Theology or ethics?

While supportive of the emancipatory movements that have engaged the churches in America since the 1960s, Martyn is wary lest the church’s social and political action becomes disengaged from its source, God’s action in Christ. If it does, ethics takes the place of theology, and reliance is placed on human agency in a cosmos that is conflicted at a deeper and more intractable level than the church is apt to recognize. In the context of a church that he perceives to be weakened by a moralism neither founded in nor energized by the gospel, Martyn stresses both the priority and the efficacy of grace as a liberating vision that frees the church to act boldly without relying on itself, and also carries the hope that, despite setbacks, God’s gracious power will triumph in the end.—J. M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Gift, 150