Best guide to Old Testament ethics from leading evangelical scholar. This book basically brings together and updates his two earlier books (Living as the People of God and Walking in the Ways of the Lord) and includes good discussions of historical and contemporary discussions of OT ethics.

Christopher J. H. Wright has produced in Old Testament Ethics for the People of God a work that helps the Christian gain a better understanding of the Old Testament (OT) by addressing the OT from the influencing factors of theology, sociology, and economics. By using these three parameters as the matrix, Wright skillfully examines many of the core issues of the OT system (many of which are reflected in contemporary society) and presents those underlying and driving factors that shaped those issues in the Jewish mind. Because many of these issues also effect the Christian, Wright offers application to the New Testament (NT) child of God regarding these considerations either by direct authoritative principle or indirect typological transference.

Wright opens Part One with a discussion of the structure for understanding OT ethics by application of the three influencing factors already noted. The theological angle of understanding ethics from the OT lies in the fact that Israel was to keep the laws of God in response to what God had already done for Israel. In fact, this response to the work of God in the lives of his people is the basis of the moral teaching and theological response of God’s people in the whole of Scripture. Wright insists that it is a mistake to suggest there is a difference in the salvation taught from the Old Testament (as pointing to keeping the law) and the New Testament (as pointing towards grace). Grace comes first; human response, second.

Regarding the social angle, Wright notes that OT ethics are driving by a recognition that the people, as descendants of Abraham, are not only blessed as Abraham was but were also to be a blessing to all the people of the earth. The key to this role as a blessing to the nations was to be their ethical distinctiveness as a people, a distinctiveness that indicated their election as the people of God and is the means to their mission. God’s character was to be reflected in their social interactions, which in turn becomes a potential paradigm – not just as a hermeneutical tool but the means whereby we can in turn expect God to act in the future. Much of this paradigmatic interaction between God and the Israelites is expressed in the OT as narrative; the events recorded build the framework of what one expects from God and what God expected from his people.

After the discussions of the theological and social angles, Wright begins a discussion of the economic angle, an angle that is expressed in the promise and occupation of the land allotted to Abraham and his descendants. There is a dual theological principle involved with the land – divine gift and divine ownership – that drives the economic angle when applied to the ethical considerations that are expected by God from the Israelites. As a divine gift, the land spoke to the election of Israel as the people of God, and spoke to the faithfulness in God’s promise to the people; a proof of the divine-human relationship. Since the land ultimately had a divine owner, the Israelites were therefore under obligation to the Lord to care for the gift which they had been entrusted and use that gift for the benefit of others – as Wright will later develop as regarding the relationship that the Israelites had with each other as brothers and the aliens within the land.

In Part Two, Wright begins the bulk of the work … a consideration of the themes in the OT and the relationship of those themes to ethics. Primary topics that are considered: ecology and the earth, economics and the poor, politics, justice and righteousness, the law and the legal system, culture, family, and the individual. Wright discusses each of these themes as influenced by the three angles previously mentioned and makes contemporary application when appropriate. Even the briefest of comments on each section would quickly overwhelm the length of this review, so for questions regarding the above topical themes one is encourages to acquire the work for future resource.

In the Part Three Wright discusses the various historical approaches to the study of OT ethics, followed by brief biographies of contemporary scholars on the subject, and then contemplates the role of hermeneutics and authority in OT ethics. In the historical section Wright notices Maricon, typically noted to be the earliest and strongest advocate of a complete separation of the OT from the New. As an aside, Marcion’s insistence that the Hebrew bible had no relevance or authority for the Christian still has some influence in contemporary thought, as does the opposite extreme held by the Ebionites that Jewish law and rites should still be followed. This leads Wright into an informative, if brief, discussion of the various positions of the Alexandrian and Antiochene schools of thought and other specific groups that have held strong beliefs regarding the interaction between the OT and NT scriptures. Wright also makes a point to bring to light some of the topical mindsets that also affect the OT-NT dynamic for the Christian: dispensationalism, theonomism, and Messianic Judaism.

In the hermeneutics section, the perennial question of the Christian response to the OT is considered. As Wright sees the dynamic, the task of constructing an Old Testament ethic is complicated by the ideological, philosophical, and/or the theological approaches to the material. It is Wright’s conviction that he takes the same position the New Testament writers maintained: (1) that the God revealed in the OT is the same God and Father of Jesus Christ that is met in the NT, and (2) that all the Scriptures are given by inspiration of God and therefore there is authority for the Christian in both the Old and the New Testaments. Those commands that are found in the Scriptures have authority because of the one who gave them, the Lord, who is the reality to which OT scriptures testify. Wright’s conclusion makes four points: it is in Jesus Christ that we meet YHWH, Jesus is the climax of the Old Testament story, it is through Jesus that we have heard the final words of God, and that in Jesus we have become part of the people. So then, the ethical demands of the OT are enhanced and transformed for those that are “in Christ.”

One strongly encourages those looking to examine the dynamic between the OT-NT to obtain and frequent this work by Wright. By the examination of the ethics involved in the OT and their application to the NT environment, Wright creates a comprehensive and thoughtful framework from which the Christian may acknowledge and apply the OT. This work will quickly become an “at hand” resource.

Quotes from the book:

“It is being increasingly recognized, in fact, that preoccupation with the law of the OT has distorted Christian understanding of the ethical value and values of the OT as a whole” (26).

“To regard Israel and the OT as an ethical paradigm forces us constantly to go back to the hard given reality of the text of the Bible itself and imaginatively to live with Israel in their world (“inhabiting the text”), before returning to the equally hard given reality of our own world, to discover imaginatively how that paradigm challenges our ethical response there” (71).

“The theological function of both people and land together, therefore, is rather like a prototype, or a sign, pointing to something that lay beyond their present empirical reality” (185).

“So when Jesus not only claimed to be the model shepherd but also affirmed that true greatness is a matter of servanthood, not status, he was recovering an authentically OT perspective on leadership and authority” (249).

“The clean-unclean distinction was symbolic of the distinctiveness of Israel among the nations in the purposes of God … Now once we grasp this essentially symbolic nature of these laws it helps in a number of ways. First, it explains why these laws no longer apply to us as Christians. The simple reason is that in Christ the distinction that pertained in the OT between ethnic Israel and the nations no longer exists” (298-99).

“In this context it is, therefore, interesting to notice that one of the paramount blessings commonly discovered by churches that experience a renewal of their spiritual life is a revival of a truly biblical fellowship” (361).

“So biblical commands carry authority because of the one who gave them, the one whose divine authority we acknowledge. They claimed the obedience of those to whom they were given in their own historical context. But whether or not they claim my obedience depends on many factors” (456). ( )

A very engaging look into a world that most people do not understand. Many Christians do not understand much of the OT and are fine with it however that does not work for me. Thankfully there are scholars like Chris Wright who do not gloss or skip over events in the Bible but face them head on and wrestle with them. In this book he does just that and brings to light much of a society that is so far removed from our western understanding of life. In doing so we are able to get in the mind better of people at that time and try and understand why certain items have only been recently questionable to our modern ears. He certainly does not give final answers nor try and answer everything but adds that there is much we are unable to understand about Yahweh. ( )

advance, compelling, one of the few authoritative authors on the subject. ( )

Ethics