Connie McDougall
"Reconciliation precedes the resolution of ethical
dilemmas; it doesn't follow."
- Richard Hays
Click Here:
SPU Church Leaders
Forums Continue Their Focus on Reconciliation
An Interview on Reconciliation With Richard Hays,
Professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School
Richard Hays visits the Seattle Pacific University campus next month as the
Palmer Lecturer and
keynote speaker for SPU's Church Leaders Day. A professor of New Testament
at Duke Divinity
School, Hays is known for his scholarship in Pauline theology and New
Testament ethics. The
acclaim for his latest book -- The Moral Vision of the New Testament:
Community, Cross,
New Creation -- has made him a sought-after speaker all over the nation.
Seattle Pacific President Philip Eaton says he considers The Moral Vision
of the New Testament
"an extremely important work for our time." Explains Eaton, "Dr. Hays is a
master at applying
biblical wisdom to today's most difficult moral questions. We need that kind
of guidance from our
scholars."
One of Hays' topics for the February 8 event is "Reconciliation,
Resurrection and Ethical
Dilemmas." In the second installment of a three-part interview series on the
topic of
reconciliation, Response recently spoke with the New Testament scholar. (For
details about Hays'
visit, click the link below left for the upcoming forums or click here for
the University
Calendar.)
Response: SPU President Philip Eaton has high praise for your book
The Moral Vision of
the New Testament. What was the purpose of the book?
Response: In the recent election, the nation was so clearly divided
that it seems as if
there is no consensus on moral questions today, even among Christians. Do
you agree?
Response: Are you describing an apolitical church?
Response: So how does this alternative culture come to consensus on
moral issues?
There are some issues where Scripture directly, forcefully and consistently
articulates
non-negotiable norms for Christian ethics. I argue, for instance, that the
rejection of violence
is in that category because it's so integrally related to both the teaching
and the example of
Jesus and his going to death on a cross rather than exercising violence to
bring in the kingdom.
Response: How can Christians evaluate a particular moral issue based
on Scripture?
For example, community means that the central purpose of God in
redeeming us is to raise
up a community, a church, a people. In other words, the central moral
question is not "What
shall I do?" but "What shall we do?" We can never make these
decisions in isolation
from one another or in isolation from concern for one another. The second
image, the cross,
focuses on the example of Jesus' death as an act of self-sacrificial love
that provides a model,
an example that we're called to conform to. Principles like autonomy weigh
very lightly in
the moral scale against this pattern of self-sacrificing love.
And finally, new creation is a way of speaking about how we stand in
an interval where
God's new order has broken into the world but we still await the final
coming of God's justice.
We're caught in an in-between state of "already but not yet." This means
that we're always
oriented toward the future of the coming kingdom; we're people who live, as
it were, with our
roots in the future of God's justice. Our calling in the present is to live
in a way that
prefigures that future. I realize that all this sounds terribly abstract,
but as I work through
the reading of the individual texts, I try to show how those images serve as
lenses that bring
moral debates into focus.
Response: Applying these 'lenses' to the ethical dilemmas of our day,
how do Christians
who have become polarized over moral issues come together? That seems
extraordinarily difficult.
Response: You said earlier that people need to be patient with each
other. Is that the
answer?
Response: You'll be speaking about reconciliation and ethical
dilemmas when you come
to campus. What will you say on this subject?
Response: How do you define the word "reconciliation?" What does it
mean to you?
Hays: Well, the book attempts to ask how it is that Scripture
functions to shape Christian community. We do have deep difficulties and
disagreements about how we address moral
issues, and so the book first tries to give a careful account of the moral
visions of the individual New Testament writings, and then asks how we apply
those visions to specific moral issues we face in our time.
Hays: I myself had a great deal of difficulty knowing how to vote,
because on many issues
I would agree with one candidate, and on other issues I would agree with the
other candidate --
on grounds that are quite specifically related to my understanding of New
Testament ethics. I
think the polarization between liberal and conservative political factions,
the way it's become
neatly packaged in the United States, has almost nothing to do with the
application of biblical
standards, and nothing to do with how Christians ought to think with moral
discernment about the
issues.
Hays: No. We represent the politics of the Kingdom of God. The church
is a sign of the justice of God's coming order. But that means that we don't
simply conform
ourselves to whatever the pollsters want us to say, identifying ourselves
categorically
as liberals or conservatives, Democrats or Republicans. It means that we
represent
a distinct alternative culture that bears witness both within and against
the culture that
surrounds us.
Hays: That's what I was attempting to wrestle with in the book. I
make a case that
there's a continuum of moral issues.
Then, on the other hand, there's an issue like abortion, which isn't
addressed at all in the
New Testament. So we are faced with having to make extremely indirect kinds
of arguments
about how Scripture might inform that debate. Abortion, therefore, is an
issue, it seems to me,
where we ought to be more patient with one another and more accepting of the
legitimacy
of serious moral arguments on either side of the debate.
Hays: The subtitle of my book is Community, Cross, New
Creation. I argue that
Christian ethical deliberation ought to proceed by recognizing that the
Bible is the dramatic
story of God's redemption of the world. In order to put the reading of that
story in
focus, I propose three focal images derived from Scripture itself that help
us to apply the
Scriptural text in moral judgment. Those three images are community,
cross and
new creation. I try to show how the application of these images to
the readings of
individual biblical texts helps us, in every case, to understand more
clearly the meaning of
the New Testament's moral teaching.
Hays: Reconciliation is always difficult.
Hays: I think it's more than that. I think a Christian view of
reconciliation is something
more than just being patient and tolerant of differences. It surely has to
do with a willingness
to reach out in love and service, even to those who are our enemies. To
love our enemies -- that's
what we're called to do. And there's nothing harder than where there are
deep antagonisms to be able to say, "Look. I'm related to you as brother or
sister in Christ. That binds us together more fundamentally than any
differences we may have over these particular political problems. And so I'm
committed to come to the common table with you and
to be reconciled as people who are reconciled to God only by the mercy of
Jesus Christ.
Hays: We tend to think the only way to achieve reconciliation is to
first resolve the
ethical dilemmas so that we can get everybody to agree, and then we can have
reconciliation.
That's naive, impossible, and out of whack with the biblical vision of
reconciliation. The
biblical vision of reconciliation (the central text would be 2 Corinthians
5) is that God was
in Christ reconciling the world to Himself -- and therefore we've been given
the ambassadorship,
the commission, of proclaiming the message of being reconciled to God and to
one another.
So reconciliation precedes the resolution of ethical dilemmas; it doesn't
follow.
Hays: As a political term, it means abstractly the cessation of
hostilities and the
establishment of affiliation between previously estranged people. That's the
formal definition.
But concretely, when I speak of reconciliation, it involves restoration to a
covenant
relationship with God. Reconciliation means being reconciled to God, which,
by definition, means
being brought into the community of the covenant people. You can never have
reconciliation
to God apart from reconciliation to your brothers and sisters.
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