For William Webb “going beyond” the Bible means “be willing to venture beyond simply an isolated or static understanding of the Bible.” In a footnote, Webb explains what he means: “A static understanding is reading the words of the Bible only within their immediate literary context, up and down the page.”[1] This is the historical-grammatical method well defined. Also, going beyond the Bible is progressing “beyond the frozen-in-time aspects of the ethical portrait found within the Bible.”[2]
Webb expands on his view “which encourages movement beyond the original application of the text in the ancient world.”[3] That is no different from finding the authorial intent of the text and applying it to the modern audience.
The example Webb uses is the war text in Dt. 21:10-14. When compared with war ethics recorded in ANE where POW women were taken captive and brutalized. Webb is saying this because the treatment of women in Deuteronomy 21 is much better in comparison that there has been a movement of meaning from the ANE texts to the Deuteronomy text. This forward movement should progress for today’s war ethics. Was God considering the ancient practices and saying to himself, “We have got to do better than this?” I don’t think so. He established principles right for his chosen nation.
Webb, next moves to the slavery issue. He refers to the harsh treatment of slave texts such as Exodus 21:20-21 where the slave owner could beat the slave within an inch of his life. If he beats the slave and he dies there is a penalty. But when compared to the Ancient Near Eastern texts which permitted slave owners to beat slaves to death with no penalty there is movement in the right direction.[4] Just the reading of words on the page of Scripture without the aid of ANE text can not explain the text.
My question is what if we did not have the ANE or what about the students of Scripture who do not have access to ANE? Are these left unable to read and understand the Bible? Is the doctrine of perspicuity true or not?
Why did not God do more in the OT to set slaves free? Webb believes that “it means that God in a pastoral sense accommodates himself to meeting people and society where they are in their existing social ethic and (from there) he gently moves them with incremental steps toward something better.[5]
Next, Webb moves to canonical development from the OT to the NT which is the RM between texts that leads to the ultimate, abolitionist ethic.[6] In the NT for example, slaves are totally equal in Christ (Gal. 3:28) and Paul strongly suggests to Philemon to release Onesimus (which Webb doesn’t even mention).
What Webb sees as Redemption Movement, I see as progressive revelation which begins with the OT and not with ANE texts and progresses to an abolitionist ethnic in the NT. How does the OT theocracy play into this issue? For example, adulterers were stoned in the OT and in the NT adulterers are excommunicated.
The next issue Webb addresses is spanking/corporal punishment texts.[7] Webb contends that Redemption Movement has already happened among his most vocal critics to the abandonment of spanking. These advocates of spanking are Albert Mohler, Andreas Kostenberger, and Paul Wegner. In a table, Webb contrasts the concrete-specific (frozen-in-time, literal reading) teaching of the Bible with the different and improved pro-spanking ethic of Albert Mohler, Andreas Kostenberger, and Paul Wegner. For example, the OT “forty stripes” were commanded as a punishment for adult criminals. Webb compares the pro-spanking advocate’s restriction to two smacks. Webb has unfairly mixed OT punishment for criminal adults to the different standard for disobedient children. Webb contends that since pro-spankers have moved forward in their ethnic that we should continue the forward movement to no spanking.
A Response William J. Webb by Walter C. Kaiser, Jr.
Kaiser calls Webb using ANE’s text as part of the historical in the historical-grammatical interpretation.[8] The historical in the historical-grammatical hermeneutic is to be limited to the history of the Bible. Kaiser notes a major weakness of Webb’s hermeneutic: Webb ... gathers teachings on all sorts of corporeal punishment, from Exodus 21:20-21 (slave passage) to punishments meted out by judges in the courts (Deut. 25:1-3), and lumps them (not to mention apocryphal material from Sirach) all together with proverbial material on raising an disciplining children. This is no way to do Bible study.[9]
A Response William J. Webb by Daniel M. Doriani
Doriani summarizes Webb’s steps:
X The original ancient Near Eastern or Greco-Roman culture
Y The Bible’s “somewhat redemptive” words in “frozen-in-time” text
Z The Bible’s “ultimate ethic” reflected in “the spirit” of the biblical text
Z’ We may find assistance in locating the ultimate ethic in our culture that happens to reflect “a better ethnic” than the Bible’s “somewhat redemptive” ethic.[10]
Dorinai questions Webb’s commitment to ancient documents: “Given Webb’s commitment to read Scripture in light of its contrast with the surrounding culture, the right understanding of ancient culture may become not desirable but essential to the task of interpretation. But can we have enough certainty about other cultures for this purpose? (For example, we can read the Code of Hammurabi, but do we know how people practiced or ignored that law?) Can a commitment to read Scripture against culture erode or commitment to read Scripture in itself? Many of Israel’s civil or penal codes were not family codes. There is movement on the slave issue but not on the homosexual issue.[11]
A Response to William J. Webb by Kevin J. Vanhoozer
Vanhoozer mentions along with the other authors, that his “chief difficulty ... is that many texts are frozen-in-time and thus either irrelevant or unacceptable if followed literally.” Vanhoozer admitted he still didn’t “have a good grasp on his basic concepts (e.g., ‘redemptive spirit of the text’; ‘movement is meaning’). [12] Vanhoozer “most significant claim is that readers should attend to the ‘trajectory or logical extension of the Bible’s redemptive spirit that carries Christians to an ultimate ethic.”[13] Vanhoozer states that “Evangelicals know that both revelation and redemption are progressive.”[14]
[1] Ibid., 215.
[2] Ibid., 216.
[3] Ibid., 217.
[4] Ibid., 221-223.
[5] Ibid., 226.
[6] Ibid., 224-225.
[7] Ibid., 228.
[8] Ibid., 250.
[9] Ibid., 253.
[10] Ibid., 255-256.
[11] Ibid., 259-260.
[12] Ibid., 263.
[13] Ibid., 265.
[14] Ibid., 267.