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A scholarly view of ethics, June 16, 2003
This review is from: Reconstructing Christian Ethics: Selected Writings (Library of Theological Ethics) (Paperback)
F.D. Maurice was one of the major British theologians and ethicists of the nineteenth century. He was a forerunner of contemporary ecumenical movements, and works on theology tend to emphasise the inclusiveness of Christianity despite denominationalism and ideological divisions within the Christian community. Maurice looks to the dramatic love of God for all humanity in all of its diversity and difference as the underlying unifying principle for a beginning for the reuniting of the various Christian traditions into a greater whole.
The book 'Reconstructing Christian Ethics: Selected Writings of F.D. Maurice' is a collection of Maurice's writings based upon his ethics and theological worldview. It is the only anthology of his ethical writings currently in print, which is a pity, given the importance Maurice has in the formation of much of this century's Anglo-American theology. Edited by Ellen Wondra, professor at Colgate-Rochester, this book is part of the Library of Theological Ethics, produced by Westminster/John Knox Press, who do a great service in keeping works such as this alive for the current generation of students, scholars, and clerics.
Most of the essays in this book consist of correspondence written and lectures which Maurice delivered in various contexts during the mid-1800s. Broadly categorised, the essays fall into the following categories:
o The Constitution and Structure of the Church
o Lectures on Ethics (with a basis on the Epistles of St. John)
o The Conscience
o Social Morality
o Dialogues on Family Worship
o Conflict in Church and Society
In examining the structure and constitution of the church, Wondra begins by including correspondence between Maurice and members of the Society of Friends, in which he discusses areas of commonality of belief, and the hope of further dialogue. From here, essays on the formal structure of more hierarchical church polity show Maurice's continuing progress toward a broader, more inclusive framework. 'As we proceed, we find every new step of the story leading us to notice the Church as the child inwhich the Jewish polity had for so many ages been carrying in its womb. Its filial relation is first demonstrated, it is show to be an Israelitic not a mundane commonwealth; then it is shown that, though not mundane, it is essentially human, containing a principle of expansion greater than that which dwelt in the Roman Empire.'
Maurice is one of the leading lights to begin reconciliation of the church with its Jewish origins. 'But we must not forget that while this universal society, according to the historical conception of it, grew out of the Jewish family and nation, it is, according to the theological conception of it, the root of both.'
This Jewish origin recognised one God for all the world, and that one God who cared for all of creation. This perhaps is the seed of ecumenism in Maurice's work.
Proceeding on to the other topics, Maurice develops other topics with both a scriptural and philosophical basis, including issues of personal, individual morality, and more general societal and universal ethics. In constructing a very careful argument, Maurice makes careful definition not only of such things as ethics and scriptural, but even to such concepts as the word 'I', to give an almost geometrically precise explication of his views.
Perhaps his greatest work among those included in this collection is the dialogue on prayer, in which he argues both for a respect for the universality of God, but a need to be true to one's own faith and calling. 'I own I do not want a Jewish religion plus a heathen religion plus a Christian religion. Nor do I want, by eliminating what is peculiar in each of these faiths, to bring forth an Etre Supreme who does nothing, thinks nothing, is nothing; who merely represents what is not true in the different system, that which has been the source of their idolatry--the notion that God is created by His creatures.'
In working through the various concerns of ecumenism and the practical concerns of daily living, Maurice sees the purpose of prayer. 'It is under the pressure of such hopes and such fears that one learns to pray, that our prayers become not solitary prayers, but family prayers, universal prayers; and yet that each one really in his prayer attains a sense of his personal life and his personal obligations which he never could realise while his only cry was, 'Save my soul if I have a soul.'
This is a fairly difficult text to wade through, because the ideas a subtle and intricately constructed, and constructed in a form of language rather more appreciated by Victorian scholarship than modern scholarship. But it remains an important collection of the work of an important albeit often overlooked theologian.
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