A leading expert in New Testament ethics discovers in the biblical witness a unified ethical vision -- centered in the themes of community, cross and new creation -- that has profound relevance in today's world. Richard Hays shows how the New Testament provides moral guidance on the most troubling ethical issues of our time, including violence, divorce, homosexuality and abortion. "Hays' passionately written book, with its bold agenda, has neither peer nor rival." --Leander E. Keck, Winkley Professor of Biblical Theology, Yale Divinity School "There are few people I would rather read for the actual exposition of the New Testament than Richard Hays. This book is filled with wonderful readings that not only inform us about how to think better about the so-called 'problem of the relation between the New Testament and ethics' but, even more, speak of how our lives should be lived in the light of Christ's cross. -Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor of Theological Studies, Duke University Divinity School "Richard Hays has succeeded brilliantly in bringing New Testament studies, contemporary theology, and ethics into a deeply reflective conversation... Hays' point is that the New Testament norms the Christian life, and, with the help of imagination and metaphor, can address the moral conflicts of our time." --Ellen T. Charry, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University "This book isn't just a breath of fresh air. It's a hurricane, blowing away the fog of half-understood pseudo-morality and fashionable compromise, and revealing instead the early Christian vision of true humanness and genuine holiness. If this isn't a book for our time, I don't know what is." --N. T. Wright, author of The New Testament and the People of God

A leading expert in New Testament ethics discovers in the biblical witness a unified ethical vision -- centered in the themes of community, cross and new creation -- that has profound relevance in today′s world. Richard Hays shows how the New Testament provides moral guidance on the most troubling ethical issues of our time, including violence, divorce, homosexuality and abortion.

In these lectures, as in his writings, Hays' passion for getting the story right and his conviction that Christians today are part of that story, become apparent. Our "getting it right" has to do not only with intellectual interests and rigour, but with the truthful practices of today's Christians.

By the time Christianity became a political and cultural force in the Roman Empire, it had come to embody a new moral vision. This wise and eloquent book describes the formative years--from the crucifixion of Jesus to the end of the second century of the common era--when Christian beliefs and practices shaped their unique moral order. Wayne A. Meeks examines the surviving documents from Christianity's beginnings (some of which became the New Testament) and shows that they are largely concerned with the way converts to the movement should behave. Meeks finds that for these Christians, the formation of morals means the formation of community; the documents are addressed not to individuals but to groups, and they have among their primary aims the maintenance and growth of these groups. Meeks paints a picture of the process of socialization that produced the early forms of Christian morality, discussing many factors that made the Christians feel that they were a single and "chosen" people. He describes, for example, the impact of conversion; the rapid spread of Christian household cult-associations in the cities of the Roman Empire; the language of Christian moral discourse as revealed in letters, testaments, and "moral stories"; the rituals, meetings, and institutionalization of charity; the Christians' feelings about celibacy, sex, and gender roles; and their sense of the end-time and final judgment. In each of these areas Meeks seeks to determine what is distinctive about the Christian viewpoint and what is similar to the moral components of Greco-Roman or Jewish thought.

Nothing confuses Christian ethics quite like the Old Testament. Some faithful readers struggle through its pages and conclude that they must obey its moral laws but may disregard its ceremonial and civil laws. Others abandon its teaching altogether in favor of a strictly New Testament ethic. Neither option, argues Chris Wright, gives the Old Testament its due. In this innovative approach to Old Testament ethics--fully revised, updated and expanded since its first appearance in 1983 as Living as the People of God (An Eye for an Eye in North America) and including material from Walking in the Ways of the Lord--Wright examines a theological, social and economic framework for Old Testament ethics. Then he explores a variety of themes in relation to contemporary issues: economics, the land and the poor; politics and a world of nations; law and justice; society and culture; and the way of the individual. This fresh, illuminating study provides a clear basis for a biblical ethic that is faithful to the God of both Testaments.

This painstaking study of the New Testament helps bring clarity to one of the great ethical dilemmas of the modern church--the moral status of wealth and possessions in relation to Christian faith.

A leading biblical scholar shows that Paul offers a coherent moral vision based on both the story of Christ and the norms of the law.