Four Uses of Scripture for Christian Ethics

 

Introduction:

 By way of introduction, several scholars’ attempts to explain levels for the use of Scripture in Christian ethics will be presented.  Then, in order to illustrate my own four uses of Scripture for Christian ethics, the recent issue of homosexuality and the Bible will be used.  The conclusion of this essay will be the proposal of a grid or table to use for moral enquiry in general and, particularly, the use of Scripture for Christian ethics.

 Four Levels for Engaging Scripture:

 If one allows that there is a meaning apart from the reader's response to a text,[1] then there are four ways in which the Bible contributes to moral discourse.  Each requires the attention of Christians in their use of Scripture.  The Bible, then, may be used--

 (1)   to specify action; 

(2)   to warrant moral choices, actions, and dispositions;

(3)   to witness to the moral life of God's people;

(4)   to symbolise the world which we inhabit.

 For example, when Scripture is used to specify action, one might appeal to imperatives or commands (e.g., 1 Cor. 7), sin lists (e.g., Rom. 1.29-31), rules (which are often culturally conditioned, e.g., Lev. 18), norms (which have to do with the typical behaviour of a group, e.g., 1 Cor. 11.16), absolutes (which are meant to be above cultural expression, such as the Ten Commandments in Ex. 20.1ff), and practices (which define expected actions which may be exemplary or cultural, as in Mt. 5.21ff).

When Scripture is used to produce warrants for deliberation about actions, one finds some basis on which to develop thought further or to define certain behaviour or actions as good.  Here we find the language of principles, values, and virtues.  'Love' can be expressed as a principle ("In everything do to others as you would have them do to you…", Mt. 7.12), as a value ('Love God, and love your neighbour as yourself', Mt. 22.37-40), or as a virtue ('"The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness …', Ex. 34.6).[2]

Scripture used as a witness to the moral life of God's people entails identifying the traditions (e.g., baptism in Col. 1.11-14, the Lord's Supper in 1 Cor. 11.17ff, creedal statements, as in Phl. 2.5-11), narratives (the Exodus, as in 1 Cor. 10.1-11, the Gospel Story, as in 2 Cor. 8.9), models or historical paradigms (e.g., covenants, the early Jerusalem Church in Acts 4.32-37, the Jubilee Year practice in Lev. 25 and Dt. 15, the Kingdom of God in the Synoptic Gospels, the life of Jesus, as in 2 Cor. 10.1 or 1 Pt. 2.21-24, Paul, as in 1 Cor. 9 and 10.33-11.1), or character (e.g., the example of a specific Christian community, cf. 1 Th. 1.6-8) of God's people.

Finally, when Scripture is used to symbolise the world that Christians inhabit, appeal is made to the Bible's moral vision, the key symbols (e.g., the Exodus, Mt. Sinai, the cross), focal images or lenses (e.g., cross, church), metanarrative (such as salvation history or the Gospel Story), basic beliefs or centres of theology (e.g., justification by faith), essential practices (e.g., baptism), or the fundamental identity of God, humanity and the church.  The attempt at this level is the opposite of Rudolf Bultmann's demythologising of Scripture; instead, the goal is to describe and inhabit a Biblical worldview.[3]

Thus, my proposal for a method of moral enquiry and the use of the Bible in Christian ethics involves looking for ways to specify, warrant, witness, and clarify a worldview.  By stating the matter in this way, I have tried to establish that there is room for debate among those who choose a particular emphasis in their ethics.  This offers a way to dialogue about ethics—the method does not determine the results.  More is required to determine a particular ethic, such as a Christian ethic based on the authority of God’s Word.

For example, someone vying for a more narratival than propositional approach to the use of Scripture will produce a very different description of the symbolic world level, and someone working out ethics in terms of values will potentially produce a very different ethic from someone emphasising virtues.  (There are, it must be said, also scholars who disparage any use of Scripture for moral discourse.[4])  Moreover, these levels do not represent a move from the concrete to the abstract, and I would contend that each level involves a discussion on what is culturally relative and what is transculturally normative.  The tendency among many contemporary ethicists to dismiss the specifying level as the level which leaves too little room for maneuvering in a multi-cultural and diverse world fails to appreciate that the issues of cultural vs. transcultural, contextual vs. absolute, concrete vs. abstract are issues that arise at each level, not only the first level.

Various ways to think about different levels of moral discourse can be found in literature on Christian ethics.[5]  In addition to the approach described above, some other proposals should be noted before proceeding.  Proposals from the following scholars will be briefly represented below: James Gustafson, Richard Hays, Glen Stassen and David Gushee, and Paul Jersild.

James Gustafson’s Four Uses of Scripture

James Gustafson stands at the head of a scholarly discussion since 1970 of four uses of Scripture for Christian ethics. [6]  He speaks of a theological and moral use of Scripture and proposes four models for the moral use of Scripture.  After listing his levels, I will offer some possible ways to construe these with my own examples.

1. Theological Use of Scripture for Christian Ethics: we learn who God is from Scripture, and this guides our response to him.  Scripture is used to show us our 'responsibilities' in life.

My examples: God is gracious towards us, and we obey him out of gratitude; according to William Spohn, James Gustafson identifies the following 'affections' as typically Christian affections: a sense of radical dependence, of gratitude, repentance, obligation, possibility and direction.[7]

2. Moral Use of Scripture for Christian Ethics: we learn about Christian morality from Scripture and accept this Scriptural morality as authoritative.

a. Moral Law Model: Scripture reveals a moral law, certain rules or principles which need to be obeyed.  Scripture is used deontologically in ethics.

Note that Gustafson places rules and principles at the same level.  One might appreciate this by noting that rules state exactly what to do in a specific situation or in every situation, whereas principles state exactly how to think about what to do in general.  Nonetheless, I suggest separating rules and principles.

My examples for rules: The 10 Commandments, the antitheses, Paul's sin lists

My examples for principles: 'Only, let every one lead the life which the Lord has assigned to him, and in which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches (1 Cor. 7.17); "All things are lawful," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful," but not all things build up (1 Cor. 10.23)

b. Moral Ideal Model: Scripture presents us with moral ideals that become goals for us to strive for.  Scripture is used teleologically for ethics at this level. 

Note Gustafson’s attempt to distinguish principles from ideals.  Principles overlap with ideals in being general guidelines that provide clarity for moral deliberation.  Ideals emphasize the goal of the moral life, whereas principles have more to do with moral deliberation as one considers action in a specific situation.

My examples for ideals: 'Be holy as I am holy,' 'Be perfect as I am perfect,' 'Love your neighbour as yourself,' 'Do to others as you would have them do to you,' 'Forgive as God has forgiven you.'

c. Analogical Model: Scripture offers analogies or precedents for us to consider as we face moral issues in the present.  Scripture is used as a source of analogies in ethics, with the understanding that these are authoritative.

My examples of moral precedents (that function analogically): (1) holding up certain people as examples to follow, such as in 1 Cor. 11.1: 'Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ'; Phl. 2.5-11: 'Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus....'; (2) using stories to guide behaviour, such as using (a) parables to teach ethics (The Lost Sheep in Mt. 18.12-14 and the Two Debtors in Mt. 18.23-35 to encourage forgiveness), (b) authoritative stories from the Scriptures (David's behaviour when he was hungry and the priests' activity on the Sabbath guiding Jesus' and his disciples' behaviour on the Sabbath, Mt. 12.3-8).

d. Great Variety Model: Scripture witnesses to a great variety of values and norms in a great variety of genres, which helps us today in making moral decisions but does not specifically dictate a certain course of action.  Scripture is used as a source of analogies in ethics, but only suggestively.

In this last model, Gustafson reveals his understanding of Scripture and its authority.  Scripture does not, for him, have an ethic; it is a canonical container for different ethical views over time.  This allows interpreters to pick and choose from within the Scriptures, and the importance of the community interpreting or using the Scriptures becomes dominant rather than the Scripture being definitive for the community.  While a rejection of orthodox Christian teaching and the use of Scripture, Gustafson’s approach to Scripture and ethics dominated Western scholarship and mainline denominations until the recent great schisms.

Allen Verhey’s The Great Reversal

Allen Verhey has devoted considerable attention to the uses of Scripture at different levels.  He works with three levels in mind:[8]

1.     The Moral-Rule Level

2.     The Ethical-Principal Level

3.     The Post-Ethical Level (answering the question, 'Why be moral?')

 Verhey concludes this book with four methodological points for the use of Scripture in Christian ethics:[9]

1.     ‘Only if the use of a Scripture passage is coherent with its intention is that use in moral argument authorized.’

2.     ‘The use of Scripture in moral argument a) is not authorized with respect to claims concerning an autonomous, impartial, and universal ethic; b) is authorized with respect to claims concerning Christian moral identity and its perspective, dispositions, intentions, and principles at the ethical-principle and post-ethical levels of moral argument, and c) is not authorized with respect to claims at the moral-rule level of moral argument.’

3.     ‘If and only if the use of Scripture is coherent with the message that God has already made his eschatological power and purpose felt in raising Jesus from the dead, is it authorized.’

4.     ‘Only if the moral claim is consistent with justice is the movement from Scripture to moral claim authorized.’

 Richard Hays’ Moral Vision of the New Testament

 The listing of levels of moral discourse in this essay comports most closely to that offered by Richard Hays in The Moral Vision of the New Testament.  His rendering of the modes of appeal to Scripture is as follows:[10]

·       Rules: direct commandments or prohibitions of specific behaviors.

·       Principles: general frameworks of moral consideration by which particular decisions about action are to be governed.

·       Paradigms: stories or summary accounts of characters who model exemplary conduct (or negative paradigms: characters who model reprehensible conduct).

·       A symbolic world that creates the perceptual categories through which we interpret reality.

 Hays takes a rather dim view of the use of Scripture at the rules and principles levels, preferring his third and fourth levels for working out Christian ethics.  This means that the use of Scripture is more to do with metaphor, analogy, and witness, and interpreters have the task of 'metaphorical mappings of the biblical stories onto our lives.'[11]   On the positive side, such metaphorical mapping permits an immediate transfer of the Biblical message in its context to its relevance for us today.  Hays writes, 'whenever we appeal to the authority of the New Testament, we are necessarily engaged in metaphor-making, placing our community's life imaginatively within the world articulated by the texts.'[12]

 Hays also speaks of the church as an 'embodied metaphor' in the sense in which Paul wrote to the Corinthian church that they are a letter from Christ (2 Cor. 3.3): 'the transformed community reflects the glory of God and thus illuminates the meaning of the text [of the New Testament].'[13]  In words not too far from Hays' description, the Scripture's use is best placed at the witnessing level for the church, and the church in its turn is best understood as a witness to the text, and both Scripture and church witness to the glory of God.

Paul Jersild’s Spirit Ethics

 Paul Jersild describes the four types of ethical content in Scripture as follows:[14]

1.     Law or commandments, embodied in codes or related hortatory material.

2.     Paradigms or models of conduct, found in narrative material.

3.     Principles or ideals, expressed primarily in a variety of teaching material.

4.     Exhortations and imperatives, based on theological affirmations concerning the gospel of Jesus Christ.

 Glenn Stassen and David Gushee

Glenn Stassen and David Gushee also propose four levels of moral norms in Christian ethics:[15]

1.     The particular/immediate judgment level

2.     The rules level

3.     The principles level

4.     The basic conviction level

According to Stassen and Gushee, this fourth level involves the theological ground for Christian ethics and is approached differently by two groups of scholars: the contextualists (H. Richard Niebuhr, Paul Lehmann, James Gustafson) and the narrative ethicists (James McClendon, Stanley Hauerwas, Darrell Fasching, Katie Cannon).[16]  Stassen and Gushee also place their emphasis on this fourth level, but, somewhat out of step with other ethicists but arguing the position I too hold, they insist that the Bible and ethics work with all four levels of moral discourse:

…we want our rules and principles to be clearly embodied in narratives, church practices and faith-community understandings.  Rules and principles are not suspended in midair; they get their meaning and have their context in the realistic, embodied, Hebraic narrative of both Testaments, and in their analogous function in a realistic, embodied way of living in our social context ….  The main point of our analysis is to correct the tendency of legalists and situationists to ignore the historically embodied narrative way of life of the people of God in both Testaments, and to correct the tendency of contextualists and narrativists to rebel against rules and principles.[17]

My Proposal: Four Levels and Three Types of Ethics

My own proposal is to develop ethical arguments by attending to both the levels of the use of Scripture and three types of ethical arguments.  First, my description of levels of the use of Scripture bears similarities to others that have been reviewed.  It also emphasizes that all four levels work together.  The great error of Liberalism was to prefer the abstract and general and disparage the concrete and particular.  Another of its errors was to reduce ethical considerations to deliberations about the application of a single principle, such as ‘Do the greatest good to the greatest number of people’ (Utilitarianism).[18]  General principles sit above the concrete teaching, even moral laws, of the Bible.  Deliberation about their applicability also places the present interpreter in an authoritative position above any duty to obey authoritative Scripture.

Scripture’s moral authority is expressed at four levels and through the interaction of one level with another.  So, for example, Scripture may provide a warrant for us to seek justice, but only by paying attention to the other levels of Scripture will we understand what ‘justice’ means.  What we find at the specifying level should cohere with what we find at the warranting, witnessing, and worldview levels. 

I also suggest that we should note whatever relationship there is between three types of ethical emphases in Scripture: character, action, and outcomes.  At times, we are drawn to an understanding of character, as in Micah 6.8:

He has told you, O man, what is good;

                        and what does the LORD require of you

             but to do justice, and to love kindness,

                        and to walk humbly with your God?

This text identifies three warrants at a generalizing level in ethics: by ‘justice’, ‘kindness’, and ‘walk humbly with your God’.  To understand what these mean, we need to go to other texts at other levels of the use of Scripture and to see how character, actions, and outcomes are related.  A liberalizing tendency would be to use Micah 6.8 to simplify Biblical ethics and open up the meaning of these general points.  Biblical authors do not treat Scripture this way, however, and nor should we.  When Jesus summarises the Law in terms of love (Matthew 22.37-40), He does not say that love replaces the two Old Testament laws to love God and to love one’s neighbour as oneself but that the laws hang on these two commandments of love.  The warranting level works together with the specifying level to understand what love entails.  The witnessing and worldview levels fill out further what this means.  Thus, we know what love is because God Himself has loved us.  The same might be said for ‘justice’ and ‘kindness’.

Scripture addresses many ethical subjects directly.  By expanding the texts that are explicit to consider other levels of the use of Scripture, we can strengthen the case or our understanding of the ethical matter.  We might, on the other hand, discover that there are limitations to the application of a rule to certain circumstances.

The following table is meant as a suggestion for an approach to the use of Scripture for moral enquiry.  Not every category will necessarily apply to every ethical topic, and the table is not to be used as a straight-jacket for moral arguments.  What it might do is suggest areas to explore in moral arguments, including about subjects that Scripture does not even directly address at the specifying level.  The right way to use this table would be to see how it might suggest areas to consider in consideration of moral issues, whether directly addressed in Scripture or not.

The Use of Scripture for Christian Ethics

Use of Scripture and Type of Reasoning	Character Ethics	Deontological/ Duty Ethics	Teleological/ Consequential Ethics
Specifying/ Obedience	Scripture’s direct teaching is used to identify concrete ethics that stress …
	Practices, habits, roles, social mores, folkways	Rules, Laws, Norms	Outcomes (Rewards, Punishments)
Warranting/ Deductive Reasoning	Generalizations or abstractions—warrants for how to live the moral life—are deduced from the 1st, 3rd, or 4th uses of Scripture and then reapplied (deductive reasoning) to new situations
	Virtues	Duties, Obligations, Principles	Values, Intentions, Goals
Witnessing/ Analogical Reasoning	Examples, Parables, Specific Stories (e.g., of heroic figures like Joseph, Daniel, Peter, Paul), Narratives (e.g., Creation, Israel, Kingdom of God), Enacted Narratives (e.g., Festivals), Paradigms (e.g., Jubilee, Jerusalem Church) that offer a vision of the Moral Community
	that stress moral character, community, heroes and villains, roles	that stress practices, heroic examples	that stress performances, the good life
Describing God/Our World/ Ourselves Perspectival Reasoning	Scripture as a whole (OT and NT) provides a Biblical world view, although there is some diversity therein.  A worldview is comprised of: (1) the answers to the major questions of life of a particular people; (2) meaningful symbols for that people; (3) the determinative narratives of that people; (4) the practices and customs of that people.  A people’s worldview provides them a meaningful perspective with ethical significance, focusing on …
	the relationship between God, His people, and the world (stressing character, narrative, and community)	God’s law and the creation order (stressing natural law, duty, roles, etc.)	God’s purposes for His people and the world (stressing creation and eschatology)

*Casuistry involves the application of general laws to particular cases.

Conclusion: Homosexuality and the Use of the Bible

In conclusion, I will offer an example in the table, below, of the appropriate use of the Bible for moral enquiry in regard to the issue of homosexuality.  This is not meant to be exhaustive but to show how considering levels of the use of Scripture and types of ethics may help us in such a study.  The purpose of the proposed method is to help us describe the content of Scripture fully on a given ethical issue, not to impose some external theory on Scripture that would serve as a filter.

Table: Homosexuality and the Use of Scripture

	Character	Actions	Outcomes/Goals
Concrete Ethics	Gal. 6.1 (community: spiritual restore the sinner) 1 Th. 4.3-7 (abstain from fornication, control your own body, no lustful passions) 2 Cor. 6.14-7.1 (separation from every defilement making holiness perfect in fear of God) Rom. 12.1-2 (bodies living sacrifices, do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by renewing of your mind) Eph. 4.19 (loss of sensitivity and abandoned to licentiousness) Eph. 4.22 (taught to put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by lusts) Eph. 5.3 (fornication and impurity not even mentioned) Eph. 5.7 (do not associate with fornicators and impure persons) 2 Pt. 3.14 (without spot or blemish) 2 Pt. 3.17-18 (don’t be carried away with the error of lawlessness and lose your stability but grow in grace and knowledge of the Lord)	Specific Texts: Lev. 18.22 (homosexuals); Lev. 20.13 (homosexuals); Rom. 1.26-27 (lesbians, homosexuals); 1 Cor. 6.9 (homosexuals); 1 Tim. 1.10 (homosexuals)	Punishments: Rom. 1.27 (in their own persons the due penalty of their error), 28 (debased mind), 32 (deserve to die); 1 Cor. 6.10 (will not inherit the kingdom of God); Jude 7 (eternal fire); Eph. 5.5 (fornicators and impure persons will not inherit kingdom of Christ and of God) Church discipline: Mt. 18; 1 Cor. 5
Warrants Virtues: 1 Th. 4.3-7 (sanctification, holiness and honor) Rom. 13.13-14 (live honorably, not in reveling and drunkenness, debauchery, licentiousness…; put on the Lord Jesus Christ, making no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires) Conscience: by rejecting conscience, some have made shipwreck of their faith (1 Tim. 1.19)	Obedience: Procreation Mandate: Gen. 1.28 (be fruitful and multiply); Righteousness: Rom. 6.16-23 (slaves to sin or obedience, righteousness for sanctification)   Definition of Marriage:	One Flesh (Gen. 1.24; Mk. 10.6; 1 Cor. 6.16; Eph. 5.28, 29, 31)   General Moral Terms (e.g., debauchery, fornication) Values: Celibacy (E.g., Mt. 19.10-12; 1 Cor. 7)	Marriage (E.g., 1 Cor. 7) Biological Genders (E.g., Deut. 22.5; 1 Cor. 11.2-16) Virginity (OT Laws on sex and marriage; NT teaching on sexuality) The problem with freedom as a moral value: people are enslaved to the ‘corruption of sinful desire,’ what masters them—2 Pt. 1.4; 2.19-20; Rom. 6.16-23
Witness	Narratives: Gen. 19; Jude 7; 2 Pt. 2.6-8 (Sodom); Jdg 19 (Gibeah)	Examples of Actions: Jude 7 (example of Sodom and Gomorrah) Household Codes (e.g., husband and wife in Eph. 5.22-33) ‘Heroic’ Examples of celibacy (Jesus, Paul)	Examples of repentance and forgiveness (David, Ps. 51; John the Baptist; Jesus died because of/for our sins)
World View	Story of Creation: Gen. 1.27 (created male and female) Gen. 2.23-24 (Creation: woman taken from man, so man clings to the woman)   The Human Condition (the Fall): Gen. 3; Ps. 51.5; Isaiah 59.1-15; Rom. 1.18-3.20, 23; etc.   Desire: James 1.14-15 (temptation—lured and enticed by desire—sin—death) Desire/10th Commandment (Gal. 5.6, 17, 24; Rom. 1.24; 6.12; 7.7f; Eph. 2.3; 4.22; Col. 3.5; 1 Th. 4.5; 2 Tim. 2.22; 3.6; 4.3; Titus 2.12; 3.3)	Natural Law: Gen. 2.24 (one flesh)	2 Th. 2 (man of lawlessness) 2 Pt. 3.3 (in last days, scoffers indulging their lusts will come); 3.9 (God’s patience); 3.10-12 (2nd coming, judgement); 3.13 (a new heavens and new earth ‘where righteousness is at home’)

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[1] In what follows, Biblical narratives will often be in view.  This literary emphasis raises the question where meaning is to be found--in the author's intention and context, in the text itself, or in the reader's response to the text.  No small segment of literary critics today emphatically state that meaning is a product of the reader's response.  As Stanley Fish avers, 'The reader's response is not to the meaning; it is the meaning' (Is There a Text in This Class?  The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 10).

[2] Of course, the language of 'virtue' is not typical of the Bible, as it is of Greek moral philosophy (cf. Aristotle, Nicomachian Ethics).  Paul might object to the human derivation of the notion of virtue, a characteristic obtained through habitual performance rather than God's gifting.  Paul prefers to speak of 'fruit of the Spirit' in Gal. 5.22f, where 'love' leads the list.

[3] N. T. Wright's approach to Biblical Theology involves constructing a worldview.  To do so, attention must be paid to the practices, answers to the big questions, narratives, and symbols of the community.  See The New Testament and the People of God (London: SPCK, 1992), pp. 121ff.  Wright also suggests that the narrative features (characterisation, plot, etc.) provide the authority for the various (though not endless) possible extensions of the narrative into the contemporary church.  The narratives Wright has in mind are Creation, the Fall, Israel, Jesus, and the Church (p. 141).

[4] Paul Jersild mentions several such scholars in his Spirit Ethics: Scripture and the Moral Life (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), including: Jack T. Sanders (Ethics in the New Testament: Change and Development (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), for whom the New Testament tradition is diverse and culture-bound, leaving us to pursue our own understanding of what is humane and right (p. 130); Wayne Meeks (The Origins of Christian Morality: The First Two Centuries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), for whom the New Testament is the collection of early Christian attempts at ethics (p. 216); and Robin Scroggs ('The Bible as Foundational Document,' Interpretation 49.1 (Jan., 1995)), for whom the Bible is only used to confirm our contemporary perspectives or relegated to the past if it does not (p. 19).  The references are from P. Jersild, pp. 73-78.  Jersild himself prefers Luke T. Johnson's distinction of three authoritative functions when considering the role of the New Testament in ethics.  First, there is the New Testament as 'Author', creating or renewing a community's moral identity by centring it on Jesus Christ and the Spirit.  Second, the New Testament might function as 'Authorizer' when it offers examples for contemporary readers, facing new experiences, are guided by the Spirit in moral discourse.  Scripture functions as a witness to contemporary communities.  Third, the New Testament may function as Auctoritates, which has to do with the specific judgements of the New Testament authors functioning as alternative proposals on a given matter.  Cf. Luke T. Johnson, Scripture and Discernment: Decision Making in the Church (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), pp. 40-44.

[5] There is a quite different approach, yet with some overlap, in Thomas Ogletree's phenomenological approach to the use of the Bible in Christian ethics.  He too has four approaches, which are also evident in Scripture itself: deontological, consequentialist, perfectionist, and historical contextualist approaches.  Cf. The Use of the Bible in Christian Ethics (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983).

[6] James Gustafson, ‘The Place of Scripture in Christian Ethics: A Methodological Study,’ Interpretation 24 (1970), pp. 430-55, reprinted in his Theology and Christian Ethics (Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1974).

[7] William Spohn, What Are They Saying About Christian Ethics? (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1984), p. 117.

[8] Allen Verhey, The Great Reversal: Ethics and the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984), pp. 187-196.

[9] Ibid., p. 196.

[10] Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1996), pp. 208f.  Hays offers as examples of the fourth mode of appeal to Scripture the New Testament's 'representations of the human condition and its depictions of the character of God'.  A simple but important point to note is also made by Hays: 'Each of these modes of discourse may be found within Scripture as well as in secondary theological reflection about Scripture's ethical import' (p. 209).

[11] Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, p. 302.

[12] Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, pp. 298f.  He sees this, incidentally, as the way to avoid trying to distinguish transcultural from cultural truth in Scripture.  Everything is culturally conditioned in the text (pp. 299f).  I have elsewhere argued that this is a worthwhile project, not to be dismissed so lightly.  In this essay, the point is also taken up by Stassen and Gushee (below).

[13] Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, p. 304.

[14] Paul Jersild, Spirit Ethics, pp. 65f.  The similarity of his first and fourth types of ethics should be noted, since they actually are the same use of Scripture.  They differ in the object they have in mind: his fourth type is based on the Gospel narrative of Jesus Christ.

[15] Glenn Stassen and David Gushee, Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), pp. 100-118.

[16] Stassen and Gushee, Kingdom Ethics, pp. 113ff.

[17] Stassen and Gushee, Kingdom Ethics, pp. 117, 118.

[18] Given Western culture’s reductive approach to ethics since the 17^th century, this sort of exercise in Christian ethics is very important.  Ethicists from the Enlightenment onwards have attempted to balance the entire weight of ethics on a single principle or two.  Immanuel Kant focused ethics on two principles: (1) treat others as ends, not as means, and (2) the right thing to do for one person will be what is right for everyone to do.  Utilitarian ethicists balanced ethics on the single principle that we should do whatever will bring the greatest good to the greatest number of people.  In the twentieth century, ethicists in the West struggled to find some guidance outside the human experience itself, a principle beyond oneself.  Thus, existentialists focused ethics on doing what brings self-authentication, and situation ethicist said that one would simply know the right thing to do when in the situation itself.  The latter often gravitated toward the single, vague principle of ‘Do the loving thing.’

A principial approach to ethics is intentionally context-less, and therein lies the problem.  This was thought to be a goal in ethics in Modernity.  The more general the principle (and therefore lacking context), the better.  The goal was to find a single principle that could be applied to as many situations as possible.  Ethics, then, was in search of abstract, universalisable, general principles (as with Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative or Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian principle).  The same approach was taken when one spoke of values, such as with the morally relative value of ‘do the loving thing’ in Situation Ethics.  Values, like principles, were to be abstract.  Approaches to ethics in Modernity, then, were opposed to concrete ethics, like laws, norms, Biblical imperatives.