Over the past few weeks, many of you have expressed to me your concerns over the recent controversial decisions made at General Convention. Because I have extensively addressed these in a Pastoral Letter and in two recent sermons, and because our Sr. Warden will be reporting on the vestry's initial conversations about them in this month's Post, I'd like to take a break from this topic to explore a larger question that has been lurking behind all of these discussions: Just how should we as Christians make decisions about what constitutes right and wrong behavior?

Ask most Christians this question, and they will rightly respond that we look to the Bible for guidance in navigating through murky moral terrain.

Yet when attempting to apply the Bible to contemporary ethical problems, even clergy are sometimes caught flat-footed, not knowing where to begin. Do you hunt for specific commandments, such as "Thou shalt not covet" (Exodus 20:17), and try to adapt them a particular instance? Or do you take Jesus' Great Commandment to love one another (John 13:34) and use that as a general principle for resolving all ethical dilemmas? If you take the first approach, what if two biblical commandments appear to contradict other (as in the famous case of Deut 25:5-10 and Lev 18:16, which eventually led to Henry VIII's establishment of the Church of England)? On the other hand, if you choose the second, how do you decide what is the "most loving" response?

While Christian Ethicists have long debated these matters, a few years ago Dr. Richard Hays, a New Testament professor at Duke University, published a volume, The Moral Vision of the New Testament (1996), that has emerged as a blockbuster in this area both within the Church and in academia.

Dr. N. T. Wright, Theologian in Residence at Westminster Abbey, for instance, writes: "This book isn't just a breath of fresh air. It's a hurricane, blowing away the fog of half-understood pseudo-morality and fashionable compromise, and revealing instead the early Christian vision of true humanness and genuine holiness."

The usefulness of Hays' study stems from its presentation of a practical framework for responsible Christian use of the Bible when addressing moral questions. While it would take several articles just to explore the book's many proposals, let me note here a few of Hays' major points:

• Biblical texts used in ethical arguments must be "understood as fully as possible in their historical and literary context" (p. 310). That is, "proof-texting" or ripping a few verses out of context must be eschewed in favor of serious and prayerful study of the biblical witness, using all the tools that scholarship affords.
  
  
• Examination of how the Bible addresses a certain topic must be comprehensive and not limited to a few favorite passages. Particular attention should be given to passages that appear to be in tension with each other.
  
  
• Moral teaching in the Bible is conveyed in four different modes that each must be taken seriously: Rules (e.g., The Ten Commandments), Principles (e.g., Jesus' Great Commandment), Paradigms (e.g., Jesus' personal example and his parables), and the Symbolic World (e.g., Paul's teaching in Romans 1 on the depth of human sin).
  
  
• Biblical moral teachings must be deliberated within the worshiping Christian community, where Christ's sacrificial death, his resurrection and the bestowal of the Holy Spirit serve as the focal images for crafting Scripture's scattered teachings into a coherent response to a particular ethical situation.
  
  
• Extra-biblical sources—such as Church tradition, human reason and human experience—rest under the authority of the Biblical witness and are "not independent, counterbalancing sources of authority" (ibid.).

Even a casual glance at the above list makes it clear that arriving at sound moral judgments requires a serious and prayerful commitment to the study of Scripture within the context of the worshiping Christian community.
On a macro level, this happens within our Church every ten years at the Lambeth Conference (the last one was held in 1998), when the bishops of the World Wide Anglican Communion gather and issue resolutions on a number of pressing moral concerns—the resolutions themselves arising from the bishops' implicit use of the above principles.

On the parish level, such theological reflection upon Scripture is no less important. Lambeth resolutions may serve as useful statements of our Church's stand on a variety of topics, but unless we can begin to hear the Holy Spirit through our own prayerful engagement with the Word of God, it will be very difficult for us to live into those teachings day by day. If we cannot personally own them, how can we even begin to exercise them? Worse yet, we may find ourselves ignoring those teachings altogether because of the bombardment of competing values we experience daily from our surrounding secular culture.

As we begin the Sunday School year, then, I encourage all of you, young and old, to take advantage of one or more of the many classes and groups at Pohick that spend time reflecting upon the Bible and its message to us today.

Registration for our young people will be held on Sunday, September 7 after the 9 am service. A week later, on Sunday, September 14, adults may sign-up for study offerings at the Activities Fair, which will be set up in the Parish House after all three services.

Whatever level of engagement with the Scriptures you may choose, I offer the following prayer for use throughout your studies:

Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Faithfully,
The Reverend Donald D. Binder

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