The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics.

The question whether the New Testament can provide adequate moral guidance for Christian behavior is an open one. Is there consistency to be found within the obvious diversity of its texts? Is the guidance of the New Testament both necessary and sufficient for authentic Christian behavior? To state these questions another way: Is the normative character of the New Testament absolute or relative? It is within the framework of this fundamental set of difficult and interrelated problems that Richard Hays's major new study should be evaluated.

Hays seeks not simply to describe the moral teaching of the New Testament (difficult enough), but above all to show how Christian moral life might be rooted in and guided by the New Testament. How do we get from these ancient texts to present-day behavior? Hays is not naive about the resistance posed by the New Testament itself, but asserts that the New Testament is an adequate source of a coherent Christian ethics. Indeed, he insists that "extra-biblical sources stand in a hermeneutical relation to the New Testament; they are not independent counterbalancing sources of authority." In effect, he argues for a form of ethical sola scriptura, which means he must find some implicit unity underlying the explicit diversity of the literary compositions.

Hays offers as such a synthesis the images of "Community, Cross, and New Creation," which he regards as shorthand for the "single fundamental story" that unifies the New Testament compositions. His project unfolds in four stages: the descriptive (in which he engages the canonical writings as such); the synthetic (in which he argues for the use of his three focal images); the hermeneutical (in which he considers the way several ethicists use Scripture); and the pragmatic (in which he takes up a series of specific moral questions: war and peace, anti-Semitism, marriage and divorce, abortion, and homosexuality). Violence is his moral test-case. Much of his passion is given to his argument for a strict pacifism.

Some notable virtues of the book should be applauded. No comparable study by a New Testament scholar takes on the whole task from the descriptive to the normative. And Hays is an uncommonly skilled reader of texts. He also gets down to hard cases and pushes for decision. Agree with his conclusions or not, his courage in reaching them is admirable. Hays's exceptionally clear style of writing, his choice of practical issues, and his selection of theoretical conversation-partners show that he is eager to contribute to the conversation within the Christian community concerning the use of the New Testament.

Because this book fills a need and will surely be regarded as a major contribution, critical questions are all the more necessary. My first set of questions concerns consistency, and what is normative about the New Testament.

Hays is inconsistent concerning one of the most fundamental questions of all, namely the textual basis for deriving moral teaching from the New Testament. He is explicitly committed to a strong view of canon. All the texts are to be considered precisely as literary compositions. In practice, however, he slips into an "authorial" approach. Paul's letters are not considered individually, but as expressions of "Paul's voice." Not only is "Paul's voice" already an abstraction drawn from the complex texture of the many Pauline letters, and thus a preliminary and unacknowledged "synthetic moment," but it leaves consideration of the disputed "Pauline" letters in limbo. Hays is equally inconsistent concerning the status of the New Testament compositions vis-a-vis history. At the heart of the distinction between authentic and inauthentic Pauline letters are decisions concerning historical development in early Christianity, decisions that have notoriously involved theological corollaries, which Hays unfortunately perpetuates. For example, is it the case that "the authentic Paul" simply has better stuff to say, or is he presumed to have better stuff to say because he is the earliest and fullest witness, and development must therefore indicate decline? Are compositions authoritative because they are written by a specific author, or because they are considered witnesses to "the original Christianity"? Or are they authoritative because the church has made them canonical?

A deeper indication of Hays's confusion on this point is evident in his decision to take up the question of the historical Jesus. Despite his reasonable observations in this section, an attempt to deal with the historical Jesus in any fashion stands in obvious tension to his principle of treating the compositions of the New Testament as the basis for ethical inquiry. And when Hays says, "If the New Testament writers based their moral visions on a distorted or fundamentally mistaken view of what Jesus of Nazareth actually did and taught, then the church's subsequent reliance on these texts would be misplaced," he is making, in my view, an unfortunately wrong turn. Not only does he inadvertently play directly into the hands of those who wish to hold the Christian tradition hostage to the ever-shifting conclusions of historical inquiry, but he diminishes the critical role played by convictions concerning precisely what Jesus did not do and say, namely his death and resurrection, for shaping the "image of Jesus" that stands at the heart of Hays's "single fundamental story."

Secondly, Hays's selection of conversation-partners also raises questions. Although his choice of ethicists is not intended to "represent a comprehensive typology of hermeneutical strategies," his exclusion of Paul Ramsey is a real weakness. Ramsey's importance for the shaping of the discipline of ethics in this country is obvious, not least because of his vigorous attempt to ground Christian ethics in Scripture. Since Ramsey's approach to Scripture, as to ethics, was through the establishment of moral principles, he would have provided a distinctive hermeneutical option. Furthermore, Ramsey devoted a major part of his attention to the question of war and peace, and represents a thoughtful version of the just-war tradition that Hays dismisses much too easily. If Hays seriously wanted to make war and violence the central moral test-case for his approach, he would have benefited by taking on Ramsey rather than appearing to rig the game by including both the pacifists John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas.

Similarly, readers who follow Hays's argumentation closely in his consideration of specific moral questions will find that the weight given to the various hermeneutical principles applied to the witness of the New Testament sometimes shifts dramatically but without much explanation. In the case of war and violence, Hays sticks close to the most literal reading of the New Testament and resists any effort to soften its testimony. In the case of anti-Judaism, by contrast, Hays works mightily to overcome the obvious and overwhelming weight of the New Testament's witness concerning the Jews. He finds the New Testament's language about the Jews historically understandable but morally repugnant. On what grounds? He surprisingly finds little help in reason, although he grants that the Enlightenment ideas of tolerance can coexist with the New Testament. Other than that, he seems to think that in this instance moral reasoning plays little role. In the case of anti-Semitism, Hays overturns the normativity of the New Testament on the basis of experience: "The role of experience...is crucial in causing the church after the Holocaust to reassess its theology and its use of Scripture." What Hays means by "experience" is the violence and hatred shown by Christians, and the suffering, degradation, and genocide suffered by Jews. On the basis of this overwhelming experience, he is willing to nullify the virtually unanimous testimony of the New Testament concerning the antagonism between Christianity and Judaism.

The status granted "experience" in the case of anti-Semitism makes Hays's treatment of homosexuality all the more striking. In this case, as he well shows, the witness of the New Testament is also unanimous. But does "experience" have any weight in this issue? It is fascinating that, although Hays is willing to allow some positive evidence in, he resists its implications. And in this case "experience" does not include, as it had in the case of the Jews, the centuries of hostility and suffering engendered by the unthinking application of the New Testament texts to living human beings. Were not homosexuals also shipped to death camps, and did not the Christian tradition of relegating homosexuals to the realm of the "deviant" have the same effect of fomenting violence against them as it did against Jews?

The problem is not simply that Hays's criteria are unevenly applied; the real problem is with the premise that the New Testament is itself an adequate source for Christian moral discourse. My next set of questions, therefore, concerns Hays's overall construal of his project. His sola scriptura approach needs to be supplemented by a deeper appreciation of the norms of tradition, reason, and experience, which he has otherwise tended to downplay, and also needs to be placed within a more comprehensive understanding of Christian moral life.

A more adequate model for moral discernment within Christianity requires a sharper definition of the church as the reading community. Is the church constituted only on the basis of reading the New Testament? Or is it a community structured also by rules and procedures and liturgies that are not derived simply from Scripture? The contributions of Hays's Duke colleague, Stanley Hauerwas, could have been exploited more fully on this point, for Hauerwas recognizes that intentional communities are not only readers, but also practitioners, whose prior rules for behavior already deeply affect their reading of texts. Tradition, reason, and experience, in turn, can be seen as modalities of this rich life within communities, not as diminishments but as enhancements of Scripture's authority. Reason, for example, should not necessarily be identified with an Enlightenment discourse, as Hays tends to do. The "Natural Law" understanding of prudential reasoning, for example, is essentially compatible with the Pauline understanding of the "mind of Christ."

Within a more positive appreciation of the church, a more flexible, midrashic mode of reading Scripture can be employed, for not everything must be made to rest on Scripture alone. The New Testament compositions can be read in all their diversity and complexity. The danger of any synthesis is that it tends to close off the possibility of texts being heard in new and challenging ways; either the texts are ignored because they do not fit within the synthesis, or they are read as though already comprehended because they are read in light of synthesis.

Similarly, Hays has a very high view of the New Testament's authority, but he fails to define the basis of that authority. Is it the inspiration of the texts, or their canonicity? Does their authority reside in the texts as literary compositions, or as the expression of authorial voices? Further attention needs to be paid to the way in which texts function authoritatively for the church's moral discernment. It is more helpful, for example, to distinguish understandings of authority on the basis of function than on the basis of historical precedence or theological consistency. Thus, the New Testament texts can be seen as "authoring" a certain identity, as "authorizing" modes of interpretation and reasoning, and as providing "authorities" that must be taken into account.

In short, any discussion of Christian morality must be placed within a coherent theological framework. Hays does not make clear, for example, whether revelation ceased with Jesus and is comprehensively contained in the New Testament, or whether the revelation of the living God continues in the world. This determination makes all the difference in the way one assesses "tradition" and, above all, "experience." An appeal to experience from the latter perspective is not a humanistic reduction, but a call to discern God's own work in the world, manifested in human lives. Furthermore, for all of his invocation of the "fundamental story" of Scripture, Hays does not articulate the ways in which the "theological drama" of idolatry, sin, grace, faith, reconciliation, and forgiveness intersect with the "moral drama." Perhaps he assumes these connections, but it would be helpful to see more clearly how "New Testament Ethics" has anything to do with what the Catholic tradition terms "moral theology."

Finally, Hays leaves almost completely untouched the relationship of ethics to a more comprehensive understanding of moral formation within the believing community. His approach remains act-centered. One looks for more of an understanding of ethics as the ethos of a people, or, for the individual, transformation according to the "mind of Christ." Much of the New Testament moral exhortation, in fact, operates at this level rather than at the level of "moral issues." Hays states that "only the Catholic Epistles take the form of general moral wisdom for the church at large." This statement could be challenged for accuracy. The more important point is that Hays himself remains unconcerned with the shaping of that "general moral wisdom." His book would have looked much different, and would probably have been improved, if in the second part he had turned not to a consideration of moral problems but to the possibilities for shaping such a Christian ethos on the basis of his focal images: How would they work when addressing issues such as the relationship between faith and virtue, edification and holiness?

Until Christian communities have a stronger Christian character, and are committed to moral transformation, indeed to sanctification, they are in a poor position (as Hays repeatedly notes) to handle such boundary issues as eugenics and euthanasia. Is not the first task of Christian ethics, in the present age, to rediscover ways of cultivating communities whose character is shaped by "the mind of Christ"? Is this not also the task the New Testament has the most obvious authority to perform and - on the evidence of the saints - does best? Professor Hays's new book, which takes significant steps in this direction, may encourage further and still more fundamental progress toward that goal.

Luke Timothy Johnson teaches New Testament at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University. He is the author of The Real Jesus (HarperSanFrancisco).