Chapter 5 - The ethics of covenant and command

Summary

The ethics determined by the new situation can best be characterized not as interim ethics but as ethics of the time of salvation or new-covenant ethics.

(Amos N. Wilder)

INTRODUCTION

As well as liberal idealism, dialectical theology and existential interpretation, there emerged a broad and varied approach to eschatology and ethics which centred on the idea of the people of God, the covenant community. It emphasised historical context and religious – especially prophetic – experience, and it could evince ‘realized’, ‘inaugurated’ or ‘futurist’ views of eschatology. It also allowed scholars to focus on the rediscovered centre of New Testament concern: the kerygma or apostolic preaching, and the moral imperatives of Jesus and the apostles. But underlying all this varied activity was the understanding and reinterpretation of the moral tradition of the Hebrew scriptures. It is here that we find the roots of covenantal ethics.

James Muilenburg has observed that even to speak of the ethics of ancient Israel means using the terms with considerable latitude.

Here we find no unified and coherent body of ethical principles, no autonomous values or ideals which one can possess and make one's own, no norms which have independent status in and of themselves. The Old Testament contains no treatises on the nature of goodness, truth and justice. No Hebrew ever thought of writing a dissertation de natura bonitatis or de natura veritatis.