The 1970s was a bleak decade for books on New Testament ethics. The field was dominated by J. L. Houlden’s Ethics and the New Testament and Jack Sanders’ Ethics in the New Testament, both of which exaggerated the differences between the New Testament authors and portrayed their writings as having little or no authoritative status for Christians today. In contrast, the 1980s have already produced several studies of note, most of them emanating from North America, adopting a more positive approach to New Testament ethics and seeing it as in some sense normative for Christian behaviour. The books reviewed here are the two most recent. Both are worthy additions to this expanding library, though each falls short of the accolade ‘outstanding’.

Verhey’s book is the more comprehensive in scope. The first three chapters are an extremely thorough survey of the ethical material found in all the New Testament books. Sometimes this descends to a rather tedious recital of texts and description of different scholars’ viewpoints. But Verhey’s judgments appear generally sound. He spotlights the different emphases of, e.g., the synoptic writers (Mark’s Jesus is seen as proclaiming a heroic morality, Matthew’s a surpassing righteousness, Luke’s an ethic of care and respect), but he also brings similar material together from different sources to demonstrate common strands.

In his final chapter, Verhey considers the question of the authority of New Testament ethics for us today. He presents a ‘modest proposal’ which in his view steers between the opposite errors of fundamentalism and liberalism, viz. fundamentalism’s tendency to discern in Scripture only timeless truths perennially binding upon Christians in all cultures, and liberalism’s tendency so to stress the cultural relativity of what is written in Scripture that it releases itself from any challenge contained therein. Verhey argues that the New Testament isauthoritative on the level of motivation, showing why Christians should behave in a certain way and in establishing certain ethical principles like love and freedom, but to inquire of Scripture at the ‘moral-rule’ level is inappropriate. This is because the rules found in the New Testament were intended to answer specific questions of conduct in the particular communities they were addressing, not for all times and places.

I agree with Verhey up to a point. Women’s veils do not have the significance for us that they had in first-century Corinth, so it is meaningless to insist on their being worn now. But it is arguable that other rules have survived the passage of time and place with meaning and value substantially intact. The principles of sanctity of marriage and faithfulness in love are still well served by a simple rule prohibiting adultery. The fact is that there are rules and rules, i.e. rules of short-term, limited validity and rules of long-term, more universal (though not necessarily absolute) validity. The New Testament contains both, and one of the ethicist’s tasks is surely to distinguish between them. This Verhey fails to do.

Longenecker begins his book on a fairly programmatic scale, by outlining a variety of ways of using the New Testament in ethics and defining the hermeneutical approach he favours as discernment and application of those prescriptive principles which stem from the heart of the gospel (usually embodied in the example and teaching of Jesus). But he then limits himself to a consideration of what he regards as the most forthright statement on social ethics in the New Testament, Galatians 3:28. This is said to involve a cultural mandate (‘neither Jew nor Greek’), a social mandate (‘neither slave nor free’) and a sexual mandate (‘neither male nor female’). Of course, many Christians have been content simply to regard this as preaching spiritual equality, and Longenecker documents the extent to which they have been ready to tolerate enormous inequalities and exercise oppression in all three areas. I agree with Longenecker that the verse does have societal implications as well, though I feel he assumes this rather than argues it systematically.

Longenecker’s most interesting, if ultimately rather frustrating, chapter is on the subject of relations between the sexes. He notes the tension in Paul’s letters between material affirming the place of women in church leadership (e.g. Phoebe, Priscilla, and the women who pray and prophesy in 1 Cor. 11) and that which reduces them to a silent, subordinate role (1 Cor. 14:34–35 and 1 Tim. 2:11–15). He makes the helpful suggestion that themes of order, subordination and submission tend to follow when the concept of creation is uppermost in Paul’s mind, and those of freedom, mutuality and equality when redemption takes prominence. My question is whether the understanding of the creation story found in, e.g., 1 Timothy 2 is the only one open to us today, i.e. does the priority of man in creation necessarily indicate pre-eminence, and does the story of the fall necessarily warrant singling out women as prone to deception? An alternative view of creation, traces of which are found in the Bible, could reduce the tension with the themes of redemption, producing a more consistently (though by no means completely) egalitarian understanding of sexual roles and functions. Disappointingly, Longenecker cuts short his discussion just when it is getting interesting, and fights shy of spelling out any conclusions about the rightness or wrongness of women’s ordination.