Are New Testament Ethics Final or Trajectory-Setting?
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - Welcome back to a new week of episodes,
00:00:07.240 | along with the Christmas episode queued up for Wednesday,
00:00:10.200 | just the season.
00:00:11.420 | But today we talk ethics, Pastor John.
00:00:14.000 | What do you say to those who hold
00:00:15.440 | to a trajectory hermeneutic?
00:00:18.120 | Proponents of this view would say something like this.
00:00:20.360 | Sure, we read in the epistles that women cannot lead churches
00:00:24.280 | but that was only temporary.
00:00:26.260 | Paul had close associates in the ministry that were women,
00:00:29.220 | therefore Paul's embrace of women as ministry associates
00:00:33.040 | really sets a trajectory that should develop over time
00:00:36.240 | and lead the church to later embrace
00:00:38.160 | the ordination of women.
00:00:40.440 | That's just one issue.
00:00:41.440 | Other issues are used like slavery and homosexuality.
00:00:44.840 | The question really is then, in other words,
00:00:47.240 | are the ethics of the New Testament final
00:00:49.840 | or are New Testament ethics to be interpreted as undeveloped
00:00:53.680 | and moving along a trajectory we must follow out
00:00:56.800 | and find apart from the New Testament text?
00:01:00.860 | - Yeah, this is a pretty sophisticated issue
00:01:05.300 | so hold on to your hats and let me give a stab at it.
00:01:10.300 | The gist of this view is that we can identify
00:01:15.780 | a state of affairs as ideal or different
00:01:20.940 | from what is presented in the New Testament
00:01:23.660 | as ideal or normative, at least presently,
00:01:27.880 | and then justify going in a different direction
00:01:32.880 | than the New Testament because of clues in the Bible
00:01:37.660 | that we should do things differently than the Bible teaches.
00:01:41.420 | That's the gist of it.
00:01:42.640 | And I have, the main issues are the role of women
00:01:46.440 | in slavery but others as well.
00:01:49.960 | I have three questions to pose to those who are toying
00:01:54.960 | with this way of treating the Bible.
00:01:58.040 | Number one, does the ethical issue in question,
00:02:03.040 | or maybe I should say doesn't the ethical issue in question
00:02:08.680 | become a wax nose that can be shaped by one's preference
00:02:13.860 | without giving decisive authority to the Bible?
00:02:19.200 | Doesn't this way of handling the Bible
00:02:21.640 | let the interpreter decide what state of affairs
00:02:26.440 | he wants the church and the world to move toward
00:02:30.520 | on the trajectory, where are we going?
00:02:32.120 | Well, he knows where we're going.
00:02:34.240 | The interpreter in this view is deciding
00:02:37.240 | where we ought to go and then say
00:02:41.600 | that the New Testament teachings
00:02:43.560 | are not that state of affairs
00:02:46.280 | but are a stepping stone on the way there.
00:02:49.400 | In other words, if you use the word trajectory,
00:02:53.560 | you are assuming you know where we should be,
00:02:57.520 | where we should be heading beyond the New Testament.
00:03:00.880 | Now, how do we know what this is
00:03:04.320 | since it's not in the New Testament?
00:03:07.000 | It seems to me that such a way of doing ethics
00:03:10.640 | will lead to a kind of subjectivity
00:03:14.140 | that lets me make my ethics in some ways
00:03:19.140 | pretty much what I want to make of them,
00:03:22.140 | which is another way of saying that this hermeneutic
00:03:24.800 | seems to effectively strip the Bible of its final authority.
00:03:29.800 | So that's my first concern.
00:03:32.680 | It isn't a trajectory hermeneutic
00:03:35.240 | presuming that I can decide what that goal should be
00:03:38.080 | and thus shape it after my image
00:03:40.260 | rather than any authoritative image in the Bible.
00:03:42.920 | Second, if the issue of roles of women and men
00:03:47.600 | are one of the key issues, which they are,
00:03:50.560 | where this approach seems to be illuminating,
00:03:53.160 | isn't it strange that Paul would argue his points
00:03:58.160 | in ways that make it hard to use this trajectory approach?
00:04:04.440 | Here's what I mean.
00:04:05.600 | This approach would say that Paul's instructions
00:04:09.400 | about men and women in the church, in marriage,
00:04:12.480 | are pointers to something
00:04:15.700 | beyond his own explicit instructions.
00:04:19.120 | In other words, Paul wants us to see his instructions
00:04:23.080 | as temporary and illustrative of liberation,
00:04:27.500 | not permanent and of normative value for all time.
00:04:32.080 | But if that's what Paul or God, in inspiring Paul,
00:04:36.440 | wanted us to think,
00:04:38.120 | that's the way they wanted us to think about things,
00:04:41.040 | it seems strange that the way Paul would argue
00:04:44.020 | for his position was in a way
00:04:46.600 | that is not culturally conditioned or temporary.
00:04:50.600 | In other words, Paul did not say
00:04:52.720 | that women should submit to their husbands
00:04:54.500 | because that would help them fit into the culture better
00:04:57.940 | so that in a later, more liberated time,
00:04:59.840 | they would fit in better another way.
00:05:02.120 | Instead, he argued that this dynamic of husband and wife
00:05:09.080 | leadership and submission was rooted in a relationship
00:05:12.680 | between Christ and the church,
00:05:14.920 | which God had signaled in creation back in Genesis 2,
00:05:19.920 | and was now being worked out in the expression
00:05:25.080 | of the way Christ related to his church.
00:05:27.920 | That's a really strange way to argue
00:05:30.240 | if you want people to take it
00:05:32.560 | in a different direction someday.
00:05:36.360 | When Paul argued for men being in authority
00:05:39.780 | as teachers and elders in the church,
00:05:42.440 | he didn't argue by saying,
00:05:43.920 | now this will help you convert people better
00:05:47.200 | because they won't have to make so many adjustments
00:05:50.120 | in their patriarchal culture
00:05:51.640 | because they can come in here and see
00:05:52.920 | that men are in charge,
00:05:54.480 | but later in another culture,
00:05:56.200 | it would help you convert people another way.
00:05:57.880 | He just never argued like that.
00:05:59.720 | He argued in 1 Timothy 2, 12, and 13
00:06:03.220 | that these dynamics are rooted in creation
00:06:08.140 | in the way Adam and Eve related to one another in the fall.
00:06:12.900 | So both of these, marriage and church,
00:06:17.900 | are ways of arguing for marital role distinction
00:06:22.260 | and church role distinction
00:06:23.900 | that are simply not what you would expect
00:06:26.180 | if God's intent or Paul's intent
00:06:29.380 | was that his way of presenting things
00:06:32.400 | was to signal to us that we should get on a trajectory
00:06:35.940 | and go in a different direction
00:06:38.200 | than the way he was ordering marriage and church life.
00:06:41.860 | That's my second concern.
00:06:43.900 | Here's the last one.
00:06:44.900 | I would ask, did Paul treat slavery,
00:06:49.460 | well, slavery is the really hot one, I think,
00:06:51.660 | did Paul treat slavery
00:06:54.220 | the same way he treated the roles of men and women?
00:06:57.620 | Did he root in creation or in redemption
00:07:02.120 | the ongoing validity of the institution of slavery?
00:07:07.060 | Or let's ask it another way.
00:07:08.700 | What did Paul say was normative
00:07:11.940 | in regard to slavery in the New Testament?
00:07:14.900 | And isn't the answer something like this?
00:07:17.220 | He did not treat the institution of slavery as normative
00:07:22.220 | or as desirable or as right in the way it functioned.
00:07:28.140 | Paul did not say that slavery,
00:07:31.560 | as it has existed in his day or in most of history,
00:07:34.400 | and especially in America,
00:07:36.360 | was the way Christians should relate to each other.
00:07:40.160 | In other words, you don't need a trajectory hermeneutic
00:07:45.160 | to see in Paul that slavery is not the way it should be.
00:07:50.520 | Paul said, 1 Corinthians 7, "Don't be enslaved to anyone.
00:07:55.480 | "Take your liberty if you can have it."
00:07:59.180 | Masters, don't threaten.
00:08:01.780 | You have a master in heaven.
00:08:04.300 | Master Philemon, "Receive your former slave,
00:08:08.740 | "no longer as a bondservant,
00:08:10.940 | "but more than a bondservant, as a beloved brother."
00:08:15.100 | In other words, when it comes to slavery,
00:08:18.260 | what's controversial about Paul, really,
00:08:21.460 | is not that he was pro-slavery,
00:08:24.580 | but that he was pro-submission to slave masters.
00:08:29.020 | Now, that's an issue that's gotta be wrestled with.
00:08:32.240 | Where and when should that be applied,
00:08:34.860 | and should it not be?
00:08:37.240 | In other words, his approach to undoing slavery
00:08:41.360 | in his situation is not the path of violence
00:08:43.720 | or the path of rebellion.
00:08:45.720 | It was another path.
00:08:47.200 | But there's no need for a trajectory hermeneutic
00:08:51.600 | to move beyond the New Testament
00:08:53.680 | as if the New Testament celebrated slavery
00:08:56.720 | as the way things should be.
00:08:58.900 | So, those are my three suggestions for consideration.
00:09:02.520 | Number one, the problem of subjectivity
00:09:05.760 | in determining where this supposed trajectory is going.
00:09:09.920 | Number two, the way Paul argues from creation
00:09:13.100 | and from Christ, not culture,
00:09:15.320 | if he's supposed to be putting us on a trajectory.
00:09:18.820 | And three, the way he does not do that,
00:09:22.960 | does not argue that way with regard to slavery,
00:09:26.360 | but points to the flaws of an institution
00:09:29.520 | that was not the way it should be.
00:09:31.740 | - Outstanding, thank you, Pastor John.
00:09:34.600 | And there's a very good introduction to this theme
00:09:37.240 | in the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology.
00:09:40.080 | It's a review article titled,
00:09:41.680 | "Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals, a Review Article,"
00:09:45.680 | which was written by Thomas Schreiner.
00:09:47.920 | You can find it with a simple Google search.
00:09:50.760 | Well, tomorrow we have a question, a great question,
00:09:52.980 | from a young podcast listener who wants to know,
00:09:55.760 | how can I be sure my relationship with God is healthy?
00:09:59.440 | So important.
00:10:00.720 | That's the next episode of the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:10:03.300 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:10:04.160 | We'll see you tomorrow.
00:10:05.320 | (upbeat music)
00:10:07.900 | (upbeat music)
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