Sequel to Disseminating Diaphoris: Toward a Participatory Christian Education
Write a Scripted Theological Dialogue Between Richard B. Hays, N.T. Wright, and Maximus the Confessor on a diaphoric way to honor the Law without idolizing it.
ChatGPT Prompt
Setting: A timeless cloister garden.
Richard B. Hays sits under an olive tree with a notebook. The sounds of wind and birds echo gently.
He is joined by N.T. Wright, in scholar’s robes and walking boots, and Maximus the Confessor, robed in monastic simplicity, eyes deep and still.
Act I: The Question
HAYS:
Brothers, thank you for joining me.
A student recently asked me, “How do I best honor the Law?”
I have spent my life teaching the moral vision of the New Testament — but I confess the question still stirs me.
Not just “How do I obey the Law?”
But how do I honor it — as Scripture, as tradition, as divine wisdom — without idolizing it?
WRIGHT (leaning forward):
Ah, yes — the law as vocation, not just regulation. A vital distinction.
MAXIMUS (smiling faintly):
And a holy one.
Act II: The Historian Speaks — Law as Covenant Vocation
WRIGHT:
Richard, as you well know, Torah was never just a moral checklist.
It was the charter of Israel’s identity — a narrative calling to be the people through whom God’s rescue project would unfold.
Take the Sabbath. Not just a rule to obey, but a sign of new creation.
Or Jubilee — a vision of economic justice, a world where God’s abundance resets our greed.
Jesus did not throw this away. He fulfilled it by embodying it — and reconfiguring its meaning in himself.
So, how do you honor the Law?
By stepping into the story it tells, and letting it shape your own role in the ongoing drama of redemption.
Act III: The Mystic Speaks — Law as Icon of the Logos
MAXIMUS:
And yet — the Law is more than story. It is a theophany.
Every true law is a mirror of the Logos, the rationality of divine love inscribed in the world.
But our vision is dim.
So God grants us partial reflections — the Law of Moses among them — to train our souls in divine rhythm.
But these are not ends. They are icons.
You honor the Law not by freezing its form, but by following its light into deeper participation with God.
Jesus, the Logos incarnate, transfigures the Law — so that the Law may lead not just to obedience, but to union.
Act IV: The Interpreter Weighs — Law as Improvised Fidelity
HAYS (reflectively):
So the Law is at once a storied vocation and a sacramental form —
a gift that is both situated and transcendent, pointing beyond itself.
But then: What does it mean to “honor” it today?
Not to absolutize its ancient form —
Not to discard it for some shapeless grace —
But to interpret it faithfully in the Spirit of the resurrected Christ.
Perhaps honoring the Law means:
- To listen deeply — letting it read us before we read it
- To discern communally — not by private judgment, but Spirit-led body
- To adapt generatively — preserving the pattern while shifting the shape
- To love supremely — since love is the telos of the commandment (1 Tim 1:5)
Act V: A Diaphoric Resolution
WRIGHT:
Yes! That’s it. You don’t honor the Law by repeating it mechanically, but by re-enacting its purpose under new conditions —
just as Jesus did, healing on the Sabbath.
MAXIMUS:
And you do not honor God by clinging to the letter of the Law,
but by entering into its kenotic rhythm:
emptying yourself, receiving difference, being transfigured through love.
The Law’s final word is not regulation, but resonance.
Act VI: Closing Blessing
HAYS (writing):
Then let it be said:
To honor the Law is to follow its music, not just its notes.
To move from shadow to substance.
From symbol to sacrifice.
From control to communion.
MAXIMUS:
Amen.
WRIGHT (smiling):
A very Pauline ending, if I may say.
HAYS (closing his notebook):
Then I will teach it not as a fence, but as a field.
Not as a cage, but as a call.
Not as final — but as fractal:
A holy pattern in need of constant prayerful improvisation.
[Curtain]
The garden falls silent again. The wind stirs the pages of Hays’s notebook. The Law is still speaking — if we have ears to hear.
Radically Happy 
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