“When you’re wrong, admit it and ask for forgiveness,” says Richard Hayes – Baptist News Global

When you encounter something wrong in your history“All you have to do is confess and ask for forgiveness,” Richard Hayes told a large gathering of LGBT Christians and their allies on October 25.

Hayes, a New Testament scholar and former dean of Duke Divinity School, recently published a long-awaited book in which he retracted his previous writings that opposed the affirmation of same-sex relationships. His early work, published 30 years ago, became the gold standard for non-affirmative evangelicals.

This book is Moral Vision of the New Testament – was named Christianity today as one of the 100 most important religious books of the 20th century.

However, after the book was published, Hayes began to realize that one chapter in it about homosexuality was wrong. He told about 500 people at the biennial CenterPeace conference at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas. The conference was sponsored by CenterWorldan independent non-profit organization with roots in the Churches of Christ.

The 25-page chapter became “the only thing people know about me,” he said. “I didn’t want that to be my legacy because I came to the conclusion that it was wrong. And when you encounter something wrong, you need to confess and ask for forgiveness.”

Reaction to the new book. Expanding God’s Mercyhas indeed been controversial, with Hughes and his co-author son attacked by conservatives as traitors and questioned by progressives who believe the 30-year-old book has caused irreparable harm to LGBTQ Christians.

However, during Hayes’ presentation last Friday afternoon, an unidentified woman shouted from the back of the room, “In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven!”

There was a palpable silence in the room, and Hayes quietly greeted the woman, bowing and clasping his hands in prayer.

He explained to the crowd that he hoped his change of heart would change his inevitable obituary. Before writing the new book, he was afraid that his obituary would begin with the words: “New Testament scholar Richard Hayes, who wrote against the acceptance of gays and lesbians, has died.”

Instead, he now hopes his obituary might begin: “New Testament scholar Richard Hayes, who changed his mind about gay and lesbian acceptance, has died.”

According to him, this desire to write another obituary is not due to selfish purposes, but because he really changed his mind.

New Testament scholar and author Karen Keene interviewed Hayes for a one-hour seminar.

At the end of the session, she asked him: “We meet a lot of LGBT people who wonder if they can keep their faith, if it’s worth it. …What word of spiritual guidance would you give to LGBT people?”

After pausing for a moment to think, Hayes responded, “I would say to them, to all of you, number one: know that your identity is based on a God who loves you, despite the failures of the church to convey that love. #2, I would say, try to find a church community where you can be welcomed joyfully and fully as a member of the body of Christ. And such communities exist. … You need to look for that community because community support is very important to maintaining a sense of identity.

“Know that your identity is grounded in a God who loves you despite the church’s failure to convey that love.”

“But the main word is that we are in the merciful hands of a God who loves us and seeks to draw us to Himself and unite us into one body of Christ… as forgiven and reconciled people. Find those friends and communities that give you that support, and communities that proclaim and live this truth about God, welcoming everyone to the table.”

Hayes received a lengthy standing ovation from workshop participants in what was likely to be one of his last public appearances due to serious health issues.

Where did he come from

Hayes is the son of a United Methodist Church woman who was charged with two counts in rural southern Oklahoma. The family eventually moved to Oklahoma City, where Hayes left as a young man to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Yale University. He later received his Ph.D. in New Testament from Emory University.

He returned to Yale as a professor for 10 years before being hired at Duke Divinity, where he spent the rest of his career.

Other scholars have called Hayes one of the leading New Testament scholars of his generation.

Although not stated in his biography, Hayes began his graduate theological studies just a few miles from the conference site in North Dallas, at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins Seminary. Hayes was then and remains today a United Methodist.

“I came straight out of Yale in 1970,” he recalled. “The world is melting due to protests against the Vietnam War. In New Haven, Connecticut, where I was that spring, the university actually closed due to fears of possible violence. … This is the world I came out of when I went to seminary and then landed in Dallas in 1970 and felt like the most politically liberal and at the same time theologically conservative of anyone in my class.”

“It was a strange feeling, and I decided pretty quickly that it wasn’t for me, and I bailed out, and I went and lived – my wife and I lived – in a Christian community in Massachusetts, an extended property sharing community, very formative for me “

He eventually decided that he was truly called to ministry and needed a theological education. To do this, he returned to Yale, but approached theology with the mind of an English specialist, which he had studied as an undergraduate.

“I took a Bible and New Testament class and came out of the class thinking, ‘What the hell are they doing with these texts?’ Because the whole approach was to try to dig below the surface of the text and recover the sources or history behind the text. In my experience at the time, there was never any attention paid to the final form of the text, the form of the text and how it worked as a narrative. She was always concerned about the antecedents of the text.

“It would be like taking a Shakespeare class and reading Hamlet or simply attempting to reconstruct Shakespeare’s sources without ever engaging with the literary effect of the finished work. So I quickly began to see if there was something wrong with the church and the theology that I would like to say simply: I want to teach, I want to learn, and I want to teach people how to read the Bible better.”

“Scripture is the source of life. … But we don’t read it simply to select supporting texts.”

And that remains a major problem in the study and teaching of theology today, he joked. “Some people reading this recent book may not have read much of my other work and may say, ‘Oh, they’re denigrating the authority of Scripture because the Bible clearly says…’

The truth is that “in no way do Chris or I object to the authority of Scripture. The difference lies in how we read Scripture as authoritative for our lives. This is what we are trying to find out in the book. But for me the Holy Scripture is the source of life. … But the way we read it is not simply to select texts of evidence or sound bites from the story, but to see the entire form of the narrative from beginning to end.”

Amazing mercy

In the new book, Hayes and his son portray God’s character as merciful and “continuing to surprise us with his mercy,” he said. “One of the consistent themes of the Bible in general is that often people who think they are God’s most zealous servants and most strictly obedient to God are actually caught off guard by the way God appears and shows mercy in unexpected ways.”

The second topic is about how to read the Bible. “Well, read the big chunks, read the gist of the story,” he advised. “Don’t pick poems here and there. We all know that when you start choosing verses, you can turn to the page, put your finger down, and then find a passage from Deuteronomy that says, “If you have a disobedient son, take him to the city authorities and let them stone him to death.” “

Christians and Jews today do not perceive this as a literal commandment binding for all time, he said. “If I had done this first, I would never have had a son who would have written this book.”

It is in the narrative of Scripture that Christians will find “a clearer picture of the person of God,” Hayes advised.

He said his new book’s emphasis on God’s mercy was misinterpreted by critics who had not read the book or misunderstood it. “It’s really amazing when you start to trace this language in Scripture and see God in Exodus revealing himself to Moses and saying, “I am a God gracious and gracious, slow to anger, compassionate with many,” and so on. And Christians, if we have a straightforward theology, everyone understands that we are all recipients of God’s grace. When we read the story, we find ourselves in a son who returns and receives a warm welcome from his father. Not the smug older brother who says, “You never do anything for me.”

Changing God’s Plan

Keene asked the scientist to explain the new book’s teaching that God can and does change God’s mind.

The tension that has “really set some people back is the claim that God changes,” Hayes said. “And this can be difficult to reconcile with our image of God if we believe in the classical doctrine of God. The problem is that the stories told in Scripture are about God being unchanging, there are many stories that show God changing his mind.”

It is true that God is unchanging, but “he is unchanging in the sense that he has revealed himself to be a god who changes.”

Change is “built into history,” he continued. “And oddly enough, most of the people I’ve seen who actually raise this objection in print are people who consider themselves biblical inerrantists. These are people who say that the Bible is without error, that it is the pure truth. But then they get to those points where God changes his mind and they say, “Well, but that doesn’t really mean what it says.” And I’m kind of scratching my head because they’re more committed to a doctrine that’s much more rooted in Greek philosophy than it is in Scripture.”

According to him, Aristotle’s concept of God as the “immovable mover” is not consistent with Scripture. Scripture reveals “a dynamic, personal God who communicates passionately with people, who grieves when we go astray, who is like a father. This is the God of Scripture. So I just keep coming back to that, that God is whoever God shows himself to be.”

It is true that God is unchanging, but “he is unchanging in the sense that he has revealed himself to be a god who changes.”

Hayes said he received the question from British New Testament scholar N.T. Wright, who had not yet read the book, who said: “If God could change his mind about human sexuality, how do you know that God won’t change his mind and change his mind? turn around and refute your chapter on nonviolence?”

Hayes acknowledged that it’s a fair question, “and the only answer I have to it is to keep saying, ‘Let’s go back to the text and see how God’s mysterious ways are actually revealed, continuing to demonstrate vast compassion for people.’ For all of us, created in the image of God, God ultimately seeks to redeem all. This is exactly what happens in history. … God is a God who continues to speak to us.”

Related articles:

Analysis: What to Expect from Spreading God’s Mercy | Analysis by Karen Keene

The healing “heresy” of Richard Hayes | Brandan Robertson’s opinion

An often-quoted biblical scholar changes his mind on LGBTQ inclusion in the church.

A new book about the Bible and the LGBT community written by a straight white man is not what we need. | Susan Shaw’s opinion