Putting the New Testament to Work:
The Delicate Task of Moving from Text to Life

MVNT 291-312
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. (Hays, 292)

1. The Danger of Mode-Confusion: "New Testament texts must be granted authority (or not) in the mode in which they speak. . . . The New Testament's ethical imperatives are either normative at the level of their own claim, or they are invalid." (294; cf. 5 on p.310)

• Is it ever valid to translate one mode (in the text) into another (in ethical guidance)?
• Is this danger of 'mode-confusion' real? Can we abuse scripture by reading it in the wrong mode? Which type of abuse is more common in your experience?

2. The Primacy of Biblical Narrative in Normative Ethics: "A Christian community that is responsive to the specific form of the New Testament texts will find itself drawn repeatedly to the paradigmatic mode of using the New Testament in ethics, seeking to shape analogies between the story told there and the life of the community. . . . Thus, narrative texts in the New Testament are fundamental resources for normative ethics." (295; cf. #6 on p.310)

• Is the New Testament (or the Bible) fundamentally a story in which propositions, rules and principles are embedded, or is it a set of propositions that often come to us encased in narrative? What difference does it make?

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3. The Culturally Embedded Nature of all of Scripture: "Every jot and tittle of the New Testament is culturally conditioned. The effort to distinguish timeless truth in the New Testament from culturally conditioned elements is wrongheaded and impossible. These are texts written by human beings in particular times and places, and they bear the marks--as do all human utterance--of their historical location." (299; cf. #8 on p.310)

• Can we distinguish between "cultural" and "universal" elements within Scripture? Is Scripture normative (universal) unless proven cultural, or cultural unless proven normative, or is all of Scripture both cultural and normative?
• Does the incarnation, in which divine became human (and the timeless/universal became historical/particular) undermine the approach that tries to discard the historical/particular and cling to the timeless/universal? (See p.300.)

4. The Hermeneutical Necessity of Christian Community: "Right reading of the New Testament occurs only where the Word is embodied. . . Interpretation of the New Testament cannot be performed by isolated individuals; the embodiment of the Word happens in the body of Christ, the church. Hermeneutics is necessarily a communal activity." (305; cf. #10 on p.310)

• Can we be safe readers of Scripture if we are ignorant of how the church has read and enacted Scripture over the years?
• Can we be safe readers of Scripture if we do not belong to a group of confessing, practising disciples of Jesus?
• Is there a place in the church for the lonely, isolated scholar who interprets texts without reference to the community?

5. The Privileged Position of the New Testament over the Old Testament: "The gospel of the cross gives the Christian tradition a hermeneutical lens through which Israel's Scripture must be read anew, so that new meanings are discerned. . . . The cross becomes the hermeneutical center for the canon as a whole. Thus, within the canon the New Testament has a privileged hermeneutical function." (pp.308, 309; cf. #1 & #2 on p. 310)

• How does the New Testament treat the Old Testament? As (binding or non-binding) moral code? As source of principles? As paradigm/story? As symbolic world? Give examples.
• Should the Christian make independent ethical appeals to the Old Testament? Or should the New Testament always have the last word?
• Does the death and resurrection of Christ call for a re-reading of the Old Testament? Do new meanings emerge? (See p.308.)