The author addresses questions about the interpretation of the Bible's ethical material. These are questions about the meanings of moral words, to be distinguished from questions of normative ethics and of descriptive ethics. By defining "ethics" formally, rather than by its content, O'Donovan has included within the scope of ethics two spheres that are sometimes distinguished from it, i.e., the religious and the aesthetic.

Ethics is the study that deals with moral principles. This article introduces three levels of ethics: metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics. It then gives a proposal of what should constitute Christian ethics.