A LIBRARIAN’S ORIENTATION
What this book explores
Richard B. Hays develops a method for Christian ethics that listens to the diverse New Testament witnesses, identifies recurring focal images—community, cross, and new creation—and then brings that synthesis into contemporary moral discernment. Through extended treatments of violence, divorce, sexuality, abortion, and ethnic conflict, he demonstrates how exegesis, tradition, analogy, and communal judgment interact when Scripture does not supply a simple modern rule.
EDITORIAL NOTE
Why it’s in the Library
This is a major work because it makes the movement from biblical text to ethical conclusion visible rather than pretending application is automatic. Travelers can study both Hays’s careful method and the contested judgments it produces, especially where churches claim that ‘the Bible is clear.’ The Library includes it as a substantial New Testament ethic from a Christian scholarly location—not as consensus, a timeless policy manual, or the final word for people whose lives bear its conclusions.
Good starting place if…
You want to see how a major New Testament scholar moves from diverse ancient texts to contemporary moral judgments and where interpretive synthesis enters that process.
Know before you begin…
Hays’s 1996 treatment of same-sex relationships has been especially influential and harmful in some communities, and its textual, historical, pastoral, and ethical conclusions are deeply contested. His own later public reassessment of that position underscores that scholarly judgments can change. The book’s focal images guide interpretation but do not remove disagreement or power. Readers should pair it with affirming scholarship, lived testimony, and current research, and should never use its conclusions to deny another person’s safety, dignity, family, or access to community.