THIS book comes with high recommendations from Rowan Williams, Jeremy Morris, and the veteran US Episcopalian ethicist Timothy Sedgwick (no relation). It joins Dr Peter Sedgwick’s previous book for Brill, The Origins of Anglican Moral Theology (2018), which I praised for its “hard-working, careful scholarship” (Books, 8 February 2019). This focused on Tudor and Caroline Anglican theologians, especially William Perkins, Richard Hooker. and Jeremy Taylor.

Sedgwick’s new book starts with Locke and Butler and concludes with Temple and Kirk. Taught originally by Quentin Skinner at Cambridge and Stephen Sykes at Durham, he is exceptionally well suited to undertake this mammoth task, after his retirement as Principal of St Michael’s College, Llandaff.

The first part of this new book covers the period 1680-1830, with extensive discussions of Joseph Butler’s Rolls sermons, William Law, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, together with shorter accounts of John Locke, William Paley, and the Wesley brothers. He particularly highlights the significance for the Anglican “exemplary tradition of moral theology” of Butler and (more surprisingly) of the erratic Coleridge, whom he depicts as “one of the most seminal thinkers in Anglican thought”. A sub-theme of this part of the book, following the revisionist work of the late Patrick Collinson, is that the 18th century was not as moribund for the Church of England as has often been claimed.

The second part starts with John Henry Newman’s Anglican writings, before his reception into the Roman Catholic Church in 1845, continues with a well-nuanced chapter on F. D. Maurice (in which Sedgwick dissents from Stephen Sykes’s dismissal of Maurice), followed by a chapter on the Lux Mundi School and, especially, Charles Gore, then another fine chapter on William Temple, and a final chapter on Kenneth Kirk.

Once again, it is the “exemplary tradition” (which takes Jesus as the supreme exemplar within a sacramental, ecclesial context) that he regards as most significant for Anglicanism, evident here particularly in the writings of Maurice and (surprisingly once more) Newman. He also, rightly, identifies Temple as “in a class of his own, because in the last ten years of his life he became seen as an international figure who could provide moral leadership to fashion a new path for Western democracy”.

In both books, Sedgwick displays a huge capacity for summarising a formidable range of scholarship. Multiple experts on, say, Hooker, Coleridge, Wesley, Newman, Maurice, and Temple will, no doubt, find fault with some of his details. That is inevitable, as he recognises at certain points, but his sheer courage and industry is itself “exemplary”. It is a great gift to Anglicans worldwide.

Nevertheless, an obvious problem remains. In his first book, he identified three features that shape “Anglican moral theology”: that it links rationality and spirituality; that it has plural sources of authority; and that it links rationality and the Holy Spirit. But, in his new book, he identifies the following four: that it adheres to an exemplary tradition; that it is both pastorally and morally rigorous; that it is an ecclesial ethic; and that it has a robust dialogue with contemporary philosophy.

Not only are these features (without explanation) somewhat different, but it is also difficult to see why they are distinctively Anglican. Presbyterian or Methodist ethicists, for example, might be just as happy to own them. So might some of the superb Roman Catholic ethicists at Boston College.

Even his insistence on identifying the discipline as “moral theology” rather than using the internationally recognised term “Christian ethics” is contentious and, perhaps even, antique — after all, it lay dormant at Oxford for many years in the 20th century and was seldom used in any other British university, even Cambridge.

None of these criticisms detracts from my overall admiration of these two books. They are a mighty achievement and well worth reading and even buying.

Canon Robin Gill is Emeritus Professor of Applied Theology at the University of Kent and Editor of Theology.

The Development of Anglican Moral Theology, 1680-1950
Peter H. Sedgwick
Brill £69.05
(978-90-04-68808-7)