New Testament Ethics: The Legacies of Jesus and Paul

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New Testament Ethics: The Legacies of Jesus and Paul. By Frank J. Matera. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1996. 325 pp., $20.00.

Matera does not directly engage the hermeneutical problem of applying NT ethics to contemporary life. His project is different. He probes each writing to find how its ethical vision functioned. Matera finds that the ethical teaching of the NT is inextricably bound up with the message of salvation and can be understood fully only in that light. For Jesus the ethical vision is rooted in the proclamation of the kingdom and for Paul in the "announcement of God's saving justice in Christ" (p. 9). Matera reasons that if the ethical vision of the NT cannot …