Scripture On the Moral Life of Creatures: In Conversation With Hans G. Ulrich

Abstract

Hans G. Ulrich's book, Wie Geschöpfe leben, engages eclectically but vigorously with moral and theological aspects of the Bible's teaching on ethics. This article employs three questions as an entrée to understanding his encounter with Scripture: it asks about his implicit biblical canon, his approach and presuppositions in hermeneutics, and finally about his major critical conversation partners. Supplementing Ulrich's strong sense of the Bible's importance for theological ethics, a strongly Lutheran reading of notions like `law' and `commandment' here goes hand in hand with a concentration on Matthew, Romans and the Psalms; this in turn is matched by a characteristically unstated (but implicitly Protestant) Rule of Faith. There is a broad engagement with contemporary philosophers and theologians, but little attention is paid either to patristic and medieval voices or for that matter to biblical scholars, even those who have in recent years attempted to recover the connection between Scripture and Theology.