Related articles and links |  1 of 3

Is it okay to wear stretch pants? You know, the kind that fit well before and after a big meal, made of 5 percent spandex and 95 percent cotton?

It's a hermeneutical (interpretive) dilemma because the answer to this question flows from the way we interpret the Bible. It's about what we do with Leviticus 19:19, which clearly says, "Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material." Think about some other puzzling biblical injunctions:

• "Are you unmarried? Do not look for a wife" (1 Cor. 7:27b).
  
  
• "Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish; let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more" (Prov. 31:6-7).
  
  
• "I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger or disputing. I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes" (1 Tim. 2:8-9).
  
  

Consider, also, the more incendiary mandates. Are the following binding for Christians today?

• "Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh" (1 Peter 2:18).
  
  
• "But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man" (1 Tim. 2:12a).
  
  
• "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman" (Lev. 18:22).
  
  

William J. Webb, professor of New Testament at Heritage Theological Seminary in Canada, opens his book with a similar but longer test—two pages full of biblical decrees. He asks, "Which of these instructions from Scripture are still in force for us today exactly as they are articulated 'on the page'?" The exercise is bound to disorient the reader, and appropriately so. It leaves one badly in need of a system to distinguish the biblical injunctions that apply to us from the ones that don't. Webb's book presents us with such a device.

The author calls it the redemptive movement hermeneutic. The name is not a zinger, but it's apt.

Redemptive stands for God's reclaiming of sin-stained ground throughout history and within cultures. Movement is for the direction of God's redemptive action throughout history—sometimes with and sometimes against, in Webb's words, the "winds of cultures."

Of course, many theologians before Webb have seen the Bible in a way consistent with the redemptive movement hermeneutic. But Webb seems to be the first to articulate it so clearly.

The redemptive movement can be detected using three factors: (1) the original culture of the primary hearers of a biblical passage, (2) the biblical mandate, and (3) our culture. The movement between these three points to an ultimate ethic.

Take slavery. It was widely accepted among the Israelites and their neighboring nations. But Webb points out that, in a liberating trend, the Scripture called God's people to a higher ethic. For example, the Hebrews were required to give a seventh-day rest for all slaves, and a seventh-year release for Hebrew slaves.

Today's culture, with talk of reparations and the savageries of slavery as practiced for generations in the United States, sees slavery as evil and works to free slaves throughout the world. Culturally, our attitude toward slavery is near the ultimate ethic, toward which God's redemptive movement is taking us.

In Webb's words, the ultimate ethic here means "slavery eliminated; improved working conditions; wages maximized for all; harmony, respect, and unified purpose between all levels in an organizational structure."

next page... |  1 of 3

July 8 2002, Vol. 46, No. 8