Episode 8 – Response Ethics to the Divine Act (Grace)
In this episode we begin to address the problems (of evil) that we looked at in previous episodes. If we take our previous conversations seriously, we will notice we are a bit stuck – in fact, if left to ourselves, we seem completely screwed. There seems no way out – our systems are fallen, our cosmos and the world we live in has fallen and, perhaps most daunting, we ourselves are deeply cracked, broken, and we represent a huge part of the problem. What can we do?
The good news is, we have not been left to ourselves. That is the whole point of the story of God, the one centered on the birth, the life, the death, and the resurrection of the God-man, Jesus. The incarnation where God became human represents a costly move on God’s part, as we already have said, an antidote that we hope (and we believe) matches the gravity and depth of the problem. God acted first – in undeserved mercy and grace toward the whole mess, in a costly manner with skin in the game; thus, there is nothing we must or even can do to add to that, except to respond to the acts from God in Christ in a way that matches God's extravagant risk in the face of evil and death. In a word, if God acted in such an unreserved way and then extended an invitation to us, the only response we now owe to God is to act toward others in the same way God acted toward us.
In short, we must ‘...act in a way that shows who we now are, who we have become, what it is that God has done for and in us.’ We must radically include others in our company because God radically included us in God’s company. That is the pattern – a model that sets the tone for everything we will say in future episodes in this series. We have a word for what we are looking for – the term is ‘Christomorphic’. We try to define and unpack this odd word in this episode, in a way that hopefully gives us a picture of what God has done for us and in us in Jesus.
Texts:
- David P. Gushee & Glenn H. Stassen, Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context. Second Edition, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2016 (ISBN: 978-0-8028-7421-4).
- Donald A. Hay, Economics Today: A Christian Critique. Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2004 (ISBN: 978-157383284).
- Stephen Charles Mott, Biblical Ethics and Social Change. Second Edition, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011 (ISBN: 978-0199739370).
- David F. Wright, editor, Essays in Evangelical Social Ethics. Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1979 (ISBN: 978-0199739370).
Readings:
- ‘Law & Prophets: Authority and Scripture’, Gushee & Stassen, Chapter 3
- ‘Using the Bible in Ethics’, I Howard Marshall in Essays in Evangelical Social Ethics, Chapter 2
- ‘God’s Grace and Our Action’, Mott, Chapter 2
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