Can Scripture be of Value for Contemporary Christian Ethics?

“Christians are often described as ‘people of the Book’… we acknowledge the Bible as embodying divine revelation and for this reason continually look to Scripture for instruction as to what we should believe and what we should do.” (Page ?? paragraph 4)

Stanley Grenz sums up very well the desire of most Christians. Our difficulty though is that, as Hays points out,

“…everybody wants to claim the Bible.” (Page 2 paragraph 3)

The Bible, whilst not taken seriously by secular culture, still has a certain recognised authority or inherent honesty that politicians especially will want to claim. Hays gives us a few examples from the USA, where the Christian vote is quite large, but in the UK, where the church in general is less right wing, the appeal is more subtle. Tony Blair, for example, when campaigning for office made sure that publicity was given to his and his family’s church attendance, this had a twofold effect; first the Christians felt an affinity with him and second, secular culture perceived him trustworthy. This was not a direct appeal to Scripture but an indirect use of Scripture’s perceived authority.

Hays makes it quite clear that the task fac

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Some common words found in the essay are:
Holy Spirit, Commandments Exodus, Bible Paul, Creator God, Tony Blair, John Fathers, Ignatius Whenever, Bible Gods, Word God, Abraham Genesis, holy spirit, god covenant, community faith, people god, relationship god, god creator, god creator god, develop method, gods purpose, blessing nations, experience community, god covenant maker, descriptive synthetic tasks, experience community faith,
Approximate Word count = 2238
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)