Theology Today - Vol 42, No. 1 - April 1985 - BOOK REVIEW - The Great Reversal: Ethics and the New Testament

125 - The Great Reversal: Ethics and the New Testament

The Great Reversal:
Ethics and the New Testament
By Allen Verhey
Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1984. 264 pp. $13.95.

The task of writing a book in the field of New Testament ethics is an enormous one. It requires the descriptive skills of an exegete whose

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understanding of the biblical texts is informed by a thorough reading of biblical scholarship, while at the same time one must be attentive to the theological and philosophical issues at stake when attempting to move interpretations of those biblical texts into the life of the believing community. Allen Verhey, an associate professor of religion at Hope College, has accomplished such a task and should be applauded for giving us this competent and useful study.

Verhey's stance before the Christian Scriptures is critical and evangelical; they are an authority for life and faith, enshrining a moral tradition which continues to have relevance for those who embrace the gospel of Christ. Yet, he insists on the "Chalcedonian consensus" which affirms that the Bible is the Word of God and the words of human writers. One's faithfulness to the biblical Word assumes the historical particularity of the human writers, their audiences, and those books which make up the New Testament. An appropriate understanding of this literature is of necessity a "critical" one, the results of which facilitate the church's recovery of its Word from God.

This abstract of Verhey's view of Scripture helps prepare the reader for the book's contents, which are at once critical and conservative. The first three of its chapters describe the flow of the moral tradition envisaged by the New Testament, which has its roots in the preaching of the historical Jesus (chapter 1); which was transmitted orally to the early church in the form of non-traditional collections and traditional paraenesis (chapter 2); and which is transmitted to the ongoing community of faith through its canonical (which is to say its "authorized") interpretations (chapter 3). This biblical material is characterized at every point by its diversity, and is a true reflection of a developing moral tradition.

At the same time, this diversity is plotted on a continuum which converges in mutual commitment to the gospel of the risen Christ; to confess this as true gives one's moral judgments some clarity and a context within which to reflect. Indeed, "if, and only if, the movement from Scripture to moral claims today is coherent with the message that God has already made his eschatological power and purpose felt in the resurrection, is the use of Scripture authorized" (183). In the final chapter, Verhey argues that the Bible is not simply revealer, but rather a context where God's relationship to Scripture and to the Christian community is that of sanctifier. Through the biblical words, God renews life, transforms identities, and recreates and resurrects a people which transforms death into life.

There is much to recommend Verhey's book. He writes as an informed scholar. More than any recent treatment of New Testament ethics, Verhey understands the often complex field of ethical theory and gives useful abstracts of competing positions (including examples from Jewish thought). Verhey also writes as a churchman. The moral tradition enshrined within the Scripture belongs to the church, most profoundly understood in its struggles to act in moral ways. He intends

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for his work to illuminate the continuing church-to set forth a description of New Testament ethics which shapes its moral discernment. The force of Verhey's proposal is therefore always directed toward the community which reads the New Testament as canon and toward the believer who as moral agent is the giver and hearer of reasons.

Against this positive reading of Verhey's book, the following criticisms only slightly qualify my recommendation of it. First, his description of the New Testament's ethic, its roots in the preaching of the historical Jesus, and its transmission to the second generation church, while valuable, is quite pedestrian. Rarely does Verhey depart from the critical consensus in his discussion of the biblical texts; rarely does he engage the reader in the contested nature of current biblical scholarship, whether in the discussion of the historical Jesus or in the exegesis of the texts themselves; rarely does he suggest creative solutions to exegetical impasses. Verhey is more an ethicist than an exegete. Second, while he takes seriously the diversity of New Testament ethics and resists harmonistic or systematic arrangements of his interpretations, Verhey does not treat Scripture's diversity as an important methodological clue. If we are to embrace the wholeness of the Scripture as the church's canon, is it not important to ask why there is no one tidy account of God's Word and will in the Bible? Should we not answer this question at a canonical rather than merely a historical level? It is at the canonical level that the current church reads its Scriptures and finds its moral authorizations. The fact is that the church has always been characterized by the diversity, theologically and ethically, one finds in its canon. The compelling methodological problem, then, is how we might utilize this canonical and ecclesial diversity in understanding God's will for the church.

Third, even though Verhey writes for the church, his book lacks concrete examples of how the church might use his proposal in meeting current moral dilemmas and it sustains a theoretical discussion throughout, the book is therefore unlikely to reach beyond the guilds of biblical scholarship and Christian ethics (and those they teach in seminaries and universities) to the non-specialist in the local church. Finally, and no fault of Verhey's, the book's indexes are inadequate, incomplete, and sometimes incorrect. This limits its value as a research tool.

As a summary of current research in New Testament studies and especially in ethical theory, Verhey's book succeeds very nicely; his contribution to the discipline is more modest. On balance, it is a book to own and to use.

Robert W. Wall
Seattle Pacific University
Seattle, Washington