Richard Hays (1948-2025): The leading New Testament scholar was a real Christian

Richard B. Hays was one of the most influential New Testament scholars of his generation, says Dr Ian Paul.  His radical faith in Christ motivated his scholarship and led him to write a number of game-changing books

Richard Hays, who died at his home in Nashville, Tennessee on 3 January, leaves a remarkable legacy of scholarship. But there are several other things that are very striking about his life and work.

The first is the way that he came to be a New Testament scholar at all. Although raised in a Christian home in Oklahoma, as a teenager, he came to believe that those around him were hypocrites, and he turned his back on faith.

Academically gifted, he studied English Literature at Yale. There he was impressed by the famous chaplain, William Sloane Coffin, and the way that his faith was integrated with practical action in his opposition to the Vietnam War and support for Civil Rights. Back at home during the winter vacation in his second year, he returned to faith. Waiting in church for the start of the Christmas Eve service, he picked up a Bible, and opened it at random to Mark 8:35: ”For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.”

“Bang! That hit me right in the chest…and stunned me into offering my life to Jesus,” he later recalled.