The Christian Moral Life. Timothy F. Sedgwick
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they come from the concrete experience of God that forms Christians in relationship to God. Central to this formation is worship and specifically the Eucharist.
Protestant thinkers shared Roman Catholic understandings that the moral life was given in the grace of God. They also emphasized the centrality of worship. What they rejected was what they judged as a narrow focus on human action. While Roman Catholic accounts of Christian faith and the moral life began with an emphasis on grace, the focus of moral theology emphasized the criteria by which to assess the goodness of human action and make judgments regarding specific cases. Protestants saw in this focus — even more so in this practice than in the written texts themselves — an undue emphasis on individual guilt and on the religious acts that should be undertaken as a remedy to sin. As Martin Luther concluded from his experience as a Roman Catholic monk, this focus on sinful acts and religious duties led to a preoccupation with oneself instead of leading to the new world of grace revealed in Jesus Christ.
The problem Protestants confronted was the opposite of that confronted by Roman Catholics. Roman Catholic moral theology developed in order to provide understanding and guidance for confessors. The problem was in naming sins and determining what to do in order to live more fully in relationship with God. The problem for Protestants was hearing the gospel. If the good news of the gospel could be heard, then there would be faith, hope, and love. The moral life would follow.
In order to hear the gospel, Protestant thinkers such as Martin Luther and John Calvin rejected the Roman Catholic framework of moral theology. The shape of the moral life was still expressed by the Ten Commandments. But what was most important was accepting that we are accepted and brought into relationship to God, apart from our own effort and work.16 In the language of Paul, the law is good, but a person is not justified by the law. The law details acts that should and should not be done. To live by the law, according to Paul, is to focus on our acts as means to an end, for example, to avoid punishment or loss or to gain favor or some other end. I tell the truth about what I am selling because if I don’t and am caught I will be unable to do business. I tell the truth because it is good for business; it is more profitable. In contrast, to live by faith is to see the law as expressing the shape of the relations that are good.
The motivation to act morally comes not from the law but from the relationship that gives rise to the law in the first place. I tell the truth because I am bound to other persons; I care about them and would not want to deceive them. In this sense, law expresses and deepens the relationship that is already given. The law is like a kiss or an embrace. The kiss and the embrace express and deepen the love that is already present. Twentieth-century theologian Karl Barth expressed this understanding of law by saying “law is the form of the gospel.”17 Faith as knowledge and relationship with God is the basis of the moral life. Faith fills the heart with the love and desire to abide in and deepen the relationship with God. In this sense the Christian moral life is a matter of grace. The heart of Christian faith and life is justification by grace through faith.
Again, Protestant thinkers shared with Roman Catholics the understanding that Christian faith was a matter of radical grace, a transformation of heart and mind in terms of personal knowledge of God which resulted in new dispositions. Instead of the language of virtue as habits of perfection, however, Protestants were more likely to speak of this new life in terms of the fruit of the Holy Spirit — as joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal. 5:22-23). The life itself was always a matter of freedom and love. The new life was freely done. Works flowed freely from the change effected by God’s grace. These works were works of love, so much so that Luther could emphasize that faith is nothing but “faith active in love” (Gal. 5:6).18
This Protestant understanding of human life and of divine grace is more narrowly theological than Roman Catholic understandings. Instead of focusing on the power and capacities of the human self, the focus of Christian ethics is on relationship with God. This is illustrated by the understanding of the Ten Commandments. For Protestants the primary purpose of the Ten Commandments and law in general was twofold: to describe the shape of the Christian life and to convict us of our inability to live that life on our own. For this reason, in The Large Catechism Luther implores all Christians to read and meditate on the Ten Commandments every day along with the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer.19 The good designated in the Ten Commandments is never fully realized. The more that the Christian studies the law the more he or she realizes that what good there is comes from God. Only by the grace of God is given the love of God and neighbor.
For Protestants what is most important for the Christian moral life is preaching and teaching of law and gospel. Roman Catholic accounts of growth in faith and love were, at best, misplaced because they focused attention on what to do — the law — rather than on what has been done — the gospel. Despite these differences, Roman Catholic and Protestant understandings of the moral life share common convictions expressed in the Ten Commandments. As stated in the first commandment against idolatry, there is one God who is the power and meaning of all of life. To use more theological language, God is the creator and redeemer of all of life. This is what is meant in saying, “I believe in one God.” The world and specifically the relationships that form our lives are of one piece. The goods of life are related, and express a unity and purpose beyond themselves. They are not randomly related. Christian faith is thus a moral life. All things are related and ordered in relationship to God. More specifically, love of God and love of neighbor are inseparable. This requires the worship of God, the acknowledgment of God, and the “resting” in God. This is the point of the fourth commandment: to keep holy the Sabbath.
Monotheism is the central common conviction shared by Christians. This conviction is tied to two others. The problem of human life is human sinfulness, not defined narrowly as a matter of wrong acts, but as idolatry. Understood in the context of worship, idolatry is a matter of misplaced love. Christian faith is not first of all a matter of right belief but of right relationship. In this sense, Christians share the conviction that faith is covenantal, given in a relationship with God. This covenant, moreover, is understood as a matter of grace. Grace is a matter of being loved by God, of being forgiven, of being embraced and invited into a new life. Monotheism, sin as idolatry, faith as covenantal — these are three basic beliefs Christians share in common.
Two more specific convictions Christians also share in common. Christians are Christian because they have come into the covenant with God through Jesus Christ. Jesus is, in this sense, the revelation of God. In other words, as Christians experience Jesus, Jesus is the redeemer. The knowledge of Jesus is given in scripture and worship, what Christians refer to as Word and sacrament. In scripture the story of Jesus is told as the story of God’s relationship to us. In worship that relationship is acknowledged and deepened.
These common convictions about Christian faith and the moral life have not always been apparent given the polemical relationship between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. From the sixteenth century onward, Roman Catholics and Protestants each sought to establish themselves as the religion of the individual nations of Europe and then with colonial expansion as the religion of new lands and peoples throughout the world. In this context, Roman Catholics and Protestants defined themselves over and against each other. This led to dogmatic understandings that hardened differences in terms of basic beliefs rather than fostering common understandings of Christian faith as a way of life given in response to God.
Faith came to be defined for Protestants in terms of justification by faith. Correspondingly, the absolute sovereignty of God was emphasized, so much so that predestination and double predestination were central beliefs for many Calvinists. In God’s absolute power and wisdom, God knew from the beginning of time who was saved and who was damned. These beliefs were reinforced as they were conceived as the alternative to Roman Catholic “works” righteousness, in which God was reduced to a good that humans acquired. For Roman Catholics, such Protestant understandings of faith reflected an individualism centered in a subjective experience of faith. The truths of faith were denied, especially the Roman Catholic beliefs about the church and its authority. Among these defining beliefs of Roman Catholicism was the belief in the pope as head of the church, a belief that eventually was defined in terms of papal infallibility in teaching doctrine essential to faith. For Protestants, these beliefs