Summary James McClendon – Ethics
Recommendation
I would highly recommend my complete summary of McClendon’s “Ethics”. In my opinion “Ethics”
is a dense book, in which McClendon deals with many different authors and disciplines. Therefore I
myself needed to get grip on the structure of the book and the main line of thought of this important
theological work. This led me to produce this summary, in which I tried to represent McClendon’s
ethical theory in a clear and complete way. At many places my summary is really extended, because in
my opinion it really helps to include examples and explanations the author provides, because they
could illustrate the author’s point more clearly. Furthermore I think this extended summary method
fits the narrative character of McClendon’s theology better than if my summary was a mere
enumeration of theoretical propositions. Although I have read each chapter, it would not do to
summarize in detail the (analyses of the) life stories, which serve as an illustration for McClendon’s
ethical theory in chapters 4,7 and 10. The reader of this summary does best to read those biographical
parts themselves, in order to check if he or she understands the theoretical parts of Ethics. This is also
important because these three chapters are an essential part of McClendon’s narrative theology.
Finally, please mind that replication or distributing this summary to others is not allowed. Thanks in
advance!
Contents
Prospect..................................................................................................................................................2
1. What is theology?...........................................................................................................................2
2. What is ethics?................................................................................................................................5
Part I: The sphere of the organic...........................................................................................................10
3. Body ethics...................................................................................................................................10
4. Sarah and Jonathan Edwards........................................................................................................14
5. Eros – Toward an ethic of sexual love..........................................................................................15
Part II: The sphere of the communal.....................................................................................................18
6. Social ethics..................................................................................................................................18
7. Dietrich Bonhoeffer......................................................................................................................22
8.The politics of forgiveness.............................................................................................................23
Part III: The sphere of the anastatic......................................................................................................28
9. Resurrection ethics.......................................................................................................................28
10. Dorothy Day...............................................................................................................................31
11. A future for peace?.....................................................................................................................31
Retrospect.............................................................................................................................................36
12. Why narrative ethics?.................................................................................................................36
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,Prospect
1. What is theology?
Theology means struggle, because truth is not available without hard struggles. The struggle consists
of at least two parts:
1. The church is not the world. Although theologians are faced by a temptation to provide a
theology that will seem true the world on the world’s own present terms, we should not
conceal the difference between church and world, because we may in the short run entice the
world, but we will do so only by betraying the church.
2. Christianity itself is not a congruent whole. There are a thousand warring sects, schism and
heresy, division and excommunication, all justified in the name of the one Lord. This led
Friedrich Schleiermacher to argue that any given theology must represent and refer to the
doctrine of some particular Christian body at some particular time.
The latter is a conclusion that McClendon shares with Schleiermacher. A Christian theology must
have a community of reference that cannot without confusion be subsumed under some more general
ecclesial type, which in the case of this systematic theology is the (Ana)baptist part of the Church.
Before McClendon characterizes this Baptist point of view, he first wants to say some things about
theology itself.
1.1 Why Baptists have produced so little theology?
In this section McClendon seeks for an adequate explanation for the scarcity of Baptist theologies. In
order to answer that question he first provides a definition of theology, which may not be too narrow
(cf. Karl Rahner) or too loosely (as if anyone who has beliefs may be said to have a theology). An
etymologically based definition of theology, in which theology is a logos of theos (ideas or discourse
about God) fails to meet both of these two criteria, discriminating against polytheistic and atheistic
theologies, one the one hand, and admitting mere occasional and random ideas, at the other. According
to McClendon theology has its objective pole, as well as it subjective one; it deals with matters of
supreme importance, but seeks to do so in an orderly, even an scientific way.
At this point McClendon introduces the term conviction, which he defines as “a persistent belief such
that if X (a person or a community) has a conviction, it will not be easily relinquished, and it cannot be
relinquished without making X a significantly different person (or community) than before.”
This definition provides the way for a definition of theology: the discovery, understanding and
transformation of the convictions of a convictional community, including the discovery and critical
revision of their relation to one another and to whatever else there is.
This definition points to what theologians do in homage to what is handed on to them, but in
“transformation” it points to what is necessarily creative in their task. Theology is thus both a
descriptive discipline and a normative one.
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,Although it may seem that McClendon’s definition is merely a formal or empty definition, this is not
the case. While postponing full discussion he points to four emphasises implicit in this definition. The
character of theology, according to this definition, is:
1. Pluralistic: it is necessarily done in many rival camps;
2. Narrrative and historical: discovering the actual convictions of a given community in their
setting in the ongoing community story;
3. Rational (or even scientific): concern with logical relations and the relation of convictions to
what there is);
4. Self-involving (in contrast to for example criminology, which of course can be studied by a
non-criminal as well).
Now we are able to ask again: Why have Baptist communities produced so little theologies? Firstly,
McClendon makes mention of the cultural explanation (Baptists were preoccupied with the harsh
struggle to survive). In addition he mentions two theological struggles in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, which were set on terms defined by parties other than Baptists:
Calvinist-Arminian struggle concerning God’s election;
Modernist-Fundamentalist struggle concerning a proper view on Scripture.
But since there is Baptist reflection on these matters, why have these distinct Baptist convictions not
given birth to Baptist theologies?
McClendon answers: The Baptists in all their variety and disunity failed to see in their own heritage,
their own way of using Scripture, their own communal practices and patterns, their own guiding
vision, a resource for theology unlike the prevailing scholasticism around them.
This makes McClendon conclude that we need:
1. to find and focus upon the theological center, the vision around which Baptist theology can
be done;
2. to acknowledge the rich resources for theology in the narrative common life of that vision;
3. to seize the appropriate point of departure for reflection upon this narrative and common life
in theological ethics.
1.2 The quest for the Baptist vision
By a vision McClendon means the guiding stimulus by which a people (or as here, a combination of
peoples) shape their life and thought as that people or that combination. The vision is the tonic
structure of their common life. Many persistent marks have been proposed in the past:
1. Biblicism;
2. Mission;
3. Liberty/Soul competency;
4. Discipleship;
5. Community.
However, while many Christians have embraced some of these elements just listed, is there a
governing vision that is seen to require them all? McClendon concludes that none of the five marks
mentioned above are able itself to meet all difficulties or persuade all theorists. Therefore he does a
different suggestion.
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, The vision can be expressed as a hermeneutical motto (“this is that”), which is shared awareness of the
present Christian community as the primitive community and the eschatological community. In other
words, the church now is the primitive church and the church on the day of judgment is the church
now. McClendon describes two parallel assertions clarifying this vision:
1. The church now is the primitive church (cf. the Roman Catholic Eucharistic doctrine: “this
is My body”). The Baptist “is” in “this is that” is neither developmental nor succesionist, but
mystical and immediate.
2. The church on the day of judgment is the church now (cf. Peter preaching on the day of
Pentecost, applying a passage in the prophet Joel to the church at his days). The past is re-
experienced.
This vision requires testing, both historical and theological:
a) Historical. The vision should show how a people’s identity is construed via narratives that are
historically set in another time and place but display redemptive power here and now.
b) Theological. The vision must yield power to organize the convictions of the present sharers of
the vision, as well as the narrative life in which these are embedded.
1.3 Matter and method in theology
In this section McClendon indicates the broad method that would be followed in theology:
1. Theology is pluralistic. God, having created the human variety we represent, wants is to
theologize in varied ways. Theology provides the loggia (as in a Renaissance Italian city) or
the gallery (as attached to a U.S. Southern house) along which dwellers in the household of
faith can walk into the give and take of humane dialogue.
2. Theology is narrative-based. The recovery of the primacy of narrative in theology may show
how experience and Bible are related to one another. The Baptist vision reminds us that the
narrative the Bible reflects, the story of Israel, of Jesus and of the church, is intimately related
to the narrative we ourselves live. The Bible is the Book of a story that claims to be our real
story. This implies that in Christian theology we are directed not only to Scripture, but to a
rich variety of material – practices, stories, hymns, and history – as well as to confessions of
faith and theological essays.
3. Theology is rational. A part of theology’s rationality is its sense of connection and
interdependence with other disciplines. Another aspect of theology’s rationality is its control
of its own internal organization, and its grasp of the logical and contingent relations obtaining
among the sub-disciplines that make up theology in the most general sense.
4. Theology is self-involving. One’s own story may not be disconnected from the common
story.
1.4 Why ethics comes first
Systematic Christian theology is often treated in three parts in a fixed order:
a) Foundations (philosophical theology);
b) Doctrine (historical theology);
c) Ethics (moral theology).
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