These two impressive volumes by Dr Peter Sedgwick perhaps require a defence in terms of a review in the ELJ. Canon Law and moral theology are intrinsically related historically. Jurisprudence in the Ecclesiastical Courts illustrates the connection between the oversight of Christian morals and the moral theology undergirding it. How the Church develops its practical response today, including legislation, for, say, same-gender relationships or marriage depends on how it does its moral theology.
Sedgwick begins his first volume by setting out his defence of the title, ‘Anglican Moral Theology’. He espouses Alasdair MacIntyre’s understanding of a ‘genealogy’. He does not offer a set of unrelated historical studies but argues that there is a recognisable pattern of Anglican moral theology. Sedgwick marshals a full resource of detailed studies to support his thesis. He opens with an explanation of why he prefers the term moral theology to the perhaps more familiar Christian ethics. He argues that it more clearly relates to spirituality, moral reasoning, personal freedom, conscience and pastoral care. Preference for this term is not, however, an essential part of Sedgwick’s argument. He also argues that at its best Anglican moral theology has been ecumenical; he is not arguing for a confessional Anglicanism. Sedgwick also responds to those who would question the whole concept of a history of ideas. Dan Hardy and Rowan Williams are major influences on Sedgwick here. He also pays due attention to those who reduce religious debate to economic factors. Recent historians now emphasise economic determinism less. Sedgwick then explores the nature of Anglicanism. He emphasises the genuinely reformed nature of the post-Reformation Church of England, accepting that the Tractarians ‘creatively’ interpreted Caroline Anglicanism as a precursor of the Oxford Movement. He also argues that there have always been different traditions of Anglican moral theology as there always have in the Roman Catholic communion.
Having set out about 50 pages of important prolegomena, Sedgwick begins his historical studies with moral theology from the Early Church to the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). This includes the patristic understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, both in the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels and the wider New Testament. Early penitential practice is examined (here are the first links to what became canon law) followed by a study of Augustine on the attraction of goodness by transforming the stoic conception of justice with love and delight. Jerome stressed conscience (syneidesis, consciousness, moral consciousness or conscientiousness from St Paul, to become synderesis in Latin). With the Fourth Lateran Council, confession became obligatory, and there emerged the need for the education of confessors and spiritual directors. So followed the growth of moral theology in the universities and analysis of moral action. Sedgwick gives considerable space to Aquinas and Abelard as sources of Anglican moral theology; Abelard stressing intention, Aquinas utilizing Aristotle but reconciling him with Augustine. Aquinas had confidence in human reason and a moral theology of virtue as well as stressing equity. Scotus, Ockham and the Franciscans challenged the Dominican school of Aquinas and defended natural virtue. The latter was to be strongly challenged at the Reformation. Importantly, Sedgwick outlines the rise of casuistry in the writings of the Scottish John Maer. No action could be abstracted from the context and norms of the society and culture in which the person lived. With Tyndale and Luther (Sedgwick carefully distinguishes between them) came the collapse of scholasticism. Synderesis is here rejected.
The moral theology of William Perkins and Richard Hooker are compared. Perkins taught a ‘practical divinity’, not from syllogisms but actual cases to help a minister to give appropriate moral advice. He largely follows Aquinas, although there is no doubt as to his reformed credentials. Richard Hooker for Sedgwick is a turning point in moral theology at the Reformation. Sedgwick argues that he uniquely holds together the Reformation and the pervious moral theology tradition. Hooker returned to the mediaeval debates yet in his own distinctive way. Hooker was more appreciative of free-will than the orthodox Reformed position allowed. On our knowledge of God and happiness Hooker is Thomist. He holds a virtue ethic and expounds equity; he also attacked Calvinism by rejecting an arbitrary conception of divine omnipotence.
Of the Carolines Sedgwick majors on Sanderson, Hall, Hammond and especially Jeremy Taylor. But not as prototype Tractarians. Sanderson indeed was Reformed rather than Arminian but also interpreted Aquinas and wrote extensively on casuistry. He was also highly critical of the ‘godly’ Puritans who separated themselves from the main church. Hammond marked a further turn from Puritanism; justification and sanctification were one process through teaching, the sacraments and growth in a holy life. Jeremy Taylor was a Laudian and Arminian. He expounded casuistry in Doctor Dubitantium (1660) and also wrote extensively on conscience and spirituality. His writings rapidly became classics of Anglican moral theology and spirituality. Sedgwick follows earlier and more recent studies of Taylor including those of Archbishop Harry McAdoo (the Anglican Co-chair of ARCIC-I), who saw Taylor’s writings as prefiguring Catholic moral theology at Vatican II and stressed the ascetical nature of Caroline moral theology. Taylor follows Aquinas on natural law as a dictate of practical reason, while he also spoke of how hard it was to state its precise content. Current argument on the meaning of what is natural and human sexuality confirms this!
Volume II is divided into two parts: the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and then Newman and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Sedgwick continues his argument for an Anglican genealogy but as a complex and ‘polyphonic’ continuum. He devotes two important chapters to the changing shape of English religion at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke and Shaftesbury and schools such as the Cambridge Platonists and the Latitudinarians are analysed. Thomas Traherne’s (now re-discovered) virtue ethic is recorded.
Sedgwick explores the challenges to Christian orthodoxy in the early eighteenth century. He is an impressive guide to the thought of the period as well as essential reading for an understanding of later developments in moral theology. Butler (in his Rolls Sermons) is examined; especially his response to Hobbes, Locke and Shaftesbury, and his understanding of love and conscience with relevance to moral theology. Sedgwick argues that Butler is the ‘turning point’ for this volume. Butler stressed the unity of human nature and the inter-relation of reason and emotion. His arguments from probability (anticipating Newman) and analogy were important developments. His stress on conscience, echoing both Sanderson and Taylor, and his virtue ethic principles now provided an alternative to contemporary Catholic Thomism.
William Law’s writings are explored as examples of both spirituality and a related moral theology. They link Caroline moral theology, especially that of Jeremy Taylor, with that of Newman and F.D. Maurice. He also influenced Samuel Johnson and John Wesley. Wesley is himself given extended treatment. Wesley’s stress on sanctification is analysed and its relation to both William Law and Jeremy Taylor are noted as well as readings of Wesley which place him in the virtue tradition of Aquinas. Sedgwick devotes a most interesting and perhaps surprising chapter to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who after scepticism turned to (Cambridge) Platonism and Emmanuel Kant. Coleridge grasped intuitively the Anglican exemplary tradition, taken up later by Newman, Maurice, Charles Gore and Kenneth Kirk. Sedgwick’s evaluation of Coleridge is one of his particular insights.
The literature on Newman is immense; Sedgwick concentrates on his writings before his conversion to the Roman Catholic Church as evidenced in his Parochial and University Sermons. Newman was strongly influenced by Butler on both natural religion and on conscience. Although he argued for a time that the Caroline divines were a via media after he had changed his mind he nevertheless retained an admiration for Jeremy Taylor’s spirituality and moral theology, although Butler was more influential. Sedgwick also explores Newman’s debt to Coleridge.
FD Maurice is expounded and Sedgwick rightly criticises Stephen Sykes’ assessment of Maurice as muddled. Richard Niebuhr is cited here as well as Jeremy Morris and Timothy Sedgwick (no relation to the author). Once again conscience is central. Sedgwick particularly notes Maurice’s sacramental emphasis as intrinsically related to his moral theology. In this Maurice is at one with the Carolines.
The volume concludes with an analysis of the Lux Mundi and the liberal catholic school, especially Charles Gore. He then turns to William Temple’s philosophical idealism and social ethics, calling for a reconsideration of Temple’s later teachings. Finally, and perhaps surprisingly, a chapter is devoted to Kenneth Kirk who was a major contributor to the revival of Thomism within Anglican thought and an exponent of casuistry. He wrote for the clergy, to help them think morally using actual case studies and considering mitigating factors, arguing that neo-Thomism was not alien to Anglicanism. He too stressed the importance of conscience and was also a considerable exponent of canon law, understanding the connection between canon law and moral theology. He consciously followed the Anglican tradition of Sanderson and Taylor and others of the seventeenth century. Sedgwick demonstrates Kirk’s influence on the change in teaching on contraception between the 1920 and 1930 Lambeth Conferences precisely because of the conscience of practising Christians. This illustrates how the Church can change its mind. Sedgwick notes both criticism of Kirk (e.g. Oliver O’Donovan and Stanley Hauerwas) and contemporary praise and calls for a re-evaluation of his works.
Not only are these two volumes a comprehensive introduction to the theologians considered in their historical and philosophical context, they also provide essential evidence for recurring features of Anglican moral theology: the consideration of particular cases, contexts and conscience and the spiritual and sacramental nurturing of the Christian in virtue. These are not exclusively Anglican but they are distinctive and therefore the lack of them un-Anglican. The extensive citation of historical studies cited by Peter Sedgwick make convincing his claim that there is here a genealogy of Anglican moral theology.
