This book outlines a biblical understanding of freedom and the particular ways in which Christians choose to exercise that freedom in response to major issues confronting the world today. Specifically, Bauckham constructs a Christian understanding of freedom, explores the authority of scripture in modern and postmodern contexts, and also examines themes of tradition, ethics, oppression, and ecology as they relate to issues of freedom and authority. "The meaning of freedom and the nature and place of authority are at stake in most of the key issues about the way we live today, about the structures of our society, about the possibility of common values, about the sustainability of the western and increasingly globalized culture of individual autonomy. . . . Can we think and speak about the authority of God in such a way as to affirm human freedom, as given and nurtured by God? Are there Christian understandings of both freedom and authority which avoid the dilemmas of contemporary culture and point to a positive interaction of the two?" --From the Introduction Richard Bauckham is Professor of New Testament Studies and Bishop Wardlaw Professor at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a member of the Doctrine Commission of the Church of England.