The Love Universe

I just finished William J Webb’s “Slaves, Women & Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis” and I highly recommend it to any brothers or sisters in Christ who share with me a dissatisfied attitude towards the way in which Scripture is often interpreted and applied.
A recurring tension in my life has been my uncertain disposition towards Scripture. Raised in the Evangelical Lutheran tradition and schooled at Trinity International University I was instilled with the notion that the Bible as we have it today is divinely inspired in its entirety. The nuance of what this meant varied depending on who was teaching at the time. And while most of these teachers and leaders would stress the importance of understanding the historical context of the Bible, they would act as if we were on dangerous ground or a slippery slope when it came to questioning the morality of the biblical text as written (especially in the New Testament), as if the bible existed in some sort of vacuum and was immune to cultural influence. How could one possibly argue with the command when its written right there, as clear as day? My concerns grew as I encountered many passages in the Bible which I felt to be absolutely detestable (yes, even in the New Testament). Some passages seemed to directly contradict the spirit of the gospel that I held so dear. And even worse, many of these passages have been used and are still being used to support and defend some of the most atrocious acts in all of human history. I also discovered a lack of consistency in how much value was attached to certain commands. This presented a huge stumbling block to me believing in the inspiration of Scripture. What sort of God inspires these sorts of writings?
I have recently found refuge in Webb’s proposal for what he calls a Redemptive Movement Hermeneutic. It is a hermeneutic that takes into account God’s ultimate plan of redemption and renewal that has yet to come to fruition. It is a hermeneutic that I feel comes to terms with not just the biblical culture, but the culture in which we live in the present.
Webb is an Evangelical and wholeheartedly believes in the divine inspiration of Scripture, but believes that the Bible was written during moments on this path towards redemption. Therefore, we receive glimpses of what this ultimate ethic is. An ultimate ethic that was embodied in Jesus Christ. In fact, this is a hermeneutic that Jesus Himself uses with much of the Old Testament. He shares a hermeneutic that looks at the underlying spirit of God’s commands. But the biggest difference for me is that with this hermeneutic a modern Christian is allowed the perspective to read the Bible and understand that in some cases our present day ethic is actually stronger than some of the commands as worded in the text. Webb does outline an approach to gauging what is cultural and what is transcultural in Scripture. That is what makes the book absolutely worth reading. He introduces what he calls the ladder of abstraction as a guide for obtaining meaning out of texts that we can safely assume have a cultural dimension to them.
I don’t necessarily think that anything Webb proposes is earth shattering or radical by any means. However, I do think he offers a relevant skeletal framework for approaching the Bible that I was in desperate need of. If you think about it, the Bible exists in this tension between idealism and realism. Which gives me renewed interest in it because that is where I often exist. And leaning too far towards idealism makes me disillusioned and cynical while leaning too far on the side of realism makes me apathetic and complacent. Thinking of the Bible in these terms has given me renewed faith in not only the inspired words but in the divine wisdom of God that reveals Himself in mysterious ways.