Recently several important projects have emerged challenging the myth of secular reason that there is an autonomous realm of 'ethics' (eg Charles Taylor, Milbank, Oliver O'Donovan), seeking to show the constitutive moral and theological threads incorporated into the 'mainstream' narrative(s) of modernity, and so illuminating the theological forgetfulness of the secular mind. While these projects have a host of favourable outcomes, not the least of which is a new and confident engagement with modernity on Christian terms, before one becomes too enamoured of such projects, much more needs to be done biblically and theologically to show why Christian faith has a moral discourse that philosophers and social theorists etc ought to consider. Here (along with the obvious benefit such disciplined thinking can have in local churches) Richard Hays' impressive new work in NT ethics can help us.
Hays' own project is concerned principally with the Christian community and its ability to live "under the Word", to hear Scripture speaking to us today. Such an aim is only controversial depending upon where one stands in the NT Studies guild. If one adopts the approach of Jack T. Sanders, for example, any appeals to the NT can only founder due to historical distance, alien contexts and questions - and can even be downright immoral! Otherwise, Hays can be seen to be engaging in a classical and necessary Christian practice, joining the many volumes written in Christian ethics, and complementing the experience and activity of Christians and their communities worldwide.
In my 'evangelical' circles where the Bible is said to be "taken seriously", the 'Constantinian' mindset is sadly dominant (and there are too many superficial treatments mixed with the good). Hays' approach shares the same (or greater) biblical 'seriousness' but is radically *ecclesiocentric* like the NT - something that is possibly clearer to a NT professor than a professional 'ethicist' or systematic theologian. Alongside the work of James McClendon, Hays' book stands as a detailed, systematic challenge to a prevalent way that Christians--including my fellow evangelicals--'do ethics'.
Hays sees Christian ethics as consisting of four interrelated, interpenetrating tasks (distinguishable for "heuristic purposes") - descriptive, synthetic, hermeneutical and pragmatic. The descriptive task is primarily exegetical, dealing with the texts without an immediate concern for harmonising, seeking the specific concerns and interests of each literary unit. He says: "Our descriptive work cannot be confined, however, to the explicit moral teachings of the NT texts; the church's moral world is manifest not only in didache but also in the stories, symbols, social structures, and practices that shape the community's ethos."
Hays highlights that NT moral exhortations must be seen in connection with their theological warrants (and not as freestanding 'ethics' or 'values' desired by analytic philosophers).
From these diverse materials, Hays moves (beyond Meeks) to the synthetic task. This broad harmony is not sought in some `ethical theme' such as `love' (which, once again, is more akin to the modern disjunction of fact and value, or, theologically, doctrine and ethics, than to the NT traditions); nor is a theological theme such as 'creation', 'eschaton' or 'covenant' considered suitable. This is due to Hays' (more than formal) appreciation of narrative; that the various traditions tell and re-tell the same basic story with different focuses on themes and events. Hays finds a continuity across the NT in three main themes; shorthand descriptions of vital elements of God's redemptive drama, not abstract ideas.
COMMUNITY: "The church is a countercultural community of discipleship, and this community is the primary addressee of God's imperatives."
CROSS: "Jesus death on a cross is the paradigm for faithfulness to God in this world."
NEW CREATION: "The church embodies the power of the resurrection in the midst of a not-yet-redeemed world."
Within these themes there are many tensions not `resolved' through some false harmonisation or balancing out. The diversity of the materials is respected while a strong narrative-thematic unity is maintained.
The hermeneutical task asks the familiar question: How do we use the NT in Christian ethics? He surveys five ethicists - Barth, Reinhold Niebuhr, Yoder, Hauerwas, and Elizabeth Shussler Fiorenza - summarising and analysing them through his four-fold description of the ethical task. Barth is criticised, for example, for his over-stress on God's commands that leads to an extraordinary statement seemingly denying the role of hermeneutics - apparently, an overworked Reformation theme damaging some old-fashioned common sense! Yoder is praised for exegetical sensitivity especially in his treatment of Romans 13 but is considered overreaching the mark in his "revolutionary subordination" interpretation of the household codes. An interesting comparison is also made between Yoder and Hauerwas on the relative priority of Scripture and/or community.
Hays' "... central point is this: the use of the NT in normative ethics requires an integrative act of the imagination, a discernment about how our lives, despite their historical dissimilarity to the lives narrated in the NT, might fitly answer to that narration and participate in the truth that it tells... [Whenever] we appeal to the authority of the NT, we are necessarily engaged in metaphor-making, placing our community's life imaginatively in the world articulated by the texts."
The pragmatic task is an exercise in discerning the NT moral vision in relation to five issues: Violence in Defence of Justice, Homosexuality, Divorce and Remarriage, Anti-Judaism, and Abortion. The choice of these is interesting as they range from explicit issues of Scripture, an issue that stems from Scripture itself (anti-Judaism) to those barely or not touched on. Although they may be marked as `positions' that Hays takes, the purpose of the exercise is to follow through the methodology. Any disagreement with Hays must follow through as carefully as he has done and he has set a high standard even if they are not the final word but that of one particularly skillful and persuasive voice in an ongoing conversation.
It is refreshing to read such a book which, while attentive to theoretical issues, is focused on the concrete and which is itself a concrete exemplification of Alasdair MacIntyre's description of a healthy moral tradition. The riches available in such a text and the community from which it arises would be, so you'd think, an attractive reality to explore in an age of ethical crises for those working in philosophical ethics and political theory, and not only in theology.
