Ethic of Christian Freedom and Discipleship

By Ronald R. Ray

Ethic of Christian Freedom and Discipleship is written for teachers and students of Christian ethics within the English-speaking world. It demonstrates the basis of Christian ethics in Christian theology. Twenty-nine years ago, before leaving the Nigerian theological college where the author had been teaching, Between Two Worlds: An Ethic of Christian Freedom was privately printed. In Kenya, at what became St. Paul's University, the author primarily used copies of this book for eleven years of teaching Christian ethics. Ethic of Christian Freedom and Discipleship manifests continuity with the author's earlier book, but is a distinctly different work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Release date: Mar 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666753608

Ronald R. Ray

Ronald R. Ray completed seven years of parish ministry in Oregon, fifteen years of teaching in Nigeria, and eleven in Kenya. He earned a BA in economics from Willamette University, an MDiv from Yale Divinity School, and a PhD from Saint Andrews University, Scotland, completing the first doctorate on Jacques Ellul’s Christian Ethic. He is the author of Systematics Critical and Constructive 1 and Systematics Critical and Constructive 2, both published by Wipf and Stock. Ron and Diane currently live in Wilderness, South Africa, on the southern coast just outside of George.

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Ethic of Christian Freedom and Discipleship

Ronald R. Ray

Ethic of Christian Freedom and Discipleship

Copyright © 2023 Ronald R. Ray. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Pickwick Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-5358-5

hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-5359-2

ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-5360-8

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Ray, Ronald R., author.

Title: Ethic of Christian freedom and discipleship / by Ronald R. Ray.

Description: Eugene, OR : Pickwick Publications, 2023 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: isbn 978-1-6667-5358-5 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-6667-5359-2 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-6667-5360-8 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Christian ethics.

Classification: bj1251 .r39 2023 (print) | bj1251 .r39 (ebook)

03/22/23

Unless otherwise noted, scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Part 1: Primarily Concerning Principles of Christian Ethics

Chapter 1: Sinfulness and the Gift of Christian Freedom

Chapter 2: Freedom under Authority

Chapter 3: Freedom in Christ

Chapter 4: Freedom to Love

Chapter 5: Christian Freedom and Use of Biblical Law

Chapter 6: Responsible Freedom in Moral Interpretation and Discernment

Chapter 7: Freedom from Enslavement to the World

Chapter 8: Freedom in Face of World’s Morality

Chapter 9: Freedom from Modern Discipleship-Threatening Tendencies

Chapter 10Freedom amid Contextual Interaction

Chapter 11: Risk and Burden of Christian Freedom

Chapter 12: Freedom to Fail

Chapter 13: Freedom’s Ultimate Hope in God Alone

Chapter 14: Freedom to Discern Social Reality

Chapter 15: Freedom within the Dialectics of History

Chapter 16: Various Distinctives of Christian Freedom in Contrast with Philosophical Conceptions

Part 2: Additional Examples of Applied and Social Ethics

Chapter 17: Women’s Rights and Christian Freedom between Wives and Husbands

Chapter 18: Western Culture—A Carrier of and Barrier to Responsible Christian Freedom

Chapter 19: Free and Responsible Discipleship amid Changing Social Conditions

Expanded Table of Contents

Bibliography

Dedicated to Diane, my dear wife, whose proofreading helped so much,

to the many scholars who have shed much light, Jacques Ellul in particular,

to our two sons, their wives, and their children,

to the memory of John D. Godsey,

and to former students.

Introduction

To realize faithful freedom in and through Christ is no easy matter. Not for me, not for anyone. Having struggled in this direction, I hope this book is of some assistance in your own endeavor to realize Christian freedom and faithful discipleship.

To write of Christian freedom one must qualify it extensively—for so Scripture does. Throughout I attempt to show the limitations required if Christian freedom is to be faithful to its own foundation and stand with its own integrity.

Because I was a pastor in the United States for seven years and then taught Christian ethics and systematic theology in Nigeria for fifteen and in Kenya for eleven, it is not surprising that I write to and from Western and African contexts but do not wish to canonize either. I seek to speak of Jesus Christ from within both and to both.

After teaching Christian ethics in Nigeria for some time, I became dissatisfied with both Western and African books for teaching this subject to our particular students. So for many years I struggled to pull together, reinterpret, expand, and apply widely scattered Christian theological and ethical ideas, while integrating my interactive ones, so as to teach Christian ethics with greater clarity. Some of the material contained in this book was used in Nigeria and in Kenya, both resulting in considerable improvements in teaching and learning. The current work includes fresh content, is for a wide readership, and takes careful account of the changed world situation.

The work is evaluative, at points highly critical, but primarily interpretive. It is hoped it may assist others who seek to learn of or teach this discipline. Particularly in mind are theological students and their teachers, undergraduate students of Christian ethics, pastors, and interested lay people.

The chapter headings generally articulate the reconciling and sanctifying action of God that capacitates and sustains the specifics of Christian freedom and discipleship. The first footnote of chapters usually offers theology of Christian ethics chapter summaries that link to each chapter heading. The chapters themselves normally deal with both aspects intermixed.

I have been a student of Jacques Ellul’s thought since the late sixties. Most of these chapters have an Ellulian aspect, but only that. Barth, Kierkegaard, Brunner, and a variety of biblical scholars also condition these pages and my life and thought. H. Richard Niebuhr influences this work, as is particularly noticeable in chapter 10. His brother, Reinhold, is here as well, as seen especially in chapter 1. Throughout the book I interact with the various writings of my teacher of Christian Ethics, James M. Gustafson, but see note one below. In particular, close attention is paid to his two volume masterpiece, Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective. Most of my chapters are much involved in scriptural exegesis, but also respond to historical theology, utilizing ideas from such church fathers as Augustine and Luther. Jonathan Edwards decisively influences at many points.

Concerning philosophy, I enter into critical conversation with the ancients, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and modern and contemporary philosophers. All such are put to work where they illumine various topics of theological ethics, but are not allowed to dominate. Though Christian ethics should be Christ-centered, critical dialogue with philosophy can sharpen theological perception.

Another dialogue discipline is sociology, particularly that of Jacques Ellul and Peter Berger. (The latter has addressed many developing world issues.) Chapter 14 indicates my opinion concerning the usefulness of conversation with these specific sociologies.

I do not seek to resolve conflicts within various thinkers’ ideas over their lifetimes, or between the total thrust of one scholar’s position in contrast to that of another, or in contrast to mine.¹ As articulating an ethic of Christian freedom and a theology of Christian ethics, this book has no obligation to deal with all aspects of various thinkers’ positions. I do believe that the facets of scholars’ thought to which I respond have been accurately utilized and form a consistent unity in developing my position. While stating my perspective in dialogue with others, I labor to systematize and interpret clearly, so complex and difficult matters can be more easily understood.

As for an explanation of the various ways language usage here expresses gender inclusion: No alterations are made for extra-biblical quotations—many of which are from modern authors who wrote (and in many cases were translated) before the linguistic aspect of the women’s rights movement came to prominence. To minimize gender emphases in non-quoted, gender-neutral contexts, feminine or masculine pronouns and possessives alternate, with occasional plural usage.

The greater inclusion problem concerns pronouns or possessives referring to God. Since God is an Active Subject and no It, and since I am averse to using such words as Godself, or s/he, my choice was between she or he, her or him, hers or his. When referring to God, feminine forms are used, and without regard to stereotyped images of what human characteristics are often considered feminine. The reader should regard such gender reference to God as merely English language ways of referring to God as a Personal Agent. Not only when writing of Jesus on earth, but of Christ as the risen Lord, masculine pronouns and possessives are used because Jesus was a male.²

1

. Concerning James Gustafson or other thinkers to whom I refer, my disagreements with them are stated only if doing so serves to amplify the perspective being articulated. Lest someone think that because I have learned much from Gustafson I am some kind of a Gustafsonite—a state of being he would have abhorred, even in himself—I confess one opinion concerning a vital difference between us. Though Gustafson had masterful knowledge of the Christian ethical heritage and in Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective excellently systematized, his writings gradually became less explicitly Christian. This is seen in the above and even more in A Sense of the Divine, where he exhibits little concern that theological ethics retain its Christocentric focus.

2

. Most biblical citations are from the RSV translation of the Bible. Ones from the NRSV are so indicated.

part 1

Primarily Concerning Principles of Christian Ethics

From the applications that will all along occur, one can see that discussions of moral practices are not sharply separated from those concerning moral principles, though some chapters emphasize one aspect more than the other. Differing emphases can also be seen between Part 1, which deals primarily with principles, and Part 2, mainly with application.

chapter 1

Sinfulness and the Gift of Christian Freedom

³

(1) Bondage and Need for Deliverance

In ancient times those defeated in war were often captured and enslaved, losing everything—save their lives. They were torn from their families. They lost all civil rights and citizenship, and became the mere property of their owners. A slave had only one hope. There was only one procedure to improve his status and restore his humanity. He could not accomplish this; deliverance or redemption had to come from beyond. If his relatives had not been enslaved they could work frantically to collect the huge sum needed to buy back his liberty. Only if this happened, if he were ransomed or redeemed, could he again know genuine freedom. He could then regain his citizenship, be reunited with his family, and resume his previous occupation. He could again enjoy life to the full.

We also have been enslaved. God created us for true life, for fellowship with God and with one another, but we denied our destiny. We rebelled against God, placing ourselves at the center of life. For this reason, forces hostile to ourselves and to God have overpowered us, and we cannot restore our true humanity. Along such lines, Paul explicitly articulates sin’s all-encompassing scope.⁴ All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23). None is righteous, no not one (Rom 3:10).

Paul personifies sin by speaking of it as a power that rules and enslaves.⁵ Through self-reliance humankind loses true selfhood, and sin becomes the active subject (Rom 7:9), even corrupting the sub-conscience. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. . . . So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. . . . Wretched [person] that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? (Rom 7:18b–24) I and I, self and self, war against each other.

The New Testament has various other ways of describing such self-destroying bondage to sin: Instead of living from God, natural humankind tries to depend on itself. In so doing people may ignore or disobey God’s commands by living immorally, or by attempting to fulfill those on their own, which causes them to trust in their own achievements. Either way people fail to live as God intends. Such turning away from God and centering of life upon ourselves is what is meant by sin.

Paul speaks often of the contrast between the present evil age and that to come. His assumption, shared by Jesus and the early church, is that this world, though still God’s good creation, has considerably rebelled against God.⁶ As in the Fourth Gospel,⁷ Paul can even use dualistic language, referring to the god of this world (2 Cor 4:4a).

The New Testament affirms a relative dualism. On one hand, it regards the material world as the good creation of the God who cares for the birds of the air, and arrays the grass of the fields with beauty (Matt 6:26, 30). The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.⁸ For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.⁹ Yet the good creation is subject to vanity and corruption and yearns for deliverance (Rom 8:19–22).

The Old Testament describes the human heart as evil from youth (Gen 8:21). The very biblical writer who records that God declared her creation good (Gen 1:31) went on to attest the devastating results of sin. God saw the earth, and behold it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth (Gen 6:12). Human wickedness so deeply grieved God that the Bible suggests she had second thoughts about having created us (Gen 6:5–7).

Jesus was well aware of human sinfulness and of our desperate need for God’s forgiveness. Regarding God’s perfect love as the standard (Matt 5:43–48), Jesus considered all people as sinners in need of repentance (Luke 13:1–5). He taught that natural humankind grapples for power and dominion (Mark 10:42). Concerning faith in people, Jesus seems a great skeptic, who regarded his generation as evil and adulterous (Matt 16:4; 17:17; Mark 8:38), a people who stone their prophets then erect monuments to them. Jesus placed little trust in his own disciples, being convinced not only that they would be offended by him, but would desert him when the test came.

Jesus regarded sin as primarily a condition—brokenness of relationship with God. The tax collector in Jesus’s parable did not enumerate specific sins, though such a person would have had plenty. Rather he confessed his sinful state and prayed, God be merciful to me a sinner (Luke 18:13).

(2) Sin as Pride

In the Jewish world arrogance was reflected in zeal for fulfilling the Torah, in taking pride in one’s accomplishments in this regard, and in the use of titles of honor (Rom 2:17, 23). In the Hellenistic world pride and autonomy were expressed in arrogance concerning knowledge (1 Cor 1:19–31; 2 Cor 10:12–18) and pertaining to spiritual endowment. Not only Jew and Greek, but all people compare themselves with others to establish a basis for self-righteousness (Gal 6:4; see 2 Cor 10:12–18). Yet before God no one has grounds for boasting.¹⁰

Along biblical and Augustinian lines, Reinhold Niebuhr showed that pride expresses itself in intellectual, moral, and religious ways. Intellectual pride causes people to absolutized their partial truths and close their minds to new insights. People are considerably ignorant, but imagine their knowledge is truer than it is. Intellectual pride is something more than the mere ignorance of one’s ignorance. It always involves, besides, a conscious or subconscious effort to obscure a known or partly known taint of interest. A particularly significant aspect of intellectual pride is the inability of the agent to recognize the same or similar limitations of perspective in himself that he has detected in others.¹¹ Paul had observed that those who judge are often guilty of that of which they accuse others (Rom 2:1).

Moral pride makes people incapable of profiting from criticisms, and prevents self-criticism, thus retarding the moral development of individuals and societies. It also condemns others because they do not conform to one’s own, often arbitrary standards. The morally self-righteous may become cruel because—judging according to their own perspectives—they attribute the essence of evil to those who disagree with them.

Religious pride makes explicit the self-deification implied in moral pride. This happens when people claim divine sanction for those standards that are relative. Because people often behave this way, not only is religion not inherently good, but is often the final battleground between God and human self-interest. In this war people can use even the most pious practices as instruments of pride. Such spiritual pride leads to intolerance and dogmatism, and can result in persecuting, holy war, and clerical tyranny.¹²

The question is whether we will surrender to the grace of God in Christ and know ourselves as sinners whose need can be met only in him. For even when we complete our assigned work we can only confess, we are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty (Luke 17:10b). Because God claims our entire lives and we have fallen far short, living from divine forgiveness and empowerment is essential.

As grace-led, we no longer belong to ourselves (1 Cor 6:19). We thus do not need to try to secure our own future. None of us lives to himself and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live unto the Lord, and if we die, we die unto the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.¹³

(3) Fourth Gospel Criticism of Uncritical Veneration of Biblical Traditions

Paul described the sin of the Jews (not unique to them) as the proud illusion that they could earn salvation by following the law. The Fourth Gospel says something different: (A widely shared) sin of the Jews is the uncritical veneration of traditions that forces the closing of hearts to the fulfillment that shatters expectations.

Playing off their Scriptures against Jesus, whose fulfillment challenged the adequacy of many pre-Old Testament traditions, the Jews thought Jesus could not be greater than Abraham (John 8:52–59). They also affirmed the pre-Old Testament teaching that the Messiah’s home and parentage would remain unknown, and pointed out that people knew Jesus’s parents and where he lived.¹⁴ How then could he be the Messiah? Other Jews insisted that the Messiah as Son of David was to be born in Bethlehem (John 7:41b–42), but Jesus came from Nazareth.¹⁵ Other traditions said that when the Christ came he would remain forever (John 12:34) and establish an earthly utopia, yet Jesus died and without perfecting the social order.

The Jews’ religion should have left them discontent; open for the fresh revelation in Jesus Christ that demolishes all self-security. Instead they often became so content with mere traditions that they closed their hearts and lives to God’s judgment and grace¹⁶—and Christians have often done the same.

(4) Inerrancy Errs, Is Not Free, and Is a Christian Example of Veneration of Tradition

¹⁷

Both Paul’s and the Fourth Gospel’s analysis of sin are bases for criticizing the belief in scriptural inerrancy.¹⁸ Inerrancy traditionalism closes the mind to receiving the Living Christ who speaks through Scripture in ways that do not validate all biblical expectations. Believing in biblical inerrancy requires the imposition of traditional meanings upon Scripture, rather than openness to the phenomenon of a Bible that does not provide a neatly harmonious package.

Inerrancy teaching can become an instrument of pride, self-assertion, and will-to-power. That people believe that the Bible sanctions their motives, purposes, and ideologies may only destroy their powers of self-criticism and make them less able to judge the ethical dimensions of what they are doing.¹⁹

A belief treasured by inerrantists is justification by grace through faith, certainly a central Christian conviction. One wonders, however, whether such people value this belief only as an idea, and not as also a continuing critical experience. With Paul the experience of and belief in justification led to freedom from authoritarian understandings of religious tradition (see, e.g., Gal 5:1). Not so with inerrantists and traditionalists generally, who seek to protect adherents from exposure to diverse Christian viewpoints. The life of freedom turns out to be one demanding much conformity to human traditions and organizations.

(5) Idolatry and Its Effects

As we turn away from God and center our lives upon ourselves we become polytheists. Sin is no mere absence of loyalty, but involves false loyalties. Instead of trusting in God and being faithful to her, humankind absolutizes what is relative, and in effect worships finite deities.²⁰ For example, love can become tribally restricted to family, clan, or group of like-minded people. By shutting ourselves up within closed societies we are no longer being responsible to the Lord of all. Having turned from God in these ways, the principalities and powers (social structures) prey upon us and toss us about. These powers are superhuman, at least in that their influence transcends the willed influences of individuals and groups. Such powers dominate through mores and customs, are partly objective and partly subjective, and go by such labels as individualism, communism, capitalism, and nationalism, or even more generally as the climate of opinion or spirit of an age.²¹

Conflicts with others similarly torn by false loyalties result in wars of all against all. As it is within and between individuals,²² so it is between groups within communities and between communities. Less than fully responsible within our local contexts and particular nations, we also become more irresponsible within the larger world context—and to the one God beyond our mundane contexts.²³

Under such conditions the first law of life becomes self-preservation and survival. With anxiety concerning the well-being and survival of the groups to which we belong, we divide the world between friends and enemies; the former being those who will assist us in our survival tactics, the latter being those we perceive as threatening.

Separation from God thus disrupts social interrelatedness, whereas reconciliation empowers us for love, and enables us to become ambassadors of peace. (He . . . has broken down the dividing wall of hostility (Eph 2:14). Though we have reason to be distrustful and suspicious of others, we can entrust our future and that of all creation into the nail-pierced hands of Divine Love. We can shape our actions through faith—by