Blount and Hays

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Blount and Hays

• Eugene Baek

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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How Do Ethicists Use Scripture?

• Modes of Appeal to Scripture
• Other Sources of Authority
• The Enactment of the Word
• A Diagnostic Checklist

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.