New Testament Social Ethics for Today

Download or read book New Testament Social Ethics for Today written by Richard N. Longenecker and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 1984 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a print on demand book and is therefore non- returnable. To answer the question of what role the New Testament should play in the formation and expression of Christian social morality today, Richard Longenecker here proposes a developmental hermeneutic, which distinguishes between "declared principles" and "described practices" in the New Testament writings. With this distinction in mind, he focuses on the three couplets of Galatians 3:28 -- "neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female" -- showing how these matters were treated in early Christian thought and explaining their meaning for us today. In so doing, Longenecker lays a hermeneutical foundation for the much larger discussion of Christian social ethics.