Ethics With(out) the Bible: Toward a Hermeneutical Framework for Engaging Biblical Narratives in Christian Ethics

Abstract

This paper explores how narrative texts in the Christian Bible, and especially the Hebrew Bible, can inform contemporary ethical discourse. To this end, the paper proposes a framework of re-reading and re-telling as an approach to ethical engagement with biblical narratives. The framework is developed through intersectional feminist engagement with the Hagar narrative (Gen 16 and Gen 21)—a story that is rarely referred to in ethical argumentation. While some scholars read it as a ‘text of terror’, others interpret it as a story of resistance and of God’s attention and promise. Through the practice of re-reading and re-telling, the story of Hagar becomes a test case for how biblical narratives can function as a context of remembrance, discovery, justification, and testing of moral orientation in contemporary ethical discourse.