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God’s Love and Christian Ethics by Larry Hurtado


Larry Hurtado is a scholar of the New Testament and Christian origins. In August 2011 he retired from the University of Edinburgh which he served from 1996. He has written much on the subjects of early Christianity and early "devotion to Jesus". Recently he submitted a paper about God's love and Christian ethics.

Here is a summary of the paper in the words of Larry Hurtado . . .

I was honored to be invited again to the Second Nishan Forum, held May 2012 in Jining, China, and to contribute again a paper to the conference. I have now placed the text of my paper (PDF) under the “Selected Essays” tab.
The jist of my paper is that (1) the NT emphasis on the biblical deity as loving the world, and this love as the prime basis for God’s acts toward the world, is rather novel in the Roman religious environment, and (2) that this divine love serves rather consistently as the basis and pattern for the actions that believers are called to exhibit.
I make no claims about how consistently Christians have actually lived up to this. Heaven knows it’s hardly a consistent record! Perhaps all the more reason to return to the NT texts every so often.


If the summary grabs your attention you can read the full paper here as a PDF.

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