The Bible rightfully enjoys a place of honour in
doing Christian ethics, not only for its moral teachings, but also for
providing an appreciation of the communal life of early Christians, their
theological explorations, and their lively sense of the power and presence of
Jesus Christ. How could one do Christian ethics without the Ten Commandments,
the eighth century B.C.E. cry of the prophets for justice, the “Sermon” on the
“Mount,” the Great Commandment, and the pastoral Paul, sometimes hurling
thunderbolts of condemnation, but also pleading the way of love and
consideration, for the frail of conscience.
Yes, my topic is on the
use of Bible in doing Christian Ethics, but we must understand that the Bible
is not the sole authority to Christian Ethics, because if we take the words in
the Bible literally, we can see that it legalises, violence, rape, hatred,
jealousy, etc.
The Bible, a
Human made book: the supreme authority, not sole authority
Firstly we must understand that the
Bible, is traditionally used as the base for doing Christian Ethics, but it is
a fact that Bible has been the work of mere human hands with so much of bias
and prejudice as its base. We here need to critically look at the way in which
the Bible came to our hands, a process of canonisation. This canonisation was
done by humans. Hence we see that the Bible is not ‘The Word of God’ but human
reflection about the works of God in their lives and their communities. It is
not in the sacred sense in which the Muslims regard the Quran to be dictated by
Angel Gabriel and descended from heaven.
By taking the Bible literally, we
tend to give equal weight-age to all sections of the Bible, and giving no
regard to the exegetical principles and no consideration to the historical and
the literary criticisms. Such an approach will negate the contextual situations
of the text and an entirely different meaning will be imposed on the text, hence,
making all kinds of violence and patriarchal dominance and other oppressive
human constructs legal and binding. To do Christian ethics we must first
acknowledge that Bible is a human made book, a book of God’s revelation in
History. We can for example take the various stories in the Bible like, Judges
19, the Levite’s concubine who was raped and murdered, and the murder being so
brutal, slaughtering her into twelve pieces. Well, if this is to be considered
as ‘the word of God’ then all said and done at the various atrocities in the
societies can be made legal.
What is the Bible?
I would say
that it is a collection of writings produced over a 1400 year period by Israel
and by early Christian worshipers of a particular God [a statement of
historical fact]. It is a record of that God's self-disclosure to persons of
the past; Christians state that this record becomes revelation for the believer
today [a faith statement]. It is the "Word of God" [faith statements].
"The statement that the Bible is God's Word is a confession of faith, a
statement of the faith which hears God himself speaks through the biblical word
of man". It is a divine-human book, it is a book which points beyond
itself to God; i.e., the Bible itself is not the most important thing--it
serves as a vehicle to bring a person to God. "Faith
looks through the Scriptures, not at them"
Difficulties in
appropriating the Bible in ethics:
Difficulties
intrinsic to the Bible: It is an ancient book, hence the importance of the ‘two
horizons’ then and now. If the Bible is not to mean anything we want
it to, then we must pay attention to the original context of its teachings; if
it is to mean something to us, then we must pay attention to our context.
Ironically,
the most distinctive source of Christian ethics, the Bible, is the product of
the most primitive stage in the life history of the community founded in Christ.
The cultural gap between the biblical period and us: Cyril Rodd, focusing
specifically on the OT, states that this cultural gap is probably the chief
factor behind the difficulty in using the OT in ethics today. The Bible is
culturally-conditioned: in language, racial attitudes, gender attitudes,
cosmology, etc.; or, the OT emphasis on holiness, purity, and uncleanness,
expressed esp. in terms of ceremonial impurity/uncleanness. The writers
encountered God in the historical process and reported that encounter in their
own way. Who they were affected what they said and how they said it.[1]
Ethics
surely differs in every society, and is a convenient term for socially approved
habits. For example, the Persian king Darius, in his travels, noted the
different funeral customs of the Greeks, who cremated their dead, and the
Callatians (a tribe of India), who ate the bodies of their dead fathers. Both
were appalled at the custom of the other. If evangelicals do not approve of
this view, then they must provide an explanation that tells how a revelation
given, in and through an ancient culture can yet have a binding authority on
peoples of other cultures and later centuries.
The Bible is
not a systematic textbook on ethics. It does not reflect philosophically on
ethics or the foundations of ethics; it does not deal systematically with
specific issues. The Bible does not always speak with one voice on a
matter: e.g., divorce, not only the difference between Deuteronomy and Jesus,
but also between Jesus' own words as recorded in Matthew and Mark; war- kill
everything that breathes vs. love your enemies.
Birch and
Rasmussen warn against ‘genre redactionism’ the effective selection, whether
deliberate or not, of only certain kinds of biblical materials as the materials
pertinent to ethic. The strangeness of Scripture: e.g., regarding sex &
marriage, it speaks of Solomon's harem; Levite marriage; Jacob's purchase of a
bride; Bilhah giving birth on Rachel's lap, or what about the strangeness of
Acts 5--the death of Ananias and Sapphira because they held back some of their
money?
Having
emphasized the strangeness/distance of Scripture, we move on to look
for continuities. They are there because the biblical authors and modern
Christians are concerned about the same thing the ways of God with humanity. The
moral problems raised by the Bible itself: ‘Shall we justify genocide because
it is found in Scripture?’ e.g., Deut 7: 1-5; 20:16-18; Joshua 6:21; 1 Sam 15 ‘If
we do not recognize the evil in Samuel's actions, we have no right to claim to
be followers of the crucified Christ, who suffered his own death rather than
force his way upon the world’.
By the same
token, shall we justify slavery because it is found in
Scripture? "With regard to slavery, as with regard to other areas of
social ethics, the moral stance of the NT is often passively conservative.
One does not seek to change one's social or political station but rather to
serve God faithfully in that station, no matter how degraded it may seem to
be", or, what about the NT's admonition to submit to the ruling
authorities ‘For the Lord's sake accept the authority of every human
institution, whether of the emperor as supreme, or of governors. . . ."(1
Peter 2:13-14, 17; Rom 13:1-7). Countryman notes that such admonitions “were
appropriate for a small, weak community that had little hope of influencing the
social and political tendencies of the times . . . it was probably good advice
for people who could not have hoped to win a revolutionary struggle, in any
case”.[2]
But our
ancestors did not follow this ethic; many Christians in Germany during the
Hitler era were silent to the various killing of the Jews. In short, the
NT may at times lay down an ethical standard that later generations of
Christians will reject.
More and
better exegesis brings us all the way to a solution. Indeed, careful exegesis
heightens our awareness of the ideological diversity within Scripture and of our
historical distance from the original communities (in ancient Israel and the
earliest churches) to whom these texts were addressed. In other words, critical
exegesis exacerbates the hermeneutical problem rather than solving it. Interpreters
who think that they can determine the proper ethical application of the Bible
solely through more sophisticated exegesis are like people who believe that
they can fly if only they flap their arms hard enough"
Difficulties extrinsic to
the Bible i.e., those "arising not from faults within the Scriptures
themselves but rather from the way in which Christians have been accustomed to
using the Bible".
We are
culturally conditioned in our hearing of the Bible: "It is a mistake
for us to assume that we can enter into the study of the Bible as if we were
not particular people in a definite history. We all bring our own agendas to
the study of the Bible. These agendas affect everything from our approach to
the Bible in the beginning to the 'truth' we see in the end. As long as these
agendas remain hidden from us, as long as we do not investigate our underlying
assumptions, then our study is most likely to result in little more than a
proof texting of our preconceptions
Our
decisions are not made on the basis of our faith alone but are powerfully conditioned
by our other loyalties. If we assume that our ideas of right and
wrong will be shared by all peoples at all times, we are merely naive Many
of our most crucial modern problems are not addressed in the Bible at all e.g.,
genetics, as well as most of the field of bioethics including abortion and
euthanasia; nuclear and chemical warfare; AIDS; church-state relations are
dealt with indirectly but certainly not in our terms First Amendment issues or
religion in public issues; the depletion of non-renewable natural resources;
gun control; economic issues such as multi-national businesses and their impact
on Third World economies.
The relation of the Bible to
those outside the Christian community of faith: Note: even when the Bible's
ethical norms have been correctly interpreted and accepted within the community
of faith, there remains the separate and equally difficult problem of how the
biblical norms should relate to those outside the community of faith. The 'be
what you are' principle, which grounds the imperative of Christian
behaviour in the indicative of Christian existence, likewise implies that we
are to envisage conduct which arises out of the new creation and is
possible within it.
Conclusion
The way the Bible has been distorted:
The world knows all too well that a scriptural text can be used to justify
almost anything, including war, racism, and silence while a nation commits
genocide. Our selective use of biblical materials is one way we
distort. Sometimes Scriptures which we overlook and downplay say as much or
more about us than those passages which we lift up and to which we pay so much
attention. What does it say about us, that the law versus charging interest as mentioned
in the OT, yet we pay so little attention to it? How much better known are
the fewer texts which address homosexuality?
With this
we know that the Bible is supposedly a source for doing Christian ethics;
however it is not the source to do Christian ethics. The salvation for the
entire creation in the life and death of Jesus Christ as the base, critically
looking at the biblical text and proper and careful exegesis should be the base
of doing Christian ethics. Although, I do not disregard the other sources like,
tradition, experience, etc to do Christian ethics, we must understand that the
Bible is one of the various reflections of the ancient community of believers
and is considered the ‘Holy Bible’ the sacred book of Christianity, hence it is
also one of the sources for doing Christian Ethics.
Bibliography
Bruce Birch and Larry
Rasmussen, Bible and Ethics in the Christian Life (Minneapolis:
Augsburg, 1976)
L. Wm. Countryman, Biblical
Authority or Biblical Tyranny (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982;
reprint Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1994)
J. I. H. McDonald, Biblical
Interpretation and Christian Ethics
Cyril Rodd, ed., New
Occasions Teach New Duties? Christian Ethics for Today Edinburgh: T. &
T. Clark, 1995.
John Barton. "Approaches
to Ethics in the OT," in Beginning OT Study, ed. John Rogerson
(Philadelphia: Westminster, 1982),
Robert R. Wilson. "Approaches
to OT Ethics," in Canon, Theology, and OT Interpretation: Essays
in Honour of Brevard S. Childs, ed. Gene Tucker, David Petersen, & Robert
R. Wilson (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988)
