Witherington on Doing New Testament Theology

"At the end of the day, it is not helpful to arrange New Testament proof texts into preexistent systematic theology categories and then construct a Testament theology or ethics or analyze New Testament theology or ethics on that basis. This puts the ‘dog’ back in dogma, and that dog won’t hunt if we are talking about being fair to the focus and thrusts of the New Testament itself, which are christocentric and christological to the core.”

Ben Witherington III, The Indelible Image: The Theological and Ethical Thought World of the New Testament, Volume One: The Individual Witnesses (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2009), 54,