Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics Paperback – November 6, 2018

Good book!

Wells' use of story-telling is gripping. His explanation of habit was the best part of this book.In my opinion, the clarity and practicality diminishes throughout the final chapters.

Samuel Wells compares his vision for Christian ethics to theatrical improvisation. Wells defines theatrical improvisation as unscripted drama done by actors schooled in their art and seasoned in their practice. Such skilled actors can approach various and unknown situations without fear, with humor and confidence. Wells calls his idea of Christian ethics a "study of how the church may become a community of trust in order that it may faithfully encounter the unknown of the future without fear." (11) His idea of improvisation for Christian ethics gives Christians "uninhibited freedom" in their lives. Christians are encouraged to do and say the obvious based on their formation in a Christian community that discerns and practices life in Christ.Wells patterns his drama of ethics not only on improvisation in the theater but on his interpretation of how God is revealed working in Jesus Christ. Wells sees God as overwhelming humanity in the incarnation. In the resurrection, God has saved humanity through what humanity has rejected. Wells calls the first action "overaccepting" and the second action "reincorporation." For Wells, these are the two most significant practices in improvisation and provide the pattern for how Christians should imitate God. He also employs terms like "blocking" and "accepting" to describe Christian posture toward the world. Improvisation is not mere spur of the moment or spontaneous behavior by Christians; rather, it is a methodical approach to Christian ethics based on Christian community and formation through regular study of Scripture, prayer and liturgical practice. Improvisation requires preparation and practice, so that in the moments of decision or action there is no ethical crisis.Wells cites three types of Christian ethics in contemporary writing: universal, subversive and ecclesial. He approaches Christian ethics as ecclesial ethics or "ethics for the church." (34) He writes, "What is needed is for the church to be restored as the primary location of theological and ethical enquiry." (41) This moves the focus for Christian ethics from the world and the individual to the worshipping community that consists of faithful saints rather than individual heroes striving against the world.A significant element in Wells' approach to ethics is the five-act play which is a revised model of Anglican Bishop Tom Wright's Christian drama. For Wells, Act One is creation, Act Two is Israel, Act Three is Jesus, Act Four is the church, and Act Five is the eschaton. Wells stresses the need for Christians to see themselves as within the five act drama and to see themselves in Act Four, the act for the church. This is after Jesus has come and before the eschaton when God restores all things. The church is not the savior of the world (Act Three) and is not responsible for making all things well (Act Five).The church's action is worship and discipleship while accepting God's grace at all times. This prepares Christians for improvisation in the world. Wells argues, "Most of the Christian life is preparation for an unknown test." (80) It is the preparation that matters. This takes place in the Christian community. He continues, "Ethics is about forming the life of the agent more than it is about judging the appropriateness of the action." (81) Wells emphasizes that the Christian life should be filled with humor and liveliness that can only arise out of improvisation based on preparation and grace.In addition to explaining the key elements to his Christian ethics, Wells provides case studies on how this method applies to real situations. These offer valuable insights to the challenge of improvisation on large and small scales. Wells interprets some of the lessons from these case studies.Wells sees his Christian ethics of improvisation as imitating the gospel story by its request, invitation, challenge and gift. He respects the authority of the Bible and the discernment of the Christian community. He returns ethics to the church and returns the church's vision to the eschatological hopes of God's kingdom. I think he gives Christians freedom to unload the burdens of having to be right and do right all of the time according to the world. He recognizes that by being only in Act Four of the Christian drama Christians can fail without destroying God's plan and purpose.His Christian ethics however lay appropriate responsibility on the church and on individual Christians. The church must practice spiritual formation, training and discipline, and individuals must commit and submit to the church. I think a potential weakness in Wells' method is that a lack of discipline or structured community can easily lead to Christians improvising ethics apart from the discernment and discipline of the church. This is a relevant danger in the free-church tradition that values individualism rather than corporate life.Craig Stephans, author of  Shakespeare On Spirituality: Life-Changing Wisdom from Shakespeare's Plays

(Review available with links, formatting, and in PDF format on[...])As the name suggests, Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics by Sam Wells seeks to cast reflection on Christian ethics in terms of drama, more specifically, improvisation. Wells' basic argument can be succinctly stated: Christian ethics is less a matter of making decisions as it is of Christians thoroughly grounding themselves in their story and practice so that their ethical decisions will flow naturally out of who they have come to be. Wells' book is neatly divided into three parts, each of which I will now try to summarize.Part OneIn Part One, Wells argues that Christian ethics is something done in and for the church, the redeemed body of God's people. He puts little stock in "universal ethics"--ethics that will shape the practices of those both inside and outside the body of Christ. Rather, he argues that Christian ethics must be theological, grounded in God's story and in the practices of the church. Thus he says, "Ethics is about forming lives of commitment, rather than informing lives without commitment" (30).Central to his understanding of the place of Christian ethics is his dramatic rendering of the Christian story. Wells suggests that the Theo-dramatic story can be divided into five acts: "Act One is creation, Act Two is Israel, Act Three is Jesus, Act Four is the church, and Act Five is the eschaton" (53). In Wells' view, this 5-act structure is important because the church lives between the accomplishment of the story (in Act Three through Jesus' life, death, and resurrection) and the final completion of the story in Act Five, meaning that she must fittingly participate in God's story as she waits for God to bring the story to a close.But how does the church conceive of her participation in the drama? Wells suggests that the church should think of her role as one of improvising upon the Christian tradition. He summarizes this conception of the church's role like this: "When improvisers are trained to work in the theater, they are schooled in a tradition so thoroughly that they learn to act from habit in ways appropriate to the circumstance. This is exactly the goal of theological ethics" (65).Wells is not suggesting that Christians should "make up" the story or do things on their own authority. Rather, he is suggesting that they be so grounded in and shaped by the practices of the church that they simply do what is "obvious...trusting that God will do what only God can do, and thus having the freedom to do what only the disciple can do" (67). Accordingly, Wells' proposal focuses on ecclesiology--who the church is and how she faithfully witnesses to the way of Jesus.Part TwoIn Part Two, Wells takes his basic thesis and suggests specific ways that the metaphor of improvisation can enrich Christian ethics. Central to his presentation is the idea that ethical decisions are not made in the moment of ethical crisis, but are instead shaped by the habits formed in the community prior to that moment. He says, "Christian ethics is more concerned with the development of good habits than with the making of good decisions" (152).Wells devotes a considerable portion of Part Two to illustrating how the practices of the church as embodied in worship should form the community into habits, particularly the habit of peacemaking (Wells clearly aligns with a pacifist viewpoint). Space prohibits a full description of Wells' suggestions in Part Two, so I'll attempt only a brief summary.Wells suggests several strategies of theatrical improvisation as metaphors for how the church should be a faithful witness. First, he suggests that the church learn how to overaccept the offers that the world presents, rather than simply accepting them or blocking them. Essentially, what Wells means is that rather than falling prey to the evils--or supposed goods--that the world presents (accepting them) or forcing our own view or path on the world (blocking the world's offers), we should creatively look for ways to take the offers/threats of the world and transform them into witnesses to God's larger story.Secondly, of central importance to this concept of "overacceptance" is questioning the givens of the world and looking instead for the gifts that God gives, so that God's people can overaccept the gifts. By givens, Wells means those things "that are simply there and the community must simply adapt to, if it is to remain in the real world" (125). By gifts, he means things that "are largely what one chooses to make of them" (125). Wells argues that much of what the church sees as given is actually gift. In fact, he argues "that the only given in God's story, the theo-drama, the church's narrative: all else is potentially gift" (125). Accordingly, many seemingly given aspects of lives--disabilities, the threat of violence, the global food crisis, and so on--can be instead viewed as gifts, as opportunities for the church to witness faithfully to the story of God in the world. Improvisation, then, is the way in which the church seeks to transform the "givens" of the world into gifts.Thirdly, Wells suggests that reincorporation is a helpful way of seeing how the church can overaccept and transform givens into gifts. He argues that the forgotten parts of the story--the poor, the downtrodden, the oppressed--can be viewed not as givens, not as accepted (though sad) parts of the story, but as gifts to be reincorporated into the body of Christ. Accordingly, a large part of the church's ethical witness is to focus on reaching out to the poor and oppressed.Part ThreeIn Part Three, Wells applies his model to more specific ethical situations. He first discusses difficult issues facing the church: human evil (particularly in the context of oppression by the state) and flawed creation (dealing with disabilities in the church). His basic argument in the case of both is that Christians should not listen to the rival stories presented in the world, but should rather form themselves in the habits of Christian practice.Specifically, he argues that rather than taking up the power of the state to block human evil, the church should learn from the Eucharist and offer themselves as sacrifices, confessing Jesus as Lord rather than the state. And rather than seeing people with disabilities as painful givens, as those who don't fully fit in the church's life currently, the church should fully incorporate them, recognizing that all of us long for the eschatological redemption of our bodies. Those with disabilities and those without them are "resident aliens" (to use the title of a book by Stanley Hauerwas). In worship, the church comes together as one to anticipate the final act of the divine drama, a drama in which the disabled participate as well.Secondly, Wells deals with offers that are promising rather than threatening. Specifically, he examines two issues: human cloning and genetically modified foods. These offers seem to present the promise of life through technological means. Yet Wells, in his focus on the practices of the church, argues that cloning and genetically modified foods present rival stories--stories that claim to be able to fix the body or solve the food crisis apart from God. Wells argues that the church practices of baptism and the Eucharist give Christians a unique answer to these promising offers. He suggests that by providing a community with an eschatological hope that celebrates the ultimate Bread from heaven, Christians can witness to the fact that we are called to trust in God for our future. Not only that, but Christians are also called to distribute the bread that we have rather than using the bread that we have to maintain power over those who are lower in society.EvaluationWhile my above summary does not do justice to the nuances of Wells' argument, hopefully it gives at least some idea of the direction that Wells takes in the field of ethics. I now turn to evaluating Wells' approach.PositivesSome might be tempted to simply dismiss Wells' book as "much ado about nothing." Why do we need the metaphor of improvisation? Why don't we just look to Scripture, see what it says, and act accordingly? I hope to highlight a few areas in which I think Christian ethics can be enriched by Wells' approach before moving on to areas of disagreement and concern. 1. Ethicists in general, and perhaps Reformed ethicists in particular, have primarily focused on the duties commanded and acts forbidden by God's Law as recorded in Scripture. As I will argue later, this is vital to any discussion of Christian ethics. However, Wells highlights for us the crucial role of imagination in Christian ethics. We live in a world complicated by the presence of sin and by the advancements of technology, both of which pose deep ethical questions. Perhaps rather than being content with pat answers, Christians should look for creative ways to point to the Way, the Truth, and the Life in these situations. Wells' metaphor of improvisation is one possible way to stimulate the imagination to that end. 2. One important component of Wells' thesis is that ethical agents (i.e., Christians) are indivisible from the study of ethics. As I quoted earlier, Wells says, "Ethics is about forming lives of commitment, rather than informing lives without commitment" (30). He repeatedly emphasizes that ethics is about what kind of people we are rather than just what decisions we make. This emphasis is helpful, in my estimation. As I will mention later, Scripture is our ultimate foundation for ethical decisions (and ethical habits and formation). But that should not be divorced from the fact that ethical decisions are made by ethical agents in the context of a particular ethical situation. 3. Wells argues that the practices of the church constitute the primary way that Christians should form the habits of ethical living. Specifically, he highlights worship and the sacraments. This insight is one worthy of reflection. If indeed the sacraments are "means of grace" (see the Westminster Confession of Faith, XXVII), then perhaps Reformed theologians in particular should consider how the sacraments form the character of God's people. While discussions of worship are lacking in many expositions of ethics, the Reformed tradition has typically emphasized worship because of its focus on the Ten Commandments (see the Westminster Larger Catechism, Qs 98-148). John Frame, in his massive volume The Doctrine of the Christian Life, has also spent considerable time discussing worship in the context of ethics (see Chapters 25 and 26). Thus it seems that worship as a central locus for the ethical shaping of Christians fits naturally in the Reformed tradition. What the Reformed can likely explore in more depth, however, is how the very practice of worship shapes the people of God into people who will act out of habit in the drama of redemption.Negatives/Questions/Causes for ConcernAs I have just outlined, I do think that Wells' thesis deserves consideration. However, before the positives that I have just mentioned can be put into practice, I believe several areas of concern need to be addressed. 1. Wells repeatedly emphasizes the practices of the church as formative for Christian character and habit. However, the only practices that he mentions are worship, baptism, and the Eucharist. A natural question arises at this point: has not God given us more to shape us than these three aspects of Christian experience (recognizing of course that many things are subsumed under worship)? This leads directly to the next question: 2. Is not one of the practices that is to shape the Christian community what Kevin Vanhoozer dubs the "practice of sola Scriptura" (The Drama of Doctrine, 231-242)? In other words, Wells seems to fail to accord Scripture a central role in the shaping of the Christian community. He does briefly (in pages 60-66) address the role of Scripture, including a mention of Vanhoozer's work in this area, but his primary concern seems to be to dismiss the concept of the "performance of Scripture" as descriptive of the church's role in the theo-drama. Indeed, in the final analysis, Wells "sees the key location of theology as being in the practices of the church. This is only secondarily about a sacred text, sequence of events, or set of doctrines; it is primarily about the formation, development, and renewal of a sacred people" (37). I believe that this is where the weakness of the book truly lies. By not ascribing to Scripture its proper place, Wells evaporates the very ground of Christian practices: the sufficiency of Scripture. This leads to a third point: 3. Which practices should form Christian habits? Indeed, what meaning should one give to ecclesial practices (such as worship and the sacraments)? By not giving Scripture it's rightful place in Christian practice, Wells deprives the church of the ability to claim divine warrant for her practice and of the ability to understand more fully how its practices should shape the life of the church. 4. Lastly, somewhat different than the first three concerns, it seems that Wells' approach to the question of "universal ethics" is not sufficiently nuanced. He argues that ethics is not done in a vacuum, that ethics is done by people who have been formed in the way of Jesus. That is a point well taken. However, does that then mean that the ethics as presented in God's revelation to us are not authoritative for all? That question is seemingly ignored in Improvisation and needs to be addressed in order to make the thesis more substantive.

The first part is a little slow reading but gets better later

Excellent

最新のキリスト教倫理の理論を手にすることができました。感謝。

A most interesting book.