The Bible's Role in Christian Ethics*

Biblical scholars and Christian ethicists have in the past frequently had little contact with each other's work. The former have been content to limit their focus to historical questions; whereas the latter have usually spoken to contemporary moral issues either with minimal reference to Scripture or with little concern for the technical and historical questions of biblical scholarship. Meanwhile, people in the pew have generally assumed that the connections between Scripture and moral decision-making were obvious, even though Scripture has often played little or no role in their actual decisions. Today, however, there is a renewed interest in the place of. Scripture in the Christian's moral life. Christian ethicists and biblical scholars are joining in a new and poten tially fruitful dialogue. ' Such a dialogue is obviously not free of problems. How much moral guidance is likely to come from a book which addresses the morality of eating food offered to idols and which prohibits a freed slave from keeping his slave-girl wife? Is it reasonable to expect such an ancient collection of documents to speak to the moral issues of contemporary society? If so, what is the nature of Scripture's moral authority for the present-day Christian? Is the chief locus of its authority the process of character formation, of community building, or of decision-making? Does Scripture, with its vast variety of materials, even present a unified, coherent picture of moral virtue and obligation? And is it possible to focus on moral