The Widening of God’s Mercy by Richard & Christopher Hays

Unchanging Love Changes – Book Review by Kathy Vandergrift

God’s love as the reason for fully accepting LGBTQ+ persons is often dismissed as inadequate in church circles. A new book, The Widening of God’s Mercy; Sexuality in the Biblical Story, provides depth and broad Biblical grounding for inclusion as an essential character of a loving God. In a whole-of-Scripture approach, it traces the central story of a God who includes those previously excluded and changes rules for living as God’s people in response to plead for justice and mercy.   “Whether we aspire to “tikkun olan” (repairing the world) or “imitatio Christi” (imitating Christ), the widening mercy of God for the whole earth stands at the center.”  God’s widening mercy regularly “overflows the prohibitions and restrictions that exclude and condemn,” in the context of the on-going relationship between God and humans.   

This is a highly anticipated book by two respected theologians, Christopher Hays, an Old Testament scholar, and Richard Hays, a New Testament scholar.  A previous book by Richard Hays, titled The Moral Vison of the New Testament (1996) included a chapter on homosexuality that was widely used to defend traditional teaching, including in the CRC’s Human Sexuality Report (HSR).   In this book, Richard Hays not only explains why he has changed his understanding of the Bible; he explicitly apologizes for the harm that was done by his earlier work.  That is unusual in the world of academic Biblical scholarship.  

This is not an academic text.  Easy to read, it is written for pew sitters, students, and anyone who wants to better understand the Biblical story in the context of current controversies about sexuality.  By choosing to repent in a text for the people affected by harmful hermeneutics, the Hays also contribute to changing the oppressive way that theology is often done in Christian circles. 

God is love (hesed), say Hays and Hays, and that includes changing rules God gave to humans, all through the Biblical story.  Starting with the creation origin story, that theme runs through the story of God’s special relationship with Isreal and the prophets; and then, in the New Testament, it runs through the life of Jesus, the early church, and the apostle Paul. The direction of those changes is to widen the scope of God’s mercy to embrace those who were rejected by God’s own rules, such as aliens, eunuchs, prostitutes, tax collectors, “sinners”, and the “uncircumcised” at the Jerusalem Council, a church gathering with comparisons to our Synod.  Of specific relevance for this moment are the three elements of discernment that justify changing previous norms:  imaginative attention to the Bible, attentive listening to where and how God is currently at work; and careful conversation in communities that deeply listen to testimonies of God’s love from different perspectives. 

Every chapter includes insightful readings of puzzling Biblical stories, such as the story of the daughters of Zelophehad in Exodus, child sacrifices and the Abraham/Isaac story, inclusion of eunuchs and others in Isaiah, and reconciliation between diverse peoples and cultural enemies in the early church. 

The authors explain why they do not spend time on the clobber passages.  Given that the book’s subtitle is Sexuality in the Biblical Story, the absence of a chapter on the trajectory of the Bible’s stories about intimate relationships and marriage is more puzzling. In my view, it could have added value to the text.   Applying their approach would likely highlight the importance of committed, self-effacing, loving relationships that God shows, widening from obsession with pelvic issues.  In brief references they support using the same ethical norms for same-sex relationships as for heterosexual relationships. On the whole, it is refreshing to read a book on the subject of sexuality that looks at the whole Bible and does not rehash the endless quarrels over a few specific texts.  

This book does not clobber the clobber texts, as some hoped it would.  It will not be the definitive text on a Christian approach to human sexuality. What it does is replace that abusive way of reading the Bible. It provides more than enough reason to stop the harm for which they apologize, continue listening and learning from all of Scripture, and live into and out of the wide expanse of God’s mercy.