclntyre himself does, I will draw on the example of games, in this case basketball. The sport of basketball consists of many elements. Coaches must formulate a game plan. Individual players

S. Hauerwas, Character and the Christian Life (San Antonio: Trinity University Press 1975; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 1994) xv. 19 Maclntyre, 187.

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must be able to dribble, shoot, defend, rebound, pass, and move off the ball to receive passes. Teams must collectively run a variety of offensive "sets," as well as plays such as in-bounding the ball when it has gone out of bounds. They must also work in unison defensively to make sure each player is carrying out his or her role within the particular defense being run. Despite the inherent multiplicity of components, these items are all centered on a twofold end: scoring and preventing the other team from doing so. This twofold end thus brings unity to the various aspects of the game, making basketball both complex and coherent. It is important to note that in this example the activity being engaged in is inherently social and cooperative, which brings us to the second aspect of the definition of a practice. Even basketball, which in many ways reflects the competitive, Homeric account of virtues centered on the agn, has a social and cooperative dimension, such that it has affinities with the Aristotelian notion of cooperative virtues of life in the polis. There is, of course, the obvious character of teamwork necessary for team sports. In addition, playing the game of basketball brings one into a relationship with current and former practitioners of the game.20 One even enters into relationship with those against whom one is competing because the competition is one for excellence at a task that is already agreed upon as important no matter who wins or loses a particular contest. The reason that the social and cooperative dimensions of practices are important is because practices are produced by and thus are reflections of a community, rather than the products of the whims of individuals. Indeed, they are partially constitutive of a community's corporate life. This emphasis is in keeping with Maclntyre's thesis that morality and moral philosophy always presuppose a social or political framework within which actions and accounts of actions are rendered meaningful. The third prominent aspect of a practice is that of goods internal to a practice. These goods are defined as those that can only be achieved by participating in a given practice or ones similar to it. To return to our example, one of the goods achieved through a sport such as basketball is a certain form of physical fitness, one that

20

Ibid., 194.

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combines elements of quickness, speed, endurance, and agility. Such fitness can only be achieved by participating in basketball or some other form of athletic pursuit, such as soccer, which requires and cultivates those same qualities. Since internal goods can be achieved only by participation in a practice or its cognates, Maclntyre contrasts them with goods external to a practice, which can be achieved by other means and are only contingently attached to a practice. If one achieves a certain degree of proficiency at basketball, one may receive an athletic scholarship. The scholarship would be an external good, since scholarships can be gained in other ways also. A further point of distinction between internal and external goods is that external goods are subject to the law of scarcity, while internal goods are not.21 For example, if two people play basketball together throughout their childhood, advancement in the skills of the game by one person does not preclude a similar development by the other one. In fact, as one gets better at playing the game, the other may also by playing against increasingly improving competition and learning from him or her. If, however, the first person is offered a college scholarship for basketball, the second person may be prevented from receiving a scholarship for the simple reason that there are only so many scholarships available. They are, in other words, scarce resources. The final component of a practice is that of standards of excellence. As the name would suggest, standards of excellence involve the criteria by which we judge whether or not we are engaging in a practice proficiently. Like goods internal to a practice, these standards arise from within the practice itself. The standards, moreover, are performance-based; that is, they are not simply the rules that partially define the practice, though they will always flow from a following of the rules, and may result in changes to the rules. Rather, standards of excellence are those performances of a given practice that are heretofore the most accomplished. Thus we know what it means to play basketball well because we have seen Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls play the game. To carry the point further, we know that the Bulls were good because we had the prior standards of Larry Bird's Boston Celtics and Ervin "Magic"

21

Ibid., 190.

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Johnson's Los Angeles Lakers, which were surpassed by the Bulls. Because of teams like the Bulls, people who play basketball have the criteria by which they can evaluate their own performances. Maclntyre notes: "To enter into a practice is to accept the authority of those standards and the inadequacy of my own performance as judged by them. It is to subject my own attitudes, choices, preferences and tastes to the standards which currently and partially define the practice."22 Maclntyre does not back away from the full implications of the historically contingent character of standards of excellence. Because they can develop, they may also decline.23 With this description of a practice in place, we are now in a position from which we can discern whether liturgy can be considered a practice. Maclntyre himself suggests that practices cover a wide range of human activity: the arts, scholarship, games, certain forms of politics, and the sustaining of family life. In addition, critics of Maclntyre's work have approvingly noted that his notion of practice can be applied to a range of human endeavor, the significance of which he may fail to detect.24 It should come as no surprise, then, that theologians have appropriated Maclntyre's account of practice for explicating the moral significance of various aspects of the church's life.25 If we look at the correlation between the previously highlighted four components of practices and liturgy, we can see that it is appropriate to consider liturgical rites, not only as individual practices, but as constituting a coherent set of practices.
Ibid. Ibid., 189. 24 In Ethics After Babel: The Languages of Morals and Their Discontents (Boston: Beacon Press 1988), Jeffrey Stout argues that the most helpful aspect of After Virtue is its account of the virtues in the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters, including his description of a practice (266). Yet, Maclntyre, as Stout reads him, does not sufficiently appreciate the significance that the multiplicity of practices within liberal societies (an object of Maclntyre's scorn) may have for moral discourse within those societies (271). 25 See, for example, Murphy, Nancey, Brad J. Kallenberg, and Mark Thiessen Nation, eds., Virtues & Practices in the Christian Tradition: Christian Ethics after Maclntyre (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International 1997); Jonathan Wilson, Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World: Lessons for the Church from Maclntyre's "After Virtue" (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International) 61-63; and David McCarthy Matzko, "The Performance of the Good: Ritual Action and the Moral Life/' Pro Ecclesia 7 (1998) 199-215.
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We begin with liturgy as a socially established and cooperative activity because, of the four aspects of a practice, this is the most self-evidently seen in the liturgy. That liturgy is fundamentally a social phenomenon is rather obvious and is reflected in the etymology of the term. As is well-known, our term "liturgy" is derived from the Greek word leitourgia, which is most commonly translated as "the work of the people." As such, the very nature of the liturgy requires that it be a communal celebration in which each person has an important function. Sacrosanctum Concilium puts the matter this way: "Liturgical services are not private functions but are celebrations of the Church, which is 'the sacrament of unity/ namely, 'the holy people united and arranged under their bishops/ Therefore, liturgical services pertain to the whole Body of the Church. . . . It must be emphasized that rites which are meant to be celebrated in common, with the faithful present and actively participating, should as far as possible be celebrated in that way rather than by an individual or quasi-privately."26 This passage from the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy clearly affirms the notion that Christian worship is an inherently social activity, rather than private action of an individual. Christian worship requires that each person contributes to the celebration through active participation in a given service. In doing so, Christians engage each other and God, thereby making liturgy a truly cooperative activity. Christian liturgy also coheres with Maclntyre's emphasis on the coherent and complex nature of practices. This holds true both for particular rites and for the worship of the church as a whole.

Sacrosanctum Concilium, nos. 26-27. Translation taken from Austin Flannery, O.P., ed., Vatican Council II: The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, rev. ed. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press 1992) 10-11. Because Maclntyre's work in After Virtue is dependent on antique notions of virtue, with their roots in the agn, the social character of the liturgy, owing to its basis in charity, would surpass Maclntyre at this point. Maclntyre has been critiqued by theologians for not significantly appreciating how Aquinas's understanding of caritas transformed the nature of the virtues in a manner that removed them from the competitive realm of the agn and placed them in arenas of charitable mutuality. For examples of this critique, see John Milbank, Theology & Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers 1990) 359-76 and Stanley Hauerwas and Charles Pinches, Christians Among the Virtues (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 1997) 55-69.

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Particular rites are made up of a variety of components: prayers, music, postures, readings, ritual actions, and material elements. Despite the complexity of a given rite, each rite has a unity that is constituted by the interlocking goals toward which a particular rite is directed. For example, in baptism one is incorporated into Christ and the church. Likewise, the focus or climax of the Eucharist is when people come into communion with God and each other. The liturgy, rightly understood, is not simply a collection of disparate practices. Instead, the liturgy as a whole makes up a kind of liturgical complex in which the various rites work together to help shape Christian life from birth to death. The unity of this liturgical complex is constituted, in part, by the overall goals of liturgy, the goods internal to the practice of the liturgy. Although it may atfirstsound odd to think of the liturgy in terms of goods, upon further reflection there are indeed such goods. To name but three internal goods, there are the glorification of God, the sanctification of humanity, and communion. All three are achieved through liturgy and similar types of practice, such as the corporal works of mercy. In addition, with all three cases, "possession" of these goods does not prevent their "acquisition" by others so that they are not subject to the law of scarcity. These three goods, moreover, can be seen as ordered in such a way that glorification and holiness are ultimately directed toward communion with God and other human beings (hence the centrality of the Eucharist), which provides for the unity the coherence within complexity for individual rites and the whole of the church's liturgy.27 Standards of excellence make up the final aspect of Maclntyre's definition of a practice we need to discuss. The discernment of such standards is difficult because it seems almost nonsensical to ask the question "who is worshiping better?" and in turn use that person or group as a gauge for others. Although trying to discern some standard for worship may at first seem difficult, if not impossible, we may be able to find a way around this apparent problem
27 This threefold distinction is misleading in that it would seem to suggest that these three goods are individuated in a manner that overlooks their intimate relationship. However, they should be viewed as being of a piece such that sanctification and glorification are not simply means to the end of communion; they are integral to that end.

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by keeping in mind the purposes of worship, the goods that worship seeks to obtain. The seemingly problematical question "who is worshiping better?" is more easily addressed when it is reformulated into "who provides the standard for rendering God glory, holiness, and communion with God?" The answer to this question is, of course, Jesus Christ. Christ lived and died in a manner that was focused on self-emptying love or kenosis, allowing the lives of Christians to be depicted in these terms as well. Christ's kenotic love was manifest in his incarnation and ministry, but most fully in his passion. Christ's self-giving, in turn, is presented as source and standard for Christians through the liturgy, especially the Eucharist. In summary, one could say that Christ's kenosis is the basis for the church's offering of itself in thanksgiving in the Eucharist, which in turn becomes a basis from which Christians glorify God, become holy, and live in communion with God and neighbor through the whole of their lives.28 What does Maclntyre's account of a practice provide us with in terms of the liturgy? Essentially, his description of a practice gives a "thick" account of the way that liturgy can be viewed as a context within which Christian virtues are cultivated. When conceived of as a practice in the technical sense, liturgy is morally significant because it provides an activity within which the concomitant elements of character and the virtues can be cultivated. In order to see why this is so, we need to highlight Maclntyre's definition of a virtue as it relates to practices, "A virtue is an acquired human quality the possession and exercise of which tends to enable us to achieve those

The employment of Jesus Christ as a criterion moves away from Maclntyre's work in a significant manner. Jesus as moral standard is in keeping with Maclntyre's insistence that standards emerge historically. Jesus was a particular human being, who lived at a specific juncture of Jewish and Roman history. Nevertheless, for theological reasons, it would be impossible to say that the standard of Christ can be historically transcended. If such were the case, then the very logic of the Incarnation and Christianity would become unintelligible. It is possible to maintain a historicist stance, however, by highlighting the church's status as the body of Christ. If the church is always in the process of realizing "the full stature of Christ" (Ephesians 4:13), then its awareness of what it means to live the "Christ-life" (Virgil Michel) can also be expected to develop historically. For the church, then, the standard remains constant, while its understanding and expression continue to unfold historically.

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goods which are internal to practices and the lack of which effectively prevents us from achieving any such goods/'29 From this framework, Christian virtues would be those qualities that allow us to render God glory, become holy, and live in communion with God and neighbor. The most important virtue for achieving these ends, as the Christian tradition has consistently affirmed, is charity. Because of the importance of charity for the Christian life, it may prove useful to show how it is embodied in the dynamics of the Eucharist in order to concretize what has been said above. To do so, we must begin with creation, which is the presupposition of the Eucharist. In creation God gives humans life and all that is necessary for the support of life. In a sign of unlimited graciousness, God also gives us the gift of his Son because of our misuse of creation. Humanity, then, rightfully takes a portion of this creation wheat, water, and grapes and changes them through human effort into bread and wine. We take these elements and give them back to God in thanksgiving for God's gifts of creation and of his Son. God, then, takes this offering, transforms it, and returns it to us as the Body and Blood of Christ. Upon reception of these gifts, whereby we become what they are, we are sent into the world "to love and serve the Lord." Even from the schematized rendering of the Eucharist, it becomes apparent that the logic of the rite is one that centers on self-giving. Such kenosis is the defining characteristic of charity. Accordingly, the Eucharist is charity embodied, and "full, active, and conscious" participation in the Eucharist becomes a means by which Christians practice that virtue.
N A R R A T I V E , THE LITURGICAL YEAR, A N D MORALITY

As Don Saliers noted in his essay that serves as the springboard for this article, one aspect of the liturgy's moral significance resides in the ability of its narratives to characterize the participants in a specifically Christian manner. Here I will supplement Saliers's insight by providing a more detailed account of how such narratives help foster identity. In order to carry out this task, I will once

29

Maclntyre, After Virtue, 191, author's emphasis.

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again draw on the insights of Alasdair Maclntyre, though this time with some assistance from Stephen Crites. Although Maclntyre's description of the moral significance of narrative covers a variety of distinct yet related topics, ranging from particular actions to the histories of communities (i.e., traditions),30 our primary concern here will be with the role of communal stories for shaping how we understand and live our lives. An appropriate place to begin this discussion is with the raw datum of ethics intelligible human action. According to Maclntyre, a given action can be described in multiple ways, but the adequacy of those descriptions must be tested against the action's underlying short-term intentions.31 For instance, one could describe the same segment of behavior by little Bobby as either "hitting Suzy" or "throwing a baseball." In order to find out which description is the more accurate, we would need to know whether he intentionally hit her or did so inadvertently while attempting to throw the ball to Suzy's brother. Little boys being what they are, it may very well be that Bobby would say that he was trying to throw the ball to her brother, though he really wanted to hit her. This insight brings us to a second point. Proper characterizations of short-term intentions need to make reference to long-term intentions. If there were a history of animosity between the two children, then his statement about not intending to hit her would be less believable. But, if he actually liked her, then his statement would have more credibility. These long-term intentions, in turn, can best be described in reference to the wider sets of beliefs that inform such intentions. If one knew that he was a gentle child, who had been raised to believe that it was always wrong to hit other people, then one would have more evidence that his hitting of Suzy was unintentional. Conversely, if he, like many young boys, believed that little girls were little more than nuisances, then "hitting Suzy" may turn out to be the most accurate

L. Gregory Jones has noted seven distinct uses of the category of narrative by Maclntyre, some of which may be in tension with each other. For Jones's analysis, see "Alasdair Maclntyre on Narrative, Community, and the Moral Life/7 Modern Theology 4 (1987) 53-69. 31 The information in this paragraph is taken from Maclntyre, After Virtue,
207-08.

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description for his action. As this example indicates, the correct description of an agent's actions requires a causal and temporal ordering of intentions and beliefs. Put schematically, "A" (belief) leads to "B" (long-term intention) leads to "C" (short-term inten tion), which results in "D" (action). The important thing to note about this chain of practical reasoning is that a proper rendering of this action entails that we place that action within the larger con text of the person's life. Because of the necessity of such historical contextualization, narrative becomes indispensable for describing intentional human action. Since human action is rendered intelligible by its location within such larger historical frameworks, it follows that Maclntyre dis cusses the historical and thus narrative quality of human existence as a whole. When he says that human life can be described as a narrative, he does not mean that otherwise random events can have an order imposed on them through the subsequent use of a narrative artifice. Rather, human life is itself narrative in nature, which is why life can be depicted using narrative: "It is because we all live out narratives in our own lives and because we understand our own lives in terms of the narratives that we live out that the form of narrative is appropriate for understanding the actions of others. Stories are lived before they are told except in the case of fiction."32 The reason that life is inherently narrative in nature is because life is historical. Humans understand and relate their lives through narratives because that life is first experienced as an historical narrative that has the stock features of most narratives: beginnings, middles, and ends; characters; a plotline with an un known outcome (depending on one's place in the story); and so on. Maclntyre develops this point by arguing that the difference between stories that are lived and stories that are merely told lies in their respective authorship. "The difference between imaginary characters and real ones," he tells us, "is not in the narrative form of what they do; it is in the degree of their authorship of that form and of their own deeds."33 This comment on authorship brings us to a second significant aspect of his discussion of the narrative character of human existence. Although each person is the author
32 33

Ibid., 212. Ibid., 215.

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of his or her life, that person is not the only author of that life. He makes the point forcefully: "Now I must emphasize that what the agent is able to do and say intelligibly as an actor is deeply affected by the fact that we are never more (and sometimes less) than the co-authors of our own narratives. Only in fantasy do we live the story we please."34 The reason that we are only co-authors of our own stories is that the life of any person is necessarily influenced by other people and events, including the lives of family members, cultural forces, membership in various communities, and historical contingencies. Because of such variables, a person's story is rendered intelligible insofar as it is understood against the backdrop of these wider influences, which provide certain constraints and possibilities for that person. "Embedding" is the technical name that Maclntyre gives to this interlocking of narratives. He illustrates this concept by use of historical examples, pointing out how the life and work of Thomas Becket was embedded within the reign of Henry II and how Mary Stuart's life was embedded within that of Elizabeth I. Because of the phenomenon of embedding, the life of any one person is shaped by that person's relationships with other people. More broadly, the communities within which people live provide them with the means by which they come to understand themselves and their place in the world. Accordingly, every person's story is part of an interlocking set of narratives that partially set the agenda for how that person's life is lived and understood. One of the most significant ways communities form their members through narratives is through the telling and retelling of those stories that express the core beliefs and values that are partially definitive of the community's identity. These stories are expressed in multiple ways such as fairytales, myths, scriptures, and legends. Maclntyre's description of this point is fundamental to our work, necessitating that we quote him at length: "It is through hearing stories about wicked step mothers, lost children, good but misguided kings, wolves that suckle twin boys, youngest sons who receive no inheritance but must make their own way in the world and eldest sons who waste their inheritance on riotous living and go into exile to live with the swine [sic], that children learn or

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Ibid., 213.

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mis-learn both what a child and what a parent is, what the cast of characters may be in the drama into which they have been born and what the ways of the world are. . . . Mythology, in the original sense, is at the heart of things. Vico was right and so was Joyce. And so too of course is that moral tradition from heroic society to its medieval heirs according to which the telling of stories has a key part in educating us into the virtues."35 As should be evident from this quote, he is suggesting that communal stories such as myths provide the dramatic resources by which people come to see themselves and the world in which they exist. Unfortunately, he does not tell us precisely how such stories fulfill this function. In order to develop this point more fully, we need to turn to an author whose work is at once similar to that of Maclntyre, yet who gives more attention to the importance of myth for day-to-day life than he does. One such writer is Stephen Crites, especially in his essay "The Narrative Quality of Experience."36 Like Maclntyre, Crites begins by suggesting that human life has an inherently narrative "quality." After arguing for the importance of narrative for understanding human life, he takes up the topic with which we are now concerned, namely, the relation of myths and lived life. He begins the discussion by introducing the categories of "sacred stories" and "mundane stories." He states that sacred stories are narrative forms within which people live: "within the traditional cultures there have been some stories that were told, especially on festal occasions, that had special resonance. Not only told to be ritually-enacted, these stories seem to be allusive expressions of stories that cannot be fully and directly told. . . .These stories lie too deep in the consciousness of a people to be directly told: they form consciousness rather than being among the objects of which it is directly aware."37 He provides a helpful metaphor for describing the nature of these stories. He tells us that they are not

Ibid., 216. S. Crites, "The Narrative Quality of Experience/ in Why Narrative? Readings in Narrative Theology, eds., Stanley Hauerwas and L. Gregory Jones (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1989) 65-88. This work was originally published under the same title in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion 39 (1971) 291-311. In the following discussion, citations will come from the Why Narrative? version. 37 Ibid., 69.
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monuments to look at, but rather dwelling places people inhabit in that they create a sense of self, world, community, and even reality itself. Sacred stories are like homes: we live in them, they provide us with shelter and comfort, and they provide a location from which we view the world. Monuments, conversely, do not have the same impact upon us. Although they may be interesting in their own right, they always remain apart from us, something that may be enjoyable to observe, but have no sustained bearing on our lives. Although Crites refers to these stories as "sacred," he also states that there may be what we would call secular versions of this type of story. Marxism is a good example of this tendency. The Marxist sacred story that is reflected in the myth of the inevitability of class conflict that eventuates in the dictatorship of the proletariat provided one of the means by which Communists have understood themselves and their role in the world. Likewise, one of the sacred stories of the United States is alluded to in the phrase "rags to riches," which serves as a plotline that highlights some of the values of the people of the United States: individualism, hard work, good timing, ingenuity, and so on. As both of these examples illustrate, the truthfulness of sacred stories lies in the degree to which they engender reality as much, if not more so, than they reflect reality. It is common to label a story as fictional that did not take place. From this perspective sacred stories would be classified as fictions, as untrue. But sacred stories can be considered to be true to the degree to which they inform future actions, rather than in the way they may or may not reflect prior ones. Crites's description of mundane stories is rather straightforward in comparison to his characterization of sacred stories. They are the stories that do or could take place in our phenomenological world. As he puts it, "The stories that are told, all stories directly seen or heard, I propose to call mundane stories."38 After discussing these two types of narrative, he proceeds to note their relationship. He says that they should be viewed as conceptually distinct, yet not so distinct that they are considered separate from one another. The reason sacred stories should not be severed from mundane stories is that mundane stories help articulate the sacred

38

Ibid., 70.

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stories they presuppose. Crites writes: "Between sacred and mun dane stories there is a distinction without separation. From the sublime to the ridiculous, all a people's mundane stories are im plicit in its sacred story, and every mundane story takes soundings in the sacred story. But some mundane stories sound out at greater depth than others. Even the myths and epics, even the scriptures, are mundane stories. But in these, as well as in some works of literary art, and perhaps even in some merry little tales that seem quite content to play on the surface, the sacred stories resonate."39 After discussing sacred stories, mundane stories, and their rela tionship, Crites explains how they converge in the shaping of per spective. He introduces this topic by putting forward a thesis: "I w a n t . . . to propose that the form of active consciousness, i.e., the form of its experiencing, is in at least some rudimentary sense narrative. That is why consciousness is able to mediate between sacred and mundane stories through which it orients itself in the world."40 He supports this claim in a series of steps, which begin with a discussion of the relation of consciousness to reality. Ac cording to Crites, consciousness grasps reality in a temporal manner in which past, present, and future are of a piece. Without such temporal coherence, "Consciousness would be locked in a bare, momentary present, i.e., in a disconnected succession of percep tions which it would have no power to relate to one another."41 Crites develops this point by discussing the purpose of what he terms "memory" and "recollection." Memory, for its part, serves as a chronicle of experience in which those experiences are recorded in a bare manner, that is, simply in terms of before and after. Recollection, however, involves the ability of consciousness to re-order images from the chronicle of memory into new patterns of meaning and comprehension. He elaborates on the relation of memory and recollection: "Images do not exist in memory as atomic units, like photographs in an album, but as transient episodes in an image stream, cinematic, which I must suspend and from which I must abstract in order to isolate a particular image. The most direct and obvious way of recollecting it is by telling a story,
39

Ibid., 71. Ibid., 72. 41 Ibid., 73.

40

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though the story is never simply the tedious and unilluminating recital of the chronicle of memory itself. And, of course, I can manipulate the image-stream in other ways. I can abstract general features and formal elements of it for purposes of theory, or suspend it in order to draw a picture, or splice episodes from it in a way that gives them new significance."42 Crites then spells out the implications of this insight by suggesting that it is possible to re-collect the images of memory in very different ways. In other words, the "same" story can be told differently based on the way that certain things are emphasized or omitted, the importance of succeeding events that contextualize and re-contextualize the event(s) being told, changes in perspective that arise from new experiences, and anticipated outcomes of future events. The last comment introduces another key component of his position "the scenario of anticipation," which is a narrative form that looks to the future. According to Crites, anticipation and memory work hand in hand to create a sense of selfhood: "Our sense of personal identity depends on the continuity of experience through time, a continuity bridging even the cleft between remembered past and projected future."43 Having discussed the role of narrative for personal identity, Crites turns his attention to the role of sacred stories and mundane stories in the shaping of that identity. In a passage worth quoting at length, we are told that the stories "people hear and tell, the dramas they see performed, not to speak of the sacred stories that are absorbed without being directly heard or seen, shape in the most profound way the inner story of experience. We imbibe a sense of the meaning of our own baffling dramas from these stories, and this sense of its meaning in turn affects the form of a man's experience and the style of his action. Some cultural forms, both sacred and mundane, are of course socially shared in varying degrees, and so help link men's inner lives as well as orienting them to a common public world. Both the content and the form of experience are mediated by symbolic systems which we are able to employ simply by virtue of awakening within a particular culture in which those symbolic systems are the common currency.
42 43

Ibid., 75. Ibid., 78.

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Prevailing narrative forms are among the most important of such symbolic systems. It is not as though a man begins as a purely individual consciousness with the incipient story and musicality of his private experience, and then casts about for a satisfying tale to lend it some higher significance. People awaken to consciousness in a society, with the inner story of experience and its enveloping musicality already infused with cultural forms. The vitalities of experience itself may in turn make a man feel that some of the old stories have a hollow ring and may be the source of originality in the formation of new stories, or even kinds of stories. But the way we remember, anticipate, and even directly perceive is largely social. A sacred story in particular infuses experience at its root, linking a man's individual consciousness with ultimate powers and also with the inner lives of those with whom he shares common soil."44 If one applies these insights to the narrative portions of liturgical worship (e.g., lectionary readings, eucharistie prayers, and creeds), one can begin to state the possible significance of these elements in the formation of Christian identity. These mundane stories are rehearsed and ritually enacted in the various celebrations of the liturgical year. These rehearsals and enactments provide Christians with access to the sacred story of the triune God's relationship with the world. These stories, then, provide a stock of dramatic resources that can help form how Christians see themselves in relation to God, the entire Christian community, and the whole of creation. Before leaving our discussion of narrative, we need to say something about how story relates to the virtues, which is the central theme that I have been developing in this essay. In order to elaborate on this topic, we need to return to Maclntyre and specifically his depiction of both the teleological and unpredictable nature of human life. He argues that human life is teleological in the sense that we live in anticipation of achieving certain goals and aspirations. As he states it, "There is no present which is not informed by some image of some future and an image of the future which always presents itself in the form of a telos or a variety of ends and

44

Ibid., 79-80, author's emphasis.

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goals towards which we are either moving or failing to move in the present."45 Although we live our lives in light of certain expectations, human life has another quality that often comes into tension with its teleological nature. In a word, life is unpredictable, such that we cannot know what will and will not happen until our lives actually unfold. One of the reasons that life is variable in this manner is a point we made previously concerning our lives being embedded within those of other people. Since our lives are part of an interlocking set of narratives, those stories serve to shape our stories in ways that cannot always be anticipated. Maclntyre's description of the dynamic between teleology and unpredictability leads him to discuss the kind of genre that is most suitable for characterizing the moral life quest. There are two salient features of this literary form. First, it is inherently teleological because "without some at least partly determinate conception of the final telos there could not be any beginning to a quest."46 The specific end he has in mind is "the good." Second, he refrains from providing any specific content to the category of the good because the discernment of its content can only be stated vaguely at the onset of the quest. It is only after the journey has been undertaken that increasingly better conceptions of the good can be put forth. This is why he discusses quest in pedagogical terms: "A quest is always an education as to the character of that which is sought and in self-knowledge."47 How, then, does one come to a greater knowledge of the good? Maclntyre addresses this question by pointing to some of the factors that lead to the unpredictable character of human life. Because various harms and dangers impinge upon our lives, our understanding of the good and of ourselves will depend on the virtues that we acquire in overcoming these problems. It is at this point that he formulates a second definition of virtue, in addition to the one he provided in relation to practices. In terms of quest, virtues "are to be understood as those dispositions which will not only sustain practices and enable us to achieve the goods internal to practices, but which will also sustain us in the relevant kind of
45

Maclntyre, After Virtue, 215-16. Ibid., 219. 47 Ibid.

46

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quest for the good, by enabling us to overcome the harms, dangers, temptations and distractions which we encounter, and which will furnish us with increasing self-knowledge and increasing knowledge of the good."48 It is important to note that he refrains from providing us with any specified content of the good, while also avoiding naming any particular virtues that one might cultivate in seeking that good. His reason for these omissions is significant. Historically speaking, it is impossible to give a single account of what the good life is and what are its concomitant virtues. As he points out, "What the good life is for a fifth-century Athenian general will not be the same as what it is for a medieval nun or a seventeenth-century farmer."49 It is our positioning within historically changing communities and the acceptance of those communal roles that provide us with the specific possibilities, limitations, and obligations that constitute the basis from which we live. Because communities differ, so too does a good life within those communities. It is at this point that the liturgy once again becomes paramount for an understanding of virtues within Christianity. Not only does the liturgy serve as a practice within which Christian virtues are fostered, it also serves as an ongoing expression of the central elements of the Christian tradition, thereby providing followers of Christ with the communal narratives by which their lives can be lived and understood in a specifically Christian manner. It does so to a great extent through the celebrations of the liturgical year. In both the temporal and sanctoral cycles, the church rehearses those stories that reflect what it means to believe, think, feel, and act as a Christian. It is also important to note that the heart of the liturgical year the temporal cycle has a christological pattern to it. Hearing the stories of Christ's nativity, ministry, death, and resurrection provides Christians with the means by which their stories can resonate with that of Christ. For example, by telling the stories of the paschal mystery during Easter, the church rehearses what it means to undergo redemptive suffering and transformative rebirth. In turn, these stories can provide Christians with the hope by

49

Ibid. Ibid., 220.

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which they also can undertake such suffering in their efforts to be faithful witnesses to Christ and the kingdom of God.50 When liturgical scholars and moral theologians talk to each other, there is always the danger that they may talk past each other. As with all academic disciplines, these two have technical vocabularies that assist them in their respective tasks. As helpful as technical language may be, it can prevent helpful in some cases, necessary dialogue from occurring, as the two parties become trapped within their respective "language games" (Wittgenstein). The issue is especially significant because liturgical scholarship and moral theology focus on different aspects of the same issue, namely, the Christian life. Part of the brilliance of Don Saliers' "Liturgy and Ethics: Some New Beginnings" was that it served as an attempt to find a common language within which the relation of liturgy and morality can be discussed by both sets of scholars. Saliers did so by drawing on the tradition of discussing ethics in terms of character and virtue. His work, while ostensibly about "new beginnings," was very much rooted in a classical, if often ignored, manner of talking about ethics. Here I have attempted to further his fundamental insights by highlighting some of the more recent insights in scholarship on the virtues. In doing so, I have hopefully shown that something old can also be something new.

Here it is important to note the direction of interpretation. I have not started with suffering in general and then proceeded to discuss the Passion as merely an instantiation of such suffering. Such a move would be both theologically and psychologically suspect. In terms of the former, such an approach would suggest that Christ's crucifixion was merely one example, though an important one, of the fact that pain and death are part of "the human condition/' This view overlooks the fact that Christ's suffering was unique in that he was the God-man. His death is also unique in that it brings the human reality of death within God's own "experience." In terms of the latter, it would suggest that suffering in general is a goal for which Christians should aspire, reducing Christianity to a form of masochism. Properly understood, however, Christians are to bear tribulation because their Lord did so and because, as his example shows, such Christ-like suffering is transformative.

50

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^ s
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