Singing the Ethos of God

What place does Scripture have in Christian ethics? After all, the Bible is hardly a dictionary of modern ethical dilemmas and their solutions. We cannot, say, look up ‘nuclear weapons’ in the Bible and decide whether they are a good or a bad thing. Scripture does not work like that.

We can, of course, attempt to proof text our ethics. When the Bible says ‘you shall not kill’ that is fairly clear. Applied to nuclear weaponry, however, it might clearly state we should not use the bomb, but what about possessing it to stop the other side using theirs? Even then, ‘thou shalt not kill’ has, over the years, accumulated a number of caveats, such as self-defence and the defence of the weak.

So, for example, if a poor and demilitarised state were threatened by a neighbour with invasion or, if there were any resistance, nuclear annihilation, would another state be justified in threatening the neighbour with annihilation if they crossed the border? As far as I can tell, the Bible is not going to give us direct answers to these questions.

How, then, is Scripture used in Christian ethics? Alternatively, we can ask what is the place of Christian ethics in Scripture? As the foregoing might have suggested, the answer is not as straightforward as some people, both Christian and not, might suppose.

One view of the place of ethics in Scripture is put forward by Brian Brock:

Brock, B. (2007). Singing the Ethos of God: On the Place of Christian Ethics in Scripture. Cambridge: Eerdmans.

The first question that arises is why on earth ‘singing’? What is the difference between singing and saying, speaking or reading? Brock’s point is that in singing of God we involve ourselves. That is, by singing the ethos of God, we form ourselves in using Scripture to praise God. The paradigm case of doing this in Scripture is, of course, the use of the Psalms.

The book is divided into three parts. In the first part, Brock discusses various views of Christian ethics and the relation thereof with Scripture. For those of us who have not read the other views, this is interesting but a bit off-putting. I suppose that is the price of reading academic texts without being an academic in the specific subject. After that, and a discussion of Bonhoeffer's ethics as related to Psalm 119. Brock describes the use of the Psalms by Augustine and Luther. He focusses on the exegesis of a few Psalms that they wrote; not the same Psalms for comparison, but the focus is on how those Psalms are related to the rest of Scripture and, most importantly, to the formation of the Christian mind and hence conscience.

The overall effect is that by reading the Psalms carefully, as Christian believers, we can relate the formation which Scripture gives to our thinking to the world around us. Both, after all, are given by God and therefore should be relatable. Just because the Bible says nothing about nuclear weapons does not mean that the formation given by Scripture should not, or cannot, form our thoughts about their use and possession.

Brock notes that a constant theme in the Psalms, particularly Psalm 119 is the idea of te ‘way’. The way of the Lord, Torah, the Law and a variety of other synonyms. How do we learn the way of the Lord? The answer is by truly engaging with Scripture, wrestling with it, if you like, singing it. We learn the way of the Lord by doing the way of the Lord. That doing is, of course, usually done in a community of people trying to do the same thing. As Brock says, we know what the goal of the Way is, but we cannot see the path to get there. We have to rely on God to show us the next step on the way towards the heavenly city.

The third part tries to move the discussion forward. There is a discussion of language and metaphor in the Bible. Metaphors orient us towards the reality that the metaphor indicates: ‘...from now on you will be catching men' (Luke 5:10 NRSV). The Way is itself a metaphor: we are not called to walk along a specific concrete path, but to form ourselves according to Scripture, our interaction with the world, other Christian voices and in the light of our calling towards the city of God.

One point that Brock makes is that the metaphors of the Bible have become a bit over-familiar to us. They have lost their shock value, the capability to surprise us and prompt a rethinking of our views, values, attitudes and thinking. Hence, Brock argues, when we truly immerse ourselves in Scripture, when we become (to use Luther’s expression) ‘chatterers about God’, when we sing about God, engaging with Scripture not only intellectually but affectively, by allowing it to shape our thinking, our lives, our emotional responses to the call of God as well as to the charge to serve the world, then we find the place of ethics in Scripture and Scripture in ethics.

God, famously, reorientates our hearts as well as our minds. The Apostle’s lives were turned upside down by Jesus call to them. The prophets too had their lives changed by God and his calling, often to extremely uncomfortable places. But it is only engagement at an affective level, not just as an intellectual exercise that will permit us to find answers to our questions of ethics that arise in the world.

The role of Christian ethics in Scripture, then, is to be formed by it. Once the minds seeking a Christian ethical answer have been formed by Scripture, the shape of answers to ethical problems should be discernable, even if considerable effort is still required to articulate them. The problem is the first step, of course, which requires engagement, a hermeneutic of the whole of Scripture and, ultimately, some serious hard work and openness to being changed.