What Are Biblical Values?
By John F Collins
Yale University Press, 285pp, £22/$28
A venerable idea lies at the heart of John Collins’s guide to biblical ethics: that we are responsible for the moral choices we make. We can’t just bleat that we were pushed towards a decision or posture because social convention demanded it, or because our spouse was yelling in our ear, or because we were compelled by the dictates of a text.
This, Collins argues, would be cowardly.
What, though, of the most potent text of them all? No, says, Collins: the “because the Bible tells me so” line is of limited use. After all, we wouldn’t want to let Scripture-citing 19th-century slave-owners off the hook.
