Preface

News that Allen Verhey, president of the Society of Christian Ethics in 2013, would not attend the 2014 annual meeting in Seattle cast a pall over the entire conference. While many enjoyed the scholarship, debate, and camaraderie that accompany our annual meetings, the void of his absence was palpable, especially during the presidential address, which was read by his son, Timothy Beach-Verhey. Our sadness only deepened when Allen died a few weeks later on February 26, 2014. Allen was a well-respected scholar, sought-after mentor, passionate teacher, and above all a man of deep faith, which formed and informed his teaching and scholarship.

In his 2011 book The Art of Christian Dying, Allen draws on the fifteenth-century book Ars Moriendi (“The Art of Dying”) and the example of Jesus’s death as correctives to the contemporary experience of “medicalized” death. Acknowledging his own bias, Allen wrote, “I write as a Christian theologian, as someone who cherishes the gospel and tries to think about all things, including dying, in relation to that gospel. And I write as a mortal, as someone who has been reminded recently of my own mortality” (7). Recognizing his own mortality he goes on to say,

But if I was going to die, I wanted it to be my death, the final chapter in my story and not a footnote in a research report someday. I wanted it to be a faithful dying, a dying worthy of one who cherishes the gospel. This book started in conversation with myself, myself as theologian talking with myself as mortal. Sometimes, frankly, the mortal talked back. I think I became a better theologian by listening to my mortal self, and I hope my voice in this book is that of a mortal theologian, a man who knows that he will die and who believes that the last word belongs to God, a man who cherishes both the Christian tradition and life.

(7)

Allen’s love for the Christian tradition inspired him to choose “Retrieving the Theological Traditions” as the 2014 theme. The essays in this issue, as well as some in the next, relate to this theme. Allen was not an uncritical supporter of “tradition for tradition’s sake.” He recognized that tradition can be good. He also acknowledged the twin dangers of traditionalism and selective retrieval as well as the challenges of receiving tradition, applying tradition to new contexts, and handing on tradition in appropriate ways. The essays in this volume reflect the kind of conversation Allen hoped would emerge from this annual meeting, and so it is in his memory this volume is dedicated.

The first essay, “Should Jesus Get Tenure?” is an edited version of Allen’s presidential address. Using a contrived tenure report on Jesus, Allen proffers Jesus the apocalyptic teacher, Jesus the rabbi, and Jesus the sage as the pedagogical paradigm for Christian ethicists. “Our vocation includes the teaching roles of seer, sage, and rabbi. We are called to teach for shalom, for wisdom, and for justice,” which should put us “at odds with our culture’s expectation … that the scholar/teacher should stand above any particular community, above any particular tradition, and describe how the world looks from a transcendent space.” It was fitting that Daniel Maguire should receive the Lifetime Achievement Award prior to Allen’s presidential address, for Maguire embodies the seer-sage-rabbi pedagogy that Allen extolled. Channeling the apocalyptic penchant for boldness, Maguire drew on two teachings from Aquinas, “Justitia consistit in communicatione” (justice consists in sharing) and “Fortitudo est conditio cujuslibet virtutis” (courage is the precondition of all virtue) to chastise timidity. In accepting the award, Maguire said, “Scholarship that takes no risks, extends no frontiers, that merely recycles the thoughts of the dead, and the nearly dead, is married to ideology, not to the process called truth. Risk-free research may look wissenschaftlich [scientific], but it is not virtuous, not according to Thomas. To do Christian ethics right takes courage.” The other essays in this volume explore various aspects of “retrieving the theological traditions” and are clustered in two groups.

The first group of essays addresses methods and processes of retrieving...