The ten essays collected in this volume are the fruit of Professor Horrell's investigations into the concrete social historical circumstances of the early Christ-believing assemblies; Paul's responses to the ethical challenges, which arose within the assemblies to which he wrote; and the appropriation of Pauline ethics in the context of contemporary ethical challenges. The book's tripartite structure reflects these three areas of investigation.

Part 1 is entitled “Early Christian Assemblies in Sociohistorical Context.” Chapters 1 and 4 concern, respectively, misconceptions associated with the designation “Pauline communities” and the use of kinship and household language in shaping social relationships within the Pauline communities. In chapters 2 and 3, Horrell examines the archeological and demographic evidence from Corinth based on which he challenges assumptions about two interrelated topics: the venues used by early Christians for their assemblies and the socio-economic makeup of these assemblies. Though Horrell considers these issues through the story of Philemon in chapter 3, much of that chapter's content overlaps with chapter 2.

In Part 2, “Pauline Ethics in Historical Context,” Horell's first two essays (chapters 5 and 6) examine the content and reasoning that guided Paul's responses to specific ethical challenges that arose within the Corinthian community. Regarding the case of sexual immorality, treated in 1 Cor 5, Horrell's most significant insight relates to Paul's insistence on believers’ distinct corporate identity and the establishment of boundaries between them and the surrounding pagan culture, while, at the same time, finding common cause with unbelievers when their ethical norms coincide with what is demanded of those in Christ. On the issue of idol food (1 Cor 8–10), Horrell observes that, rather than recourse to rules, Paul proposes “other regard” after the example of Christ's selflessness as the moral norm governing Christian behavior. In chapter 7, Horrell weighs in on the debate over whether the virtue of humility rooted in the example of Christ's self-lowering (see Phil 2:6–11), which Paul presents to believers as a moral paradigm, is a uniquely Christian development in the context of Greco-Roman morality.

In Part 3, “Pauline Ethics in Modern Contexts,” Horrell reconsiders the three texts examined in Part 2, plus Romans 14–15, in the context of the liberal-communitarian debate over church-world relations (chapter 8). After reviewing three proposed models of church-world relations, he shows how the moral norms and reasoning Paul sets forth in these texts support each model without privileging one. Reading Paul in view of current ecological and environmental concerns is the focus of the final two chapters. After addressing the hermeneutical issue of engaging Paul on issues that transcend his first-century context and concrete concerns, Horrell discusses key Pauline texts that can resource a Christian response to our ecological crisis (chapter 9). The final chapter contains the author's ecological reading of 2 Cor 5:14–21 based on which he proposes God's act of cosmic reconciliation in Christ as the key to an ecologically reconfigured Pauline theology.

Horrell moves the reader seamlessly through a careful examination of Paul's texts in their original contexts to an appreciation of their value and relevance for modern moral questions. This is an erudite but accessibly written set of essays. Both scholars and students, especially graduate and upper-division religious studies majors, can learn from Horrell's judicious use of sources, detailed textual analysis, and exegetical insights. Although the $45 cover price may incline some to retrieve the essays separately—nine were previously published between 2010 and 2016—this book's value lies precisely in the accumulation of interconnected insights that the collection brings to the fore.