An alternate title for Collins’s cogent, lucid, and persuasive text on the use of the Bible as an ethical guide might be How Responsible Readers Can Interpret and Apply Scripture’s Moral Teachings and Authority because the central argument of this accessible and timely book is that readers must acknowledge and accept responsibility for interpreting and applying biblical texts while evaluating the moral authority of different parts of Scripture. The question here is not so much what the Bible says about key ethical issues but how responsible readers are to mine this resource in an ethical fashion.
Collins begins this fine guide on the responsible use of Scripture as an ethical teacher with three caveats. First, he questions whether the biblical text says anything about ethics except through a reader’s interpretive lens, inviting us to accept responsibility for how we read the moral lessons of Scripture. Next, he reminds readers of the complexity and contradictions found among biblical statements about differing ethical issues, making it problematic to assert that “this is what the Bible teaches.” And finally, Collins challenges readers to deal with the fact that numerous biblical texts support practices (like slavery or the conquest of Canaan) that are not only highly objectionable to our modern (post-Enlightenment) sensibilities, but also profoundly inconsistent with Scripture’s own call to love the neighbor.
Collins next reminds us that the ethical perspectives of biblical authors were framed by a grasp of creation, covenant, and eschatology different from contemporary audiences, making it treacherous to translate specific ethical norms as if written for or with modern sensibilities. It is not just that the Bible addresses different issues or comes to differing judgments. Biblical authors and audiences inhabited a different theological landscape and breathed a different philosophical atmosphere, and forgetting this undermines the translation and application of biblical values to our modern setting.
With these caveats and contexts in mind, the main body of the text explores what ethical guidance the Bible offers regarding issues such as abortion, capital punishment, homosexuality, gender, marriage, the environment, violence, and social justice. Unsurprisingly, Collins eschews simple answers, acknowledges how the biblical framework and diverse range of positions complicates matters, and challenges us to acknowledge texts (especially around violence and gender) whose teaching and authority must be questioned. In addition, Collins examines and evaluates a variety of contemporary scholarly approaches to troubling biblical texts and warns of the dangers of inserting modern sensibilities into biblical interpretation to avoid hard decisions about the authority of these texts. Better, Collins thinks, to report what you find and let the chips fall where they may.
This thoughtful exploration of biblical teaching on various ethical issues offers a handful of valuable lessons. First, it is possible to discern a hierarchy of scriptural values (with love of God and neighbor at the summit) to interpret and evaluate specific ethical statements. Second, even within the biblical corpus, there is a pattern of critiquing and reforming earlier teachings. Third, certain biblical texts or teachings are deeply inconsistent with more central biblical values. Each of these lessons suggest that contemporary readers also have a responsibility to interpret and evaluate biblical texts.
While this important text reminds readers of the need for and difficulties of interpreting what the Bible says about important ethical issues and models this conscious and scholarly process in the examination of several contemporary issues, the book’s most important contribution is the reminder that readers have the responsibility to decide what authority they are going to grant to biblical passages supporting deeply objectionable practices, and how they are going to determine whether a biblical teaching is morally obligatory.
Collins’s own answer to this question seems to be that we need to read the Bible as a whole and alongside other sources, bringing together critical moral judgments informed both by our appropriation of Scripture’s most basic values and a larger ethical worldview sustained by a careful and broad reading of ethical wisdom from a variety of sources.
