We’ve come to the end of our blog series on Richard Hays’ The Moral Vision of the New Testament. In case you’re late to the party, feel free to work your way through these summary posts. They are no substitute for working through Hays’ book on its own, but they will give you a good overview of his approach to New Testament ethics.
- Preface and Introduction: The Task of New Testament Ethics
- Chapters 1-2: The Moral Vision of Paul and Developments of the Pauline Tradition
- Chapters 3-4: The Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of Matthew
- Chapter 5: The Moral Vision of Luke-Acts
- Chapters 6-8: The Gospel and Epistles of John / Excursus / Revelation
- Chapters 9-10: Diverse Voices in the New Testament Canon and Three Focal Images
- Chapters 11-12: How Do Ethicists Use Scripture and 5 Representative Hermeneutical Strategies
- Chapter 14: Violence in Defense of Justice
- Chapter 15: Divorce and Remarriage
- Chapter 16: Homosexuality
- Chapter 17: Anti-Judaism and Ethnic Conflict
- Chapter 18: Abortion
- Revisiting Chapter 13: How Shall We Use the Texts?
14 Favorite Quotes
As we close out this series, I’d like to provide fourteen of my favorite quotes from the book. Enjoy!
1. On the Limits of a Book
“The living out of the New Testament cannot occur in a book; it can happen only in the life of the Christian community” (7).
2. On the Purpose of Theology
“Theology is for Paul never merely a speculative exercise; it is always a tool for constructing community” (18).
3. On the Church’s Role in the Story
“The church is to find its identity and vocation by recognizing its role in the cosmic drama of God’s reconciliation of the world to himself” (19).
4. On the Eschatological Church
“The old age is passing away, the new age has appeared in Christ, and the church stands at the juncture between them” (20).
5. On Hope and Realism in Spiritual Growth
“To live faithfully in the time between the times is to walk a tightrope of moral discernment, claiming neither too much nor too little for God’s transforming power within the community of faith” (27).
6. On the Necessity of the Church
“One cannot follow Jesus, according to Matthew, except by becoming part of the community that he trained to carry out his mission in the world” (97).
7. On Ethics in Community
“The coherence of the New Testament’s ethical mandate will come into focus only when we understand that mandate in ecclesial terms, when we seek God’s will not by asking first, ‘What shall I do,’ but ‘What should we do?'” (197)
8. On the Strange Beauty of Christian Eschatology
“The eschatological framework of life in Christ imparts to Christian existence its strange temporal sensibility, its odd capacity for simultaneous joy amidst suffering and impatience with things as they are” (198).
9. On Reducing Love to “Inclusiveness”
“The biblical story teaches us that God’s love cannot be reduced to ‘inclusiveness’: authentic love calls us to repentance, discipline, sacrifice, and transformation” (202).
10. On the Inherent Cultural Rootedness of Scripture and Obedience
“The effort to distinguish timeless truth in the New Testament from culturally conditioned elements is wrongheaded and impossible” (299).
11. On Using Our Moral Imaginations
“The temporal gap between the first-century Christians and Christians at the end of the twentieth century can be bridged only by a spark of imagination” (302).
12. On Obedience as Prerequisite to True Knowledge
“Knowledge of the will of God follows the community’s submission and transformation. Why? Because until we see the text lived, we cannot begin to conceive what it means. Until we see God’s power at work among us, we do not know what we are reading. Thus, the most crucial hermeneutical task is the formation of communities seeking to live under the Word” (306).
13. On Demythologizing Sex
“Sexual gratification is not a sacred right, and celibacy is not a fate worse than death” (401).
14. On Countering a Self-Gratifying Society
“In the midst of a culture that worships self-gratification, and in a church that often preaches a false Jesus who panders to our desires, those who seek the narrow way of obedience have a powerful word to speak” (403).
What quotes did you underline? Which ones stood out to you? If you read along with us, please share some of them in the comments.
