This book is actually a very thorough introduction to the topic of Christian ethics. It would be impossible to do a full review in the context of the Subculture Concept page. Instead, I want to confine myself to one aspect of the author's conclusions on "Christian Ethics & the Contemporary Context" (chapter 6).

Grenz sees Christian ethics as a "Community-Based Ethic of Being". The following quote from p231 expresses some of our subculture ideas especially well.

"Foundational to our understanding of the ethical life is the realization that as Christians we constitute a particular community. We are a people who gather around our common confession that Jesus is the Christ. This suggests that the Christian ethic, in turn, is the call to live out the worldview of the community that gathers around Jesus the Christ. It entails acting according to the foundational belief structure or convictions of this community, especially as derived from the Bible, the foundational text of the community of Christ."

According to Grenz, the Christian community is the reference point for our personal values and convictions as Christians. In fact, he says that "every understanding of the ethical life is ultimately derived from a community-based vision, which links the personal life with something beyond." (p231) Integrity means being faithful to a shared value system.

Grenz adds that "the move to a communitarian understanding holds promise as a way of articulating the Christian ethic in the emerging postmodern context." In other words, our ethical stance can more easily be communicated to the modern audience. To say: "we do it like this" or "we believe this" is entirely enough to justify our position. Any community, according to post-modernism, has the right to define its own values, so the Christian community is no exception. The problem comes, as Grenz rightly points out, at the level of metanarratives. Christianity claims that its worldview is right and that its truth applies to all mankind, something that post-modernism cannot allow.

"Taken as a whole, the biblical narrative speaks of God at work establishing community." (p238) We find it hard these days to conceive of God dealing with communities, or even families. We are so conditioned to think in terms of the individual. Yet Grenz is undoubtedly correct. The Bible is about families, communities, nations. We cannot fully live out the Christian life in isolation.

"And it is this vision of the fullness of community that we must seek to embody as the community we call "the church of Jesus Christ." For God has called this particular community out of the world to incarnate within its own life and to proclaim to the entire world God's universal intent for all humankind." (p239)

I think that says it well. I would use the word "subculture" rather than "community" because, to me, the word "community" implies a more localised group, people who actually know each other, whereas the Christian Church obviously contains millions of people around the world who don't know each other.