Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 40:2 (NA 1989)
Article: The Limits Of Hope And The Logic Of Love: On The Basis Of Christian Social Responsibility
Author: Stephen N. Williams

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TynBul 40:2 (1989) p. 261

The Limits Of Hope And The Logic Of Love: On The Basis Of Christian Social Responsibility

Stephen N. Williams

It has long been said that social action is the offspring of love but by now we are also familiar with the claim of hope to conjoint parental rights and responsibilities. To propose that hope has determinate limits with regard to social action looks like playing Canute with the contemporary theological tide. The story is often told of how scholarship appeared to secure for eschatology its place in the New Testament a few decades ago at the cost of uprooting it from any stable home in dogmatic theology. But its odyssey ended with the discovery of a congenial partner, viz., social action and since the 1960s we have witnessed a brood of theologies proficially spawned, mandating socially transforming activity partly or largely on the basis of eschatological hope. That is the background to this lecture whose focus, none the less, is biblical rather than dogmatic. The following is a proposal that we distinguish between love and hope in relation to social responsibility and action without suggesting a schism designed to spice up in unsanctified fashion the theological task.

Reference to biblical, as opposed to dogmatic theology, requires comment. All the distinction states is that we are asking about biblical perspectives and not taking on the dogmatic task of asking about the status of such perspectives in relation to the contemporary theological endeavour. But ‘biblical perspectives’ also requires comment. The deliberate design of taking broad biblical themes in the compass of a single lecture obviously risks first, imposing artificial unity on the material and secondly, neglecting exegesis. This warning is well taken and, I hope, heeded. If distinctions are not explicitly made and exegesis is not explicitly offered I hope it will at least be clear that care has been taken to propound a thesis that is fully alert to the relevant range of questions. Having said that, it is as well to let the kind of argument presented show forth its contours in the actual presentation, or

TynBul 40:2 (1989) p. 262

the qui s’excuse s’accuse syndrome which hovers over introductory remarks will be in too much evidence.

In his Biblical Ethics and Social Change, Stephen Mott provides us with a comprehensive and focussed discussion of principles of biblical theology of social action.1 We begin by being parasitic on this account particularly as it embodies the kind of plausible and solid conclusions that will strike many as evidently correct. While he adopts as an overall perspective the cosmic conflict with evil, Mott finds the direct biblical mandate for social acti...

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