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Moral Authority oj Scripture
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Ihey must also he able to forgive.57 But to be a people capable of accepting
forgiveness separates them from the world: The world, under the illusion that
power and violence rule history, assumes that it has no need to be forgiven.
Part of the meaning of the “world,” therefore, is it is that which assumes it
needs no scripture, since it lives not by memory made possible by forgive
ness, but by power.
Being a community of the forgiven is directly connected with being a
community sustained by the narratives we find in scripture, as those narratives
do nothing less than manifest the God whose very nature is to forgive. To be
capable of remembering we must be able to forgive, for without forgiveness
we can only forget or repress those histories that prove to be destructive or at
least unfruitful. But Christians and Jews are commanded not to forget, since
the very character of their community depends on their accepting God’s
forgiveness and thus learning how to remember, even if what they must
remember is their sin and unrighteousness.58 By attending closely to the
example of those who have given us our scripture, we learn how to be a
people morally capable of forgiveness and thus worthy of continuing to carry
the story of God we find authorized by scripture.
6. The Moral Use of “ Biblical Morality”
Some may well wonder whether this account of the moral authority of
scripture has really helped us advance beyond the problems concerning the
use of “biblical morality” described in section two. It may be objected that all
I have done is redescribe as 4 ‘moral ’’ aspects of scripture and the process of its
development which we already knew.59 I may be right that remembering is a
moral activity that requires a particular kind of community, especially if the
stories we find in the scripture are to be remembered, but that still does not
help us to know what to do with the more straightforwardly ‘‘moral ’’ aspects
of scripture—i.e., the Decalogue or the Sermon on the Mount. Nor does it
help us understand what we are to do with those aspects of scripture that now
seem irrelevant or, even worse, morally perverse.
For example, the complexity of the analysis offered here tends to
obscure the straightforward command “Thou shalt not commit adultery,”
(Ex. 20:14) or the equally significant, “Do not resist one who is evil”
(Matt. 5:39). In spite of all that one must say about the need to understand
such passages in context, I am impressed by those who live as if such com
mands should directly govern their affairs. None of us should lose the suspi
cion that our sophistication concerning the cultural and theological qualifica
tions about ‘‘biblical morality ’’ often hides a profound unwillingness to have
our lives guided by it.