72 FEMINIST VIEWS THAT UNDERMINE SCRIPTURE
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 requires of us, what his “ultimate ethic” is.
How different from Webb’s system is the simple, direct teaching of
the New Testament! We read, “Therefore, having put away falsehood,
let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are mem-
bers one of another” (Eph. 4:25), and we know we have to tell the truth
and not lie. We read, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this
is right” (Eph. 6:1), and we read, “Fathers, do not provoke your chil-
dren to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the
Lord” (Eph. 6:4), and we know those are God’s commands for us today!
We don’t have to use Webb’s eighteen criteria and study them through
the filters of ancient Near Eastern/Graeco-Roman culture to know
whether they apply to us! Nor do we need any specialist scholars to
decide that for us. That is not the system God intended. His words are
for his people to understand and obey.
THE SERIOUS DANGERS FOR CHRISTIAN MORALITY
But my larger concern about Webb’s system is not even that it is so dif-
ficult for anyone to follow. My larger concern is that in actual practice,
Webb’s system means that the moral authority of the New Testament is
completely nullified, at least in principle. There may be some New
Testament commands that Webb concludes actually do represent an ulti-
mate ethic, but even then we should obey them not because they are
taught in the New Testament but because Webb’s system has found that
they meet the criteria of his “ultimate ethic.”
The implications of this for Christian morality are extremely seri-
ous. It means that our ultimate authority is no longer the Bible but
Webb’s system. Of course, he claims that the “redemptive spirit” that
drives his hermeneutic is derived from the biblical text, but by his own
admission this “redemptive spirit” is not the same as the teachings of the
Bible. It is derived from Webb’s analysis of the interaction between the
ancient culture and the biblical text.
Someone may object at this point, “Doesn’t everyone have to use
some kind of cultural filter like this? Doesn’t everyone have to test the