Eugene Baek

John: The Christology of Active Resistance In John’s work, Blount finds his

language symbolism to be the stuff of active, countercultural, communal resistance.

One Can read John’s narrative in the light of its own social location.

Loving one another, Blount denotes, is the foundation for an ethics of active resistance.

Shucking Corn: A Slave Perspective on Countercultural, Active Resistance According to Hopkins, the slaves stole

pleasure, co-opted power, and appropriated resources in an effort to foster self-respect and engineer a sense of communal belonging and pride.

Slaves played their way into a reality where the injustices that presently plagued them were “in truth” no more.

Johannine Christology: The Potential for Ethics Everything in John begins with Christ. There is no kingdom confusion. John simplifies matters; his focus is on

Jesus alone. Jesus’ identity as Son of God is the truth

to which the signs in the Gospel and the Gospel itself testifies.

Question: “Are we with Jesus or against him?”

Johannine Love: Christological Ethics There is a problem: it appears that ethics has been

reduce to mere belief in the Johannine framework. Blount explains that the link that binds faith and love

together for John is Jesus. Two questions: “Can we keep Jesus’

commandments?” “What exactly are Jesus’ commandments?”

Love was already a preeminent ethical expectation long before Jesus descended.

Love was not exclusively personal; it was interpersonal, even communal, directing an image of self-sacrifice for others on a corporate, social scale.

Johannine Dualism: An Ethics of Resistance John operates from a theological perspective of

cosmological dualism. John encourages his readers to choose the path of

faith in his, Jesus’, Sonship, and thereby ally themselves with the things from above.

The problem with John’s dualistic rendering is that, in the end, his narrative connects the structural intransigence of “the world” with the characterization that he names “the Jews.”

John’s ethics is a Christology of active resistance allowed Blount to a renewed appreciation for the manner in which John ends with the conclusion to the first rendering of his Gospel.

Revelation: The Witness of Active Resistance Blount’s primary interest was to

demonstrate that the Roman occupation endured by Mark’s readers corresponds to the “psychological occupation” that continues to haunt African Americans.

Blount mentions that the language that John uses is the language of resistance, not escapism.

Apocalyptic Theology: The Truth Is Out There

Question: “ Who is in control? God? Or the Emperor and Rome?”

Outlines two key oppositions: God vs. Satan

Hays: Three Focal Images Community

The church is a countercultural community of discipleship, and this community is the primary addressee of God’s imperatives.

CrossJesus’ death on a cross is the paradigm for

faithfulness to God in this world. New Creation

The church embodies the power of the resurrection in the midst of a not-yet-redeemed world.

Community Primary sphere of moral concern is not the

character of the individual but the corporate obedience of the church.

Ex. Romans 12:1-2 Community is called to embody an alternative

order that stands as a sign of God’s redemptive purposes in the world.

The term “community” points to the concrete social manifestation of the people of God.

Church is the body of Christ, a temple built of living stones, a city set on a hill, Israel in the wilderness.

Cross Jesus’ death is consistently interpreted in the

New Testament as an act of self-giving love, and the community is consistently called to take up the cross and follow in the way that his death defines.

The death of Jesus carries with it the promise of the resurrection, but the power of the resurrection is in God’s hands not ours.

Imitating is a way of obedience. The focal image of the cross that ensures that

the followers of Jesus must read the New Testament as a call to renounce violence and coercion.

New Creation Paul’s image of “new creation” stands here

as a shorthand signifier for the dialectical eschatology that runs throughout the New Testament.

In Christ, we know that the powers of the old age are doomed, and the new creation is already appearing.

Thus, the New Testament’s eschatology creates a critical framework that pronounces judgment upon our complacency as well as upon our presumption despair.

How Do Ethicists Use Scripture? Modes of Appeal to Scripture Other Sources of Authority The Enactment of the Word A Diagnostic Checklist

Modes of Appeal to Scripture Theologians may appeal to Scripture as a source of

the following: Rules: direct commandments or prohibitions of specific

behaviors Principles: general frameworks of moral consideration by

which particular decisions about action are to be governed

Paradigms: stories or summary accounts of characters who model exemplary conduct

A symbolic world that creates the perceptual categories through which we interpret reality

All these modes or discourse within the NT suggests that all of them are potentially legitimate modes for our own normative reflection.

Other Sources of Authority Tradition

Refers to the church’s time-honored practices of worship not general cultural customs.

Tradition can take a more local form: cultural groups or a particular denominations within the church bear their won distinctive forms of belief and practice.

Gives us a place to start in our interpretation of Scripture Reason

Refers to Understanding of the world attained through systematic philosophical reflection and through scientific investigation.

Reasoning enabled us to understand more about the cultural context of scriptural writings and their processes of composition and development.

Experience Refers to not just to the religious experience of individuals but also to the

experience of the community of faith collectively. Experience confirms the testimony of Scripture in the hearts and lives of

the commuinty.

The Enactment of the Word What sort of communities have resulted or

might result from putting the readings of Scripture into practice?

When we pose this question, we are acknowledging the force of James’s insistence that “faith without works is dead.”

The view is asking how the proposals for the use of the NT in ethics have been put into practice in living communities of faith.

A Diagnostic Checklist

The overall structure of the checklist corresponds to the four-part structure.DescriptiveSyntheticHermeneuticalPragmatic

Employs the assessing role of Scripture in the work of various theological ethicists.