All too often, argues Ben Witherington, the theology of the New
Testament has been divorced from its ethics, leaving as isolated
abstractions what are fully integrated, dynamic elements within the New
Testament itself. As Witherington stresses, "behavior affects and
reinforces or undoes belief." Previously published as
The Indelible Image,
Volume 1, Witherington offers the first of a two-volume set on the
theological and ethical thought world of the New Testament. The first
volume looks at the individual witnesses, while the second examines the
collective witness. The New Testament, says Ben Witherington, is "like a
smallish choir. All are singing the same cantata, but each has an
individual voice and is singing its own parts and notes. If we fail to
pay attention to all the voices in the choir, we do not get the entire
effect. . . . If this first volume is about closely analyzing the sheet
music left to us by which each musician's part is delineated, the second
volume will attempt to re-create what it might have sounded like had
they ever gotten together and performed their scores to produce a single
masterful cantata." What the New Testament authors have in mind,
Witherington contends, is that all believers should be conformed in
thought, word and deed to the image of Jesus Christ?the indelible image.