How should the Bible be used in Christian Ethics? Although this question has been addressed many times, little attention has gone to how the Bible actually has functioned in constructing theological ethics. In this book, Jeffrey Siker describes and analyzes the Bible's various uses in the theology and ethics of eight of the twentieth century's most important and influential Christian theologians: Reinhold Niebuhr, H. Richard Niebuhr, Bernard Haring, Paul Ramsey, Stanley Hauerwas, Gustavo Gutierrez, James Cone, and Rosemary Radford Ruether. In approaching each author, Siker organizes his study around five related questions: which biblical texts does each author in fact use; in what ways does each use these texts; how does each envision the authority of the Bible; what kind of hermeneutic does the author employ; finally, what has each author's particular approach to the Bible yielded in terms of Christian ethics, or, in other words, what are some of the practical results? Siker ends each chapter with a critical evaluation of the various problems and prospects for the author's use of Scripture, and concludes the study with a comparison and contrast of the author's respective appropriations of the Sermon on the Mount.
Industry Reviews
"A first-rate contribution that will be very illuminating for all interested in the discipline of moral theology or Christian ethics."--Charles E. Curran, Southern Methodist University
"The book makes a significant and helpful contribution to the understanding of the methodology of the use of the Bible for ethics. It presents a fine spectrum of issues that are currently being confronted."--Stephen Charles Mott, author of A Christian Perspective on Political Thought
"What makes his book an exciting piece of scholarship is not only the enumeration of the actual biblical texts most frequently cited by his eight ethicists, but especially his teasing out of their principles of interpretation as well as his critical evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of their use of the Bible to ground their ethics."--Choice
"A first-rate contribution that will be very illuminating for all interested in the discipline of moral theology or Christian ethics."--Charles E. Curran, Southern Methodist University
"The book makes a significant and helpful contribution to the understanding of the methodology of the use of the Bible for ethics. It presents a fine spectrum of issues that are currently being confronted."--Stephen Charles Mott, author of A Christian Perspective on Political Thought
"Siker's treatment of each theologian is fair and thorough, and his evaluation is illuminating...This book serves an important need in the very contemporary and critical field of theological ethics."--Religious Studies Review