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Blount and Hays

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Title: Blount and Hays


1
Blount and Hays
  • Eugene Baek

2
John The Christology of Active Resistance
  • In Johns work, Blount finds his language
    symbolism to be the stuff of active,
    countercultural, communal resistance.
  • One Can read Johns narrative in the light of its
    own social location.
  • Loving one another, Blount denotes, is the
    foundation for an ethics of active resistance.

3
Shucking Corn A Slave Perspective on
Countercultural, Active Resistance
  • According to Hopkins, the slaves stole pleasure,
    co-opted power, and appropriated resources in an
    effort to foster self-respect and engineer a
    sense of communal belonging and pride.
  • Slaves played their way into a reality where the
    injustices that presently plagued them were in
    truth no more.

4
Johannine Christology The Potential for Ethics
  • Everything in John begins with Christ.
  • There is no kingdom confusion.
  • John simplifies matters his focus is on Jesus
    alone.
  • Jesus identity as Son of God is the truth to
    which the signs in the Gospel and the Gospel
    itself testifies.
  • Question Are we with Jesus or against him?

5
Johannine Love Christological Ethics
  • There is a problem it appears that ethics has
    been reduce to mere belief in the Johannine
    framework.
  • Blount explains that the link that binds faith
    and love together for John is Jesus.
  • Two questions Can we keep Jesus commandments?
    What exactly are Jesus commandments?
  • Love was already a preeminent ethical expectation
    long before Jesus descended.
  • Love was not exclusively personal it was
    interpersonal, even communal, directing an image
    of self-sacrifice for others on a corporate,
    social scale.

6
Johannine Dualism An Ethics of Resistance
  • John operates from a theological perspective of
    cosmological dualism.
  • John encourages his readers to choose the path of
    faith in his, Jesus, Sonship, and thereby ally
    themselves with the things from above.
  • The problem with Johns dualistic rendering is
    that, in the end, his narrative connects the
    structural intransigence of the world with the
    characterization that he names the Jews.
  • Johns ethics is a Christology of active
    resistance allowed Blount to a renewed
    appreciation for the manner in which John ends
    with the conclusion to the first rendering of his
    Gospel.

7
Revelation The Witness of Active Resistance
  • Blounts primary interest was to demonstrate that
    the Roman occupation endured by Marks readers
    corresponds to the psychological occupation
    that continues to haunt African Americans.
  • Blount mentions that the language that John uses
    is the language of resistance, not escapism.

8
Apocalyptic Theology The Truth Is Out There
  • Question Who is in control? God? Or the
    Emperor and Rome?
  • Outlines two key oppositions God vs. Satan

9
Hays Three Focal Images
  • Community
  • The church is a countercultural community of
    discipleship, and this community is the primary
    addressee of Gods imperatives.
  • Cross
  • Jesus death on a cross is the paradigm for
    faithfulness to God in this world.
  • New Creation
  • The church embodies the power of the resurrection
    in the midst of a not-yet-redeemed world.

10
Community
  • Primary sphere of moral concern is not the
    character of the individual but the corporate
    obedience of the church.
  • Ex. Romans 121-2
  • Community is called to embody an alternative
    order that stands as a sign of Gods redemptive
    purposes in the world.
  • The term community points to the concrete
    social manifestation of the people of God.
  • Church is the body of Christ, a temple built of
    living stones, a city set on a hill, Israel in
    the wilderness.

11
Cross
  • Jesus death is consistently interpreted in the
    New Testament as an act of self-giving love, and
    the community is consistently called to take up
    the cross and follow in the way that his death
    defines.
  • The death of Jesus carries with it the promise of
    the resurrection, but the power of the
    resurrection is in Gods hands not ours.
  • Imitating is a way of obedience.
  • The focal image of the cross that ensures that
    the followers of Jesus must read the New
    Testament as a call to renounce violence and
    coercion.

12
New Creation
  • Pauls image of new creation stands here as a
    shorthand signifier for the dialectical
    eschatology that runs throughout the New
    Testament.
  • In Christ, we know that the powers of the old age
    are doomed, and the new creation is already
    appearing.
  • Thus, the New Testaments eschatology creates a
    critical framework that pronounces judgment upon
    our complacency as well as upon our presumption
    despair.

13
How Do Ethicists Use Scripture?
  • Modes of Appeal to Scripture
  • Other Sources of Authority
  • The Enactment of the Word
  • A Diagnostic Checklist

14
Modes of Appeal to Scripture
  • Theologians may appeal to Scripture as a source
    of the following
  • Rules direct commandments or prohibitions of
    specific behaviors
  • Principles general frameworks of moral
    consideration by which particular decisions about
    action are to be governed
  • Paradigms stories or summary accounts of
    characters who model exemplary conduct
  • A symbolic world that creates the perceptual
    categories through which we interpret reality
  • All these modes or discourse within the NT
    suggests that all of them are potentially
    legitimate modes for our own normative
    reflection.

15
Other Sources of Authority
  • Tradition
  • Refers to the churchs time-honored practices of
    worship not general cultural customs.
  • Tradition can take a more local form cultural
    groups or a particular denominations within the
    church bear their won distinctive forms of belief
    and practice.
  • Gives us a place to start in our interpretation
    of Scripture
  • Reason
  • Refers to Understanding of the world attained
    through systematic philosophical reflection and
    through scientific investigation.
  • Reasoning enabled us to understand more about the
    cultural context of scriptural writings and their
    processes of composition and development.
  • Experience
  • Refers to not just to the religious experience of
    individuals but also to the experience of the
    community of faith collectively.
  • Experience confirms the testimony of Scripture in
    the hearts and lives of the commuinty.

16
The Enactment of the Word
  • What sort of communities have resulted or might
    result from putting the readings of Scripture
    into practice?
  • When we pose this question, we are acknowledging
    the force of Jamess insistence that faith
    without works is dead.
  • The view is asking how the proposals for the use
    of the NT in ethics have been put into practice
    in living communities of faith.

17
A Diagnostic Checklist
  • The overall structure of the checklist
    corresponds to the four-part structure.
  • Descriptive
  • Synthetic
  • Hermeneutical
  • Pragmatic
  • Employs the assessing role of Scripture in the
    work of various theological ethicists.
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