A friend who is a NT professor recommended this book on Christian ethics. Here are some of the highest-ranking Amazon.com reviews.

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

by Richard B. Hays (Author)

THE Book on New Testament Ethics, August 8, 2005

By Halden Doerge (Portland, OR United States)

This is certainly a monumental work in the field of New Testament ethics. Frankly, I don’t think I could find a volume to match it anywhere. Richard Hays does and excellent job of intereacting with the bulk of the New Testament, examining the methdological questions of New Testament Ethics, exploring other ethicist’s use of the New Testament and offering a coherent framework for constructing a New Testament ethic grounded in the focal images of Community, Cross and New Creation.

In the first section of the book, Hays treats the various blocks of NT material, treating the Pauline writings, the so-called deutero-pauline letters, Matthew, Mark, Luke-Acts, John, an excursus on the “Historical Jesus” and the Revelation. These chapters are all very well-done and illuminating. Hays’ exegesis is profound and articulate and his willingness to embrace the theological perspectives of the New Testament texts, in all their radical dimensions is quite striking and welcome. The only unfortunate point in this section involves what is left out, namely nearly all the general epistles and many of the Pauline letters. Of course, one can only do so much in one book, but on a books that seeks to investigate the ethics of the entire NT, I would have hoped for a bit more comprehensiveness.

All throughout this section Hays emphasizes allowing the NT text to speak with diverse voices, not attempting any facile form of harmonization. However, in the second section, he does attempt to discern a coherent ethical thrust that can be used to find a unifed perspective throughout the NT. Hays locates this in the three focal images of Community, Cross and New Creation. This focus on community emphasizes the centrality of the church in the NT as well as the church’s continuity with Israel. The Cross (and resurrection) is of course the central event in the New Testament which both acomplishes God’s salvation and is paradigmatic for the life of the people of God. Finally, New Creation points to the eschatological tension that undergirds the NT. New Testament ethics are centered in the reality that in Christ’s cross and resurrection, the age to come has truly broken into the present age, and yet the final consummation of the kingdom is not yet. It is these three large scale focal images that Hays sees running consistently throughout the NT, providing a coherhent basis for a unified New Testament ethic that is able to see a coherhent unity without squelching the diversity in the NT texts.

The third section moves on to discuss and critiqu different ways ethicists have used Scripture. Hays examines Reinhold Niebhur, Karl Barth, John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas and Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza. In the end Hays is the most critical of Niebhur, Hauerwas and Schussler-Fiorenza. Yoder and Barth (though in certain respect, Hauerwas as well) end up becoming Hays’ major hermenutical allies in discerning how the construct a New Testament ethic.

In the final section, Hays brings all his previous constructive work to bear in addressing several important “ethical issues.” He discusses violence in defense of justice, divorce and remarriage, anti-Judaism and ethinic conflict, homosexuality and abortion. Generally his discussions are very helpful. His chapters on violence and homosexuality are worth the price of the book in themselves. However his chapter on anti-Judaism I found particularly disappointing. Hays seemed to end up seeing an irreconcilable contradiction between the perspectives of Paul and Luke on the one hand and Matthew and John on the other. In the end he opts for Pauls and Luke’s perspective and argues that Matthew and John should essentially be ignored on this issue. While his attempt to allow diverse texts to speak is admirable, I don’t know how faithfully we approach scripture if we allow diverse text to speak only to dismiss the ones we disapprove of.

Nevertheless, as a work, this volume is unparalleled. There simply is no better, more comprenehsive book on New Testament ethics. Highly recommended.

*****

Buy this first – other books can wait…, By Ian Packer

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.

*****

An almost overwhelming accomplishment…, December 8, 1998 By MingusMan “ambassadortex”

This is an amazing book – solid scholarship and well thought-out interpretation delivered with a sense of urgency and sincerity. If you are at all interested in Ethics or the state of New Testament scholarship, this book is an absolute necessity.

Hays sees distinct (though overlapping) tasks in the process of “doing ethics” and is able to explain and apply them clearly. His emphasis on seeing ethical questions through the “focal lenses” of Cross, Community and New Creation is a wonderful guidepost for anyone concerned with faithful, Spirit-driven scholarship. He stresses that an “integrative act of the imagination” is required to be able to apply the Scripture to our world and suggests methods for achieving it.

Hays analyzes 5 theologian/ethicists in light of his approach (including Barth, Hauerwas, and Schussler-Fiorenza) and, in doing so, further clarifies how his approach can be used by others.

The final section of the book applies Hays’ approach to contemporary issues. Partly because of his obvious authority in Greek and New Testament scholarship, and partly because of his honest, passionate approach, his conclusions are bold and very persuasive.

This book will likely be very influential in both the fields of Ethics and New Testament Studies. Students, professors and church communities alike will be dealing with (and indebted to) this book for years to come.

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