66 FEMINIST VIEWS THAT UNDERMINE SCRIPTURE
defend his position. Through his use of this system, Webb argues that
the New Testament texts about male headship in marriage and male
church leadership are culturally relative.
Webb’s view of what the New Testament taught for its own time is
interesting. In contrast to many evangelical feminists who argue that the
New Testament does not teach that wives should be subject to their hus-
bands, 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 he claims 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.”^2
THE X➝Y➝Z PRINCIPLE
At the heart of Webb’s system is his “redemptive-movement hermeneu-
tic.” (He notes that some may prefer calling his approach a “progres-
sive” or “developmental” or “trajectory” hermeneutic, and says that
that’s fine with him.)^3 Webb explains his hermeneutic by what he calls
“the X➝Y➝Z Principle.” The letter X represents “the perspective of the
original culture.” The letter Y indicates what the Bible says about a
topic. Webb says, “The central position (Y) stands for where the isolated
words of the Bible are in their development of a subject.” The letter Z
represents “an ultimate ethic,” that is, God’s final ideal that the Bible is
moving toward.^4
Therefore, what evangelicals have ordinarily understood to be the
teaching of the Bible on particular subjects is in fact only a point along
the way (indicated by letter Y) toward the development of a final or ulti-
mate ethic (Z). Webb says,
The X➝Y➝Z Principle illustrates how numerous aspects of the bib-
lical text were not written to establish a utopian society with complete
justice and equity. They were written within a cultural framework
with limited moves toward an ultimate ethic.^5(^2) Ibid., 36, italics added.
(^3) Ibid., 31.
(^4) Ibid.
(^5) Ibid.