A Broadening Boundary of Belonging
A Feature Review of
The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality Within the Biblical Story
Christopher B. Hays and Richard B. Hays
Hardcover: Yale University Press, 2024
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Reviewed by J.A. Madrox
Editor’s Note: We are saddened by the news of Richard Hays’s death last week. He was an exceptional biblical scholar, and this final book of his, co-written with his son Christopher, which narrates an important change of mind, will undoubtedly be a significant part of his legacy.
As a prior student of Richard Hays, specifically at a time when his book, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, was gaining traction, I was eager to read his book, The Widening of God’s Mercy, co-authored with his son, Christopher B. Hays. During my time at Duke, Richard Hays was reluctant to even discuss the topic of homosexuality. He worried that no amount of exegetical maneuvering was ever going to change the biblical condemnations of same-sex practices. While the concept of homosexuality (as well as heterosexuality) was not created until the late 19th century, Richard argued that the few biblical texts that reference same-sex practices outright condemn it. This put him in a position where, though he wanted scripture to be more affirming to folks within the LGBTQ communities, he, nevertheless, thought that it was disingenuous to change the meaning of scripture just because it says something we do not want it to say. While the God of scripture certainly loves, forgives and redeems all beings, God still requires that God’s people be a people who simply do not engage in certain practices. For Richard Hays, this included participation in same-sex relationships.
In The Widening of God’s Mercy, the Hayses attempt a different approach than what Richard Hays argued in The Moral Vision of the New Testament. Richard argues that while his exegetical approach to those passages that condemn same-sex practices has not changed, he has altered how he understands the larger narrative of God’s work within the Bible. The authors note that there is an “ongoing conversation within the Bible in which rules, boundaries, and theologies are repeatedly rethought” (3-4). The Bible, they argue, is constantly shifting, constantly being revised. This not only includes different law collections within the Torah claiming, “different things about the same topics” but “God even admits that some of the laws were not good: ‘I gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live’” (3). While some of us may not be aware of this passage referenced in Ezekiel 20:25, many Christians surely must assume as much.
After all, few of us are discussing the logistics of selling our children into slavery, shaving the sides of our faces, eating pigs, or whether women must cover their head when they pray. We simply assume that these statutes, ordinances, rules and laws, as described both in the Old and New Testament, are simply no longer binding. If that is the case, why do Christians continue to assume that the ordinances against same-sex practices are still binding? Is this assumption just one more instance where some Christians exercise their authority over the Bible by choosing which ordinances and statutes others must follow while ignoring so many others?
For the Hayses, their argument is that the love of God continues to expand, to include those who were initially not part of the original covenant. The bulk of their book is working through the numerous moments in scripture where God– and this may sting– “changes” God’s mind. It’s not as if they, necessarily, take God literally when God claims to have regrets (as in Genesis 6 and I Samuel 15), though perhaps they do. Rather, what we see throughout the Bible, the authors argue, is an expansion of God’s grace to those who were not initially a part of God’s chosen community. As they argue in their fifth chapter, Widening the Borders, the God represented in the Old Testament is often depicted as a very tribalistic deity (71-83). God not only forbids intermarriage and making covenants with other nations, but God demands that God’s people “utterly destroy” those other nations that God has given over to them. And, yet, argue the Hayses, we somehow end up in the Book of Acts with Paul claiming, to a diverse and multiethnic group, that all are part of God’s family (72). How did we get here, they wonder.
This leads them through a broader journey of the Bible by which they conclude, through numerous references to scripture, that, ultimately, God is gracious and merciful, forever broadening God’s grace so that the stranger, the foreigner, the exile, the alien, and even the Gentiles, will be included within the desire of God for all of creation to be redeemed. Somehow, those on the outside of God’s original covenant with Israel are now a part of it, while those who continue to gatekeep God’s mercy, those who continue to push their exclusionist understanding of God on others in an attempt to limit the grace of God, will be reminded that God will not be limited by the religious attempts to make God into our own image.
The Hays do argue, however, that there is at least one biblical command that must rule over others: the love of God and neighbor. On this point, they quote Augustine who argues that “anyone who thinks that he has understood the divine scriptures or any part of them, but cannot by his understanding build up this double love of God and neighbor, has not yet succeeded in understanding them” (220). The expansion of God’s mercy does not just extend to those Gentiles who pick and choose which commandments and directives in the Bible to follow; rather, the expansion of God’s mercy, specifically in light of how God, and our understanding of God, continues to change not only in the biblical narrative but throughout human history, necessitates a new way of thinking of those within LGTBQ communities.
For those who are immediately suspicious of notions about ‘God changing God’s mind’ or the ‘updating’ of God’s ordinances, this book will either be offensive to such sensibilities or, possibly, liberating. Those who wish for a static deity–while accepting that there are countless things in the Bible for which they no longer must adhere—will find this book problematic. To be fair, there may be good reason to be skeptical as we must ask at what point do we say none of the commands are binding, save for love of God and neighbor, if we continue to negotiate and revise as we go along? Granted, this may very well be the overarching problem with biblical authority: the Bible is only authoritative because we wrote it, we choose which books would belong to it, and we continue to decide which passages will be binding and which ones will not be binding. That, however, is a question for a different book.
The question this book raises is whether God’s expansive mercy is just that: expansive. Does God think differently about same-sex practices in which, it appears, that God, now, thinks differently about dietary laws, slavery, and treating women as property? If so, what else must be revised? Is it enough to simply say that the love-ethic of Jesus is the gist of what is required by his followers, and, if so, what does this do with his very specific teachings? Has he revised his teachings on marriage, adultery, divorce, the swearing of oaths, and nonresistance? How does the church continue to struggle with those teachings when Jesus specifically calls us to be set apart from this world—in which what sets us apart is embodying those teachings? While the focus of this book is geared more toward the ever-growing grace of God by which some statutes and ordinances are no longer divisive within our communities, it seems that this book is also an important start of asking larger questions about biblical authority. In a highly individuated culture of Christianity, this, alone, is a daunting task.
J.A. Madrox
J.A. Madrox, PhD is a professor, farmer, and recovering misanthrope.
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