First Reviews on Richard Hays' New Book on Sexuality
A Leading Biblical Scholar Changes His Mind on Homosexuality
Richard Hays’ book The Moral Vision of the New Testament was a landmark publication in the field of New Testament ethics. It is a terrific book, even while I disagree with a lot of it, it has rightly been regarded as the standard book for biblical reasoning on ethical issues. Importantly, in that book, Hays maintained a traditional view of human sexuality, identifying homoerotic behavior as incompatible with the Christian life.
More recently, Richard Hays has teamed up with his son Christopher (himself an OT scholar) to write a book called The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality within the Biblical Story, available in Nov 2024. Here’s the blurb:
Discussions of the Bible and human sexuality often focus on a scattered handful of specific passages. But arguments about this same set of verses have reached an impasse, two leading biblical scholars believe; these debates are missing the forest for the trees.
In this learned and beautifully written book, Richard and Christopher Hays explore a more expansive way of listening to the overarching story that scripture tells. They remind us of a dynamic and gracious God who is willing to change his mind, consistently broadening his grace to include more and more people. Those who were once outsiders find themselves surprisingly embraced within the people of God, while those who sought to enforce exclusive boundaries are challenged to rethink their understanding of God's ways.
The authors―a father and son―point out ongoing conversations within the Bible in which traditional rules, customs, and theologies are rethought. They argue that God has already gone on ahead of our debates and expanded his grace to people of different sexualities. If the Bible shows us a God who changes his mind, they say, perhaps today's Christians should do the same. The book begins with the authors' personal experiences of controversies over sexuality and closes with Richard Hays's epilogue reflecting on his own change of heart and mind.
Since I am not American, I do not critique books that I have not read!
I hope to read it in due course and offer my own response. So if someone can get me an advance or bootleg, I’d love to get my hands on it. Until then, I can neither endorse nor litigate Hays and Hays on the issue.
However, a number of responses have already been published by people who have received advanced copies, and I have collated some of them below.
Rebecca McLaughlin (TGC): Richard Hays Thinks God Changed His Mind About Same-Sex Sex. Is He Right?
Preston Sprinkle: Review of The Widening of God’s Mercy by Christopher B. Hays and Richard B. Hays.
Jonathan Merritt (RNC): Conservative Christians just lost their scholarly trump card on same-sex relationships.
Andrew Goddard (Psephizo): Is God ‘willing to change his mind’ (Richard Hays) on sexual ethics?
I look particularly forward to the response of Wesley Hill, a same-sex attracted Anglican biblical scholar, whose life was shaped by Hays’ Moral Vision, and he intends to write something engaging with the Hayses.
More to come on this topic in the coming months!
I was about to say I can't wait to read it, but I discover that this book is already released, in Canada at least. Guess what I'll be doing today.
I've always felt a cognitive dissonance between the usual evangelical stance which is based on flimsy evidence from Scripture, and the broader biblical ethic of love and inclusiveness.
Not having read the book, but just having looked into the reviews, it appears we have another modern attempt to move away from historical biblical norms, misunderstanding the human sin problem, under the cloak of good rhetoric but poor reasoning.