atla0001558213 _ wilson _ liturgy and ethics
TRANSCRIPT
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Stephen . Wilson
Liturgy and Ethics: Something Old, Something New
During the past century, theologians have given an increasing
amount ofattention to the ways liturgy and morality mayrelate to
one another. The focus on this topic is in evidence in the earliest
stages ofthe liturgical movement in the United States, most notably
in the writings ofVirgil Michel,1the founder of The Liturgical
Press and Orate Fratres(now, ofcourse, Worship). Since Michel's
death in 1938, scholars have continued to discuss this subject withsignificant depth and breadth. They have done so from the per
spective of both liturgical studies and theological ethics. Scholars
like E. Byron Anderson,2
MarkSearle,3
Geoffrey Wainwright,4
and
James F. White5
have explained the possible connections between
corporate worship and morality as part of their workin liturgical
Stephen B. Wilson teaches in the department oftheologyat 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
Fratres4 (1929) 72-77; "The Liturgy the Basis ofSocial Regeneration/' Orate Fratres
9 (1935) 536-45''"Frequent Communion and Social Regeneration," Orate Fratres
10 (1936) 198-200; "Modern Greed and the Mass," Orate Fratres11 (1937) 322-24;
and "Social Justice," Orate Fratres12 (1938) 129-32.2
E. B. Anderson, Worship andChristian Identity: PracticingOurselves,VirgilMichel Series, ed., Don E. Saliers (Collegeville, MN: Pueblo 2003).
3
M. Searle, "The Liturgy and Catholic Social Doctrine," in The Future ofthe
Catholic Church in America: MajorPapersofthe VirgilMichelSymposium, July11-14,
1988 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press 1991); "Serving the Lord with Justice," in
Liturgy and SocialJustice, ed., MarkSearle (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 SocialJustice, ed., Mark
Searle (Collegeville: Liturgical Press 1980) 13-35.4
G.Wainwright, Doxology: The Praise ofGodin Worship, Doctrine andLife (NewYork: Oxford UniversityPress 1980) 399-434 and "Eucharist and/as Ethics,"
Worship 62 (1988) 123 37
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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. Theliturgy, 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 andethics are
most adequatelyformulatedby specifying how certain affections and
virtues are formedand expressedin the modalities ofcommunalprayer
andritualaction. The modalities ofprayer enter into theformation 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 ofthe 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 GoodCompany: The Church as Polis (Notre Dame: Uni
versity 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.
8R. A. McCormick, "Scripture, Liturgy, Character and Morality," in Readings in
MoralTheology, No. 4; The Use ofScripture in MoralTheology, 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 andthe Moral Life (Cleve
land: The Pilgrim Press 1995).10J. 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," Journalof ReligiousEthics 7 (1979) 173-89. This essay has been reprinted as part of Saliers's Festschrift
Liturgy and the MoralSelf: Humanity at Pull Stretch Before God eds E Byron
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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 de
scribed 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 consequen-
tialism) in order to find the appropriate conceptual categories for
exploring the wider significance of the church's worship. In theremainder 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.17Hauerwas states, "With his virtuoso performance
14Ibid., 18.
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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 develop
ments 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 ofa 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 appropri
ate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with theresult that human powers to achieve excellence, and human con
ceptions 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 compo
nents 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
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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 two
fold 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 tothe second aspect of the definition ofa 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 com
petition 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 reflec
tions of a community, rather than the products of the whims of
individuals. Indeed, they are partially constitutive ofa 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 ofa 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 sportsuch as basketball is a certain form of physical fitness, one that
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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, Maclntyrecontrasts 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 basketballtogether 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 competi
tion 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, inother words, scarce resources.
The final component ofa practice is that of standards of excel
lence. 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"
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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, prefer
ences 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 ofa practice in place, we are now in a posi
tion from which we can discern whether liturgy can be considereda 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 prac
tice 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 ofthe church's life.
25If we look at the correlation between the previ
ously 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.
22Ibid.
23 Ibid., 189.24
In Ethics After Babel: The Languages of Morals andTheir Discontents (Boston:
Beacon Press 1988), Jeffrey Stout argues that the most helpful aspect ofAfter 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, BradJ. Kallenberg, and Mark Thiessen
Nation, eds., Virtues & Practices in the Christian Tradition: Christian Ethics afterMaclntyre (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International 1997); Jonathan Wilson, Living
Faithf ll i a F a t d World L f th Ch hf Ma l t ' "Aft
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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 func
tions but are celebrations of the Church, which is 'the sacrament of
unity/ namely, 'the holy people united and arranged under theirbishops/ 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 thateach person contributes to the celebration through active partici
pation 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.
26Sacrosanctum Concilium, nos. 26-27. Translation taken from Austin Flannery,
O.P., ed., Vatican CouncilII: 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 sig
nificantly appreciating how Aquinas's understanding ofcaritas 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
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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 ofa 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 liturgi
cal 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, thegoods 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, "posses
sion" of these goods does not prevent their "acquisition" by othersso 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 impos
sible, we may be able to find a way around this apparent problem
27This threefold distinction is misleading in that it would seem to suggest that
these three goods are individuated in a manner that overlooks their intimate
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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 reformu
lated 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 Eucha
rist. In summary, one could say that Christ's kenosis is the basis forthe 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 ele
ments 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 andexercise ofwhich tends to enable us to achieve those
28 The employment of Jesus Christ as a criterion moves away from Maclntyre'swork in a significant manner. Jesus as moral standard is in keeping withMaclntyre's insistence that standards emerge historically. Jesus was a particularhuman 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. Ifsuch were the case, then thevery logic ofthe Incarnation and Christianity would become unintelligible. It is
possible to maintain a historicist stance, however, by highlighting the church'sstatus as the body of Christ. If the church is always in the process of realizing" h f ll f Ch i " (E h i 4 13) h i f h i
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goods which are internal to practices andthe lack ofwhich 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 andneighbor.
The most important virtue for achieving these ends, as the Chris
tian 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 crea
tion God gives humans life and all that is necessary for the supportof 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.
NARRATIVE, THE LITURGICAL YEAR,
AND 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
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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
Forinstance, 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. Propercharacterizations of short-term intentions need to make reference
to long-term intentions. If there were a history of animosity be
tween 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 inten
tions, 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
30
L. Gregory Jones has noted seven distinct uses of the category of narrative byMaclntyre, 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
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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 discusses 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 theform 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 narrativecharacter of human existence. Although each person is the author
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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 ren
dered intelligible insofar as it is understood against the backdrop
of these wider influences, which provide certain constraints andpossibilities 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 liveprovide 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 mem
bers 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 mis
guided 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 andgo into exile to live with the swine [sic], that children learn or
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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 anauthor 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 andlived 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 expres
sions 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
35Ibid., 216.
36
S. Crites, "The Narrative Quality of Experience/ in Why Narrative? Readingsin Narrative Theology, eds., Stanley Hauerwas and L. Gregory Jones (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans 1989) 65-88. This work was originally published under the same title
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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 soundingsin 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
literaryart, 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 want... to propose that the form of active consciousness, i.e.,
the form ofits 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 ofsteps, which begin
with a discussion of the relation ofconsciousness 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 ofconsciousness to
re-order images from the chronicle of memory into new patterns
ofmeaning 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,
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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 ofit for purposes oftheory, or suspend
it in order to draw a picture, or splice episodes from it in a way thatgives them new significance."
42
Crites then spells out the implications of this insight by suggest
ing that it is possible to re-collect the images of memory in very
different ways. In other words, the "same" story can be told differ
ently 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 offuture events. The last comment introduces another key compo
nent of his position "the scenario of anticipation," which is a
narrative form that looks to the future. According to Crites, antici
pation and memory work hand in hand to create a sense ofself-
hood: "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.
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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 consciousnessin 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 powersand 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 Christianswith 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 some
thing about how story relates to the virtues, which is the central
theme that I have been developing in this essay. In order to elabo
rate 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
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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 knowl
edge of the good."
48
It is important to note that he refrains fromproviding 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 ele
ments 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 aChristian. 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 resur
rection 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
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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. Aswith 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, neces
sary 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.
50Here it is important to note the direction ofinterpretation. I have not started
with suffering in general and then proceeded to discuss the Passion as merely aninstantiation ofsuch suffering. Such a move would be both theologically andpsychologically suspect. In terms ofthe former, such an approach would suggestthat Christ's crucifixion was merely one example, though an important one, ofthe 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'sown "experience." In terms of the latter, it would suggest that suffering in general
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^ s
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