Review of the Moral Vision of the New Testament by Richard Hays

http://www.directionjournal.org/article/?1039

I want to suggest this approach as a framework that is sound for reading ,discussing, evaluating and applying scripture as the church seeks to be a community that is transformed into the image of Christ. It is taken from a rewrite of Richard Hays' book on New Testament Ethics, the story retold.

Personally, I like this approach because it avoids the extremes of fundamentalism and subjectivism and allows for ongoing conversation that is centered in wrestling with the text..I think this framework allows us dynamic freedom within the context of the gospel narrative and other writings to allow the word to be a lamp unto our
feet and a light unto our path.  I also think it helps us to place contemporary cultural ideas about community in a place that is subservient to the gospel and the gospel message.

Excerpt:
Hays recognizes the difficulty the church experiences when attempting to identify the message or application of Scripture amidst diverse and often variant readings of the New Testament. The problem is that “unless we can give a coherent account of how we move between the biblical text and normative ethical judgments, appeals to the authority of Scripture will be hollow and unconvincing” (2).
Hays begins by “mapping the field” with a survey of six current approaches or models of New Testament ethics. These approaches include the attempt to merely describe the ethical teachings of the New Testament or the morality of the early church. One model seeks to use Scripture as an abstract source for principles or moral ideals with little concern for a detailed exegesis of the text. Other approaches use contemporary experience as a grid through which the New Testament text is evaluated or assert that it is the moral character of the church which enables it to faithfully read the biblical text.
Hays defines his approach as a “metaphorical embodiment of narrative paradigms” (18). The contemporary church is called to read the Bible as a story in which it discerns the correspondence between the present community and the people whose story is told in the New Testament. Hays affirms the priority of the canonical story, the need for careful exegesis, and a recognition that the “right understanding of the texts is possible only when we act in obedience to them” (19). He asserts that “New Testament ethics requires a confessional, self-involving commitment to put what we read into practice” (19). {72}
Hays suggests that New Testament ethics involves four overlapping tasks. First, the descriptive task calls for a careful reading of the text. The synthetic task seeks to discern a coherent perspective within the diversity of the canon. Hays claims that the unity of the New Testament is centered around the gospel story, which itself requires a cluster of images (community, cross, new creation) to adequately identify what is fundamental to the ethical witness. The hermeneutical task is to place “our community’s life imaginatively within the world articulated by the texts” (33) and to “see our lives anew by reading them in metaphorical juxtaposition with this story” (35). The church is called to stand under the authority of Scripture and to allow its life to be confronted with the vision of the New Testament. Finally, the pragmatic task is for the church to embody the meaning of the text as it is continually being shaped by the text.

http://www.licc.org.uk/engaging-with-the-bible/book-reviews/richard-b-hays-on-new-testament-ethics-925