Quotes from Richard B. Hays

the sword with which he strikes down the nations comes from his mouth. We are to understand that the execution of God's judgment occurs through the proclamation of the Word.

Mark nowhere explicitly interprets Jesus' death as an act of "love." The way of the cross is simply the way of obedience to the will of God, and discipleship requires following that way regardless of cost or consequences.

Paul understood himself as a Jew sent by the God of Israel to the world of Gentile "outsiders" for the purpose of declaring to them the message of eschatological salvation promised in Israel's Scriptures - preeminently Isaiah - to the whole world.

Not only is the charge false that Jesus sponsors antinomianism, but in fact he demands a standard of legal obedience more stringent than that of the scribes and Pharisees, who merely require a minimal outward adherence to the literal sense of the Law.

Thus, Paul and John define the opposite poles on the New Testament's spectrum of attitudes toward Judaism.

The temptation to project upon the figure of Jesus our own notions of the ideal religious personality is nearly irresistible.

All actions, however ostensibly spiritual, must meet the criterion of constructive impact on the church community.

Rarely, however, has the church fundamentally questioned whether military service is consistent with Christian service

It is a peculiar irony that in the modern—and "postmodern"—world, Christianity has come to be regarded as narrow and moralistic. Originally, it was quite the reverse: figures such as Jesus and Paul were widely regarded as rebels, antinomians, disturbers of decency.)

One reason that the church has become so bitterly divided over moral issues is that the community of faith has uncritically accepted the categories of popular U.S. discourse about these topics, without subjecting them to sustained critical scrutiny in light of a close reading of the Bible.

Barth identifies three temptations that beset Christian ethics: (1) apologetics: the temptation to justify theological ethics on nontheological grounds; (2) differentiation: the temptation to isolate theological ethics as a special sphere of inquiry sharply distinguished from philosophical ethics; (3) coordination: the temptation to correlate theological ethics and philosophical ethics as mutually complementary.

The basic problem with the desire of Jewish Christians to maintain Torah observance was, according to Paul, not that it engendered "works righteousness" but rather that it fractured the unity of the community in Christ.

John Barclay has well summarized the ethical issue at stake: "The problem here is not legalism (in the sense of earning merit before God) but cultural imperialism—regarding Jewish identity and Jewish customs as the essential tokens of membership in the people of God.

As Yoder has persuasively suggested, the temptation to refuse the cup is precisely the temptation to resort to armed resistance.

To be sure, Paul hopes for the ultimate triumph of God's grace over all human unbelief and disobedience (Rom. 11:32, Phil. 2:9–11). Until that eschatological consummation, however, Paul speaks only to the community of faith. He articulates no basis for a general ethic applicable to those outside the church.

The gospel is not a summary of "the necessary truths of reason"; rather, it is a revelation that shatters and reshapes human reason in light of God's foolishness. The Word is known in contingent human form, and only there. That is the scandal of the gospel.

To use Matthew's own language, turning the other cheek makes sense if and only if it really is true that the meek will inherit the earth, if and only if it really is true that those who act on Jesus' words have built their house on a rock so that it will stand in the day of judgment. Turning the other cheek makes sense if and only if all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus.

The question that Luke-Acts puts to the church—then and now—is not "Are you reforming society?" but rather "Is the power of the resurrection at work among you?

First, we should guard against falling into a habit of reading New Testament ethical texts in one mode only. If we read the New Testament and find only laws, we are obviously enmeshed in grave hermeneutical distortion. Likewise, if we read the New Testament and find only timeless moral principles, we are probably guilty, as Barth warned, of evading Scripture's specific claims upon our lives.

Jesus' death on the cross is not an accident or an injustice that befell him; it is, rather, an act of sacrifice freely offered for the sake of God's people.

The church embodies the power of the resurrection in the midst of a not-yet-redeemed world.

the ethic envisioned by the New Testament writers is not an impossible ideal. If we fail to live in obedient responsiveness to their moral vision, that is because of a failure of the imagination—or perhaps a lack of courage—on our part.

The New Testament has a normative role in Christian theology and ethics that is different from the Old Testament's role. We do not have a simple, undifferentiated canon running from Genesis to Revelation. The claim that Jesus' death and resurrection is the central decisive act of God for the salvation of humankind means that the cross becomes the hermeneutical center for the canon as a whole. Thus, within the canon the New Testament has a privileged hermeneutical function.

one cannot become a follower of Jesus in this Gospel's narrative world without surrendering a position of privilege.