"A Redemptive-Movement 2Hermeneutic: The Slavery Analogy" (Ch 2) & "Gender Equality and Homosexuality" (Ch 23) by William J. Webb

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Introduction

How can Christians today know which parts of the Bible are "culturally relative" and which parts apply to all believers in all cultures throughout history?

William Webb argues for a new approach to that question, an approach he calls a "redemptive-movement hermeneutic" (RMH). He summarizes this approach in his two chapters in Discovering Biblical Equality, but a longer, fuller statement of his position is found in his 2001 book, Slaves, Women and Homosexuals.¹ In both contributions he focused specifically on slavery, men's and women's roles, and homosexuality as examples that illustrate his general approach toward discovering the ethical standards that Christians should follow today.

Since Webb's two chapters in Discovering Biblical Equality depend on and summarize his work in Slaves, Women and Homosexuals, I will focus most of my analysis on his longer book, while adding additional interaction with his 2004 chapters at points where they supplement his earlier argument.

I published an extensive analysis and critique of Slaves, Women and Homosexuals in June of 2004.² Therefore, just as Webb's more recent chapters are a summary of his longer book, so this article will be a shorter summary of my earlier critique. But I have also added more interaction with Webb's primary claim in his 2004 chapter, the claim that the Bible's commands about slavery prove that we need to adopt his redemptive-movement hermeneutic. And I have also added some interaction with Webb's fuller explanation of how he understands the New Testament to be "our final and definitive revelation" from God (395).³

First, it is appropriate to summarize Webb's system, his "redemptive-movement hermeneutic." Webb claims that the ancient world in which the Bible was written had gravely defficient moral standards. God in his wisdom knew that it would be best to work gradually to lead his people from the moral

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practices of the surrounding cultures to much higher standards of moral conduct. Therefore in the Old Testament God gave moral commands that were a great improvement over the standards of the surrounding culture, but were not yet his highest ideal. Webb then argues that in the New Testament, God gave even higher moral standards, making further improvement over what was taught in the Old Testament. But even these New Testament moral commands were not God 's "ultimate ethic." Our task today is to try to understand the direction in which God was gradually leading his people, so that by observing that trajectory we can discover God's "ultimate ethic" on various topics, an "ultimate ethic" that we should seek to teach and obey today.

Webb's approach has been embraced by many egalitarians because of his conclusions regarding roles for men and women in the home and the church. However, we should note that Webb differs with many egalitarians in his understanding of what the New Testament actually teaches for its own time. In contrast to many earlier egalitarians (who have argued that the New Testament does not teach that wives should be subject to their husbands, and that it does not teach that only men should be elders), Webb believes that the New Testament does teach these things for the culture in which the New Testament was written, but that in today's culture the treatment of women is an area in which "a better ethic than the one expressed in the isolated words of the text is possible" (Slaves, Women and Homosexuals, 36, italics added).

Analysis

(1) Webb's trajectory hermeneutic nullifies in principle the moral authority of the entire New Testament and thus contradicts the Reformation principle of sola Scriptura.

At first glance, it may not seem as though Webb "nullifies" the moral authority of the entire New Testament, because he agrees, for example, that homosexual conduct is morally wrong and that the New Testament condemnations of homosexual conduct are transcultural (Slaves, Women and Homosexuals [henceforth SWH], 39-41, 250-52, and many other places in the book). He also affirms that the New Testament admonitions for children to be subject to their parents are transcultural (SWH, 212). Is Webb not then affirming that some aspects of New Testament ethics are transcultural?

The important point to realize is the basis on which Webb affirms that these are transcultural commands. Most evangelicals today read a text such as, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right" (Eph 6:1), and conclude that children today are to obey their parents because the New Testament was written for Christians in the new covenant age. Since we Christians today are also in the new covenant age (the period of time from Christ's death until he returns), this command is binding on us today.

Most evangelicals today reason similarly about the New Testament texts concerning homosexual conduct (see, for example, Rom 1:26-27; 1 Cor 6:9), and conclude that these are morally binding on us because these texts were written to new covenant Christians, and we today are also part of the new covenant.

But for Webb, the process is entirely different, and the basis of authority is different. The commands concerning children and homosexuals are binding on us today not because they were written to new covenant Christians and we today are part of the new covenant (I could not find such a consideration anywhere in

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Webb's book), but because these commands have passed through the filtering system of Webb's eighteen criteria and have survived.⁴Actually, the command concerning children has not entirely survived his filtering process. Webb believes that the commands for children to obey their parents actually teach that adult children should continue to be obedient to their parents throughout their adult lives, but that this aspect of the command was culturally relative and need not be followed by us today (see SWH, 212).⁵

In this way, it is fair to say that Webb's system invalidates the moral authority of the entire New Testament, at least in the sense that we today should be obedient to the moral commands that were written to new covenant Christians. Instead, only those commands are binding that have passed through his eighteen-part filter.

Someone may object, "Doesn't everyone have to use some kind of cultural filter? Doesn't everyone have to test the New Testament commands to see if they are culturally relative or transcultural before deciding whether to obey them?"

My response is that there is a fundamental difference in approach. Most evangelicals (including me) say that we are under the moral authority of the New Testament, and we are morally obligated to obey its commands when we are in the same situation as that addressed in the New Testament command (such as being a parent, a child, a person contemplating a divorce, a church selecting elders or deacons, a church preparing to celebrate the Lord's Supper, a husband, a wife, and so forth). When there is no exact modern equivalent to some aspect of a command (such as, "honor the emperor" in 1 Pet 2:17), then we are still obligated to obey the command, but we do so by applying it to situations that are essentially similar to the one found in the New Testament. Therefore, "honor the emperor" is applied to honoring the president or the prime minister. In fact, in several such cases the immediate context contains pointers to broader applications (such as 1 Pet 2:13-14, which mentions being subject to "every human institution" including the "emperor" and "governors" as specific examples). Unlike Webb, in making such adjustments we do not have to abandon any New Testament ethical standards or say they are less than perfect. We just obey them by applying them to a similar but somewhat different situation.

But with Webb the situation is entirely different. He does not consider the moral commands of the New Testament to represent a perfect or final moral system for Christians. They are rather a pointer that "provides the direction toward the divine destination, but its literal, isolated words are not always the destination itself. Sometimes God's instructions are simply designed to get his flock moving" (SWH, 60).

(a) Webb's XYZ principle

At the heart of Webb's system is what he calls a "redemptive-movement hermeneutic." Webb explains his hermeneutic by what he calls "the XYZ principle." The letter Y indicates what the Bible says about a topic. Webb says, "The central position (Y) represents particular words of the Bible at that stage of their development of a subject" (SWH, 31; see also Webb in Discovering Biblical Equality [henceforth DBE], 382-83). The letter X represents "the perspective of the original culture," and the letter Z represents "an ultimate ethic," that is, God's final ideal that the Bible is moving toward.

Therefore in Webb's system, what evangelicals have ordinarily understood to be "the teaching of the Bible" on

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particular subjects is in fact only a point along the way (indicated by the letter Y) toward the development of a final or ultimate ethic (Z). Webb says,

The XYZ principle illustrates how aspects of the biblical texts were not written to establish a utopian society with complete justice and equity. They were written within a cultural framework with limited, incremental moves toward an ultimate ethic (SWH, 31; also DBE 383-84; italics in original).

Therefore, Webb discovers a number of points where "our contemporary culture" has a better ethic than what is found in the words of the Bible. Our culture has a better ethic today "where it happens to reflect a better social ethic- one closer to an ultimate ethic (Z) than to the ethic revealed in the isolated words of the biblical text" (SWH, 31).

Webb's approach to Scripture can also be seen in the way he deals with biblical texts regarding slavery. Most evangelical interpreters today would say that the New Testament does not command or encourage or endorse slavery, but rather tells Christians who were slaves how they should conduct themselves within that situation, and also gives principles that would modify and ultimately lead to the abolition of slavery (1 Cor 7:21-22; Gal 3:28; Philem 16, 21; see further discussion of slavery in section 3 below). By contrast, Webb believes that the Bible actually endorses slavery; however, it is a kind of slavery with "better conditions and fewer abuses" (SWH, 37).

It is rather astonishing that Webb shows no awareness at all of the centuries of Christian commentators who argued against slavery from the moral teaching of the Bible itself (see section 3 below for more detail). Rather than saying that we needed a better ethic than the New Testament (as Webb does), they took the moral teachings of the Bible as definitive and argued that slavery was itself contrary to those New Testament moral standards.

Of course, someone may respond, "But other Christians in the nineteenth century used the Bible to support slavery." Yes, they did, but they lost the argument. Many people have argued wrong things from the Bible at many points in history, but eventually the wrong arguments have been answered and defeated, and the vast majority of God's people have rejected those arguments. Why should we feel any obligation to believe these wrong arguments? By saying that the Bible endorses slavery, Webb is asking us to accept the discredited arguments that failed to persuade the church in previous centuries. He is asking us to believe that the New Testament endorses a morally evil system. He is asking us to adopt the mistaken view of the Bible held by the losing side in the slavery debates. Surely it is not necessary to accept Webb's understanding of the Bible's teaching on slavery. (See further discussion of the Bible and slavery in section 3, below.)

Webb's redemptive-movement hermeneutic approaches the slavery question by saying that the original culture (X) approved of "slavery with many abuses" (SWH, 37). Partially correcting that original culture, the Bible (Y) endorses "slavery with better conditions and fewer abuses" (SWH, 37). However, Webb believes that on the issue of slavery "our culture is much closer to an ultimate ethic than it is to the unrealized ethic reflected in the isolated words of the Bible" (SWH, 37). Today, the ethic of our culture, which

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is superior to that of the Bible, has "slavery eliminated and working conditions often improved" (SWH, 37).

At the end of the book, Webb recapitulates the results of his analysis regarding slavery:

Scripture does not present a "finalized ethic" in every area of human relationship.. . . To stop where the Bible stops (with its isolated words) ultimately fails to reapply the redemptive spirit of the text as it spoke to the original audience. It fails to see that further reformation is possible. . . . While Scripture had a positive influence in its time, we should take that redemptive spirit and move to an even better, more fully-realized ethic today (SWH, 247).

Therefore, rather than saying that the New Testament does not endorse or command slavery, Webb believes that it does approve a system of slavery for the people at the time at which it was written. However, in its modifications and regulations of slavery, the Bible starts us along a trajectory that would lead to the ultimate abolition of slavery, though the New Testament never actually reaches that point.

Webb asks why the Bible is this way:

Why does God convey his message in a way that reflects a less-than-ultimate ethic. . . that evidences an underlying redemptive spirit and some movement in a positive direction, it often permits its words to stop short of completely fulfilling such a spirit? Why did God not simply give us a clearly laid out blueprint for an ultimate-ethic utopia-like society? How could a God of absolute justice not give us a revelation concerning absolute justice on every page? (SWH, 57)

Webb's answer to these questions is to see this incomplete movement toward an ultimate ethic as a manifestation of God's wisdom. In showing us that the Bible was making progress against the surrounding culture, but not completely correcting the surrounding culture, we can see God's pastoral wisdom (SWH, 58), his pedagogical skill (SWH, 60), his evangelistic care for people who might not have heard the gospel if it proclaimed an ultimate ethic (SWH, 63), and other aspects of God's wisdom (SWH, 64-66).

According to Webb's system, then, Christians can no longer simply go to the New Testament, read the moral commands in one of Paul's epistles, and believe that they should obey them. According to Webb, that would be to use a "static hermeneutic" that just reads the "isolated words of the text" and fails to understand "the spirit-movement component of meaning which significantly transforms the application of texts for subsequent generations" (SWH, 34). Rather, we must realize that the New Testament teachings simply represent one stage in a trajectory of movement toward an ultimate ethic.

The implications of this for Christian morality are extremely serious. It means that God's moral commands to New Testament Christians were not morally perfect commands even in the

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time they were written-they were just transitional improvements on the surrounding culture. It means that Christians who obeyed those commands and thought they were living lives of holiness before God were not actually doing so, because the commands did not represent a life of perfect righteousness.

Moreover, this system means that our ultimate moral authority is no longer the Bible but Webb's system. Of course, he claims that the "redemptive spirit" that drives his hermeneutic for each area of ethics is derived from the biblical text, but by his own admission this "redemptive spirit" is not the same as the teachings of the Bible, but rather is derived from Webb's analysis of the interaction between the ancient culture and the biblical text. Here is his key explanation:

The final and most important characteristic of a redemptive-movement hermeneutic is its focus on the spirit of a text.... The coinage "redemptive-movement hermeneutic" is derived from a concern that Christians apply the redemptive spirit within Scripture, not merely, or even primarily, its isolated words. Finding the underlying spirit of a text is a delicate matter. It is not as direct or explicit as reading the words on the page. In order to grasp the spirit of a text, the interpreter must listen for how the text sounds within its various social contexts. Two life settings are crucial: the broader, foreign ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman (ANE/GR) social context and the immediate, domestic Israelite/church setting. One must ask, what change/improvement is the text making in the lives of people in the covenant community? And, how does the text influence the larger ANE/GR world? Through reflecting upon these social-setting questions the modern reader will begin to sense the redemptive spirit of the text. Also, a third setting permits one another way of discovering the redemptive spirit, namely, the canonical movement across various biblical epochs. (SWH, 53, italics added).

This paragraph is remarkable for the candor with which it reveals the subjective and indeterminate nature of Webb's ethical system. If the heart of the "most important characteristic" of his hermeneutic is discovered through "reflecting upon" the way the Bible interacts with ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman cultures, and through such refection the interpreter will "begin to sense the redemptive spirit of the text," we have entered a realm so subjective that no two interpreters in the future will be likely to agree on where the "redemptive spirit of the text" that they are beginning to "sense" is leading, and what kind of "ultimate ethic" they should count as God's will for them.

For example, people seeking justification for their desire to obtain a divorce will "begin to sense the redemptive spirit" of more and more reasons for divorce, moving from the one reason that Jesus allowed (adultery in Matt 19:9), to the increasing freedom found in Paul, who allows a second ground for divorce (desertion by an unbeliever in 1 Cor 7:15), along a trajectory toward many other

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reasons for divorce as we move toward an "ultimate ethic" (Z) where everyone should be completely happy with his or her spouse.

And on and on it will go. Baptists will "begin to sense the redemptive spirit" of believer's baptism as the New Testament corrects the all-inclusive nature of the religions of the ancient world, and paedobaptists will "begin to sense the redemptive spirit" of inclusion of infants in the covenant community, as the New Testament decisively corrects the neglect and abuse of children found in many ancient cultures.

In fact, this idea of following the movement of the "redemptive spirit" in Scripture has troubling similarities to a Roman Catholic, not a Protestant, view of authority in the church. One of the distinctive differences between historic, orthodox Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church has been that Protestants base doctrine on "Scripture alone" (in Latin, sola Scriptura), while Catholics base doctrine on Scripture plus the authoritative teaching of the church through history. Webb's redemptive-movement hermeneutic is disturbingly similar to Roman Catholicism in this regard, because it places final authority not in the New Testament writings but in later interpreters' ideas of where that teaching was leading. On this basis a Roman Catholic could argue that more reliable than anybody's speculation on where the teaching was leading are the historical facts of where the New Testament teaching did lead. So the redemptive-movement hermeneutic would give us the following picture (which actually was fulfilled in church history): (1) Jesus' teachings mention no local church officers or church governing structure; (2) Paul's writings show increased authority given to elders and deacons; (3) the final "ultimate ethic" to which the redemptive spirit of Scripture was leading was worldwide authority given to the Pope, cardinals, and bishops.

The Reformation principle sola Scriptura was formulated to guard against the kind of procedure Webb advocates, because the Reformers knew that once our authority becomes "Scripture plus some later developments" rather than "Scripture alone," the unique governing authority of Scripture in our lives is lost.

Now Webb may object that these hypothetical "redemptive spirit" findings could not be derived from a responsible use of his eighteen criteria. On the other hand, I have lived in the academic world for over thirty years, and I have a great deal of confidence in the ability of scholars to take a set of eighteen criteria and make a case for almost anything they desire. But whether or not my hypothetical suggestions are the result of a proper use of Webb's criteria, the point remains: The standard is no longer what the New Testament says, but rather the point toward which some biblical scholar thinks the Bible was moving. And that is why I believe that Webb's redemptive-movement hermeneutic nullifies in principle the moral authority of the entire New Testament.

(b) Webb's claim that the New Testament is "our final and definitive revelation"

In his essay "The Slavery Analogy" Webb affirms more clearly that he believes that "the New Testament is our final and definitive revelation" (DBE, 395). But what is significant is what else he affirms when we read that sentence in its entirety:

While the New Testament

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is our final and definitive revelation and its underlying redemptive spirit contains an absolute ethic, the realization of its redemptive movement is incremental (as in the Old Testament) and not a fully realized ethic (DBE, 395).

Webb does not say that the ethical commands we read in the New Testament are a morally perfect ethic from God. He says the New Testament's "underlying redemptive spirit contains an absolute ethic." And for Webb the "underlying redemptive spirit" is not seen in the actual moral commands of the New Testament but in the direction they were pointing, the direction we should move to improve on those commands. So Webb does not at all view the commands of the New Testament as the "final and definitive" moral standards we are to follow.

In what sense then can Webb say the New Testament is our final revelation? In the sense that its not-yet-perfect ethic shows the way for further improvement, and shows that we need Webb's system! In other words, the New Testament is the final example of revelation from God that shows itself not to be the final moral standard! This is certainly not the sense in which orthodox Christians have previously understood the New Testament to be God's final revelation to us.

Webb's system therefore constitutes a direct denial of the Reformation principle of sola Scriptura, the doctrine that "the Bible alone" is the ultimate authority for what we are to believe and do, and that its teachings constitute the norm to which all our beliefs and practices are to conform. In Webb's system the norm is no longer the moral teachings of the Bible but what we can discover about the "ultimate ethic" (Z) toward which the Bible was heading.

(2) Webb fails in many sections of his argument to recognize that Christians are no longer bound by old covenant laws, and thus he frequently neglects to use the fundamental structural division of the entire Bible (the difference between the Old and New Testaments) as a means of determining moral obligations for Christians today.

(a) We should not go beyond the moral teachings of the New Testament.

Although Webb occasionally gives attention to what he calls "canonical movement" from the Old Testament to the New in Slaves, Women and Homosexuals (see SWH, 77-78 for example), and although he gives somewhat more attention to this development in "Slavery Analogy" (DBE, 390-94), for him such development is just additional evidence that we should move beyond the New Testament even as the New Testament developed beyond the Old. He sees the Old and New Testaments as just two steps along the way toward further redemptive-movement in ethical development beyond the New Testament. He says that the fact that "the New Testament is still revelation from God within a curse-laden and culturally distinct world" indicates that we "should be less quick to pronounce the movement within the New Testament ‘absolute' in all of its particulars rather than incremental like the Old Testament" (DBE, 394).

Webb therefore does not think that the development from Old Testament to New Testament is the end, and that the New Testament itself provides the final ethical standard for Christians in the new covenant. His system fails adequately to

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consider the fact that the moral standards of the Bible are not based on what God thought might be a temporary, partial step toward holiness for people within any given culture, but are based on God's unchanging moral purity, to which he calls us to conform: "You shall be holy, for I am holy" (1 Pet 1:16). "You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt 5:48). The moral commands of the Bible do not need improvement. They reflect the absolute moral holiness of God himself.⁶

Webb fails to understand what it means to be members of a covenant, particularly the new covenant in Christ. Christians today are members of the new covenant. Just as every covenant in the ancient world had specific conditions telling how the parties of the covenant were to act, so the New Testament has moral commands specifying how we are to act in fellowship with God and with Jesus Christ, the mediator of that new covenant (Heb 9:15). The moral commands of the New Testament are the behavioral requirements placed on us as members of that covenant. When Webb tells us that we do not have to obey some of the moral commands of the New Testament, he is telling us not to obey the written commands of God which he included in the documents that define the new covenant. In other words, he is telling us to disobey the new covenant. It is difficult to overstate the seriousness of this claim.

When Webb claims that "a redemptive-movement hermeneutic has always been a major part of the historic church, apostolic and beyond" (SWH, 35), and therefore that all Christians believe in some kind of "redemptive-movement" hermeneutic, he fails to make one important distinction: Evangelicals have always held that the redemptive movement within Scripture ends with the New Testament! But Webb carries it beyond the New Testament.

In doing this Webb fails to recognize the centrality of Jesus Christ for all of history. Yes, there is movement and development beyond the Old Testament, because in the Old Testament "at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets." By contrast, "in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world" (Heb 1:1-2). In the writings of the New Testament we have a written record of the revelation that God gave us in Christ and the revelation that Christ gave to his apostles. We are not to look for doctrinal or ethical development beyond the teachings and commands of the New Testament, for that would be to look for development beyond the supreme revelation of God in his Son.

Yes, the New Testament explicitly tells us that we are no longer under the regulations of the old covenant (Heb 8:6-13), so we have clear warrant for saying the sacrificial laws and dietary laws are no longer binding on us. And we do see the apostles in a process of coming to understand the inclusion of the Gentiles in the church (Acts 15; Gal 2:1-14; 3:28). But that process was completed within the New Testament, and the commands given to Christians in the New Testament say nothing about excluding Gentiles from the church! We do not have to progress on a "trajectory" beyond the New Testament to discover that.

Christians living in the time of Paul's epistles were living under the new covenant. And Christians today are also living under the new covenant. This is "the new covenant in my blood" (1 Cor 11:25), which Jesus established and which we affirm every time we take the

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Lord's Supper. Tat means that we are living today in the same period in God's plan for "the history of redemption" as the first-century Christians. And that is why we can read and directly apply the New Testament today.

To attempt to go beyond the New Testament documents and derive our authority from "where the New Testament was heading" is to reject the very documents that God gave us to govern our life under the new covenant until Christ returns. It is to reject the Reformation doctrine of sola Scriptura and establish an entirely new basis of authority distinct from the Bible itself.

(b) Webb repeatedly fails to consider that we are no longer under the Mosaic Covenant.

When Webb repeatedly gives long lists of Mosaic laws on slavery or wives, and then says it would be foolish to obey what "the Bible" says on these subjects today, unsuspecting readers may think that he has built a persuasive case for his eighteen criteria. But he has not, because the change from old covenant to new covenant means that those dozens of Mosaic laws are not part of what "the Bible" requires of Christians today. We are not under the Mosaic law.⁷

Yet this fundamental omission is pervasive in Webb's book. If someone were to go through his book and remove all the examples he takes from the Old Testament to claim that we cannot obey "the Bible" today, and all the implications that he draws from those examples, we would be left not with a book but with a small pamphlet.

Webb's failure adequately to take into account the fact that Christians are no longer bound by Mosaic covenant legislation is an omission of such magnitude as to nullify the value of this book as a guide for hermeneutics.

(3) Webb repeatedly confuses events with commands, and fails to recognize that what the Bible reports as a background situation (such as slavery or monarchy, for example) it does not necessarily approve or command.

Again and again in his analysis Webb assumes that "the Bible" (in Webb's undifferentiated form, lumping Old and New Testament verses together) supports things such as slavery (see SWH, 33, 36-37, 84, 106, 186, 202-03). He also uses monarchy as an example, assuming that the Bible presents monarchy as a favored form of government, one that people should approve or even say that the Bible requires (see, for example, SWH, 107, 186, 203).

With respect to slavery, therefore, Webb says that

a static hermeneutic [this is Webb's term for the hermeneutic used by everyone who does not use his redemptive-movement hermeneutic] would apply this slavery-refuge text by permitting the ownership of slaves today, provided that the church offers similar kinds of refuge for runaway slaves. . . . Christians would dare not speak out against slavery. They would support the institution of slavery (SWH, 33, italics added).

What is rather astonishing is that the only alternative that Webb acknowledges to his position is what he calls a "static hermeneutic." But then he affirms that such a "static hermeneutic" would have to support slavery:

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Even more tragic is that, in arguing for or in permitting biblical slavery today, a static hermeneutic takes our current standard of human rights and working conditions backwards by quantum leaps. We would shame a gospel that proclaims freedom to the captive. . . . A static hermeneutic would not condemn biblical-type slavery if that social order were to reappear in society today (SWH, 34, 36).

(a) Opposing slavery without adopting Webb's system.

In his eyes there are only two choices: do you support Webb's system or do you support slavery? Which will it be? He appears oblivious to the historical fact that for centuries many Christians have opposed slavery from the text of Scripture itself, without using Webb's new system of interpretation, and without rejecting the final moral authority of the New Testament. To say we have to choose between Webb's system and slavery is historically unfounded, is biblically untrue, and is astonishing in its failure to recognize other alternatives.

In actual historical fact, the Bible was used by more Christians to oppose slavery than to defend it, and eventually their arguments won, and slavery was abolished. But the fundamental difference from Webb is that the evangelical, Bible-believing Christians who ultimately brought about the abolition of slavery did not advocate modifying or nullifying any biblical teaching, or moving "beyond" the New Testament to a better ethic. They taught the abolition of slavery from the Bible itself.

Webb shows no awareness of biblical anti-slavery arguments such as those of Theodore Weld in The Bible Against Slavery,⁸ a book which was widely distributed and frequently reprinted. Weld argued strongly against American slavery even from Old Testament passages such as Exod 21:16, "He that stealeth a man and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death" (KJV) (13-15), as well as from the fact that men are in the image of God and therefore it is morally wrong to treat any human being as property (8-9, 15-17). He argued that ownership of another person breaks the eighth commandment, "Thou shalt not steal," as follows:

The eighth commandment forbids the taking of any part of that which belongs to another. Slavery takes the whole. Does the same Bible which prohibits the taking of any thing from him, sanction the taking of every thing? Does it thunder wrath against the man who robs his neighbor of a cent, yet commission him to rob his neighbor of himself? Slaveholding is the highest possible violation of the eighth commandment (10-11).

But Webb shows no knowledge of such historical argumentation. He makes absolute claims that are simply incorrect, such as these:

Unless one embraces the redemptive spirit of Scripture, there is no biblically based rationale for championing an abolitionist perspective (DBE, 395, italics added).

He also says "a redemptive-movement hermeneutic applied to the New Testament" is "the only valid way to arrive at the abolition of slavery" (DBE, 395).

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But Theodore Weld championed the abolition of slavery even from the moral commands of the Old Testament! Webb says his system is "the only valid way" to arrive at the abolition of slavery, but in historical fact the Christians who actually succeeded in abolishing slavery did not use Webb's redemptive-movement hermeneutic or suggest that we had to replace the New Testament's moral commands with something better.

The New Testament never commanded slavery, but gave principles that regulated it and ultimately led to its abolition. Paul says to slaves, "If you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity" (1 Cor 7:21). And he tells Philemon, regarding his slave Onesimus, that he should welcome him back "no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother" (Philem 16), and that he should "receive him as you would receive me" (v. 17), and that he should forgive anything that Onesimus owed him, or at least that Paul would pay it himself (vv. 18-19). Finally he says, "Confdent of your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say" (v. 21). This is a strong and not very subtle hint that Philemon should grant freedom to Onesimus. Paul's condemnation of "enslavers" (1 Tim 1:10, ESV)⁹ also showed the moral wrong of forcibly putting anyone into slavery.

The Bible does not approve or command slavery any more than it approves or commands persecution of Christians. When the author of Hebrews commends his readers by saying, "You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one" (Heb 10:34), that does not mean the Bible supports the plundering of Christians' property, or that it commands theft! It only means that if Christians find themselves in a situation where their property is taken through persecution, they should still rejoice because of their heavenly treasure, which cannot be stolen. Similarly, when the Bible tells slaves to be submissive to their masters, it does not mean that the Bible supports or commands slavery, but only that it tells people who are in a situation of slavery how they should respond.

When we couple Paul's teachings in 1 Cor 7:21, his condemnation of "enslavers" in 1 Tim 1:10, and his directions to Philemon, with the realization that every human being is created in the image of God (see Gen 1:27; 9:6; Jas 3:9; see also Job 31:15; Gal 3:28), and the teaching that whatever we do for the least of Christ's brothers we do for him (Matt 25:40), we then see that the Bible, and especially the New Testament, contains powerful principles that would lead to an abolition of slavery. The New Testament never commands people to practice slavery or to own slaves, but rather gives principles that would lead to the overthrow of that institution, and also regulates it while it is in existence by statements such as, "Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven" (Col 4:1).¹⁰

J. B. Lightfoot in 1879 summarized the way the New Testament did not immediately prohibit slavery but surely led to its demise:

[Paul tells Philemon] to do very much more than emancipate his slave, but this one thing he does not directly enjoin. St. Paul's treatment of this individual case is an apt illustration of the attitude of Christianity towards slavery in general. . . . a principle is boldly enunciated, which

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must in the end prove fatal to slavery. When the Gospel taught that God had made all men and women upon earth of one family; that all alike were His sons and His daughters; that, whatever conventional distinctions human society might set up, the supreme King of Heaven refused to acknowledge any; that the slave notwithstanding his slavery was Christ's freedman, and the free notwithstanding his liberty was Christ's slave; when the Church carried out this principle by admitting the slave to her highest privileges, inviting him to kneel side by side with his master at the same holy table; when in short the Apostolic precept that ‘in Christ Jesus is neither bond nor free' was not only recognized but acted upon, then slavery was doomed. Henceforward it was only a question of time.¹¹

Lightfoot is not using something like Webb's redemptive-movement hermeneutic to seek a better ethic than the New Testament; he is using the New Testament ethic itself, as God's perfect revelation of his will, to argue for the abolition of slavery.

And so it has been throughout the history of the church. Christians have argued not from some "ultimate ethic" beyond the New Testament but from the moral teachings of the New Testament as they worked for the abolition of slavery.

Two recent studies have shown this in more detail. Alvin A. Schmidt notes the following:

St. Augustine (354-430) saw slavery as the product of sin and as contrary to God's divine plan (The City of God 19.15). St. Chysostom, in the fourth century preached that when Christ came he annulled slavery. . . . Slavery was also condemned in the fifth century by St. Patrick in Ireland. For several centuries bishops and councils recommended the redemption of captive slaves ... by the fourteenth century slavery was almost unknown on the Continent. . . .

. . . although slavery in America was condoned and defended by many who were members of Christian denominations, there were also strong countervailing voices of prominent Christian leaders who came to be known as abolitionists. . . . the abolitionist movement had a considerably higher percentage of Christian clergy than did the pro-slavery defenders.¹²

Schmidt tells of many prominent abolitionist leaders in England and the U.S. who believed the Bible and were motivated by its teachings in their zeal to abolish slavery, among them William Wilberforce in England, and in the United States Elijah Lovejoy, Edward Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom's Cabin), Charles Torrey (founder of the Underground Railroad), and William Lloyd Garrison (publisher of the influential periodical The Liberator).¹³

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In a significant recent study, Baylor University professor Rodney Stark traces the dominant Christian leadership in abolitionist movements in both the United States and England, noting that in the United States 52 percent of the traveling agents of the American Anti-Slavery Society were ordained clergy, as were 75 percent of its local agents.¹⁴ He says that "as abolition sentiments spread, it was primarily the churches (often local congregations), not secular clubs and organizations, that issued formal statements on behalf of ending slavery."¹⁵ He adds, "The abolitionists, whether popes or evangelists, spoke almost exclusively in the language of Christian faith. And although many Southern clergy proposed theological defenses of slavery, pro-slavery rhetoric was overwhelmingly secular -references were made to ‘liberty' and ‘states' rights,' not to ‘sin' or ‘salvation.'"¹⁶And in England, "Those who brought about abolition in Britain quoted not ‘liberal principles' but the Bible."¹⁷

What is significant about these anti-slavery movements is that they did not adopt William Webb's redemptive-movement hermeneutic. They did not see any need to abandon the moral teachings of the New Testament and seek some "ultimate ethic" that improved on the ethic of the Bible. They argued from the moral standards found in the Bible itself, and they won the arguments again and again in the minds of the vast majority of Christians.

Therefore, when Webb defends his redemptive-movement hermeneutic as necessary for arguing against slavery, and when he says, "Unless one embraces the redemptive spirit of Scripture, there is no biblically based rationale for championing an abolitionist perspective" (DBE, 395), his statement is made in ignorance of the actual history of the Christian church and its opposition to slavery. His statement is not correct, and his argument fails to be persuasive.

But this claim about slavery is basic to Webb's entire argument. Webb's mistaken evaluation of the Bible's teaching on slavery forms a fundamental building block in constructing his hermeneutic. Once we remove his claim that the Bible condones slavery, Webb's Exhibit A is gone, and he has lost his primary means of supporting the claim that we need his "redemptive-movement hermeneutic" to move beyond the ethic of the Bible itself.

(b) Making sense of New Testament texts on women without adopting Webb's system.

Webb claims four examples of New Testament texts regarding women that, he says, we need not (and should not) obey today. He claims we should follow instead a better ethic, one that senses the "redemptive-movement spirit" (DBE, 395) in the text and follows its direction to move beyond the commands of the New Testament. His four examples are (1) the requirement for head coverings on women in worship (1 Cor 11); (2) the requirement for women to be silent in congregational gatherings (1 Cor 14:34-36); (3) the instruction for wives to call their husbands "lord" (1 Pet 3:5-6); and (4) the instruction for wives to "submit" to their husbands (Eph 5:22; Col 3:18).

What is remarkable, even astonishing, is that as we read Webb's discussion we see no awareness whatsoever of the fact that responsible interpreters have not understood his first three examples to require what he claims. For example, I know of no responsible evangelical scholar today who argues that women should be completely silent in congregational gatherings or that women should call

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their husbands "lord." They do not agree with Webb that we should move beyond the New Testament commands to a better ethic, but they claim that careful, responsible exegesis of those texts shows that the New Testament did not require complete silence of women in church even in the first century, and did not tell wives to call their husbands "lord" even in the first century. Tat was not what 1 Corinthians 11 and 1 Peter 3 meant even at the time they were written.

In a similar way, though there has historically been some difference among interpreters, many evangelical commentators have understood the commands about head coverings to reflect a custom in first century society in which head covering was an outward symbol either of being married or of being a woman in distinction from a man. Therefore, they have argued, in a society where head covering does not convey that same meaning, the instruction is best obeyed by adopting a different outward symbol that conveys a similar meaning (such as a wedding ring as a sign of being married).¹⁸ (For further discussion of how to determine which New Testament commands are culturally relative, see the final section of this article.)

So Webb's argument about Bible texts on women is similar to his argument about texts on slavery: He argues not against responsible evangelical scholars and their exegesis of these texts, but against a straw man of his own construction. When Webb assumes as true interpretations of the New Testament that no responsible interpreter today supports, and when he completely ignores other interpretations that are widely held in the scholarly literature, it does not increase our confidence that he has adequately considered his theory in comparison to other valid alternatives.

(4) Webb creates an overly complex system of interpretation that will require a class of "priests" who have to interpret the Bible for us in the light of ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman culture.

Although Webb does not explain his redemptive-movement hermeneutic at length in his essay "The Slavery Analogy" in Discovering Biblical Equality, it is important for readers to understand the complexity of his system as found in Slaves, Women and Homosexuals, and what it actually requires us to do before we can determine the moral standards that Christians should follow today. At the heart of Webb's system is his requirement that the interpreter "must listen for how the text sounds within its various social contexts," especially "the broader, foreign ancient Near-Eastern and Greco-Roman (ANE/GR) social context and the immediate, domestic Israelite/church setting" (SWH, 53).

How does one do this? Webb gives eighteen criteria which one must use in order to carry out his redemptive-movement hermeneutics properly. His first criterion is called "preliminary movement," and here is how he says it should happen:

Assessing redemptive-movement has its complications. Without going into an elaborate explanation, I will simply suggest a number of guidelines: (1) the ANE/GR real world must be examined along with its legal world, (2) the biblical subject on the whole must be examined along with its parts, (3) the biblical text must be compared to a number of other ANE/GR cultures which themselves

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must be compared with each other and (4) any portrait of movement must be composed of broad input from all three streams of assessment-foreign, domestic, and canonical (SWH, 82).

And this is just his procedure for the first of eighteen criteria! Who will be able to do this? Who knows the history of ancient cultures well enough to make these assessments?

If the evangelical world begins to adopt Webb's system, it is not hard to imagine that we will soon require a new class of "priests," those erudite scholars with sufficient expertise in the ancient world that they can give us reliable conclusions about what kind of "ultimate ethic" we should follow today.

But this will create another problem, one I have observed often as I have lived and taught in the academic world: Scholars with such specialized knowledge often disagree. Anyone familiar with the debates over rabbinic views of justification in the last two decades will realize how difficult it can be to understand exactly what was believed in an ancient culture on even one narrow topic, to say nothing of the whole range of ethical commands that we find in the New Testament.

Where then will Webb's system lead us? It will lead us to massive inability to know with confidence anything that God requires of us. The more scholars who become involved with telling us "how the Bible was moving" with respect to this or that aspect of ancient culture, the more opinions we will have, and the more despair people will feel about ever being able to know what God's requires of us, what his "ultimate ethic" is.

I do not believe that God gave us a Bible that is so direct and clear and simple, only to require that all believers throughout all history should first filter these commands through a complex system of eighteen criteria before they can know whether to obey them or not. Tat is not the kind of Bible that God gave us, nor is there any indication in Scripture itself that believers have to have some kind of specialized academic knowledge and elaborate hermeneutical system before they can be sure that these are the things God requires of his children.

(5) Webb fails to demonstrate that New Testament teachings on men and women are culturally relative.

Throughout Webb's book he attempts to dismantle the complementarian arguments for male leadership in the home and the church by claiming that the biblical texts on male leadership are culturally relative. Ye t in each case, his attempts to demonstrate cultural relativity are not persuasive. In the following section, I consider a few of Webb's claims for culturally relativity in the order they occur in his book.

(a) Webb fails to show that New Testament commands regarding male headship are only a "preliminary movement" and that the New Testament ethic needs further improvement.

Webb claims that the commands regarding wives submitting to their husbands in Eph 5:22-33 are not a final ethic that we should follow today, but are simply an indication of "where Scripture is moving on the issue of patriarchal power" (SWH, 80-81). But this claim is not persuasive because it depends on his assumption that the ethical standards of the New Testament are not God's ultimate ethical standards for us, but are simply one step along the way toward an "ultimate ethic" that we should adopt

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today (SWH, 36-39).

(b) Webb fails to show that Gal 3:28 is a "seed idea" that would ultimately lead to the abolition of male headship once cultural changes made it possible to adopt a superior ethic to that of the New Testament.

Once again, Webb's conception of a "seed idea" is based on his claim that some New Testament commands are inconsistent with that seed idea, and those commands show only that "the biblical author pushed society as far as it could go at that time without creating more damage than good" (SWH, 73). Webb claims that the "seed idea" is simply a pointer showing that there should be "further movement" toward a "more fully realized ethic" that is "more just, more equitable and more loving. . . . a better ethic than the one expressed in the isolated words of the text" (SWH, 36).

Galatians 3:28 should not be seen as a "seed idea" pointing to some future "higher ethic" but as a text that is fully consistent with other things the apostle Paul and other New Testament authors wrote about the relationships between men and women. If we take the entire New Testament as the very words of God for us in the new covenant today, then any claim that Gal 3:28 should overrule other texts, such as Ephesians 5 and 1 Timothy 2, should be seen as a claim that Paul the apostle contradicts himself, and therefore that the word of God contradicts itself.

(c) Webb fails to show that the Bible adopted male leadership because there were no competing options.

Webb says, "It is reasonably safe to assume, therefore, that the social reality of the biblical writers was the world of patriarchy. . . . This consideration increases the likelihood of patriarchy being a cultural component within Scripture" (SWH, 154-55; he makes a related argument in DBE, 411). Webb explains that this is because an egalitarian position regarding marriage or the church was simply not an option, given the surrounding culture.

But this criterion is not persuasive. The New Testament teaches many things that were not found in the surrounding culture. No people in the surrounding culture believed in Jesus as the Messiah before he came. Even Webb admits that the idea that husbands should love their wives as Christ loved the church was revolutionary for the culture. The idea that there could be a church made up of Jews and Gentiles fellowshipping together was not an option in the surrounding culture. If Jesus and the apostles had wanted to teach egalitarianism, they would have done so, whether or not it was found in the current culture.

Webb's other response to Ephesians 5 and 1 Corinthians 11 is to say that if Paul had been addressing a different culture he would have commanded something different:

If Paul had been addressing an egalitarian culture, he may have used the very same christological analogy (with its transcultural component) and reapplied it to an egalitarian relationship between husband and wife. He would simply have encouraged both the husband and the wife to sacrificially love one another (SWH, 188-89).

This amazing statement reveals how deeply committed Webb is to finding an egalitarian ethic that is "better than" the ethic taught in the New Testament. Even though he admits that Paul did not teach

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an egalitarian view of marriage, he says that Paul would have taught an egalitarian view of marriage had he been addressing a different culture, such as our egalitarian culture today! Webb is not at all bound by what Paul taught, but here as elsewhere feels free to use his speculation on what Paul "might have" taught in a different situation as a higher moral authority than what Paul actually did teach.

(d) Webb fails to show that wives were to be subject to their husbands only because they were younger and less educated.

Webb says that it made sense for wives to submit to their husbands in an ancient culture because they had less education, less social exposure, less physical strength, and they were significantly younger than their husbands (SWH, 213-14; also DBE, 411). But these reasons, says Webb, no longer apply today, and therefore the command for wives to be subject to their husbands should be seen as culturally relative. A wife today should just give some kind of "honor" and "respect" to her husband (SWH, 215).

Webb's argument here is not persuasive, however, because these are not the reasons the Bible gives for wives to be subject to their husbands. The reasons the Bible gives are the parallel with Christ's relationship to the church (Eph 5:22-24) and the parallel with the relationship between the Father and Son in the Trinity (1 Cor 11:3). Another reason that Paul gives is that this is what "is fitting in the Lord" (Col 3:18). Yet another reason is that it is part of "what is good" (Titus 2:3-4), and another reason is that unbelieving husbands may be "won without a word by the conduct of their wives" (1 Pet 3:1).

Webb's reasons concerning education, age, and social status are merely speculative, and there is no indication that the biblical authors are taking these factors into account when they give these commands. Moreover, these New Testament commands apply to all wives, even those who were more intelligent than their husbands, or the same age as their husbands, or physically as strong as their husbands, or had as much social exposure and social rank as their husbands, or as much wealth as their husbands. Webb's reasons are simply not the reasons the Bible uses.

In short, Webb says that the Bible teaches a wife's submission because of Webb's own invented reasons. Then he removes these invented reasons for today's culture and concludes that we can count the command as culturally relative. It is far better to heed the reasons the Bible actually gives, and to believe that these are the reasons that the Bible commands wives to be subject to husbands.

(6) The difficult passages for determining cultural relativity are few, and most evangelicals have already reached a satisfactory conclusion about them.

Webb has made the question of determining when something is "culturally relative" into a much bigger problem than it actually is. The main question is not whether the historical sections of the Bible report events that occurred in an ancient culture, because the Bible is a historical book and it reports thousands of events that occurred at a time and in a culture significantly different from our own. The question rather is how we should approach the moral commands found in the New Testament. Are those commands to be obeyed by us today as well?

Although my comments in this section are prompted by Webb's book,

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they are applicable more broadly to the general question of how we can know what parts of the New Testament are culturally relative and what parts are still binding on us today.

The question of which New Testament commands are culturally relative is really not a very complicated question. It is not nearly as complicated as Webb makes it out to be. The commands that are culturally relative are primarily-or exclusively-those that concern physical actions that carry symbolic meaning. When we look at the commands in the New Testament, I think there are only six main examples of texts about which people wonder if they are transcultural or if they are culturally relative:

1. Holy kiss (Rom 16:16; 1 Cor 16:20; 2 Cor 13:12; 1 Thess 5:26; 1 Pet 5:14)

2. Foot washing (John 13:14; compare 1 Tim 5:10, which is not a command)

3. Head covering for women or wives in worship (1 Cor 11:4-16)

4. Short hair for men (1 Cor 11:14)

5. No jewelry or braided hair for women (1 Tim 2:9; 1 Pet 3:3)

6. Lifiting hands in prayer (1 Tim 2:8)

The first thing that we notice about this list is that all of these examples refer to physical items or actions that carry symbolic meaning. The holy kiss was a physical expression that conveyed the idea of a welcoming greeting. Foot washing (in the way that Jesus modeled it in John 13) was a physical action that symbolized taking a servant-like attitude toward one another. Head covering was a physical piece of clothing that symbolized something about a woman's status or role (most likely that she was a married woman, or possibly that she was a woman and not a man; others have proposed other interpretations, but all of them are an attempt to explain what the head covering symbolized). As Paul understands long hair for a man in 1 Cor 11:14, it is a "disgrace for him," because it is something that was distinctive to women (in that culture at least), and therefore it was a physical symbol of a man being like a woman rather than like a man.

For these first four examples, one can still find a few examples of Christians who argue that we should follow those commands literally today, and that they are still applicable to us. But the vast majority of evangelicals, at least in the United States (I cannot speak for the rest of the world), have not needed Webb's "redemptive-movement hermeneutic" to reach the conclusion that the Bible does not intend us to follow those commands literally today. Tat is because they are not in themselves fundamental, deep-level actions that have to do with essential components of our relationships to one another (such as loving one another, honesty with one another, submission to rightful authority, speaking the truth and not lying about others, not committing adultery or murder or theft, and so forth). Rather they are outward, surface-level manifestations of the deeper realities that we should demonstrate today (such as greeting one another in love, or serving one another, or avoiding dressing in such a way as to give a signal that a man is trying to be a woman, or that a woman is trying to be a man). Therefore the vast majority of evangelicals are not troubled by these four "culturally relative" commands in the New Testament because they have concluded that only the

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physical, surface manifestation is culturally relative, and the underlying intent of the command is not culturally relative but is still binding on us today.

In seeing these outward manifestations as culturally relative (long before Webb's book was written), evangelicals have not adopted Webb's viewpoint that we need to move to a "better ethic" than that found in the New Testament commands. Evangelicals who take the Bible as the very words of God, and who believe that God's moral commands for his people are good and just and perfect, do not see these commands as part of a defficient moral system that is just a "pointer" to a higher ethic. They see these commands as a part of the entire New Testament ethic that they even today must submit to and obey.

For most people in the evangelical world, deciding that a holy kiss is a greeting that could be manifested in another way is not a terribly difficult decision. It is something that comes almost intuitively as people realize that there are of course different forms of greetings among different cultures.

The last two items on the list need to be treated a bit differently. When we rightly interpret the texts about jewelry and braided hair for women, I do not think that they prohibited such things even at the time they were written. Paul says that "women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire" (1 Tim 2:9). Paul is not saying that women should never wear such things. He is saying that those things should not be the things that they consider the source of their beauty. Tat is not how they should "adorn themselves."

This sense of the prohibition becomes even more clear in 1 Pet 3:3. The ESV, which is very literal at this point, translates the passage as follows:

Do not let your adorning be external-the braiding of hair, the wearing of gold, or the putting on of clothing-but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious (1 Pet 3:3-4).

If this passage forbids braiding of hair and wearing of gold, then it must also forbid "the putting on of clothing"! But surely Peter was not telling women they should wear no clothes to church! He was rather saying that those external things should not be what they look to for their "adorning," for their source of attractiveness and beauty to others. It should rather be the inner character qualities which he mentions.¹⁹ Therefore I do not think that the statements about jewelry and braided hair for women, when rightly understood, are "culturally relative" commands, but they have direct application to women today as well.²⁰

Finally, should men be "lifting holy hands" in prayer today? Personally, I lean toward thinking that this may be something that is transcultural and that we should consider restoring to our practice of prayer (and praise) in evangelical circles today. (I realize that many Christians already do this in worship.) On the other hand, since this is an outward, physical action (and thus some may think that it falls in the same category as a holy kiss or the washing of feet), I can understand that others would conclude that this is simply a variable cultural outward expression of a physical expression of an inward heart attitude

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toward God and dependence on him and focus on him in our prayers. It seems to me that there is room for Christians to differ on this question, but in any case it certainly is not a complicated enough question that it requires Webb's entire "redemptive-movement hermeneutic" to encourage us to move beyond the ethic of the commands that we find in the New Testament.

Is it really that simple? Are the only matters in dispute about cultural relativity just these simple physical items or actions, all of which carry symbolic meaning? Perhaps I have missed one or two other examples,²¹ but I suspect it really is that simple. I believe God has given us a Bible that he intends believers generally to be able to understand (what has traditionally been called the clarity or the perspicuity of Scripture). Surely the question is not as complex and confusing as Webb's book portrays it.

At this point someone may object, what about all those other passages that Webb lists at the beginning of his book (SWH, 14-15), passages which we found so difficult to classify regarding the question of cultural relativity?

My response to that is that there are other widely-accepted principles of biblical interpretation that explain why many other commands in the Bible are not binding today. These principles of interpretation, however, are far different from Webb's principles, because they argue that certain commands are not binding on Christians today because of theological convictions about the nature of the Bible and its history, not because of cultural analysis or because of convictions about cultural relativity, and surely not because of any conviction that the New Testament commands were simply representative of a transitional ethic beyond which we need to move as we find a better ethic in today's society.

The following list gives some kinds of commands in the Bible that Christians do not have to obey in any literal or direct sense today (a fact which is evident apart from Webb's "redemptive-movement hermeneutic"):

1. The details of the Mosaic law code, which were written for people under the Mosaic covenant.²²

2. Pre-Pentecost commands for situations unique to Jesus' earthly ministry (such as "go nowhere among the Gentiles" in Matt 10:5).

3. Commands that apply only to people in the same life situation as the original
command (such as "bring the cloak. . . . and above all the parchments" in 2 Tim 4:13, and also "no longer drink only water" in 1 Tim 5:23). I would also put in this category Acts 15:29, which is a command for people in a situation of Jewish evangelism in the first century: "That you abstain from what has been sacrificed
to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled" (note that Paul himself
explicitly allows the eating of foods sacrificed to idols in 1 Corinthians 10).

4. Everyone agrees that there are some passages, especially in Jesus' earthly teaching, that
are difficult to understand in terms of how broadly we should apply them. Passages like, "Do not refuse the one who would borrow from you" (Matt 5:42) must be

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interpreted in the light of the whole of Scripture, including passages that command us to be wise and to be good stewards of what God has entrusted to us. But these are not questions of cultural relativity, nor do these difficult passages cause us to think that we must move beyond Jesus' teaching to some kind of higher and better ethic. We agree that we are to be subject to this teaching and to obey it, and we earnestly seek to know exactly how Jesus intends us to obey it.

5. There are differences among Christians today on how much we should try to follow commands regarding the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit such as, "Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons" (Matt 10:8). Some Christians think we should obey those commands directly, and they seek to do exactly what Jesus commanded. Other Christians believe that these commands were given only for that specific time in God's sovereign work in the history of redemption. But the important point here is that these differences are theological. This is not a dispute over whether certain commands are culturally relative because the point at issue is not one of ancient culture versus modern culture, but is rather a theological question about the teaching of the whole Bible concerning the work of miracles, and concerning God's purpose for miracles at various points in the history of redemption.

After we have made these qualifications, how much of the New Testament is left? Vast portions of the New Testament are still easily and directly applicable to our lives as Christians today, and many other passages are applicable with only minor changes to modern equivalents.

As I was preparing to write this analysis of Webb's book, I read quickly through the New Testament epistles, and I was amazed how few of the commands found in the epistles raise any question at all about cultural relativity. (I encourage readers to try the same exercise for themselves.)

Where it is necessary to transfer a command to a modern equivalent, this is generally not difficult because there are sufficient similarities between the ancient situation and the modern situation, and Christian readers generally see the connection quite readily. It is not difficult to move from "the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud" (Jas 5:4) to "the wages of the employees who work in your factory, which you kept back by fraud." It is not difficult to move from "honor the emperor" (1 Pet 2:17) to "honor government officials who are set in authority over you." It is not difficult to move from "Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly" to "Employers, treat your employees justly and fairly." It is not difficult to move from "Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord" to "Employees, obey your employers" (with the general biblical principle that we are never to obey those in authority over us when

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obedience would mean disobedience to God's laws). It is not difficult to move from "food offered to idols" (1 Cor 8:10) to other kinds of things that encourage Christians to violate their conscience. And, to take one Old Testament example of a command that everyone believes tells us what God expects today, it is not difficult to move from "You shall not covet your neighbor's...ox" (Exod 20:17) to "You shall not covet you neighbor's car or boat."

My suggestion, then, about the question of culturally relative commands, is that it is not that difficult a question. There are perhaps three to five "culturally relative" commands concerning physical actions that carry symbolic meaning (at least holy kiss, head covering, foot washing; perhaps short hair for men and lifting hands in prayer), but we still obey these by applying them in different forms today. There are other broad categories of commands (such as Mosaic laws) that are not binding on us because we are under the new covenant. There are some fine points that require mature refection (such as to what extent the details of the Old Testament show us what pleases God today). But the rest -especially the commands in the New Testament addressed to Christians in the new covenant-were written for our benefit, and they are not for us to "move beyond," but to obey.