William Webb 6: Persuasive Extrascriptural Criteria

William Webb continues: Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis.

Previous chapters:
Chapter 1: The Christian and Culture
Chapter 2: A Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic
Chapter 3: Persuasive Criteria
Chapter 4: Moderately Persuasive Criteria
Chapter 5: Inconclusive Criteria
Almost done. Now Chapter 6: Persuasive Extrascriptural Criteria
1. This chapter reminded me of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. This material would relate to experience and reason. In it he gives his last two criteria.

Criterion 17: Pragmatic Basis Between Two Cultures
This criterion has to do with whether the pragmatic basis for instruction in the Bible can be sustained from one culture to another. "A component of a biblical imperative may be culturally relative if the pragmatic basis for the instruction cannot be sustained from one culture to another. The converse is that a biblical command is more likely to be transcultural in its articulated form to the extent that the pragmatic factors are themselves sustainable across various cultures" (209).

An important observation here is that "pragmatic factors played at least a limited role in shaping the biblical text." "Our discussion of a pragmatic basis needs to be clearly distinguished from the ultimate basis that underlies every biblical command and imperative" (210).

He gives as an example the instruction not to reap at the corners of a field to allow the poor to feed. This would not make sense in most contexts today. Therefore, we move up the "ladder of abstraction" and apply the principle in relation to making sure the poor get fed.

2. Examples most would agree with:

• foot washing - we wear enclosed shoes now, so we don't have to follow concretely.
• children submission to parents - young children are still less developed in knowledge and intellectual capacity than most parents. Young children should in general continue to submit to parents... but probably not once they are adults. That was cultural.
• submission to the king -- a representational democracy is different, so the specifics are cultural, although we should respect those in authority
• congregations and church elders - some continuity, but our culture has a more "empower the laity" approach that fits our democratic context.

3. Women submission to men
The practicality here had to do with the lack of education of women, their general lack of exposure and experience and their lack of physical strength for agriculture. These practicalities do not apply today, suggesting that the instruction to submit to husbands was cultural rather than transcultural.

4. Homosexual prohibitions
He argues quite a bit against Walter Wink in this section. Wink suggests that the need for many children in the ancient world no longer applies--indeed that our problem is overpopulation--and thus that homosexuality should be promoted as an option. Webb shows fairly easily that this is a pretty weak argument in favor. Would the overpopulation argument validate every non-procreative form of sexuality?

Criterion 18: Scientific and Social-Scientific Evidence
5. Webb makes a distinction between two types of scientific/social scientific data--absolute scientific data that would hold true in any culture and time and relative scientific data that would only hold true within a particular culture.

Agreed upon examples:

• Scripture functions with a geocentric (earth-as-center) view of the world. He argues this was "phenomenological." It was the way the world appeared to them. "The geocentric component is cultural; the theological and phenomenological components are transcultural" (222).
• Flat earth -- "Scripture accommodated itself to the cosmology of its day" (223).

6. Now for the topics of the book:

• Women are not reproductive gardens. The understanding of reproduction, which underlies some biblical language, is no longer held. The woman is not just an incubator. She contributes just as much "data" to reproduction as the man, and infertility is often the man's fault.
• Women as poor leaders -- This simply is not true in our culture, even if it would have primarily been true in biblical times because of cultural conditions (but note that the Bible itself defies the culture in several instances).
• Women more easily deceived than men. This was probably generally true in ancient times, but it is certainly not true today. He takes Schreiner and others to task for skewing their interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:14 to make it more palatable while retaining complementarianism. Historically, Christian commentators have seen an innate intellectual capacity difference between men and women. Schreiner and Doriani reject this side to the interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:14 while retaining that women are less discerning than men because they are more relational. 
• In the end, he argues that the educational level of women in Paul's day has to be taken into account. 

Webb moves up the ladder of abstraction and summarizes the take away of 1 Timothy 2:14 as "seek teachers and leaders who are not easily deceived" (230).

7. With regard to homosexuality, he examines in this final section whether homosexual activity is determined behavior. He indicates that both environmental and biological factors can play a role in homosexuality. However, "the influence of nonvolitional forces upon any human action is no help in determining the ethical status of that action" (233).

This is quite true. The question whether homosexual activity is moral or not is not determined by the nature of the origins of such desires. "Environmental and biological factors are not sufficient grounds for assessment of any behavior" (234). Non-volitional factors in behavior "moderate the degree of personal culpability, but they do not change an assessment of the behavior itself" (234).

William Webb 5: Inconclusive Criteria

William Webb continues: Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis.

Previous chapters:
Chapter 1: The Christian and Culture
Chapter 2: A Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic
Chapter 3: Persuasive Criteria
Chapter 4: Moderately Persuasive Criteria

Now Chapter 5: Inconclusive Criteria
You can see that Webb is steadily moving from criteria that he finds very helpful to criteria that he finds less and less clear Criterion 14: Theological Analogy
The question here is whether, if God is described in a certain way, we would consider such descriptions as transcultural. Webb says that the answer is inconclusive, since God is sometimes described with cultural analogies.

For example, the following are transcultural:

• God is love; therefore, love is a transcultural value.
• God is holy; therefore, holiness is a transcultural value.
• God forgives; therefore, we should forgive.

However, on other occasions cultural analogies are used to describe God:

• God is master, we as slaves.
• God as king, we as subjects.
• Christ is the firstborn, thus primogeniture.
• Jesus is at God's right hand, the right hand is preferred. 

Webb then suggests that these are cultural analogies:

• Christ is a husband who loves his wife does mean husband-headship is transcultural.
• God disciplines his wife like a husband (e.g., Hosea). It is not transcultural for a husband to strip his wife and physically confine her.
• However, there is no theological analogy in relation to God and homosexuality.

Criterion 15: Comparisons in Collections
In this section Webb looks at various biblical collections of items. Does the transcultural nature of one item in the collection suggest the others are transcultural too?

• "mixture texts" -- don't wear clothing of mixed thread, don't plow with donkey and ox together.  Most of these texts are considered cultural. I call this "Levitical kind theology," part of the Levitical worldview that believed that different kinds of things should not be mixed. Following Mary Douglas, I believe this worldview ultimately stood behind the food laws (ostrich, eel, and snake did not fit the "kind" of thing they were).
• virtue and vice lists -- Webb believes these lists lean heavily toward the transcultural (including, for example, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10.
• household codes -- He considers these texts mixed in relation to their transcultural import. So the instruction on children/parents and congregations/elders are transcultural, while the material on slaves/masters and husbands/wives is cultural.
• sexual taboo lists -- He considers most of the items on these lists in Leviticus 18 and 20 to be transcultural, although not necessarily in their punishment. He has also mentioned elsewhere that he does not consider rules on sex during menstruation to be transcultural. I'm not sure he has provided a good rationale here.
• He argues that the unusual mention of Molech in Leviticus 18:21 is a transition between heterosexual sex and non-heterosexual sex, implying that heterosexual sex is a key value implicit in the structure of the chapter. He does mention the possibility that the fact that the prohibition on homosexual sex comes after a mention of Molech could imply that the prohibition is about homosexual temple prostitution but indicates there is not enough contextual evidence to conclude that.  

Criterion 16: Continuity with Old Testament
He words this one in a funny way to me. For me, a key factor in these discussions is whether a teaching in the Old Testament is continued into the New Testament. For example, the command not to wear clothing of mixed thread is not mentioned in the New Testament, but the prohibition against homosexual sex is continued. By contrast, he considers such continuity inconclusive in general.

Here is his summary: "Discontinuity between epochs in salvation history does provide a reliable basis for assessment" (206). So because Jesus explicitly declares all foods clean, we can eat pork now (Mark 7:19). However, "continuity between Testaments, whether by ideological precedence or verbal appeal, is not a reliable indicator for discovering that which [is] transcultural."

Examples of discontinuation:

• sacrifices - fulfilled in Christ, not continued, no longer in effect
• food laws - clearly discontinued in the NT
• circumcision - clearly not required according to Galatians and Acts 15
• slaves and masters - although continued between OT and NT, cultural, thus 

Example of continuance that is cultural:

• slavery - continued between OT and NT but cultural
• kings and subjects - continued between OT and NT but cultural
• lifting up holy hands - continued between OT and NT but cultural
• holy kiss - continued between OT and NT but cultural
• foot washing traditions - continued between OT and NT but cultural

I'll end this summary with an interesting comment about Lutherans and the Reformed tradition:

• Fallacy #1 (a tendency of the Lutheran tradition): "Only those particulars of the Mosaic law that the New Testament expressly sanctions apply to New Testament believers"  (205).
• Fallacy #2 (a tendency of the Reformed tradition): "Christians are bound to obey all those particulars in the Mosaic law that the New Testament does not expressly abrogate."

He would say we have to look at the particular commands of the OT in the light of all these criteria.

William Webb 4: Moderately Persuasive Criteria

I continue my review of William Webb's Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis.

Previous chapters:
Chapter 1: The Christian and Culture
Chapter 2: A Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic
Chapter 3: Persuasive Criteria

Now on to Chapter 4: Moderately Persuasive Criteria
Webb finds these criteria helpful in the discussion, but not as definitive as those in the previous chapter.

Criterion 6: Patterns of the Original Creation
The basic question of this criterion and the next two relates to whether the way God originally created humanity was an absolute ideal. Were there cultural dimensions even to the original creation? Will the new creation go even further than the original creation?

Generally, Webb starts with what he considers "neutral" examples. Here I note as before that today's common sense may need to be defended in the next generation. I remember I felt similarly in 2001. It seemed obvious to me that everyone would agree slavery should have been abolished. But people be crazy.

His thesis in these first two criteria is that "one cannot automatically assign a transcultural status to all that is found within the garden" (124). Here is a list of various items relating to the garden:

• Divorce -- Jesus appeals to the Genesis creation text to argue against divorce.
• Polygamy -- Here I am not sure I agree with him. I am doubtful that Genesis saw polygamy as a contradiction of the "one flesh" passage in Genesis 2:24. In the Ancient Near East, a man could become one flesh with many wives. This is thus a culturally unreflective reading on Webb's part, IMO.
• Singleness -- Webb rightly notes that we might prohibit singleness if the original creation was absolute.
• Farming as an occupation -- clearly not all men are farmers, although this seems a near assumption of the biblical text
• Ground transportation -- we don't insist on walking today, although this was possibly an assumption of the original creation
• Procreation command -- although some do, we do not consider procreation a command today
• Vegetarian diet -- The diet seems to shift after the Flood, but should we go back to being vegetarians as in the Garden?
• Sabbath -- Christians have certainly modified sabbath observance. We observe Sunday rather than Saturday. I would add that the New Testament explicitly does not consider the Jewish Sabbath binding for Gentile Christians, even though it is modeled in creation (Rom 14:5; Col. 2:16).
•  Length of a work week -- We get Saturday and Sunday.

Women
He then looks at the somewhat mixed nature of the original creation in relation to women:

• God's image - Both male and female are created in it.
• Ruling together - Both man and woman are to rule
• Helpmate - He thinks the evidence is indeterminate. 72% of the instances of this word are a superior like God helping and inferior (e.g., Ps. 54:4). But in 10% of the uses the helper is inferior.
• Adam's rib - He finds any rhetoric here unhelpful. It can be argued both ways.
• Man naming the woman - already discussed

I want to separate off the last three. Webb suggests there may be some patriarchy in the creation account. He will especially address this question under the next criterion, so see below.

• man leaves and cleaves - We don't apply this literally today, so it's hypocritical to make a big deal out of taking it literally. 
• God addresses man first - "quiet whisper of patriarchy"?
• Creation order: God makes the man first - 1 Timothy 2:13 seems to use this logic. See below.

Homosexuality
Webb argues that "the author of Genesis understood the creation story as a statement about normative sexual patterns being heterosexual" (133). On the other hand, he also notes that the creation story does not mention contrary situations. For example, it does not say anything about singleness. It must thus be acknowledged that homosexual relationships are not addressed one way or another. However, Webb argues that abstinence from sex limits while homosexual sex would broaden. He thus argues that abstinence from marriage is a different kind of situation than a different kind of marriage.

To put it another way, "God made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve," is only a partial argument, not an absolute argument. The Garden no doubt presents the norm, but it does not actually argue against other variations like singleness. God made Adam and Eve to have children is not an argument that it is wrong not to have children. Description is not prescription.

Criterion 7: Basis in the Original Creation: Primogeniture
This criterion focuses in on the created order. We already mentioned that 1 Timothy 2:13 seems to argue in this way "Adam was formed first, then Eve." I've heard David Ward poke at this logic a little, since trees and animals were made before Adam. Must we thus submit to the will of goats?

Here is where Webb raises an important question: "Eden's quiet echoes of patriarchy might be a way of describing the past through present categories" (143). "Given the agrarian base to primogeniture logic, the patriarchy of the garden may reflect God's anticipation of the social context into which Adam and Eve were about to venture" (144). Here we remember that Genesis was written in the Ancient Near East. It is not simply a dictation in heavenly categories. The story of the time before the fall is told in a document written after the fall.

Webb points out the inconsistencies of someone who would argue that these features of the original creation are transcultural.

• Scripture often overturns primogeniture.
• Christians no longer apply primogeniture today.
• Primogeniture was linked to ancient culture, which was agrarian based with short life expectancy and great potential for feuding and fighting over land. 

In the end he suggests that the best way to appropriate 1 Timothy 2 today is something like, "Choose teachers/leaders who are worthy of high honor in the congregation" (145).

Criterion 8: Basis in the New Creation
This criterion is similar to when I talk about the kingdom trajectory and it also relates to his previous criterion of "breakout verses." For example, Galatians 3:28 points to the new creation. See the previous post.

I might add some features he does not mention and might not agree with. The wording of Galatians 3:28 is curious: "In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither slave nor free. There is not 'male and female.'" I think it is quite possible that this verse alludes back to Genesis 1:27, where God creates them "male and female." Poetically, something even of the creation order is undone in Christ.

In short, I agree with him that the consummation of the creation goes one step further than the creation itself. This is solid Christian doctrine I learned once upon a time from Chris Bounds. Indeed, it is not clear that our glorified bodies will be sexual at all. In the kingdom, there is no marriage (Mark 12:25). We are like the angels.

"Original-creation patterns are far more likely to have culture-locked components with them" (148). They "simply do not have the same potential for reflecting transcultural features as do new-creation patterns."

Criterion 9: Competing Options in the Original Culture
His concept here is that if the Bible picks an option among many different cultural options, then that choice is more likely transcultural. On the other hand, if there was only one basic option at the time, then that instruction is quite possibly cultural.

• Slavery versus abolition - Abolition wasn't really an ancient option. "The lack of alternatives increases the likelihood that biblical interaction with slavery addressed this limited (culture-bound) horizon."
• Geocentric cosmology - the cosmology of the Bible assumed the earth was the center of the universe. There just wasn't another option.
• Monarchy - Democracy wasn't really an option in biblical times. The monarchic assumptions of the Bible are therefore likely to be cultural rather than timeless.

With regard to women, pretty much all the cultures of the ancient world were patriarchal. Even today, matriarchy is not really a thing when you dig deep. [Interestingly, I remember David Wright telling me this several years ago.] Accordingly, the role of women displayed in the Bible may very well be cultural since there weren't really any other options at the time.

The situation with homosexual practice is different. Homosexual practice was a known quantity in the ancient world. He does raise the question of whether "covenant" homosexual relationships were present in the ancient world, like gay marriage today. He says the ancient evidence is not agreed on, but he thinks it was an option (not marriage, but committed relationships).

So here and elsewhere he eliminates casual homosexual relationships from moral behavior because the Bible chooses against that option in its cultural world. He is not entirely certain whether married homosexual relationships are a phenomenon different enough from the options of the ancient world that they would not be covered under the biblical mandates. But he certainly leans in the direction that they would be covered.

Criterion 10: Opposition to the Original Culture
This criterion is closely related to the previous one. The previous one simply asked whether other options existed. This one asks whether the Bible actually argues against those other options. In that sense we have already started talking about this one.

Here are some extensions from his discussion of the previous criterion:

• Slavery: Although the Bible assumes slavery, it does challenge aspects of its cultural practice (see criterion 1, preliminary movement).
• Cosmology: Although the Bible assumes a geocentric cosmology, it argues against the worship of heavenly luminaries.
• Worshiping other gods: While the sanctuaries of Israel resembled those of other gods, while Israel offered sacrifices like other religions offered sacrifices, Israel was only to worship Yahweh. I would add that the Israelites probably believed those other deities were real entities (Paul calls them demons), but God did not allow their worship.
• Bestiality and transvestite activities - I have found the revival of Deuteronomy 22:5 interesting in recent days in relation to transvestitism. When I was a boy, this verse was used to argue that women should only wear dresses, not pants or slacks. I spent a couple years tortured over whether I should date a girl who wore pants. So let's just say I'm not too keen about the sudden "clarity" this verse has all of a sudden again. I don't understand transvestitism. I find it highly unusual, shall we say. But I get really annoyed by Boomers who would have mocked their parents for using this verse against pants now suddenly touting this verse loudly and widely as a proof text.
• Non-retaliation/love of enemies - This is the big one. Love of enemies makes no sense whatsoever from a worldly perspective. This is the distinctive biblical ethic above all.

Webb quotes Grant Osborne to sum up this criterion (from The Hermeneutical Spiral): "Teaching that transcends the cultural biases of the author and his readers will be normative" (161). Here is how Webb adds: "The countercultural side to the criterion is almost always accurate in detecting something of transcultural value, whereas the converse expression simply increases the probability of something being cultural" (162). In other words, if the Bible argues against something in the culture, that is likely transcultural. However, if the Bible doesn't argue against something in the culture, that doesn't mean that cultural feature is transcultural.

Criterion 11: Biblical Treatment of Closely-Related Issues
If we see that the kingdom moves beyond the Bible on an issue closely related to another, then it is at least possible that the kingdom would move beyond the Bible on that issue too.

Slavery as a closely related issue where we have a sense that we need to move beyond the Bible:

• viewing slaves as property
• releasing Hebrew slaves after 7 years (although not foreign slaves)
• using slaves for reproductive purposes (like Hagar)
• different penalties for rape of slave women and free women
• physical beating of a slave
• value of slave's life versus a free life

So on the question of women, Christians have also already moved beyond the Bible in many respects:

• Women are no longer viewed as property, as they are in much of the Old Testament.
• Wives are no longer transferred from father to husband.
• Women can now inherit property.
• We now would argue for consistent virginity for both men and women, while the Bible is largely only concerned about the women's virginity going into a marriage.
• Adultery legislation was much stronger in the Bible toward the woman than the man.
• Divorce legislation in Scripture was much more strongly directed against the woman.
• Other issues where the kingdom seems to move beyond things said somewhere in the Bible: polygamy, concubines, levirate marriage.

However, he argues that homosexual sex is in a different category than, for example, the fact that we do not enforce legislation on having sex during menstruation or the abandonment of polygamy or concubinage. [Interestingly--and uncomfortably--he is not sure that the Bible implies a prohibition of anal sex within a heterosexual marriage]

Here are some of the arguments for homosexual sex being in a different category. 1) The prohibition of homosexual sex is not tied to ceremonial impurity, 2) The New Testament retains the Old Testament prohibition of homosexual sex. 3) There is no intrinsic or logical connection between the rules on sex during menstruation and homosexual sex.

The second argument is the one that I have found most persuasive. Unlike other laws that the New Testament explicitly does not continue from the Old Testament, the prohibition on homosexual sex is explicitly retained.

I might add that the distinction between ceremonial law and moral law is really anachronistic. It is an overlay that makes sense to us but wouldn't have made any sense to, say, the apostle Paul. The Bible does not divide up the Old Testament Law in this way. What we have is 1) laws that related to Israel as a people distinct from their surrounding peoples, 2) laws of Israel that overlap with the laws of the Ancient Near East, and 3) laws that transcended Israel's Ancient Near Eastern context into the New Testament and beyond.

Criterion 12: Severity of the Penal Code
The criterion here looks at how severely various actions were punished in the Old Testament as an indicator. "The less severe the penalty for a particular action, the more likely it is of having culturally bound components" (172).

So some actions had the death penalty. Some might result in expulsion from Israel. Others involved punitive consequences that were less severe. Finally, some resulted in being impure for a time. Webb argues that we have a sliding scale here, with the final category being the least transcultural.

He notes that homosexual activity held a result of a death penalty. On the other hand, the law tells of no punishments for the insubordination of a wife or slave.

He anticipates a later criterion here as well--pragmatic considerations. For example, it is simply impractical to give young children the same vote in the family as a parent. They simply are not mentally equipped to make many important decisions. It is thus appropriate to retain the hierarchy of parents to children even though it no longer makes sense to retain the hierarchy of husband over wife.

I might add that there is some debate about how active ancient near eastern penal codes were. One line of thinking sees them more as "position papers" than actual practices. For example, how often in ancient Israel was a disobedient son actually stoned to death?

Criterion 13: Tension with General Principles
The final criterion of this chapter deals with a situation where a specific statement of Scripture seems to be in tension with an overarching principle. "Specific statements within Scripture are more likely to be culturally confined in some aspect than general statements" (179).

I have expressed a similar idea. Individual verses are most likely to be ambiguous and situational/time-conditioned. Therefore, it is important to focus more on the overall themes of Scripture than on individual verses. We should be cautious about how we apply any idea that is only expressed once in Scripture

He mentions gleaning laws as an example, leaving the edges of a field for the poor to eat from. Compassion toward the poor is timeless, but this particular way of showing compassion is not likely binding on modern farmers. Doing what they did doesn't do what it did.

In general, the principle of loving one's neighbor is the macro-ethic that should guide our approach to human relationships. We of course need to be careful not to have a myopic sense of love. Sometimes, "love must be tough." Love does not contradict discipline or the protection of one group by acting restrictively toward another.

However, we would be enacting kingdom values the most in culture if we could make the structures of society be equally "loving" toward all its members.

William Webb 3: Persuasive Criteria

My review continues of William Webb's Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis.

Previous chapters:
Chapter 1: The Christian and Culture
Chapter 2: A Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic

Now Chapter 3: Persuasive Criteria
In this chapter Webb sets down five of his 18 criteria for determining the extent to which biblical instruction on slaves, women, and homosexual acts relate to today. This chapter gives the five that he considers most persuasive.

Criterion 1: Preliminary Movement
The basic concept of this criterion is the direction in which biblical instruction is moving relative to the culture of its day. Another question that this criterion does not in itself answer is whether that movement is "preliminary" or "absolute."

The concept here is that sometimes Scripture differs from its surrounding culture in a way that reaches a final destination, what I would call the kingdom ideal. This is like scoring the touchdown on this issue. At other times, I think Webb rightly observes, Scripture demonstrates a movement toward the kingdom that is not fully reached. This is like moving the scrimmage line toward the goal.

Slavery
He mentions 8 ways in which the practice of slavery in Scripture reflects movement in relation to the culture of its day:

• generous number of days off work
• elevated status in worship setting
• release of Hebrew slaves after six years
• provisions given to slaves upon release
• limitations on physical beatings/freedom for damaged slaves
• admonitions toward genuine care
• condemnation of trading stolen slaves/people
• refuge and safety for runaway slaves

So Scripture does not fully move to the absolute destination where "in Christ there is neither slave nor free" (Gal 3:28), but it is moving in that direction.

Women
He mentions nine ways in which Scripture shows preliminary movement in relation to the status and empowerment of women:

• improved rights for female slaves and concubines
• no bodily punishment of a wife
• women's gain of (limited) inheritance rights
• the right of women to initiate divorce
• greater rights in divorce cases
• fairer treatment of women suspected of adultery
• elevation of female sexuality
• improved rape laws
• softening the husband side of the household codes

Several of these are of particular interest to me. I smiled at "the right of women to initiate divorce." I don't think his argument is quite right here but I agree with where he is headed so I won't say more. I have long taught that Paul's concern for the woman's sexuality in 1 Corinthians 7 would have been striking in that day.

Similarly, I have long argued his position on the household codes. I regularly read from Aristotle's Politics when we get to Colossians and Ephesians in a New Testament Survey class. There is nothing distinctively Christian about what Paul says to wives in these codes. It is rather what he says to the men that is striking.

Homosexuality
I note throughout the anachronism of his references to "homosexuality" and "homosexuals." This is a modern paradigm. There was no concept of sexual-ity or sexual orientation in the ancient world. The Bible refers to acts of men having sex with men and once to women having sex with women. It speaks of passion toward the same sex. It has no category for a person with a homosexual orientation.

The story of Sodom and Gomorrah is not about homosex-uals. It is a story about attempted same-sex rape.

We can thus recalibrate and note his three movements of the Bible in relation to culture on the question of homosexual acts:

• challenging the portrait of ancient gods (the Bible does not depict God having homosexual sex)
• removing homosexual practices of the temple cult
• legislating against homosexual practices within community life

The last one has the most force since the first two would also apply to heterosexual sex. Homosexual acts were practiced to varying degrees among the nations around Israel. Leviticus makes a broad-sweeping ban of such practices in Israel.

Criterion 2: Seed Ideas
This criterion looks at statements in Scripture that seem to point the way in a redemptive direction even though that path is not fully developed within the pages of Scripture. Perhaps the most obvious verse of this kind is Galatians 3:28--"In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; there is not male and female." Patriarchalists note that Paul is primarily speaking of salvation here rather than social equality.

What Webb argues is that it is clear from other criteria that these liberations sow the seeds of a social direction. Because the Jew-Gentile distinction was crucial to the spread of the gospel in the first century, it is in this area that Paul most fully works out the implications. Once other criteria are brought into play it seems clear that the trajectory is a kingdom without hierarchy in relation to slaves or women either.

He also points out that the principle does not obviously apply to "gay and straight." As I argued above, it is doubtful that Paul would even recognize these categories. The issue seems one of homosexual activity not personal identity. Even in 1 Corinthians 6:9 he formulates the prohibition in terms of individuals in the active homosexual role and those in the passive homosexual role.

Criterion 3: Breakouts
It seems to me that this section largely presented individuals who did not fit the cultural norms of the ancient context despite the Bible often conforming to those norms. Some of Webb's examples are easy for us because our culture has already "broken free" of those cultural norms and those issues are not debated in the church. For example:

• Left handed people are not devious.
• Long hair is usually not an issue for guys any more.
• Firstborn children don't always get more of the inheritance.
• We are affirming of there not being slavery.

I do think he glosses over some of these too quickly. My father was conscious of hair length on men his whole life, and my mother would comment on my hair if I visited her right now. Webb finds exceptions to these rules in Scripture and dubs them "breakouts," pointing to the fact that they were merely cultural not absolute.

I agree with his conclusion that they were culture-bound, but I'm not sure his argument would be felt sufficient by someone who disagreed. My criteria has much more to do with the "Love God, love neighbor" criterion. There is nothing intrinsic about hair length that seems to violate the love of God or the love of neighbor in absolute terms.

Meanwhile, it is simply false to say that all left-handed people cannot be trusted. In fact, that common cultural view is based on ignorance. Behaving differently toward left-handed people than right-handed people violates the core principle that God does not show favoritism and loves all people equally, including his enemies.

Meat offered to idols
I find his argument here muddy. The fact of the matter is, there was disagreement in the early church on how to handle this issue. We can discern three different positions. First, James and the Jerusalem church took an "avoid at all costs" position. If in doubt, don't eat. Paul took a medial position: "Don't ask where it came from." Eat according to your conscience. If you don't know, feel free to eat. Then there was the Corinthian position--"You have knowledge, eat it anywhere."

Because Paul's writings have pride of place in the canon--and because his position embodies the full inclusion of the Gentiles--it seems to be the position that wins in the canon. Is that a breakout? Sure. I suppose it is.

Women
In this section Webb points to a number of women leaders of both political and spiritual kinds in Scripture. There is Deborah, Huldah, Priscilla, Junia. He argues that these are "breakouts" that point the way rather than mere exceptions to the rule.

On the one hand, these examples do clearly demonstrate that male leadership is not an absolute. That means that no one can claim biblically that a woman can never lead. God does call women to lead, clearly. Deborah is the supreme political and military leader of Israel--so a woman could be president of a Christian nation. Huldah is sought for a spiritual decision by the high priest and the king. So a woman can be a general superindentent or bishop.

What the Day of Pentecost does is make this normative. Now sons and daughters will prophecy (Acts 2:17). Everyone has equal access to the Spirit now. And while women may have been generally uneducated in biblical times, that is simply not the case. Any claim that women are somehow inherently worse leaders or thinkers than men is simply an ignorant claim in itself, suggesting the person who says such things lacks the wisdom to lead themselves.

He also mentions the equal consideration of women in sexual rights (1 Cor. 7:3-5) ultimately undermines any principle other than mutual submission. Although Paul only speaks of it in the sexual arena, Webb argues that this cultural breakout points toward its extension into to all areas of the marital relationship.

Homosexuality
Webb indicates that there are no breakout instances in relation to homosexuality in Scripture. He rightly concludes that there is nothing about the Jonathan/David or Ruth/Naomi stories that indicates a homosexual relationship. Here is an instance where our culture may make it difficult for us to see that men and women can have strong and affectionate relationships that are not sexual. Indeed, a professor I knew in England argued that our fear of appearing gay has at times made it difficult for men to have the kinds of non-sexual intimate relationships that they used to have.

Criterion 4: Purpose/Intent Statements
The idea of this criterion is that when Scripture links instruction to a purpose that doing that instruction would not accomplish today, then that instruction was cultural and should not be practiced. I generally agree, although I don't think it is always obvious what the actual function was. But as I have said before, "Doing what they did isn't doing what they did if it does not have the same significance it had in the ancient world."

So the holy kiss would not produce today the same result it did then. It would be offensive and troubling in our context. So a handshake will suffice today. Or in the days of COVID-19, jazz hands. "If we obey the text, we may violate the purpose of making people within the Christian community feel a warm welcome and a special bond" (105).

Webb argues that the submission of slaves to masters or wives to husbands similarly does not accomplish its original function of Christian witness and evangelism. Rather, a strong subordination of wife to husband would turn off a lot of people in the United States today. It would not accomplish one of its original functions, which was evangelistic. "Only deference and respect in a mutual-submission framework allows for the evangelistic or winsome gospel purpose statements to be realized in our social context" (108).

With regard to homosexuality, Webb argues that, by contrast, the purpose of the instructions against homosexual practice remains the same as it was originally. For example, the purpose of this instruction had nothing to do with evangelistic witness, in contrast to the submission of wives to husbands and slaves to masters. "The prohibitions against homosexuality are related to purposes such as the appropriateness of sexual intercourse within the male-female physical relationship... sexual intercourse was intended for a male-female relationship."

I might note here that the Bible isn't actually very clear about the reasons why homosexual sex is thoroughly prohibited. It is an abomination in Leviticus 18 and 20. Along with various practices of incest and bestiality, it seems to be something that the Canaanites did. My guess is that it might have been difficult for an ancient Israelite or Christian to explain why homosexual sex was wrong.

Criterion 5: Basis in Fall or Curse
My sense is that he has put this criterion in for those who would actually argue against egalitarianism. He has another criterion in the next chapter called, "basis in original creation." However, this section foreshadows the important point of the next chapter that I have said often--if we can enact the redemption of Christ on a societal level now, why would we artificially wait for the kingdom? If we can do away with slavery now, why wouldn't we? If we can restore the balance of full equality within marriage now, why wouldn't we?

But this section asks, are there omni-cultural (he says transcultural) factors that are a consequence of the fall? Yes, there are:

• childbirth pain
• weeds
• death

Still, it would be perverse to prohibit the advance of medicine because death is human punishment. We would not prohibit modern farming equipment or weed-killing chemicals because farming is supposed to be hard. It would be devilish to prohibit a woman from having an epidural because of the fall.

So, as Webb says, "It is not part of Christian mission to perpetuate the curse; it is our mission to fight the curse" (111). He rightly ends the section by saying this is not an argument for nudity. Clothing is actually a fight against the curse.

Prescriptive or Descriptive?
Here we get to an issue I have mentioned when I have taught from Genesis. We should view the consequences of the fall as more descriptive than prescriptive. Since salvation and redemption are the ultimate goals of God in Scripture, it is clear that God's own ultimate goal is to undo the Fall. Therefore it works against God's purposes to view the consequences of the Fall as prescriptive. The curse "should not carry any imperative implications" (112).

A couple other horses are head off at the path. One is that the order in which Adam and Eve sinned plays no role in Scripture. The fact that Eve ate first never is even pointed out in the Bible as a thing.

The nature of Eve's sin in 1 Timothy 2:14 seems to be that she was more easily deceived than Adam. This has been the most typical interpretation of the verse throughout church history (his Appendix B). But women are not intrinsically more deceivable than men (Appendix C). We thus find ourselves explaining this aspect of 1 Timothy 2 as either 1) a matter of the situation at Ephesus or 2) an aspect of the culture of the day (that women were less educated). Either way, the deceivability of women is not an omni-cultural data point.

Origins of Hierarchy
Another question is whether hierarchy was a consequence of the fall or baked into the creation. Webb states, "There are no clear or explicit statements formulating a hierarchical relationship between man and woman until after the Fall" (115). He argues for a post-Fall introduction of hierarchy based on the following factors:

• There are explicit statements of hierarchy between humanity and animals pre-Fall, but only after the Fall for men and women.
• The way the man names the woman is different from how he names the animals--she is like me. [As a side-note, it is often noted that "helper" does not imply hierarchy, since God is our helper in the psalms.]
• Finally, blessing and cursing formulas often involve a change in status, so it would be natural if the curse of Eve involved a reduction of status.

Long chapter with a lot of content!

William Webb 2: Redemptive Movement Hermeneutic

Earlier in the week I started reviewing William Webb's Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis.

Chapter 1: The Christian and Culture

Chapter 2: A Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic
1. The second chapter is where he lays out his general "hermeneutic," his philosophy of appropriating the biblical texts. He calls it a "redemptive movement hermeneutic."

I found this chapter fascinating and maybe a little jarring. I've been tip-toeing around sensitive issues for my whole teaching career. He just kind of lays it down. I try to be so careful how I present these things--sometimes I may have danced so gingerly that students haven't even really fully understood what I was getting at.

Meanwhile, he just lays out a sentence like, "From one direction the Bible looks redemptive (and is); from the other direction it appears regressive (and is)" (31). "There is much within Scripture that needs an infusion of greater justice, greater compassion and greater equity in the treatment of human beings" (43). He argues that in some cases our culture reflects a better ethic than the words of the Bible isolated from the spirit they had in their context. For example, "surely there is a more humane and just treatment of women POWs than what is reflected in the biblical text" of the Pentateuch (33).

Now, if you dig into what he is saying, I think we will generally agree. There are some pretty harsh and cold laws in the Pentateuch. An America where women can vote and have equal rights to men is arguably a more Christian world than the world in which the women of the first century lived--and the New Testament does not entirely revolutionize that world.

On the other hand, there is some whiplash in the way he treats those who go further than him in the other direction. For example, he seems fairly harsh to me on what he calls "secular egalitarianism." To be fair, I almost always react to a book like this with the thought, "I'd like to rewrite this book in my own way." :-)

2. In the end, I generally agree with what he is getting at, even if I might put things slightly differently. Here is the main gist:

The words of the Bible are more than what they say. They had a spirit, a direction, in their original contexts. We do not necessarily fulfill what they are saying by taking them in an "isolated" sense. The words of the Bible have an "underlying spirit." You might say they have a "vector"--the Bible is pointing in a particular direction. This direction is redemptive.

This reminded me of something I read in a book by Ken Schenck, "Doing what the ancients did is not doing what they did if the significance of the action is different."

He thinks in terms of two vantage points from which we might look at the Bible. The first is the standpoint of the original meaning in its original context. When the Bible is viewed against the backdrop of the Ancient Near East or Greco-Roman culture, we find that the Bible is progressive. It has a "radically redemptive spirit" (34).

However, at times we look at biblical texts and they seem less redemptive than we would be today. For example, Leviticus 19 has a lesser penalty for the sexual violation of a slave woman than for a free woman. We would not consider that a very Christian position today. Parts of the Old Testament follow the thinking of ancient culture and assume that barrenness is purely the woman's problem. Improvements in our knowledge of reproduction clue us into the fact that this is not the case.

These are places where he boldly suggests that our culture sometimes has a "better ethic" than some parts of the Bible. This is where it gets a little touchy. Take slavery. He would say that the abolition of slavery fits the redemptive movement of Scripture and the "ultimate ethic" or logical conclusion of Scripture better than any position finally taken in Scripture itself. Even in 1 Peter 2, slaves are expected to endure wrongful beatings by their masters.

I have used phrases like "kingdom trajectory" and "trajectory of heaven" [2] for what he calls an ultimate ethic. I have been a little more hesitant to use the phrase "progressive revelation" because it seems a bit more of a land mine. In my booklet on women in ministry, for example, I ask what slave-master and wife-husband relationships will be like in the kingdom of God as an argument against slavery and an argument against the subordination of women to men today if we can enact such things. This is essentially the same move.

In this chapter, he presents charts on slavery and women with Scriptures that demonstrate his point. In these charts, verses on the left demonstrate places where the Bible shows redemptive movement in relation to the culture of its day. Then the column on the right reflects verses in the Bible that have not yet reached the ultimate ethic or what I call the kingdom trajectory. The trick will be to see what criteria he sets up to tell us what the ultimate ethic is.

As in the first chapter, he is working against what he calls a "static" hermeneutic that reads the words of the Bible in isolation from their spirit and underlying redemptive direction. I have spoken of a "flow of revelation" in the Bible, which is less of a concept for him so far. I also in recent years have focused on Jesus as the "last Word," taking a clue here from N. T. Wright.

I then talk of everything after Christ as "unzipping the file" or clarifying the final revelation in Christ. While the central aspects of this unpacking take place in the New Testament, there were still some details to refine in the earliest centuries of the church (e.g., the Trinity).

Webb points out that many advocates of a static hermeneutic actually have already incorporated some of the movement of Scripture into their positions, although they might deny it. The soft patriarchy of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood have already snuck into their work a perspective that is actually softer than some of the biblical texts. No mentally stable person would stone rebellious children today.

3. He also speaks of "canonical movement," particularly between the Old and New Testaments, although he has not yet spelled this out. I also speak of a "flow of revelation" in my work.

This movement of Scripture is one reason why a "find the principle" approach is valuable but inadequate. In fact, I would suggest it is why Steve Lennox's "what does this passage tell me about God" approach is missing one element. This is the fact that the older parts of the Old Testament do not have as precise an understanding of God as the later parts, and the Old Testament does not have as complete an understanding of God as the New Testament.

This has been one of my critiques of Duvall and Hays' Grasping God's Word. We are taught to cross the "principlizing bridge" from each Scripture to today. But this implies that the individual bridges all lead to a final destination today. Rather, we must take the whole counsel of God in all of Scripture into account before the bridge will lead us to an ultimate destination. In other words, crossing the bridge from certain parts of Leviticus does not get us to the final point on the other side of the river. We need the book of Hebrews and other passages in the New Testament for help with that.

A hermeneutical thought tool he mentions is a "ladder of abstraction" (54). The idea here is that if we abstract far enough from the concrete biblical text, we ultimately find a principle to apply to today. This is not entirely wrong, but it is not the whole story because it does not take into account the movement of the text.

5. In the final section of the chapter he provides a theological rationale for his approach. He affirms the authority of Scripture but claims that a static hermeneutic "cannot provide credible answers for the inquisitive seeker, the critical secularist or the troubled Christian" (57). I would have walked a little more gingerly here.

He presents what I call God's "incarnational" approach to revelation. God "takes on the flesh" in terms of the worldviews and paradigms of those to whom "he" is revealing himself. God wants to be understood, so he meets us within our own paradigms and moves us along. "Good teachers set the level of instructional material at the level of their students" (61).

This also relates to what Webb calls the pastoral dimension of God's revelation. "Pastors lead their people in soothing, quiet ways along a path toward where they ought to be" (60). It is when an audience of Scripture is near the edges that the revelation gets stark and sometimes harsh. So Paul at times is harsh in 1 Corinthians but at other times much more gradual.

There is also an evangelistic component. You meet people where they are at to move them toward the kingdom. It's more important to get them in the door first. Then you can refine their understanding later in discipleship. This is not just a technique we use outside of Scripture. I believe Webb is correct to discern that this is the approach God took within Scripture in relation to its original audiences.

It cannot be denied that there is even some accommodation to less than God's ideal in Scripture. Jesus says as much in Matthew 19 when he says that divorce was never God's preference. God gave this allowance in Scripture because of the hardness of Israel's heart. God sometimes compromises, playing a long game with humanity. The nature of revelation suggests that God is relational and practical more than idealistic.

6. I am not entirely clear on the criteria he will use to critique "going too far." He mentions for example, that while abolition is the ultimate ethic in relation to slavery, it would be incorrect to assume that we should get rid of hierarchy altogether (49). I am not entirely clear yet on how he discerns the stopping point.

Another possible critique is that he does not acknowledge the role that early Christianity played in finalizing certain aspects of Christian thinking. Admittedly, he is focused on ethics rather than doctrine. He also aims to establish criteria internal to the Bible. However, it seems to me that his approach is based on reason in this regard.

I have heard nothing yet of the actual core biblical ethic: "Love God and love neighbor." From an inductive standpoint, this is the biblical center point for all kingdom ethics, and it is clear within Scripture. This is the revealed criterion of the kingdom. That is how I would approach these issues.

I'll end today's post by pointing out that I have worked my version of this hermeneutic in a self-published book called, Who Decides What the Bible Means? I initially submitted it to Westminister John Knox and Abingdon but finally decided to publish it on my own. I also employ the hermeneutic in Why Wesleyans Favor Women in Ministry.

[1] In Making Sense of God's Word.