Luke Timothy Johnson
Frank J Matera
James T. Bretzke
Thomas E. Schmidt
Dale B Martin

Reviewed by Luke Timothy Johnson, in Commonweal; New York; Jun 6, 1997; Volume: 124; Issue: 11; Pages: 23-25; ISSN: 00103330. Full Text: Copyright Commonweal Foundation Jun 6, 1997

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 Ramseys 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.

[Author note: Luke Timothy Johnson teaches New Testament at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University. He is the author of The Real Jesus (HarperSanFrancisco).]
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Review of The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation--A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics by Richard B. Hays

Reviewed by Frank J Matera; Theological Studies; Washington; Sep 1997; Volume: 58; Issue: 3; Pages: 537-539; ISSN: 00405639; Full Text: Copyright Theological Studies, Inc. Sep 1997

Hays provides an important resource for moral theologians who seek to employ Scripture in their work. His book is an ambitious project and, in my view, one of the most significant works written on the moral teaching of the New Testament since the Second Vatican Council, which, in its Decree on the Training of Priests, urged that the scientific presentation of moral theology should draw "more fully on the teaching of Holy Scripture" (Optatam totius no. 17).

In addition to presenting the ethical dimensions of the NT in an engaging manner, H. synthesizes its teaching, evaluates the hermeneutical strategies of several contemporary scholars who employ Scripture in the service of ethics, and applies the moral teaching of Scripture to five contemporary issues.

NT ethics, according to H., must carefully and accurately describe what the text says (the descriptive task), synthesize this teaching within a canonical context (the synthetic task), interpret its meaning (the hermeneutical task), and relate that meaning to the contemporary situation (the pragmatic task). Accordingly, in Part 1 H. provides a reliable description of the moral vision of the NT in light of its major witnesses. Although his presentation does not include all the writings of the NT, it provides readers with a solid grounding in its moral teaching. If there is a weakness in H.'s descriptive work, it is the brief treatment he accords the Deuteropauline tradition. He correctly views these writings as developments of the Pauline tradition, but in my view he tends to measure them against Paul rather than viewing them in their own right as responses to new situations.

Unlike most studies of NT ethics, this work does not begin with the moral teaching of the historical Jesus. In fact H. devotes only a few pages to the ethics of Jesus, and this after his treatment of the Gospels. While some will be disappointed in this summary discussion of Jesus' ethics, in my view H.'s procedure in this matter is correct and to be commended. The moral teaching of the NT is contained in its writings as canonically shaped rather than in a historical reconstruction of Jesus' teaching. Accordingly, H. emphasizes the role that narrative plays in moral discourse, not only in the Gospels but in the Pauline writings as well, since they presuppose a story of Jesus' faithful obedience.

Part 2, on the synthetic task, is brief, and here some readers will ask for more development, since the concepts H. presents are crucial for the remainder of his work. He proposes that the moral teaching of the NT can be synthesized by three "focal images" which have a textual basis in most NT writings: community, cross, and new creation. These focal images are remarkably similar to the categories H. employs in his organization of Paul's moral teaching, and this suggests to me that it is the writings of Paul that ultimately determine H.'s understanding of the NT's moral vision.

Love does not qualify as a focal image since it is absent from a number of NT writings. Accordingly it is subsumed under the focal image of the cross. While I agree that love should be related to the cross, I would argue that it plays a more prominent role than H. allows, since it is so central to the teaching of John and Paul.

After explaining these focal images, H. employs them in Part 3, where he examines the hermeneutical strategies of five theologians: Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, and Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza. While some may object that these figures are not representative, most will approve of the rigorous diagnostic questions H. applies to each of them. How accurate is their exegesis? How comprehensive is the range of texts they employ? What mode of appeal do they make to the text rules, principles, paradigms, symbolic world)? What other sources of authority do they employ (tradition, reason, experience)? How would their moral vision be embodied in a community?

Having examined how others use Scripture, H. addresses five moral issues: violence in defense of justice, divorce and remarriage, homosexuality, anti-Judaism and ethnic conflict, and abortion. Although these are not the only important problems of our day, they are among the most contentious, and H. faces them with pastoral and ecclesial sensitivity. His views are refreshingly moderate and traditional, and he employs a methodology that others can follow with profit: a careful exegesis of the key texts; an evaluation of how these texts function within the canon; a hermeneutical discussion of the mode in which the texts speak, and how they are related to reason, tradition, and experience; and consideration of how the NT's witness might be applied today.

The task of employing Scripture in moral theology is an ongoing challenge for moral theologians. I can recommend no better place to begin than with this book.
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The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics, by Richard Hays.

Reviewed by James T. Bretzke; Theology Today; Princeton; Apr 1998; Volume: 55; Issue: 1; Pages: 97-98;

ISSN: 00405736; Full Text: Copyright Theology Today Apr 1998

Richard Hays, professor of New Testament at Duke University Divinity School who taught for a number of years at Yale, has written an important and very good book on the complicated relationship of Scripture to Christian ethics. Though Hays concentrates on the New Testament, much of his basic methodology could also be transferred to the Old Testament. Hays proposes three organizing metaphors from the New Testament as a methodological approach to utilizing the biblical material in Christian ethics, namely, community, cross, and new creation. He also names and treats four principal, sequential "tasks" of using the Bible in ethics: first, the descriptive task (what is being said); second, the synthetic task (how this or that passage or text fits within the Bible as a whole in a theologically coherent manner); third, the hermeneutical task of interpreting the biblical texts for ethics; and finally the "pragmatic" task of "living under the Word" (applying the biblical texts to concrete moral issues).

A successful treatment of how the Bible can be used in Christian ethics must necessarily attend to two overarching questions: namely, what is Scripture and what is ethics? Hays grapples with the first question explicitly, but leaves the second issue somewhat inadequately addressed. Of course, the author is a trained exegete and it is therefore logical that his stress should fall on what he calls the first two tasks: the descriptive and synthetic. Hays's overview of the New Testament, which he offers to illustrate the descriptive task, is well done and he gives three most helpful "procedural guidelines" in the synthetic task: ) confront the full range of canonical witnesses; 2) let the tensions among the texts stand; and 3) pay attention to the literary genre of the texts.

Nevertheless, in moving to the second question on the nature of ethics, Hays's discussion, while clearly going beyond a sola scriptura approach, will lead many to judge his treatment of ethics a bit lacking. To illustrate how ethicians use Scripture, Hays considers five twentieth-century theologians: Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, and Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza. He does a good job of analyzing each author according to the methodological criteria he proposes earlier. The selection of authors treated, however, could have been broader from both a methodological and an ecumenical perspective. Four of the five are Protestant, and the only Roman Catholic treated (Schussler Fiorenza) makes no claim to be a moral theologian. In regards to the place of Scripture in ethics, Barth, Yoder, and Hauerwas represent more variations on a theme, than vastly different tunes. Engagement of a Protestant ethician in a different key, such as Paul Ramsey, James Gustafson, or Trutz Rendtorff, for example, would have made for more interesting counterpoint, while inclusion of a recognized Roman Catholic moral theologian such as Bernard Hiring or Josef Fuchs would have forced Hays to defend more extensively his claims for exactly how the Bible is the privileged source (the norma normans) of ethics, as well as to confront in greater depth the question of "what is ethics?" by wrestling with considerably different perspectives on the nature and interrelation of the other sources he accepts as constitutive of Christian ethics (reason, tradition, and experience).

What many readers will find most provocative are the individual chapters that deal with the "pragmatic task" of concretely applying the biblical material to some important issues of moral life: non-violence, divorce and remarriage, homosexuality, anti-Judaism and ethnic conflict, and abortion. Hays is to be applauded for moving from theory to practice in these nettlesome issues, even if one may fail to be convinced by the conclusions he draws in this or that instance. In this regard, greater attention to contemporary hermeneutical theories (for example, Gadamer or Ricoeur) as well as a fuller articulation of what precisely is meant by a moral norm would have supported (or challenged!) the individual conclusions Hays argues for in examples such as the requirement of absolute pacifism for all Christians or the condemnation of all homosexual activity. Nevertheless, despite these critical observations Hays has written a most important work that will do much not only to inform, but also to shape the ongoing discussion of the role of Scripture in ethics in the years to come.

[Author note: JAMES T. BRETZKE, Jesuit School of Theology Berkeley, CA]
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Living the truth: A review of The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics by Richard B. Hays.

Reviewed by Thomas E. Schmidt; Christianity Today; Carol Stream; Jul 14, 1997; Volume: 41; Issue: 8; Pages: 52-54; ISSN: 00095753; Full Text: Copyright Christianity Today, Inc. Jul 14, 1997

In The Moral Vision of the New Testament, Richard B. Hays demonstrates that a passionate faith can be expressed in a scholarly treatise. Hays's manner is every bit as significant as his subject. Indeed, here may be a signal that evangelical scholarship has at last found its voice. For here is a university professor who writes for the church, a first-rate exegete who suggests that the Holy Spirit must guide the interpretation of texts, a denizen of the ivory tower who maintains that believers must practice obedience in community to realize Scripture's moral vision.

Hays demonstrates all the academic competence that landed him a professorship at Duke, but in and through his scholarship he preaches (powerfully), he discusses the moral challenges of real people he knows, he concedes that some of his conclusions are tentative, he even-gasp-admits to personal moral struggles and shortcomings.

Such a readable, superbly organized, substantial volume will quickly become the standard seminary text for New Testament ethics, supplanting the widely used works by Rudolf Schnackenburg (The Moral Teaching of the New Testament), Wolfgang Schrage (The Ethics of the New Testament), and others. That is good news, but it will be a shame if the book does not move far beyond the walls of the pastor's study into the hands of lay Christians who should take up its challenge.

The Moral Vision of the New Testament is so clearly laid out in the table of contents and introduction that the reviewer is hard-pressed to improve on "see pp. vii-x and 1-7." Each section focuses on one of the four tasks-descriptive, synthetic, hermeneutical, and pragmatic-of New Testament ethics. The descriptive task is to convey the visions of the moral life in the New Testament text, preserving the distinctive and even disparate emphases of the various writers. The synthetic task is to find coherence in this diversity; such coherence Hays finds in three images-community, cross, and new creation-employed to guide or focus our reading of New Testament texts. With respect to the hermeneutical task of using Scripture in ethics, Hays evaluates five representative theologians against clearly defined criteria and then lays out his own approach. Finally, addressing the pragmatic task of living under the Word, Hays applies his method for New Testament ethics to five "test cases": violence, divorce, homosexuality, anti-Judaism, and abortion.

So much for the outline: now on to execution. In his descriptive section, Hays first surveys the New Testament witnesses and singles out those that are "most important by virtue of their substance and historic influence": Paul's undisputed epistles, the Evangelists (including Acts with Luke), and Revelation. Hays argues that the other New Testament writings are not in tension with those he treats, and he limits his treatment further by avoiding speculation about historical development. In a helpful excursus on the role of the historical Jesus" in New Testament ethics, Hays affirms a fairly conservative reconstruction of the Lord's life and teachings (including a strong statement on the Resurrection), but he eschews attempts to base views on the ever-elusive "objective Jesus" independent of the canonical witnesses. Nevertheless, Hays's treatment of the Gospels owes much to redaction-critical notions of post-Jesus development; and his treatment of the Pauline tradition involves late and pseudonymous authorship of at least three Epistles. This will be problematic for those who are unwilling to relieve tensions by choosing, say, Luke's Jesus over John's or Romans' Paul over Timothy's. Some might take issue with Hays's critical conclusions, but my point is merely to caution the reader against a simplistic view of Hays's preference for the canonical approach over the historical.

In the synthetic section, Hays responds to New Testament diversity by developing his proposal for coherence through the three focal images he finds widely and consistently represented in the texts. He summarizes: "the New Testament calls the covenant community of God's people into participation in the cross of Christ in such a way that the death and resurrection of Jesus becomes a paradigm for their common life as harbingers of God's new creation. The popular themes of "love" and "liberation," Hays argues, might be seen as subsets of these but are not themselves sufficient as focal images. Hays takes up the hermeneutical task with a critique of Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, John Howard Yoder, Stanley Hauerwas, and Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza on a sample topic (violence) against the criteria of their modes of appeal to Scripture (its rules, principles, paradigms, and symbolic world) and their use of other sources of authority (tradition, reason, and experience). This approach offers the reader a helpful "apples to apples" comparison and sets up Hays's subsequent normative proposals. His choices of Hauerwas and Schussler Fiorenza are a bit disappointing since by Hays's own account they add little of substance to the discussion (why not Schrage, Raymond F. Collins, or a popular ethicist like Lewis Smedes?); on the other hand, Hays helps us to see their methodological weaknesses without making what might be a political blunder by omitting them.

Hays proposes that New Testament ethics must be guided, first, by serious exegesis. Other guidelines include respect for the full and sometimes disparate messages of Scripture; guidance by the focal images of community, cross, and new creation; subservience of extrabiblical sources of authority; and an integrative use of the imagination to fit our lives into the truths of Scripture. Last and not least, he maintains that "right reading of the New Testament occurs only where the Word is embodied"; that is, where believers "experience the enactment of Scripture in community." Applying these proposals in five test cases is the pragmatic task taken up by Hays in the last third of the book. To relay only Hays's conclusions does injustice to his approach, which is, humbly and carefully, to illustrate a method, not to propound rules for living. The topics well illustrate Hays's approach because they offer different configurations of evidence. Nonviolence is a univocal and pervasive theme within the New Testament, whereas no texts directly address abortion. There are only a few biblical references to divorce or homosexuality, but extrabiblical issues come into play. The anti-Judaism theme in the New Testament involves tension both between texts and between contexts (ours and that of the original audience).

The topics are, of course, interesting in their own right, although it might have been better to replace anti-Judaism with wealth, since materialism is a more pressing issue for the church, and the topic presents a similar configuration of texts in tension. Hays is reluctant to neglect the topic, but his passing treatment raises questions about his methodological consistency.

If, as Hays reminds us, Jesus demands that disciples give away all possessions (Luke 14:33), and if we cannot gloss over such texts either by spiritualizing them or choosing less threatening texts to guide our behavior, why is he content to lay the stress on sharing possessions and admonish that obedience "would entail some immediate practical and sacrificial changes in what we do with our money"? Perhaps greater specificity would engender legalism, but does Hays's vagueness here suggest the lamentable tendency he notes elsewhere for Christians to take refuge against biblical directives in more pliable "principles"?

At several points, in fact, Hays appears to undermine powerfully expressed opinions by equivocation with regard to practice. For example, after presenting a powerful argument for lifelong marriage, he allows that divorce is justifiable "in certain extraordinary circumstances," which he would extend beyond sexual infidelity; he recommends that the church "receive divorced persons as full participants in Christian fellowship." Similarly, after building a compelling argument against abortion on the ground of mercy toward the powerless, he terms justifiable" abortion in the case of rape or incest without explaining why such new lives have less claim on our mercy.

Presumably Hays allows more latitude in matters where the New Testament proscription is not as clear as in the cases of violence and homosexual practice. But it is at just such points that the reader would benefit from more thorough or explicit accounting for Hays's practical recommendations, including their relation to one another.

Further discussion of these and many other interesting questions raised by Hays's book will occupy thoughtful Christians for years to come. They hardly merit the term "criticisms" and should be set against great appreciation for a work that is at once scholarly, insightful, clear, convicting, personal, provocative, and unabashedly evangelical. Here is a voice that we must find ears to hear, a vision that we must strive to realize.

Schmidt is author of Straight and Narrow? Compassion and Clarity in the Homosexuality Debate (InterVarsity).
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See also the review by Dale B Martin in Journal of Biblical Literature 117 (2, 1998): 358-360.
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