Paul Miller on Moral Formation and the Book of Judges

Paul Miller, ‘Moral Formation and the Book of Judges’, Evangelical Quarterly 75:2 (2003), 99-115.

Paul Miller notes that although Judges is not prescriptively ethical in presenting explicit rules for moral conduct, it does deal with ‘the community of faith as the context for moral formation’ (99).

He thus aligns his concerns with those who have sought to move beyond a ‘quandary ethics’, and who see moral living as ‘the cultivation of practices and virtues that can only be formed within the context of a coherent life story’ (102). Scripture informs the church’s ethical task not merely as an historical artefact, but as a living and authoritative story received in the context of the community of faith.

As Scripture, Judges has ‘a community-forming and community-regulating function’, which ‘continues to shape those who read it with the eyes of faith’ (102).

He describes the main ethical thrust of Judges as follows:

‘The very capacity to make moral judgments itself arises from the desire to obey God. The community of faith is the context in which this capacity of obedience is learned and practiced. Conversely, when the covenant relationship between God and God’s people is neglected, the faculty of moral judgment atrophies. It not only becomes impossible to do right, it becomes impossible to know what is right. Judgment is not a function of autonomous practical reason but of a living relationship with God’ (103).

Following Lillian R. Klein (The Triumph of Irony in the Book of Judges [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1988]), Miller maintains that irony is the main device propelling the narrative of Judges… showing the horror of life without God.

He draws attention to the three resonances of the book of Judges with our contemporary situation in the west

(1) ‘morality in our time has become largely a private matter’ (111);
(2) ‘the dominating influence of alien ideologies that claim hegemony over the authority of Scripture’ (112, he instances Naziism, the cult of self, certain streams of feminist theology, and enlightenment rationalism as examples);
(3) ‘our tendency to make impersonal, institutional responses to deeply personal moral and spiritual issues’ (113).

In the face of these…

‘Community is the context in which attentiveness to God is taught, learned, nurtured and internalized. The Christian community’s role, now as much as ever, is to strengthen the commitments which reinforce openness to the activity of God in history. That role is carried out by teaching and celebrating the narratives of God’s dealings with God’s people and by being counterculturally attentive to the practices of worship, prayer, fellowship and charity which, while appearing to be socially trivial, are the foundation of Christian character and virtue’ (114).