for christians the bible is a central authority on matters of faith and practice but what kind of authority does it possess how do we move from what scripture says to what we should do here and now in this place and time some say the bible says it i believe it that settles it but for many people it doesn't seem so simple many of the ethical issues we face today are not directly addressed in the bible there are also things in scripture which are commanded but which many of us would find unpalatable today for example the
stoning of wrongdoers there are also some things about which the bible seems inconsistent or even maybe self-contradictory consider slavery in the 18th and 19th centuries both abolitionists and slave holders justified their positions scripturally as abraham lincoln stated in his second inaugural address both sides read the same bible pray to the same god and each invokes his aid against the other the slaveholder believed the bible clearly upheld a master's right to own and discipline slaves the abolitionists believed the scriptural themes of liberation and love absolutely precluded any person owning another person similarly in our own time
opposing sides appeal to scripture and debates about marriage sexuality war violence social justice and responses to poverty a basic question we might ask is this what is scripture in the first place major christian traditions have slightly different versions of scripture reflecting disagreement about the inclusion or non-inclusion of texts that protestants call apocrypha and roman catholic and orthodox christians sometimes called deuterocanonical but more importantly there are a number of different ways to understand the nature of the text of scripture themselves is the bible a rule book a code of conduct is it an ancient chronicle a
history of past events or is it a window into the heart of god a love song to woo humanity closer to him what kind of text is it and what is it supposed to do there's no single answer to a question like that of course a text can be more than one thing at once and the bible is also strictly speaking not a single text but rather dozens of different texts composed in different settings with diverse genres and audiences over thousands of years nevertheless the bible has a coherence a thematic and narrative unity at a
fundamental level it tells a single story a meta-narrative if you will about god's faithful relationship to a lost humanity and a broken creation christians believe this is an ongoing story and it is one that we find ourselves a part of this point has tremendous implications for christian ethics philosopher aleister mcintyre once wrote i can only answer the question what i to do once i've answered the previous question of what story or stories do i find myself apart imagine you see me one day running at full speed launch myself into another person tackling them into the
grass you might ask why did you do that i would then have to tell a story and your understanding of the event would hinge on that story perhaps i'm blowing off steam after a frustrating morning grading papers or maybe i saw an oncoming bus and put my life on the line to save that person the point is that we cannot know what someone is doing in any meaningful sense apart from a story that makes that action intelligible now this is true at a micro level but it's also true at a macro level in the sense
that our whole lives take the form of stories a quest for a good life which are also only understood within even broader stories about what the good life consists in in light of our understanding of the world in humanity itself this final and largest level of stories is often referred to as a metanarrative or a worldview it's a big picture story which structures our lives by orienting us in the world towards some particular goal worldviews shape the way we see the world around us primarily by answering a set of big questions one who are we
a sense of identity two where are we a sense of environment three what is wrong a sense of the problem with the way the world is and four what's the solution views and meta-narratives need not be consciously chosen and often they're not so sometimes they're subtly adopted from the wider culture through things like advertising and popular media the stories we encounter in films or disney movies are often crystallized articulations of world views communicating values follow your own heart that's the path to happiness and beliefs about the world good always wins in the end so what's
the overarching story that scripture provides biblical scholar n.t wright has argued that scripture is best understood as a five-act story or a five-act play though strictly speaking there's a sixth act too the five acts right names are creation fall israel jesus and church and the implied sixth act is new creation in case it's not obvious in this scheme we are currently living in the fifth act it's the story of the god of the universe who out of an abundance of love and grace created a good world and created humanity in his image it's the story
of humanity choosing to pursue their own ends and goals to be their own gods rather than rely on the goodness of their creator and it's the story of god's refusal to abandon creation and humanity to their own devices but to redeem them through the election of a people and by incorporating them into the life death and resurrection of that people's messiah jesus the son of god through him and by the holy spirit god is reconciling to himself all things and will one day bring about the renewal of all creation that's the story let's dig a
little bit deeper into wright's analogy of a play how do plays work plays supply a narrative by giving instructions about a scene the characters and by providing a script script gives directions for what speech and action makes sense within that narrative that the play is trying to tell but it's impossible to write every single thing into a script so there must be room for interpretation and improvisation this analogy gives us one way to explain scripture's authority for christian ethics christians believe the story scripture tells is actually our story if we are living in the fifth
act of a 5x story this means that we live in a particular relationship with what came before according to wright we must act in the appropriate manner for this moment in the story this will be in direct continuity with the previous acts we are not free to jump suddenly to another narrative a different play altogether but such continuity also implies discontinuity a moment where genuinely new things can and do happen we must be ferociously loyal to what has gone before and cheerfully open about what must come next wright highlights a few examples of how this
works for instance he notes that we cannot act as if we live in a garden of eden a world without sin or evil neither can we act as if we're living in a world without redemption as if the evil that exists in the world is omnipotent and that nothing can be done about it of course there's more to say about scripture than that it's a story we live in which provides us with a worldview this does not answer our questions so much as open up a whole new set of questions but the play analogy highlights
an important aspect of christian ethics the questions may not all have clear answers but we are invited into a life of faithful and trusting response christians seek to live faithfully in the light of their story which includes the stories of generations of christians throughout the ages who've also sought to live faithfully from the story scripture tells so let us move forward with ferocious loyalty to that story and cheerful openness about where it may lead us
