The Moral Vision of the New Testament
By Richard B. Hays
(Reviewed by Ron Sanders)
In The Moral Vision of the New Testament, Richard Hays argues for a coherent account of the methods necessary to pursue New Testament ethics as a normative theological discipline. In short, he is arguing for a way to approach Christian ethics that is faithful to the diversity of the New Testament.
He begins by offering a four-fold task for developing ethics out of the New Testament: (1) The Descriptive Task—reading the individual texts carefully. (2) The Synthetic Task—bringing the whole canon of Scripture to bear on a particular issue. (3) The Hermeneutical Task—relating the text to our contemporary situation. (4) The Pragmatic Task—living the text. Hays then sets out to take on these tasks in interpreting the individual texts of the New Testament.
He begins with the Pauline texts (the earliest known written documents of the New Testament canon), moves through the synoptic gospels, and finishes with Johannine writings. Hays doesn’t exegete each particular text in detail, but demonstrates the descriptive task through examples. In each case, he pays particular attention to the text’s Christology, picture of the church and the ethical implications of its eschatology.
After explicating the moral vision of each of the texts he exegetes in the descriptive task, Hays turns to synthesizing the diverse documents. He argues that finding coherence in the diversity of the New Testament documents requires three focal images: (1) community—the countercultural community of discipleship, (2) cross—the paradigm for sacrifice and faithfulness to God in the world, and (3) new creation—demonstrating the power of the resurrection in the midst of a not-yet-redeemed world (Ch. 10). He contends that these three focal images thread through the different canonical tellings of the Jesus story and anchor any formation of Christian ethics.
Thirdly, Hays moves from the task of synthesis to the hermeneutical task. He lists four modes of appeal to scripture that Christian ethicists have used in the past: (1) rules—direct commands, (2) principles—general frameworks of moral consideration, (3) paradigms—stories or summaries of model (or inappropriate) conduct, and (4) symbols—the perceptual categories through which we interpret reality. He also lists three other influences (outside of scripture) that shape our ethics: tradition, reason and experience. He then applies these modes and influences to five Christian ethicists as a frame for diagnosing their ethics. Those he pays particularly close attention to are, Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, John H. Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas and Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza.
Finally, Hays moves to the fourth task—the pragmatic task. He applies his method to the issues of violence, divorce, homosexuality, anti-Judaism and abortion. He applies his three foci of community, cross and new creation to each of these issues. He also uses what he calls “analogical imagination,” to make application from the ancient texts to our contemporary context.
There has been so much that I haven’t said, so far I hope to have whetted your appetite for the descriptive task if your interest is in studying the scriptures; in the synthetic task if your interest lies in the broader themes of the narrative of the New Testament; in the normative task if you want some criteria for evaluating and prioritizing your ethical decisions; and in the pragmatic task if you want to see how Hays moves through particular issues. His chapter on abortion is quite interesting.
