There’s a good post up titled The Mystery of God and Biblical Morality over at Father Jake Stops the World (“the musings of an eclectic and sometimes eccentric Episcopal priest”) which quotes a sermon that takes a look at some of those passages many find troubling in the Bible – stoning to death as a punishment for numerous sins, for example – and asks, do we want to live by this type of Biblical morality? The post also links to some previous discussions on what role the Bible plays in making ethical and moral decisions within the church. He also quotes Charles Hefling (professor of systematic theology at Boston College), who says
…What does all this imply about Scripture? Two things. First is that on matters of faith, on what Christians are to believe for their soul’s health, scripture is the sole authority. The second, however, is that Scripture is not and cannot be the complete, all sufficient criterion by which to discern our moral duty…
I think this point is one of the things that I’ve come to realize makes it difficult for me to remain in certain evangelical circles. Among some Christians, there seems to be no understanding of moral growth outside the moral life described in the Bible nearly two thousand years ago; it’s as though we don’t think God knew that society would change, that life itself might look very different, or that God could continue to transform us into even better examples of God’s love than those written down in the first century or so after Christ’s death, not to mention those written more than a thousand years before his birth. Don’t we think this possible for God? Don’t we think the Holy Spirit is aiding us and guiding us in addition to the Bible? The notion that we must be in even more direct contact with God than the Bible brings us, in such contact through constant interaction with the Holy Spirit, is why I find Quakerism incredibly appealing (though unfortunately 21st-century Quakerism doesn’t seem to be quite the same spirit-filled vision George Fox had back in the day). At any rate, I agree with the sentiment of the post. There are times when Christians should, in fact, not live by Biblical morality; they should be striving for something even higher – something like Biblical morality with the addition of the knowledge gained in 2000 extra years of human experience, reflection, and contact with the divine.
