Paul Ramsey Liturgy and Ethics in Religious Studies PDF

Journal of Religious Ethics, Inc
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Liturgy and Ethics

Author(s): Paul Ramsey
Source: The Journal of Religious Ethics, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Fall 1979), pp. 139-171
Published by: Blackwell Publishing Ltd on behalf of Journal of Religious Ethics, Inc
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LITURGY AND ETHICS
Paul Ramsey
ABSTRACT
Both liturgy and morality are "formed references'* to Divine e

to which faith also testifies. So there is parity among the or
the bene operandi, and the credendi of the Christian church
multi-directional, shaping influences among them. An ethicist's u
standing of morality is diminished without the context of liturgy
the rule of faith. An impoverished or distorted, shapeless litu
influences the morality we credit. If today the church struggled
itself against itself over a proper understanding of the Christian
life, this would be both reflected in and aided by certain litu
innovations.
Lex orandi lex credendi. The order of prayer is the order of believing.
This familiar statement concerning liturgy is reversible. No subordination
of the one to the other is implied. So we can say with equal validity, Lex
credendi lex orandi. The order of believing is the order of prayer.
On the question of liturgy and ethics, we can come at once to the heart
of the matter simply by adding- across a second implied "is"- the appropriate
Latin words. Lex orandi lex credendi lex bene Oferandu The order of
prayer is the order of believing is the order of doing well. This statement,
too, is reversible, and in any combination of the three activities of the church
to which the words refer: praying, believing and well-doing. No subordi-
nation should be implied of one or two of these actions to a third in which
Christian life more fundamentally consists.
Arthur C. Cochrane's important book The Church's Confession under
Hitler, was more than a study of the Barmen declaration. It was throughout
an analysis of "the nature of a confession of faith"- the title of the author's
final chapter. "After a silence of more than three hundred years the church
JRE 7/2 (1979), 139-171
140 RAMSEY
of the Reform
Church before
Faith" (Cochra
if, as I have su
rule of Christ
fession is "from
itself for itsel
Faith is a consu
too closely to
new Confession
I draw from th
actions of the
generation of n
had their incep
itself for itself
is whether Div
keeps the comm
to manifest "th
well in a manne
Those who elec
gies and experim
of the church's
from the world
pilferers of the
translation, ef
not apt to prov
Saving Eve
We need only t
activities: the o
faith, the norm
draw some gen
interrelation,
operandi.
Our topic is Liturgy and Ethics. The ambiguity of the word "ethics"
allows me to say that the topic is Liturgy and the Christian moral life. Both
of these expressions refer to actions or spheres of activity. The other mean-
ing of "ethics" would require us to talk about Liturgies and Ethics. Liturgies
talks about liturgical action; and ethics, about the moral life. Liturgists are
historians, critics and students of Christian worship; ethicists are historians,
critics and students of the Christian moral life- just as theologians are his-
torians, critics and students of Christian believing. Theology is rational
reflection upon or conceptual depiction of the faith of the church. Christian
ethics is a rational reflection upon and conceptual depiction of the Christian
141
moral life. Liturgies, I suppose, is rational reflection upon and conceptual

depiction of the worship of the church.
Thus, theologians, ethicists and liturgists offer "good reasons" of some
sort related in some way to what they study. While I am inclined to say
that "ethics" in this sense is subordinate to theology, as life is to faith, never-
theless the fact is, I believe, that liturgies, ethics and theology bear upon and
assist one another in a variety of ways depending on the moves or even the
idiosyncratic tendencies of the scholar or scholars in question. That ques-
tion, I have suggested, is not the one this panel is asked to address. Liturgy
and the Christian moral life is- at least by comparison- a first-order question.
If these "sciences" have anything to talk about it cannot be some shapeless
thing, indefinitely plastic to human initiative and changing times. Thus,
our topic cannot be something general like "Worship and Work" or "Con-
templation and Action" or "Mysticism and Life." There is a rich literature
on these themes showing the need for mutual enrichment between the active
life and prayer or worship, the need for periods of retreat from the world's
affairs to recoup the soul's resources the better to discharge our responsibilities
in those affairs. These themes, however important, I set aside because they
address the question of motivation or inspiration or endurance in Christian
action. They do not address the substantive question what that action should
be to claim to be Christian in any distinctive sense. There is a shape to
Christian liturgy (else no liturgies) and the Christian moral life has some
shape or character (else no Christian ethics). For this reason alone the litur-
gical action of the church may have bearing on the contours and contents of
the Christian moral life. Or the reverse relation may pertain. In any case
there can be no topic of interest to the discipline of Christian ethics unless
we can measure the authenticity of Christian liturgies and can measure the
authenticity of Christian moral life; and ask what may be their relation.
Plurality of Liturgies
Hence, it is absolutely crucial that we search out the meaning of the
lex- the measure- of Christian worship, faith, and practice. Let me say at
once that the unity to be discerned is obviously a unity admitting extra-
ordinary variety. While orandi, credendi and bene oferandi are ruled by the
same Divine events to which they respond and testify, there are nevertheless
a wide variety of accents placed by different Christian communities on our
common account of these events which are the source of all our worship,
belief and doing.
To embrace them all I suggest that we think of the two marvelous ex-
pressions Karl Barth used (C-D, IV/1:157 and IV/2:20) in his treatment of
the doctrine of reconciliation: "The Way of the Son of God into the Far
Country" [The Lord as Servant] and "The Homecoming [Exaltation] of
the Son of Man" [The Servant as Lord].
As a measure of what I would call the "orthodoxy" of liturgies, faith and
142 RAMSEY
life (if the wo

formulations
encompassed
some worship
struggle for
shapeless gener
attuned to othe
Still there is g
of the cross an
as well). The h
Eastern Orthod
when Easter b
waited for, li
humanity in th
by contrast, dr
earlier point o
the going for
atonement and
less exclusive s
to the Father's
alike is some
action for us in
Hence, we can
Bible is read-
Epistles- this i
is worshippin
power, in the b
again/' or "Ju
me," or "The
Christian life
saying "Lord, h
and a life conc
tion. When m
liturgy. Even
on, we ought
that the Frien
rather engagin
themselves fro
come, the inne
or the Euchar
ministered-or
"two sacramen
sacraments"-
congregation
143
the first mention of the incarnation: " . . . who for us men and our salvation
came down from Heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the
Virgin Mary, and was made man"- that is liturgy. When in the old English
rite- the Sarum rite- they stay down and rise together when the resurrection
is mentioned, that is liturgy. Where the "Christian year" shapes the devotion
of churches, or within this when every Sunday is an Easter and every Friday
"good," observed by fasting from meat other than the symbolic fish, that is
liturgy. As both Ezekiel and Jonathan Edwards knew, God's dispensations,
by which he is bringing the human world to his end for it, may be wheels
within wheels. In the language of Puritan typology, liturgy "types out" the
"antitype" which are the mighty acts of God.
This recital should make clear that I do not identify Christian liturgy
simply with what goes on in the more so-called liturgical churches. Even if
I had been brought up and nurtured by a more all-encompassing liturgy, I
would consider it question-begging to deny that the other simpler "divine
services" are also Christian liturgies, or to deny that they shape the Christian
moral life in equally important ways. Indeed, I have often thought that the
"foot washing" practiced by the Pope once a year ceremonially on a few
seminarians in Rome, but by the entire congregation in a certain Southern
Baptist sect, might qualify as a sacrament if only Jesus Christ had instituted
it as such and attached to it words of promise. These actions, too, are liturgy,
a type of Him who is the antitype (John 13:3-17).
All the liturgies in the foregoing recital have a common shape. The
engendering event gives shape to the engendered liturgical response. To use
a geometric image, the convex of God's action determines the concave shape
of Christian liturgies. Christians as such should have no interest in any
other worship or mysticism, aspiration or spirituality.
As Karl Barth wrote, human response to the Divine event is not left
"monotonous, colourless and formless," but "articulated, colourful and con-
toured!' One's response is not "a mere point" but "a formed reference* in
return. Since there is "a character which the [Divine] event will always
take," a character "peculiar" to it, an "outline" made manifest, there will be
a character and "standards" which are always valid, a "constancy and conti-
nuity," in the Divine services that are appropriate responses of a people who
must and can and shall stand in God's presence. "Formless reference" is
not a possibility. As our account of God is "the narration of his history or
description of his way," there will be a discoverable description of the fitting
actions of the congregation even though these are fluid, various and not in
every case specifically commanded ordinances.
I have made my point, rather cunningly, I think. The words from Karl
Barth (C-D, 111/4:17, 18, 22, 25, italics added) that I just used to enrich
my geometric image of the church's concave to the convex of the Divine
event out of which the church lives and to which it witnesses are not about
liturgy at all. I have elided them to make them sound so. Barth's words
144 RAMSEY
were about Chr

Barth underto
event as a desc
human action
references "m
goes on- "there
laws, prescrip
mands and ma
God command
do with legal
Christian mor
more than guid
from the most
should be exp
Barth provides
lows in III/4:
Neighbors, Re
nasia), Vocatio
But I go too
that everythi
moral life can
Both liturgy a
"formed refer
liturgies and m
either case, w
wrong. Some
(we may as we
Some General Statements About the Relation

of Liturgy and Morality
Elsewhere (Ramsey, 1968:120-125; 133-135; Ramsey, 1977:44-77) I have

undertaken to exhibit the relation of Christian ethics to theology by resort to
the performative-language school and to William K. Frankena's notion of
normative (as opposed to elucidatory or reportive) metaethics (Frankena,
1966:21-42). Christian theology, I wrote, is the "normative metaethics" of
Christian normative ethics; theology warrants, clarifies and gives the meaning
to the terms we ethicists use. The performative speech-acts of Christian
morality (covenants, for example) follow upon and are shaped by the Divine
performance.
My concern was to accord to the Christian community in all ages the
status of standing "metaethical" communities of discourse about substantive
moral matters. The church proposes normatively to shape and fashion how
that discourse should proceed, how to say the ethical thing. At the center
of every congregation of church or synagogue, men and women are continu-
145
ally giving themselves, renewing and enforcing, from the faith that brought
them together, the meanings that they deem appropriate to be used in making
moral appraisals. Church and synagogue are religious communities living
from the past through the present into the future engaged continually (among
other things) in recommending and conveying (traditioning) the meaning of
righteousness and unrighteousness.
Likewise, a "people of God" proposes to understand the righteousness by
which it judges performances among men according to the measure of the
righteousness it believes God displayed in his word-deeds intervening in times
past in men's deeds and moral-talk. His were the Master speech-acts; ours
should be in character and have self-involving correlative force. Our Father
in heaven is the Name from whom the meaning of all performatives (like all
fatherhood) in heaven and earth is taken, and also the meaning of "right"
and "wrong," "good" and "evil" in normative Christian moral discourse. The
"good reasons" in Christian ethics for looking on all men as brothers for
whom Christ died is the theological affirmation that Christ did actually die
for them.
That- summarized briefly- was to locate Christian ethics as derivative
rational reflection on moral life. Consciously, I was attempting to rest ethics
upon a proper Christian theology- both sciences secondary- with the assis-
tance of a couple of positions in philosophical ethics used subordinately, even
instrumentally- which is all any philosophy deserves- in order to exhibit the
meaning of Christian ethics. The foregoing account needs correction to
make clear, as suggested above, that theology, ethics and liturgies (in what-
ever relation to one another) piggy-back on the credendi, the hene operandi
and the orandi of Christian communities in their history.
Fred Carney pointed out to me that I had implicitly already turned to
the topic of liturgy and the Christian moral life. I must concede he was
correct. The following passage, for example, was written without thinking
of "liturgy" as a special topic:
Church and synagogue are communities of adoration, remembrance, cele-

bration, worship, and praise. These communities engage in faith-ing
whenever by common liturgical action or procession they say forth their
faith by doing; or when by song, recital, confession, reading or preaching
they, by saying, do. These acts-speech and speech-acts are understood to
be human performatives in response to a divine performative. Each of
these faith-acts and faith-statements of a congregation is at the same time
a way of talking about ethical talk, a way of conveying and fostering what
the community means by righteousness. (Ramsey, 1977:66)
What more shall I say about these three: orandi, credendi and hene
operandi? How shall we further articulate the interrelation of the three?
It is important to insist on (1) a parity among these activities and (2)
that no one-directional influence from one to the other, or derivation of one
from the other, will always be the case. . ;
146 RAMSEY
There is parit
lieving, worshi
known, believ
Augustine said
all one's mind
there is faith
our lives.
There is no fix
liturgical actio
"Worship is th
offered by th
mind is open t
is enthralled b
architecture,
giving love of
earth. The con
the example a
munity is edu
cession, and co
forth in sacrif
then a strong
and well-doing
Moreover, it c
is the princip
the dramaturg
to the nature o
liturgical actio
Still I think t
confessions alw
tion) no less t
and agency as
the fact that i
of the Latin lit
Christian mor
liturgy evoke
may nourish a
liturgy in wh
Instead of asc
theology and e
off as second-o
lative or abstra
and reiteration of the Divine events that are their "allotted framework" no
less than "liturgies"- and no less than these same Divine events are the lex
of the church's actions: orandi, credendi, and hene operandi. In the Pre-
147
face of his book, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, Hans Frei (1947:viii)
drew attention to two sections in Karl Barth (C-D, 11/2:340-409; IV/ 1:224-
228) that he believes to be exemplary recoveries (not discussed in his study
of the eclipse) of Biblical narrative in twentieth century theology. In a
recent lengthy book review, Frei (1978) gives the following account of
Barth's theological "method":
. . . Barth was about the business of conceptual description : He took the

classical themes of communal Christian language moulded by the Bible,
tradition and constant usage in worship, practice, instruction and contro-
versy, and he restated or redescribed them, rather than evolving argu-
ments on their behalf. It was of the utmost importance to him that this
communal language ... had an integrity of its own: It was irreducible.
But in that case its lengthy, even leisurely unfolding was equally indis-
pensable. For he was restating and re-using a language that had once
been accustomed talk- both in first-order use in ordinary or real life, and
in second-order technical theological reflection- but had now for a long
time, perhaps for more than 250 years, been receding from natural famil-
iarity, certainly in theological discourse. So Barth had as it were to
recreate a universe of discourse, and he had to put the reader in the
middle of that world, instructing him in the use of that language by
showing him how- extensively, and not only by stating the rules or
principles of the discourse.
Perhaps it is also the task of Christian ethics to "recreate a universe of dis-

course" and "put the reader in the middle of it, instructing him in the use
of that language by showing how- extensively, and not only by stating the
rules and principles of the discourse." This seems to me remarkably like
the task of "liturgies" as well.
Of course, theology is more than rehearsal. In his "redescription of the
temporal world of eternal grace"- Frei (1978) goes on to say- Barth employs a
battery of auodliary instruments to indicate two things simultaneously:

(1) that this world is a world with its own linguistic integrity . . . one
that we can have only under a depiction, under its own particular de-
piction and not any other, and certainly not in pre-linguistic immediacy
or experience, without depiction; but (2) that unlike any other depicted
world it is the one common world in which we live and move and have
our being. To indicate all this he will use scriptural exegesis to illustrate
his themes; he will do ethics to indicate that this narrated, narratable
world is at the same time the ordinary world in which we are responsible
for our actions; and he will do ad hoc apologetics, in order to throw into
relief particular features of this world by distancing them from and
approximating them to other descriptions of the same or other linguistic
worlds.
In order not to become trapped by his philosophy, it is best for a

theologian to be philosophically eclectic, in any given case employing the
particular . . . conceptualities . . . that serve best to cast into relief the
particular theological subject matter under consideration.
148 RAMSEY
He set forth a t
phrase, or by tr
interpreted in se
tools. Sometime
ments, in variou
fitly related. In
world of discou
coinherence of
counterpart.
In any case, no
"Covenant, Cove
the eclipse of
"ethics" and "lit
and reciprocal i
dendi or bene o
the other two a
and "ethics" ar
these in turn ar
that these secon
ceptual depicti
study included
For another rea
and the moral l
or our bene Ofe
formed refere
faith and life
can be turned
Divine event. H
as in the churc
Then there will
ment of liturg
theological or
may have some
parity and recip
its liturgy, its f
Lord and Master.
It has been suggested to me that in particular traditions the Christian life
may be precedent to liturgy. Stanley Hauerwas at Notre Dame sometimes
strengthens his students in their Roman Catholic faith and practice by asking
them to listen to language Mennonites use concerning the Christian life.
Their being and doing-well is expressed in profoundly Eucharistic language.
I am not sure that this fact makes his point for the reverse movement from
life to liturgy- particularly not, if liturgy is understood to include the rich
variety of typing out the faith of the church which I sketched above. How
different would the Mennonite instance be from the Eucharistic language
149
Mother Teresa uses throughout whenever she speaks of her doing well?5
The derelicts she serves in Calcutta are the sacrament offered to her again
and again. In their lost lives she partakes again of the body and blood of
the Derelict on the cross. Her well-doing is therefore a matter of thankful-
ness and joy; it is no sacrifice she offers. Again, I think, that at the heart of
the matter we have simply to say lex orandi lex credendi lex bene oferandi.
Particular Examples
I turn now to selected examples of Christian liturgy and the Christian
moral life in their reciprocal relations. I shall not bother to distinguish in
separate sections between (1) examples of the diminishment of ethicists'
understanding of the moral life when the latter is deprived of its context of
liturgical action and the life of faith and (2) examples of impoverished or
distorted liturgy that surely must adversely affect the moral life, which is the
concern of Christian ethics. In the end I propose (3) two liturgical innova-
tions that one can imagine would be instituted if today the church were
really struggling against itself for its understanding of the Christian moral life.
1. Drawing upon Arthur Cochrane, we have observed that the church's
credendi and its orandi are preserved through the fiery furnace of its
threatened witness to the one and only Lord. The same can be said of the
church's bene oferandi. Thus Cochrane (1962:211) observes that when
Barmen declared "We reject this false doctrine . . . ," the condemnation, the
damnamus, strikes down also some evil-doing threatening the well-springs
and contours of the Christian life as well. Schicklgruber had no objections
to Christians who confessed that Jesus is Lord; but he was enraged when
they confessed that Jesus is Lord and Hitler was not.
We can extend this historical point to give an adequate account of the
awesome significance of negative commandments in Biblical ethics. We
ethicists may appeal for warrant and support to the distinction philosophers
make between negative and positive duties, between the commandments to
do no harm, which have universal sway, and positive injunctions to do good,
which may have many qualifications and possible exceptions. But this gives
us no sufficient account of the increased imperativeness that Divine sanction
puts behind negative commandments in the Decalogue, for example, or the
woes that Jesus in his teachings cried against those who live fundamentally
against the ethics of the Kingdom. The account which we must give of the
condemnations, the damnamus, must be what Cochrane suggests, namely,
that there are actions and attitudes which trespass on holy ground. And we
know not what we do if we lightly call for either a new confession of faith
or a new ethics. Our use as Christian ethicists of the philosophers' negative
and positive duties can only be a convenience to show that Christian morality
is not unreasonable. If their distinction becomes finally normative, we have
lost our way.
2. The same can be said of the mileage we get from appeals to the
150 RAMSEY
"dignity" of h
to which we sh
operandi require
So does Christian orandi.
3. The same can be said of a number of other philosophical concepts,
which we are not excluded from using provided they are not given supremacy.
The notion of steadfast "covenant" love, or agape, in Christian ethics must
obviously be constantly nourished by liturgy, and the entirety of Biblical
narrative, or else it loses its meaning and becomes a mere "concept." I my-
self use the terms agape and covenant as shorthand expressions when moving
on to analyse specific problems. But I have never supposed these terms have
any meaning unless nurtured by the Word of God read and preached, and
enacted by the multitude of the church's liturgies mentioned above. If agape
means only benevolence or equal regard or the universalizability-principle,
then I see no particular reason for taking the trouble to be a Christian in the
present age or any age. Other, less-disputable philosophies provide sufficient
grounds for such positions in ethics. Therefore I am distressed by somewhat
"scholastic" articles- some referring to my writings, and some in JRE- that
assume agape to be a sort of philosophical concept to be tested like any other,
say, by the universalizability principle. Philosophically this principle is per-
suasive; to me it is, but also and primarily on Scriptural grounds. A Christian
ethicist should know, however, which is overriding if that principle were
shown to conflict with the sources of Christian ethics. This is required if
Christian ethics is given its proper primacy. The word agape- ox some
other- has to be used if one is going to push further its guidance and the
light it throws on our pathway. Still we need to remember what the French
author and philosopher Bernanos once said, "All the ideas one sends along
into the world, with their pigtails hanging behind them . ♦ . are raped on the
first corner they come to by any old slogan in uniform." Ripped from its
total Biblical context, and if not nurtured in liturgy, agape itself can become
a slogan in uniform, or function as a philosophical concept.
Professor R. M. Hare (1965:90-95) chose to expound his theory of
universal prescriptivism by formulating an "example . . . adapted from a
well-known parable"- the story Jesus told about the unforgiving steward or
the unmerciful servant (Mattfien; 18:23-35). The unadapted parable, by
contrast, shows the meaning of Christian ethics as "formed reference" (as is
the liturgy). Hare begins with a situation of comparative equipoise, and it
is human inclination or disinclination that is universalized. A owes money to
B, and B owes money to C, and the law is that creditors may exact payment
or else put their debtors in prison. The question is what B should do to A,
having in mind what C may do to him. It is no surprise that, in this situ-
tion of equally interchangeable plight, the principle of universalizability
should produce a "golden rule" argument6 sufficiently tender to A's predica-
ment for B to judge that the debtors-prison option should not be invoked
151
but instead A should be forgiven (B having in rhind that C will do likewise

to him if he does not forgive A). Or rather, having in mind that to do the
ethical thing toward A> B must be willing to prescribe that this be done in
like circumstances, i.e., by C to B.
The New Testament story begins with no such equipoise, and ends with
far more than the formal principle of universalizability as criterion. In the
parable, B (the servant who later proved unmerciful) owed C (the king)
ten thousand talents- let us say, a million dollars, an indebtedness impossible
to pay, which gives the measure of the extent and quality of C's forgiveness
when, moved by compassion, he loosed B (the servant) from obligation to
make recompense. Thereupon B went out and found a fellow servant (A)
who owed him a hundred pence. The debt is, by exaggerated contrast,
minimal, repayable eventually even on poor wages; let us say, it was twenty
dollars. Yet B would not forgive A even that small debt, and instead cast
him into prison.
When C (the merciful king) heard about this, he called B into his
presence and judged him by the moral standard the parable intends to say
is the meaning of the good: "O thou wicked servant, I forgave you all that
debt. . . . Should not you also have had compassion on your fellow servant,
even as I had pity on you? Then was B delivered up to wrath until- which
was impossible- he had paid all he owed and had earned forgiveness. "So
likewise shall my heavenly father/* the parable concludes, "do also unto you,
if you from your hearts forgive not every one his brothers their trespasses.**
Here, obviously, the definition of doing the ethical thing is decisively
not prescriptive universalizability. It is rather a substantive, material moral
norm, which has its source in the attitude and action of the merciful king.
This, then, should be extended by anyone who has been so gratuitously for-
given; this is the standard to apply in determining one's attitude and action
toward others in similar situations. Such a man nevertheless prescribes to
himself and others; he prescribes the same sort of moral attitudes and acts;
he prescribes universally for all in similar circumstances. The logical tests
are not set aside or without force in the parable. But what is prescribed
universally is given content by the merciful king's forgiveness, not- as with
Hare- by the native inclinations or disinclinations or preferences of moral
agents themselves. All this follows, for Christian ethics, from beginning as
"formed reference" to a situation of prodigious uncalled-for Divine forgiveness.
4. If the Christian orandi and credendi and bene operandi are, as I have
argued, formed reference to the engendering events, then, I think, we have
a measure to be applied to liberation theologies and ethics.
Liberation movements, and especially the black freedom movement led
by Martin Luther King, have all invoked the Exodus symbol of God's people
freed by his mighty acts from bondage in Egypt. That original and proto-
typical emancipation was prolepticly conditioned by the people's adherence
to God's righteousness revealed in his will and law (blessed be He!).
152 RAMSEY
Deliverance co
received. From
for return in e
The question to
and the Bible ta
is whether liber
to mean only em
versions of jus
liberation theol
I raise the que
separation of th
on surviving o
the Holy Suppe
ing the question
pronouncement
or whether th
sources more th
reference to Div
5. One of thes
impinges- or s
well, because of
ture, liturgy an
indissolvability
his church. There is no Christian liberation into atomistic individualism in
marriage bonding. Nor, taking the Bible as a whole, liberation into a dualism
by which we are "persons" and not embodied women-persons or men-persons.
I am aware of no way to stop well-meaning people in the churches who
tamper with Christian liturgy and remove the ancient landmarks in the
Christian moral life as well from proposing bland and novel rituals that are
not "formed references," that are not concaves to God's convex. So some
people today who call themselves "Christian" are writing, proposing and using
in churches rituals of divorce contrary to the Scriptural words we have in au-
thentic liturgies. Moreover, diminished seriousness can be the only result
of repeating words from Ephesians 5, the words of Jesus about marriage and
divorce, and pointing to the marriage of our first parents to which he referred
as basis in our original creation for these prohibitions and warnings when
all this is said a second and a third time with no liturgical notice of the
incongruity.
Rituals of repentance upon second marriage would be another thing, but
rituals upon the occasion of divorce articulate quite different "contours" to
which to make "formed reference/' Such actions within the church cannot
be the meaning of steadfast covenant-love modeled after the unswerving love
of Christ for us. Despite the Mosaic permission of divorce, and despite the
patriarchialism of its rabbinical interpretation, the Hebrew Bible does not
153
fail to record that the covenant-God, who watches over all covenants, has a
special care for the primary fidelity between husband and wife. Thus,
Malachi 2:14-16 speaks for God: "Because the Lord was witness to the
covenant between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been
faithless though she is your companion and your wife by covenant . . . take
heed to yourselves, and let none be faithless to the wife of his youth. For I
hate divorce, says the Lord the God of Israel. ... So take heed to yourselves
and do not be faithless." This passage is parallel to Efhesians 5 in their
common religious and moral meaning. Upon second marriage following
divorce there can only be liturgies of repentance for human short-falls.7
Whether we believe that marriage is- in the strict sense- a sacrament, or
not, the liturgical and moral meaning of the marriage-covenant remains the
same. It is a covenant of life with life specially touched, strengthened and
elevated by God's covenant with humankind. "Divorce rituals'* only signalize
the fact that we are coming close to defining divorce as a sort of "sacrament."
Indeed, divorce may be looked on as a "means of grace," a passage to a more
abundant life, to human flourishing defined in an individualistic way.
Against such notions Christians who believe marriage is a sacrament and
those who do not must urgently ask whether an entire congregation (the
minister included) who were all divorced and remarried would any longer
symbolize Christ's unbreakable love for his church.
On this point there is a witness in Eastern Orthodoxy among the plurali-
ties of Christian liturgies and moralities to which it might be helpful to
attend. In the East, the church by the sacrament marries the two parties,
it betroths them and it marries them. In the West, Roman contract-marriage
was taken up, the exchange of vows by the two parties makes the marriage
and constitutes its beginning, and they are the priests administering the sacra-
ment to one another. On the one hand, it is a glory of the Western church
to have elevated the marital consent of the parties out of secular collectivities
and customs (e.g., the father bringing the bride to her husband) and to their
signal role as priests or ministers of this one of the sacraments. On the other
hand, in the cultural history of the West this location of the sacrament upon
consent may have contributed to our present individualism, the fragmenta-
tion of the marriage bond, and to the anomaly that persons may, with the
church's unqualified blessing, several times take the same perpetual vow.
In the East the same church that sacramentally marries the parties also
divorces them- not by rituals but in canonical courts. In doing so, there is
no need, as in the West, to preserve indissolubility by seeking out grounds
that "reach back" to some defect in the consent that made the marriage, dis-
covered to warrant decrees of "nullity," not divorce. Thus, today incompati-
bility or psychological defect are often said to reach back, so that it can be
declared that a marriage never existed. Eastern churches simply find the
parties incompatible, i.e., as it were, dead to one another, and divorce them.8
How, then, is the church's witness to the indissolvability of Christian
154 RAMSEY
marriage not w
the fact that E
marriages, ano
must remember
entirety) are co
forms the belie
church almost
We in the Wes
East does not.
are left with th
liturgy says an
should go the
there is a separ
The liturgy for
reference to si
cretely and full
riage can contin
incongruity, hy
the world to t
West seems doom
The liturgy fo
time in the ea
spouse was look
greater disfavo
divorce. In gra
now to be dead
have such force
as such does no
marry people f
marry them a
differences betw
I am not enoug
ceremony that
prayers that ar
O Master, Lord
providence is ov
understandest a
sions of thy serv
of their iniquitie
voluntary and i
nature, in that
the harlot, and
sins of our ign
iniquity, O Lor
living shall be j
155
less, holy, plenteous in mercy, of great compassion, and repentest thee of

the evil of men. Do thou, O Master, who hast brought together in
wedlock thy servants, N. and N., unite them to one another in love:
vouchsafe unto them the contrition of the Publican, the tears of the
Harlot, the confession of the Thief; that, repenting with their whole
heart, and doing thy commandments in peace and oneness of mind, they
may be deemed worthy also of thy heavenly kingdom.
O Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, who wast lifted up on the precious
and life-giving cross, and didst thereby destroy the handwriting against
us, and deliver us from the dominion of the Devil: Cleanse thou the
iniquities of thy servants, because, they being unable to bear the heat and
burden of the day and the hot desires of the flesh, are now entering into
the bond of a second marriage, as thou didst render lawful by thy chosen
vessel, the Apostle Paul, saying, for the sake of us humble sinners, it is
better to marry than to burn. Wherefore, inasmuch as thou art good and
lovest mankind, do thou show mercy and forgive. Cleanse, put away,
pardon our transgressions; for thou art he who didst take our infirmities
on thy shoulders; for there is none sinless, or without uncleanness for so
much as a single day of his life, save only thou, who without sin didst
endure the flesh, and bestowests on us passionlessness eternal. (Holy
Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church, 1956:304-305; cf. 604-605)
To Western ears these will seem to be harsh words, indeed, to be used in

a church's celebration of second marriage that it nevertheless blesses and
sacrarrientalizes. In behalf of the Eastern liturgy I would reply to the spoken
and unspoken objections as follows: (1) Interlaced in these prayers are a
general confession that we are all sinners with specific confession connected
with the undertaking of a second marriage. But if there were only words of
general confession or declarations that we all live by the mercies of Christ,
standing alone, this would surely be a mere sentimentality to address to the
specific enactment the parties undertake and for which they now ask the
church's sacramental blessing over a second perpetual union. One could
propose in a thrice liturgies that would similarly signalize a Roman Catholic
priest's abandonment of his perpetual vows and his immediately following
resolve to assume another, namely, marriage. The Roman Catholic Church
confirms or certifies the vows of priestly celibacy. Eastern churches do the
same in regard to marriage. The passage from one lifelong vow to another,
whether from the priestly vocation of celibacy to marriage, or from one
marriage to another, involve the same quandary, namely, how can a person
forsaking one permanent vow for whatever sufficient reason enter into another
such vow with no repentance, confession of failure, no liturgical acknowledg-
ment of the specific personal identity or character with which one proposes
to enter into a new commitment that has the same essential demands?
(2) Divorce has never been the chief issue for Christian morality, but rather
remarriage following divorce. Doubtless, in divorcing, Christian partners
face significant moral issues. Nevertheless, these are arguable one way or
another. On the one hand, it is certain that no divorcing couples can do
156 RAMSEY
otherwise than
hand, it can be
of a marriage
obligations can
tion of these re
for Christians.
together, and h
necessary and
following divo
the prohibitio
second marriag
more irresolva
nullity or our g
persons. The d
churches sacra
demning and co
the church ble
itself requires
second marriag
who must settle
ally before conc
answer to this
churches, seem
is not annulled
marriage as a re
churches consec
failed first mar
shall be located
and only marr
with the churc
in the liturgy f
this must be co
marriage, and t
Rite is set.
Both marriage
people toward
the dissolution
divorces is the
every marriage
its end; yet the
solvability and
Catholics. They
Christianity- th
worldly reality
157
notion that while marriage as such is indissolvable, one never knows whether
his or her worldly reality is one of those marriages or not (Karl Barth, C-D,
III/4: 203-209). 10 Instead Orthodox orandi, credendi, and hene operandi in
both marriage rites are together on pilgrimage, in separable degrees, toward
the perfection.
No liturgy for the sacrament of Christian marriage that I know sets the
wedding within the context of the movement of human generations depicted
by realistic Biblical narrative more exhaustively, processionally, or in more
concrete detail than the Eastern liturgy. By contrast, Western liturgies are
often limited to the Feast at Cana or to Jesus' words about marriage as a
created ordinance or to "whom God has joined together let no man put
asunder." This is pretty thin stuff when compared with the Biblical narra-
tive depiction incorporated into the Eastern liturgy. More of the Old Testa-
ment, for example, is brought to bear on the present marriage, and the couple
is set by leisurely, lengthy prayers in the context of marriages throughout the
whole of Biblical history, from the marriage of our first parents until precisely
now. So I suggest that the stark realism of the Order of Second Marriage
can be- not softened but- understood along our pulses only when we appre-
hend the exhaustive narrative realism of the first Rite.
The Eastern Rite of Holy Matrimony11 breaks down into two parts: the
Betrothal and the Marriage, or Crowning. At some times and places betrothal
has been separated from marriage by a greater length of time. Ordinarily
today the two parts are celebrated in the same service. Betrothal takes place
near the entrance of the church.
Anyone reading with Western ears what takes place in Betrothal is likely
to suppose that this is the marriage. The commitments here enacted by the
church seem as everlasting as anything can be. The church betroths, as
later at the Table the church performs the marriage sacrament. The parties
are not asked to exchange vows of betrothal- in the future tense; and in the
subsequent Order of Marriage, while they do exchange vows, in this the
marriage does not primarily consist. In Betrothal, the parties are given
lighted tapers, signifying purity of life, and rings are exchanged. The priest
by prayer reminds them of the marriage of Isaac and Rebecca (whom God
miraculously identified to Abraham's servant); and concerning the symbolic
rings, the priest says:
By a ring was power given unto Joseph in Egypt; by a ring was Daniel
glorified in the land of Babylon; by a ring was the uprightness of Tamar
revealed; by a ring did our heavenly Father show forth his bounty upon
his Son; for he saith: Put a ring on his hand, and bring hither the
fatted calf, and kill it and eat, and make merry. By thine own right
hand, O Lord, didst thou arm Moses in the Red Sea; by the word of thy
truth were the heavens established, and the foundations of the earth were
made firm; and the right hands of thy servants shall be blessed also by
thy mighty words, and by thine upraised arm. Wherefore, O Lord, do
158 RAMSEY
thou now bless t

and let thine An
A liturgy that
first Rite can t
Second Marria
The plighting
would seem alr
this part of the
the two has al
place before t
One way to und
drops dead imm
riage, however
its Rite of Ho
certainly not b
Marriage.
Space does not
of numerous Bi
to memory by
example must s
Bless them, O
Bless them, O L
them, O Lord o
Bless them, O L
Bless them, O
Bless them, O L
them, O Lord
Preserve them
ark . . . Jonah
from the fire,
them, O Lord o
. . . thy Forty
heaven: Remem
nurtured them;
houses. . . . Exa
vine. . . . And l
planted olive-or
thy sight, they
The latter wor

marriages of o
case. The reaso
account of the
come to: "Thou
Sarah didst mak
to Rebecca, and
Rachel, and fro
159
following are the opening words: "O God most pure, the Creator of every
living being, who didst transform the rib of our forefather Adam into a wife,
because of thy love towards mankind, and didst bless them, and say unto
them: "Increase, and multiply, and have dominion over the earth; and didst
make the twain one flesh : for which cause a man shall leave father and
mother and cleave unto his wife and the two shall be one flesh: and what
God has joined together let no man put asunder . . ." Or again, in a prayer
just before the Crowning: "O holy God, who didst make man out of the
dust, and didst fashion his wife out of his rib, and didst join her to him as
a helpmeet; for it seemed good to thy majesty that man should not be alone
upon the earth: Do thou, the same Lord, stretch out now also thy hand
from thy holy dwelling-place, and conjoin this thy servant, N., and this thy
handmaid, N.; for by thee is the husband united unto the wife. Unite them
in one mind: wed them into one flesh, [and then in proper sequence:]
granting unto them the fruit of the body and the procreation of fair children."
Now it may be that Western liturgies are better than our theologies about
the "goods of marriage/' Still, it is extraordinary that these ancient Christian
liturgies of the Eastern churches- which contain so much of their theology
and ethics in narrative depiction- rightly ordered the goods of marriage. Be-
ginning with the first marriage in the Garden and all subsequent marriages
in the Biblical account here exhaustively rehearsed, including the marriage
now begun (which of course has its own sign of hope in "then race," "seeing
their children's children") the "primary" meaning (to use Western language)
and blessing of marriage is the union of life between the two. In our specu-
lative theologies and ethics one has to wait for some of the Reformation
Confessions,12 the pre-Milton Puritan divines (Johnson, 1970),13 Jeremy
Taylor in the Anglican tradition (Bailey, 1959:196-197), and the Second
Vatican Council14 to find this ordering of the goods of marriage union clearly
and definitively stated. This, I suppose, is also what is principally blessed,
inseverable from procreation, in the Order of Second Marriage; and why the
Eastern churches do not refuse this sacrament to divorced persons, i.e., "be-
cause it seemed good to thy majesty that man should not be alone upon the
earth." The Creator's purpose endures, and his church is not on earth to
deny this even to Rahab the harlot, or to comparable offenders who are
divorced and ask the church to marry them a second time. So it may be
believed that the same Lord "stretches out now also his hand from his holy
dwelling-place"- in the case of second marriages.15
One final comment. In the Order of Marriage, the priest leads the bride
and groom and the rest of the wedding party three times around the Table
(in honor of the Holy Trinity). The same processions are used while the
same hymns are sung in the liturgy for the setting apart of Deacons. This
obviously signifies that the priest is wedded to the church. Less obviously,
it may be that in the repetition of the same processions and hymns in the
marriage liturgy there is some suggestion that the parties are in some sense
160 RAMSEY
"pries ted" on
are crowned (w
in the Greek
the consents ex
cate that this i
expressly mini
This has been
studying the R
time will find
Somerset Maug
Nor is it myst
age of this litu
over, we stand
Berdyaev to be
dualism of "th
looks among u
"personal rela
no accounting
liturgy's stark
credendi and th
6. The contro
of a people ou
people, inhere
made them his
(Deuteronomy
out of chaos. T
naught. It shou
calling into be
us when we w
We should think both of Exodus and Genesis when we read: "Before I
formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou earnest forth from the
womb I sanctified thee; and I ordained thee . . . Qeremiah 1:5). Or when
we read in Psalm 139:1, 5, 12b-14:
0 Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me
Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thy hand upon me.
Behold, . . . the darkness and the light are alike to thee.

For thou hast possessed my reins:
Thou hast covered me in my mother's womb.
1 will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made:
Marvelous are thy works and that my soul knoweth right well.
Thus, in Exodus, Genesis, Jeremiah and the Psalm, the shape of God's
convex determines the shape of our human concave response of gratitude and
rejoicing in the goodness of our creation. For vividness and perhaps greater
161
exactitude than the Kg. James, I insert here three alternative translations of
the crucial passage: "Thou didst form my inward parts, Thou didst knit me
together in my mother's womb" (RSV). "Thou didst fashion my inward
parts; Thou didst knit me together in my mother's womb" (New English
Bible). "It was you who created my inmost self, and put me together in
my mother's womb" (Jerusalem Bible, italics added). It is simply stupid for
anyone to say that the Bible gives no point of departure for addressing the
question of the morality of abortion. Note that in saying this I am not
simply lighting upon the verses in Jeremiah and Psalm 139. If these verses
were not there, a prophet or poet could still write them if he or she had any
religious sensibility for the Exodus and the Genesis stories of creation, and
within these embracing contexts wished to say whence and how came the
creation of our particular, individual lives.
If we do not exclude Scripture from the liturgy, from all eternity God
resolved not to be God without our particular human life from its microscopic
origins. He then began to give us our "incomparable and non-recurrent op-
portunity to praise God," as Barth says (C-D, 111/4:339); and in New
Testament terms, "The true light of the world shines already in the darkness
of the mother's womb" (C-D, 111/4:416). Thus in all three creations- of
his people Israel and the second Israel by the new covenant, of the entire
cosmos, and of each one of us in particular- God calls into existence the
things that are from things that are not. This is the shape of Biblical
thought. And it is the shape of Christian liturgies so far as the Bible has
not been excluded from them.
Yet there are multitudes of sincere contemporary Christian people who
seem to believe that the Bible says nothing definitive to the abortion question.
I can only conclude that they have not heard Biblical sermons; or else have
responded: "Speak Lord, and thy servant will think it over!" "Pro-choice"
opinion if there be such among us18- or worrying first about when scientifi-
cally human life begins or making a crucial and dualist distinction between
conscious and pre-conscious life, between personal and individuated "knit
together" biological life- are secular points of view not bent to God's convex.
Even if one or another of these other issues must also be taken up, we need
first to make it at least as far as Exodus. There the Choice has already been
made for covenants of life with life most fragile. Perhaps that conclusively
settles nothing yet, but this is how we should look on the question.
Jewish ethics despite its legal code (or despite Christians' failure to under-
stand its legal tradition) is still a formed reference to the covenant. Therefore
for Judaism the fetus is a very precious form of life despite the belief and
teaching that only when the head or the larger part of the baby passes out
of the birth canal do we have a human life with equal sacredness to that of
the mother. Despite this "definition," one should violate the most holy
day- the Sabbath- in order to save unborn life. You violate for him one
Sabbath in order that he may observe many Sabbaths. Not to. work on the
162 RAMSEY
Sabbath to save
(in secular term
terms) to viola
lesser than on
conflict. There
tive Christian e
and "pro-choic
background of
tions are reflections of covenant and of the narrative of Divine events that
shape the shape of the moral lives of adherents to either community.
Different terms have to be used to home in on the narrative that has
determined through all ages until now the Christian outlook and on-look on
the ethical question I am now using for an illustration. First, an excursion
into propositional theology. How many readers of this article have ever
heard of the Christian Action Council? It is the voice in Washington, D. C,
of Evangelicals of many sorts in the United States. Evangelicals seem to be
making Christians faster than convex liberals make up their minds to drop
out of a movement in which they no longer believe. Our society [The
American Society of Christian Ethics] will not become truly national until
Evangelicals are made welcome among us, brought into our dialogue, get on
the program, etc.19
Some Evangelicals make a straightforward Christological argument. When
was God made man? Surely not in the stable in Bethlehem. The same
Gospel tells us when: at conception. All, then, one needs to learn is how
with accuracy to conceive of conception. We learned this when the ovum
was discovered. Before then Christian views about when God was made
man varied with the then current notions of conception. So did Christian
teaching about the morality of abortion. On this question there is no more
to say- unless one wants to embrace a novel form of gnosticism- about the
person of Jesus Christ incarnate. Let us call this "uterine gnosticism"; during
his life in Mary's womb Jesus was only becoming man. One either embraces
a heresy, or else believes that we become human later in development than
Jesus Christ did. That's more of a miracle than these particular Evangelicals
care to swallow.
I bring this in as preamble to saying something far more important; and
connected with liturgy, not propositional doctrine. Far more than any argu-
ment, it was surely the power of the Nativity Stories and their place in ritual
and celebration and song that tempered the conscience of the West to its
audacious effort to wipe out the practice of abortion and infanticide. As the
hold of the stories over the minds and imaginations of millions upon millions
of men and women recedes, it is clear that both abortion and infanticide are
becoming "thinkable" again as permissable practices, even good.
After the Annunciation it is recorded in St. Luke's Gospel that "Mary
rose in those days and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of
163
Judea; and entered into the house of Zacharias, and saluted Elizabeth. "Hi,
Liz/' she said; "I am 'with embryo'." And Elizabeth responded, "Hail,
Mary, didn't you know? I'm 'carrying a fetus' .... Lo, as soon as the voice
of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy"
QLuke 1:39-44, slightly revised). So did John the Baptist, the Forerunner,
first point to the Christ.
But that is not how the story goes. From the correct version heard and
sung and dramatized generations of men and women learned to feel and
think of their own unborn children in a very special way. The Nativity
Narratives served as a model for human beginnings, just as the creation of a
people out of Egypt did for Genesis, Jeremiah and the Psalm. The Christmas
story and songs did more than any argument to form the consciences of gener-
ations of men and women to respect and protect human life when next to
nothing. It was liturgy and not theology or ethics that turned the face of
Christians against abortion and infanticide prevalently practiced in Graeco-
Roman times, in all known cultures, and both of which practices are gaining
in approval in our heralded post-Christian age.
Renewal might begin where we started- by enactment and reenactment
of the following modest liturgical proposal. On the occasion of just and
necessary abortions the parents and family could be led in a prayer drafted
by Anglican Bishop John Taylor (1978:23) of Winchester, England:
Heavenly Father, you are the giver of life, and you share with us the
care of the life that is given. Into your hands we commit in trust the
developing life that we have cut short. Look in kindly judgment on the
decision that we have made and assure us in all our uncertainty that your
love for us can never change. Amen.
Vigorous objection has been raised against the Bishop of Winchester's pro-
posed ritual. He would turn a crime against humanity into a liturgical act;
"pray his people into believing that all seven deadly sins are properly seven
little sacraments, creative alternatives to the seven big ones." Torguemada,
the objector goes on to say, "had a few collects for sticking pins into Ana-
baptists, but nothing for children" (Rutler, 1978:20).
I raised a similar objection to rituals on the occasion of divorce. But
everything here depends on what the Bishop of Winchester meant. If he
meant the prayer to be used in elective abortion, of course the objector
is correct: this would be a cover-up to salve still scrupulous consciences with
a sentimental and hypocritical piety. "This hurts me more than it does
you," the objector said was the excuse offered, to God and to the child being
killed. I suggest that an opposite meaning may be ascribed to Winchester,
or use made of his liturgical proposal. If Christians prayed these words,
with their priests and ministers, in the case of just and necessary abortion,
then with them could begin a struggle of the church for itself against itself
for the hene operandi of the Christian life.
The truth is, on this point and many others in ethics and the Christian
164 RAMSEY
moral life, that

of his Church D
itself (i.e., its d
until doomsday
as he knows h
This article is
the triune "he
certain modern
the formation
tian communit
confessions of c
never recited, a
faith and life
poverishment
much contempo
liturgy of the
point of view
ethical develop
liturgy. Theol
liturgy that r
may assist the
God we believe
Since I have m
unwarranted a
clude by citing
out. So maybe
survive despite
orandi lex cred
The Methodist
Wesley's grace
Be present at ou
Be here and ever
These mercies b
May feast in fe
Wesley's word
the small comp
the church univ
giving. The pr
was not the sli
Wesley's wor
surfeit of "fell
165
without Hans Frei's caution that I needed better conceptual depiction to

inform my youthful immediacies and experience. The third alteration made
by the MYF probably required more maturity and theological critique of this
piece of liturgy, to recover from. For Wesley did not write "These mercies
bless ..." "Mercies" only hover over our concrete reality; any kind of re-
ligiousness can do that. The word does not inform or form the persons who
say them in any special way. Wesley's words were "These creatures bless . . ."
"Creatures" is a word that intrudes into our embodied existence, and brings
to bear the doctrine of creation. It also recalls to mind the fact that as the
Fall deepened after the Garden where wre were originally intended by God
to tend his creation and eat only of the fruit of the plants and trees- as one
generation followed another east of Eden- it was only by gracious per-
mission in the covenant with Noah, accommodated to the preservation of
humankind in a fallen world, that we are allowed to eat our fellow living
creatures, the animals.
Here I mean only to give an autobiographical instance of the fact that
diminished contemporary pieces of liturgy are not omnideterminant. Direct
access to Biblical narrative20 can provide the credendi and perhaps the bene
oferandi place on which to stand.
NOTES
11 thought at first to say "Lex/Ordo" to indicate the principium (a "begi

and corresponding derivative regularities in our orandi, credendi and hene op
But the Latin word Lex says all this. Its first meaning, of course, is "law
familiar sense. But the word is also used for precept, regulation, principle, ru
or manner (one can act in a disorderly, i.e., unlawful, manner); contract, agree
covenant; condition or stipulation (as in terms of peace). (Lewis and Short
Dictionary'). Albert Blaise, Dictionnaire Latin-Vrangais des Auteurs Chretien
following ecclesiastical usages: strictly, the law of Moses and in the N.T. "the
law" introducing the love commandments; the lex fidei, as in Romans 3:27, wh
Oxford Annotated Bible translates as the "principle" of faith vs. the "prin
works; the law of Christ, as in Galatians 6:2; the law of God, as in natural
social law, precept or command; the law of death, as in Romans 8:2. Thank
colleague Paula Fredrickson, an Augustine scholar, for this footnote.
2 In the first section, entitled "The Problem of Special Ethics," of §52 "Et
a Task of the Doctrine of Creation" at the beginning of C-D, III/ 4. Some B
I know- and students of Barth- seem never to get beyond the "instant" ethics of
Command in 11/ 2. Although Barth doesn't like Bonhoeffer's expression "ma
he praises Bonhoeffer for perceiving that "what is involved in the constancy o
events must also be learned only from the Word of God if a formed referenc
to be legitimate and meaningful." The task of ethics is to explain "why the co
and differentiation of this Word compels us in this question of constancy to
these particular spheres in this particular way" [to follow in this volume]
times and places it [the ethical event] will show this outline" because God char
himself "(in accordance with His inner trinitarian being) as Creator, Recon
Redeemer." The ethical event means "action on the three corresponding p
corresponding to Creator, Reconciler and Redeemer; man exists and the m
answers to God in these different respects. "God is indeed the Creator of the
166 RAMSEY
which we would
as the Creator h
can there be a fo
italics added).
3 Elsewhere in III/4, Barth continues to use expressions like "sphere," "field" and
"the character of an allotted framework." Of "Near and Distant Neighbors," he writes
that "that there are particular peoples rests on those ordinances Qordinationes'). But
these are not permanent orders Qordines*) of creation like the being of man and woman
or parents and children" (first italics added). The latter are "irremoveable" structures
(my word) of "confrontation" and coexistence, while the former are fluid. So he calls
the state "a genuine and specific order of the covenant" and not an "order of creation"
(Barth, CD, 111/4:288, 300, 303).
*I owe this conceptual depiction of the orandi to my colleague, Horton Davies,
author of the definitive 5-vol. work on Worship and Theology in England. Princeton,
N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1961, 1962, 1965, 1970, 1975.
5 For thirty minutes in a TV interview by Philip Scharfer, on the occasion of the
Eucharistic Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, a few years ago.
Eastern Orthodoxy does seem to be a standing example of shaping influence
running from liturgy to faith and life- as we shall see below in an examination of its
Rite of Holy Matrimony. Fr. Georges Florovsky (1972:58) insists that this is the case.
"One has to return from the school-room to the worshipping Church and perhaps to
change the school dialectic of theology for the pictorial and metaphorical language of
Scripture. The very nature of the Church can be rather depicted and described than
properly defined." He affirms the primacy of liturgy: ut legem credendi statuat lex
orandi; so that the rule of worship should establish the rule of faith. This is a
quotation from St. Prosper of Aquitania, who found the truth and reality of original
sin in infant baptism. St. Basil used doxologies in theological argument against the
later Arians concerning the Holy Spirit. For him dogmata meant "unwritten habits"-
the whole structure of liturgical and sacramental acts. St. Irenaeus spoke of traditio
veritatis (tradition of truth), regula veritatis, regula fidei, in a depositum juvenescens
(a living tradition). Faith and life are shaped by traditio et redditio symholi-the
transmission and repetition of the Creed, which until the 4th century in both East and
West were not to be written down (Florovsky, 1972:84-86, 88). If Eastern Orthodoxy
was our only example, it might be agreed that lex orandi is regnant over credendi and
hene operandi.
6 The Golden Rule in no way reflects moral events that are the concave of the
convex of God's action.
7 Ramsey (1963) may still be worth reading. This essay was an extension of my
third 1958 Ashley Lectures on Law and Theology at the New York University School
of Law, the first two having been published as parts of the final two chapters in my
Nine Modern Moralists (Ramsey, 1962). The essay may be worth reading precisely
because it is dated as to the civil law of marriage; and thus it mirrors how much and
how rapidly the imprint of a Christian understanding of marriage has been removed
from the public order- how far we have "progressed" in fragmenting the marriage bond.
In this situation there would seem to be need for the church to struggle against itself
for itself in its witness to the world on the matter of marriage. Instead all signs point
to the fact that these worldly trends have met with little resistance, indeed are welcomed,
and widely incorporated into a bene operandi still called "Christian" without warrant in
credendi or orandi.
Thus, in the statement of "Social Principles" adopted by the General Conference
of the United Methodist Church in 1972 we read: "We assert the sanctity of the
marriage covenant." In the commission that drew up these social principles for adoption
167
or emendation by the General Conference, it was proposed that we say "the sanctity
of marriage as a lifelong partnership." To this it was objected that this had already
been said by the word "sanctity"- which was not true, else the overwhelming majority
would not have rejected the additional words. Where the social principles affirm "we
recognize divorce and the right of divorced persons to remarry," it was proposed to add
the words "pleading only God's mercies and forgiveness and with thankfulness for his
grace in the renewal of life." Here our social action curia hit the roof, saying this
would place us in the position of Anglican churches- which was not true, since
Methodists have no relic of canonical courts or appeals to the Bishop to review proposed
second marriages. The words would have simply stated a standard to be held before
lay persons and for ministers to apply freely in their judgments about remarriages
within the church. Those words, too, were rejected. So individual conscience and
pastoral practice was left with no relic of a proper Christian context. I dubbed our
minority the "four just men," a scriptural reference I leave the reader to locate. On
another matter, the social principles adopted state that "the blessing of God is upon
marriage whether or not the persons have children." This is true beyond doubt. But
behind this statement was a penultimate draft: "We urge social approval, and not
mere tolerance, of marriages in which the partners elect not to have children"- itself
a position that is possibly defensible as a vocation if set in a proper Christian context
and not that of an arbitrary liberty or despair over the future. On this point the
minority of four succeeded in introducing the draft words "The child is a blessing of
marriage and a sign of hope. Yet God also blesses childless marriages." These words
were lost somewhere in the course of revision left to staff, who could have restored the
penultimate meaning, or lost in the procedures by which the General Conference
adopted them (United Methodist Church, 1972).
8 The symbolism of "death" of a marriage partner as grounds permitting remarriage
is used in The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647): "In the case of Adultery
after marriage, it is lawful for the innocent party to sue out a Divorce: Arid after the
Divorce, to marry another, as if the offending party were dead" (Ch. XXIV, par. V).
The next paragraph goes on to affirm that "nothing but Adultery, or such wilfull deser-
tion as can no way be remedied, by the Church, or Civil Magistrate, is cause sufficient
of dissolving the bond of Marriage." My understanding is that in granting divorces-
i.e., declaring a marriage dead- the Orthodox churches do not need to search out a
limited number of scriptural grounds. Instead it is the Order of Second Marriages
with its vivid and specific penitences that liturgically preserves the indissolvability that
is so pronounced in the first Rite.
The entire chapter on marriage and divorce was revised when the Westminster
Confession was adopted by The United Presbyterian Church in the United States of
America in 1958. There We read that "as a breach of that holy relation may occasion
divorce, so remarriage after a divorce granted on grounds explicitly stated in Scripture
or implicit in the gospel of Christ may be sanctioned in keeping with his redemptive
gospel. . . ." Presumably, it is left to pastoral care to determine whether the grounds
for dissolution were "implicit in the gospel of Christ"; and this of course is apt to be
an open sesame. The words, however, just quoted continue by saying "when sufficient
penitence for sin and failure is evident, and a firm purpose of and endeavor after
Christian marriage is manifest"; and the words are preceded by the church's declaration
of concern "with the present penitence as well as the past innocence or guilt of those
whose marriage has been broken" (United Presbyterian Church, 1970:6.123-124 and
n. 25). This does sound remarkably like generalized, non-specific penitence; and since
the same ceremony is used for second as for first marriages there is no public acknowl-
edgment in the corporate body of the church of what a remarkable thing it must be
for persons to be able to vow lifelong union a second time. Such practice of remarriage
168 RAMSEY
after divorce can

into an ideal or h
9 The Western c
disfavor upon m
Confession, Ch.
second marriag
extremes that the
churches "condem
did not (United
10Barth knows v
there are sufficie
It is "a lasting lif
bility of leaving
in them, and this
of the gracious G
which for all tim
asks, "But what
vocable way? It i
to be in this situ
irrevocability of
bility depends flo
form" (pp. 207-2
Barth 's insisten
wnhappiest, the m
God has not bless
11 In the follow
Matrimony: The
(Holy Orthodox-
12 For example,
dained for the m
legitimate issue, a
(Ch. XXIV, par. I
by The United P
texts are printed
13 See. esp. p. 92
of Thomas Aquin
14 "Pastoral Con
II, 1965:47-55). I
for an analysis of
Casti Connuhii.
15 Here my words are drawn from the Rite for first marriage in order to express
what the Eastern churches believe, and liturgically enact, in the case of second marriages
also. Second marriage is not exclusively a post-lapsarian concession.
Concerning the order of the goods of marriage, we ought not to forget in inter-
preting a liturgy so rich in Biblical imagery that the reference to the marriage of Jacob
and Rachel in the prayer quoted in the text above from the first Rite cannot mean to
elevate to first place the fact that from this union sprang the twelve Patriarchs. Any
mention of Jacob and Rachel calls also to mind that Jacob worked twice seven years to
gain her, and that at least the first seven years "seemed to him but a few days, for
the love that he had for her" (Genesis 29:20). And Jacob buried her in Bethlehem
(Genesis 35:19), where was to be born the Man of Sorrows.
16 Nicholas Berdyaev (1937:234) suggests that the crowns convey a comparison
169
with the martyrs' crowns. Graced fortitude will be needed if husband and wife are
to bear each other's burdens; since life on earth is always full of pain, all true love
means tragedy and suffering. Cf. the words, "Remember them, O Lord our God, as
thou didst remember thy Forty Holy Martyrs, sending down upon them crowns from
heaven . . ." in the prayer quoted in the text above.
17Berdyaev (1950:75) wrote in his autobiographical reflections that "I am repelled
by the very sight of pregnant women: but I do not take any pride in this; in fact I am
distressed by such reactions. I never disliked children. I was for instance, very much
attached to my nephews. But I could not help seeing in child-bearing something hostile
to personality; something that is evidence of the dissolution of personality." In this
entire section Berdyaev (1950:68-77) develops an opposition between genus and sex,
on the one hand, and love and personality on the other. See Berdyaev 1937:232-242
and 1955:180-224 for this author's move from a simple dualism to a more complex
one: androgynity. No great harm, of course, can be done by one Russian romantic.
But when large sections of the contemporary church opinion goes gnostic or Albigensian,
there is cause for alarm.
18 It is alleged, for example, that the position of the United Methodist Church is
identical with the so-called "pro-choice" position of the Religious Coalition for Abortion
Rights whose headquarters are housed in the Methodist Building near the Capitol in
Washington, D. C, and which coalition has managed to effect permanent relation with
a number of state Councils of Churches. The basis of such an assertion about the
Methodist position is the statement introduced from the floor and adopted by the 1972
General Conference in Atlanta. This statement reads: "We support the removal of
abortion from the criminal code, placing it instead under laws relating to other pro-
cedures of standard medical practice." This was, of course, a statement about the legal
order, and not about Methodist church bene operandi. The latter was not left to indi-
vidualistic choice of parents, or of the woman principally concerned. The controlling
words, into which that statement was introduced are: "Our belief in the sanctity of
unborn human life makes us reluctant to approve abortion. But we are equally bound
to respect the sacredness of the life and well-being of the mother, for whom devastating
damage may result from an unacceptable pregnancy. In continuity with past Christian
tradition, we recognize tragic conflicts of life with life that may justify abortion. We
call all Christians to a searching and prayerful inquiry into the sorts of conditions that
warrant abortion." ("Social Principles," United Methodist Church, 1972.)
These are serious words. They concern the church, and not the legal order only.
At stake is the bene operandi of the Christian faith. The words are "unacceptable" not
simply an "unwanted" pregnancy. That unacceptability is measured against loss of
life or devastating damage. The word "mother" is used, and "fetus" is not. No pro-
choice, individualistic point-of-view is endorsed. Most important of all, these words
call the church to a common searching and prayerful inquiry into the sorts of conditions
that warrant abortions. This means that the Christian community is in some, but
definite, sense the "decision maker." If in answer to this call Methodists had responded
in any way, i.e., if we had been a church, there would still, of course, have been indi-
vidual freedom to go contrary to what the church might teach as our well-doing or
wrong-doing in the matter of abortion. Parents, or individual women, who chose con-
trary to the sorts of pregnancies believed acceptable, or the sorts of abortions believed
unjustifiable, would still be free to do so. But let no one say that the United Methodist
Church has as yet officially endorsed the preposterous proposition that individualistic,
voluntaristic decision is capable of making right right, or wrong wrong.
19 There is no journal of Christian opinion to be compared with Sh'ma which man-
ages to get Orthodox, Conservative, and Reformed rabbis, laymen and women to write
articles.
170 RAMSEY
20 Of course, on
111/4:349-356.
REFERENCES
Bailey, Derrick Sherwin

1959 Sexual Relation in Christian Thought. New York: Harper.
Barth, Karl
C-D Church Dogmatics.
Berdyaev, Nicholas
1937 The Destiny of Man. London: Geoffrey Bles.
1950 Dream and Reality: An Essay in Autobiography. London
Bles.
1955 The Meaning of the Creative Act. London: Victor Gollancz

Cochrane, Arthur C.
1962 The Church's Confession under Hitler. Philadelphia: Westm
Florovsky, Georges
1972 Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View. The
Works of Georges Florovsky, Vol. 1. Belmont, Mass.: Nord
lishing Co.
Frankena, William K.
1966 "On saying the ethical thing," Presidential Address, American Philo-
sophical Association (Western Division), 1966. Proceedings and Ad-
dresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 39, 1965-1966.
Yellow Springs, Ohio: The Antioch Press.
Frei, Hans
1974 The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press.
1978 Review of Eberhard Busch's Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and
Autobiographical Texts (transl. by John Bowden. Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1976), in Virginia Seminary Journal, Vol. 30, No. 2, July 1978;
enlarged and to be reprinted in the Canadian Journal of Religious
Studies I Sciences Religieuses.
Hare, R. M.
1965 Freedom and Reason. New York: Oxford University Press.
Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church
1956 "The rite of holy matrimony," Service Book. Revised Edition. Compiled,
Translated and Arranged by Isabel Florence Hapgood. Brooklyn, N. Y.:
Syrian Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese.
Johnson, James Turner
1970 A Society Ordained By God: English Puritan Marriage Doctrine in the
First Half of the Seventeenth Century. Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon
Press.
Ramsey, Paul
1962 Nine Modern Moralists. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
1963 "Marriage law and biblical covenant." Pp. 41-77 in Donald A. Giannella,
171
ed., Religion and the Public Order. Chicago, Illinois: University of

Chicago Press.
1968 "The case of the curious exception." Pp. 67-135 in Gene Outka and
Paul Ramsey, eds., Norm and Context in Christian Ethics. New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons.
1975 One Flesh: A Christian View of Sex Within, Outside and Before Mar-
riage. Bramcote Notts, England: Grove Booklets in Ethics.
1977 "Kant's moral theology or a religious ethicsr" (Response to Alasdair
Maclntyre), pp. 44-74 in H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., and Daniel Cal-
lahan, eds., Knowledge, Value and Belief. Hastings-on-Hudson, N. Y.:
Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences.
Rutler, George William
1978 "Diary of a country priest." New Oxford Review, October.
Taylor, Bishop John
1978 "Prayer on the occasion of abortion." America, July 22.
United Methodist Church
1972 Book of Discipline.

United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.
1970 Book of Confessions. Second Edition. New York: Office of the General
Assembly.
Vatican Council II
1965 Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. (Gaudium

et Spes*), December 7. Washington, D. C: National Catholic Welfare
Conference, Reprint, 1976.

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Liturgy and Ethics

Both liturgy and morality are "formed references'* to Divine e

moral life. Liturgies, I suppose, is rational reflection upon and conceptual

life (if the wo

were about Chr

Some General Statements About the Relation

Elsewhere (Ramsey, 1968:120-125; 133-135; Ramsey, 1977:44-77) I have

Church and synagogue are communities of adoration, remembrance, cele-

. . . Barth was about the business of conceptual description : He took the

Perhaps it is also the task of Christian ethics to "recreate a universe of dis-

battery of auodliary instruments to indicate two things simultaneously:

In order not to become trapped by his philosophy, it is best for a

but instead A should be forgiven (B having in rhind that C will do likewise

less, holy, plenteous in mercy, of great compassion, and repentest thee of

To Western ears these will seem to be harsh words, indeed, to be used in

thou now bless t

The latter wor

Behold, . . . the darkness and the light are alike to thee.

moral life, that

without Hans Frei's caution that I needed better conceptual depiction to

11 thought at first to say "Lex/Ordo" to indicate the principium (a "begi

after divorce can

Bailey, Derrick Sherwin

1955 The Meaning of the Creative Act. London: Victor Gollancz

ed., Religion and the Public Order. Chicago, Illinois: University of

1972 Book of Discipline.

1965 Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. (Gaudium

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