In Richard Hays, a Rare Combination of Confidence and Contrition

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Religion News Service | Jan. 5, 2025

Professor Richard Hays, a Scripture scholar of vast influence, both through his scholarship and through his leadership in theological education, died Jan. 3, the result of a long journey with pancreatic cancer and the end of a remarkable life.

When New Testament specialists refer to the scholarship of Richard Hays, we are apt to resort to shorthand expressions. “Narrative substructure,” “subjective genitive” and “echoes of Scripture” are three that come immediately to mind, and rightly so, as Richard’s publications on these topics set waves of research in motion. But Richard was more than a set of propositions in need of defense. His work was enriching because it was itself enriched by the English language he so cherished. His early devotion to poetry paid off, not because he raided Harold Bloom, but because he read Milton and Yeats and Arnold and Eliot. Every word mattered, whether it was an ancient word or a modern one, and that made Richard’s own words more powerful.

Richard pursued his work with a confidence that manifested itself in his early willingness to take on scholarly positions that were generally thought to be “settled.” We were at a Columbia Seminar dinner together sometime in the early 1980s — well before even his dissertation had been published — when he instigated a heated discussion about the “faith of Christ” among senior scholars at the table. Neither on that evening nor later did I sense Richard was being provocative just to be provocative; he did it out of genuine conviction for the topic at hand.

That confidence was coupled, even mellowed, by a well-honed willingness to hear and respond to criticism. When "The Moral Vision of the New Testament" was still in draft form, he hosted a small conference at Duke, inviting numerous colleagues to interact with its chapters. Richard gracefully endured several days of critique — some of it quite forceful — in the interest of improving his work. Some years later, after the publication of "Seeking the Identity of Jesus" — a book we edited together through the auspices of the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton — Tom Wright issued a stinging critique of the volume in a book review panel at a national meeting. True to his own character, although Richard was dismayed by the critique and disagreed with it, he maintained his respect and deep affection for Tom.

I experienced that commitment to friendship myself, as Richard and I navigated our own disagreements. Conversations around several topics, most notably human sexuality and abortion, found us on opposite sides, and awkwardly so at times. Yet I never considered that Richard might see these as friendship-terminating moments, and I trust he never experienced anxiety over that possibility. To be sure, we both lived with privileges that allowed us to maintain the friendship, but I think something other than privilege was at work. We had been given to each other as friends, and that gift was not to be questioned or cast aside.

In the final years of his life, Richard demonstrated in a public way that confidence about one’s work needs to be coupled with the ability to change one’s mind. When he and his son, Christopher B. Hays, published "The Widening of God’s Mercy" in 2024, Richard made public what many of us knew, namely, that he had changed his mind about the interpretation of Scripture and the question of same-sex relations. Richard was aware that his earlier position, argued in "Moral Vision," had contributed to a hardening of the categories in some church circles, and he wanted very much to give public voice both to his change of mind and to his change of heart. It is a testimony to the divine mercy of the title of that book that it was published before Richard’s death.

The intensity that characterized Richard’s work also characterized his support of students and friends. I can recall warm introductions to Love Sechrest, Ross Wagner and Brittany Wilson, among others — students Richard wanted to bring to the attention of his own scholarly friends — friendships he hoped to generate. And I am deeply grateful for his support in times of personal crisis, to say nothing of his encouragement of my own work. During one season when both of us were in Princeton, we met several times to work through a translation of Romans. Those conversations were rich and precious, even if we did try the patience of restaurant staff who needed us to move along.

Such intensity can come at the expense of family, and Richard was painfully aware that his own family sometimes paid a steep price for his vocation. He acknowledged that price explicitly in the preface to "Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels," which is dedicated to his wife, Judy. In many conversations over the years, however, he always reported on Judy’s work with pride and genuine interest. And no conversation was complete until we had shared reports on our children and, with time, the grandchildren. Unquestionably, Richard loved and was loved in a way that sustained him and allowed all of them to flourish.

All of this full and good life was funded by an unapologetic conviction about the mercy of God at work in the gospel of Jesus Christ. While Richard held that there was value in historical critical investigation, it was not for him a mere parlor game but part and parcel of a quest to understand what God has done in the world and to find our place in that story. It surprised me not at all to find that his own last message on his CaringBridge site came from Romans 14:

We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves.

If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord;

So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.

Richard knew who his Lord was, and he knew what his own vocation was. The church and the academy have been the beneficiaries of that life.

Beverly Roberts Gaventa is Helen H.P. Manson Professor of New Testament Emerita at Princeton Theological Seminary and Distinguished Professor of New Testament (retired) at Baylor University. Her most recent book is "Romans: A Commentary" (WJK, 2024). The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)