Preface
Acknowledgements
Part One: Family and Sexuality
1. Marriage and family life as Christian Concerns
2. Biblical hermeneutics and the Family
3. Living as families in the Light of the New Testament
4. Is the Bible God News for Human Sexuality?
Reflections on methd in Biblical Interpretation
5. Glorify God in Your Body (1 Cor 6: 20): thinking theologically about sexuality
Part two: Community
6. The Communal Dimension of Earliest Christianity
7. Early Christianity and the Sociology of the Sect
8. Women, Jesus and the Gospels
9. Christian Community in the light of the gospel of John
10. Christian Community in the light of 1 Corinthians
11. Paul and the Limits of Tolerance
Part three: Interpretation
12. New Testament Interpretation As Performance
Index of Modern Authors

In these wide-ranging studies, Stephen Barton shows that Christian theology and the Christian scriptures have a vital contribution to make to contemporary wisdom about our common life. The subjects he addresses are relevant to the concerns of many people today. What he has to say about the family, sexuality, community and biblical interpretation is both informative and creative. Running through the book is the issue of the appropriate use of the Bible: how the sacred text may speak in ways which are life-giving. Stephen Barton claims that questions about the interpretation of the Bible have to be set in the larger context of what it means to be the church. A central argument i that the Bible is the kind of text the truth of whose witness is discovered above all in the lives of individuals and communities seeking to share by grace in the life of the Trinity.