78 FEMINIST VIEWS THAT UNDERMINE SCRIPTURE
and there is no hint that we have to move beyond the Bible’s ethics to
oppose slavery, as Webb would have us do.
In Webb’s 2004 restatement of his position in Discovering Biblical
Equality,^28 he insists even more strongly that only his “redemptive-
movement hermeneutic” can keep Christians from endorsing slavery
today. He says, “Unless one embraces the redemptive spirit of Scripture,
there is no biblically based rationale for championing an abolitionist
perspective,” and says “a redemptive-movement hermeneutic applied to
the New Testament” is “the only valid way to arrive at the abolition
of slavery.”^29 In these statements Webb reveals a surprising ignorance of
nineteenth-century anti-slavery movements that had no “redemptive-
movement hermeneutic” and still argued against slavery from the moral
standards found in the Bible itself. Webb’s system never abolished slav-
ery, but courageous Christians who relied on the New Testament as a
perfect and final moral standard did abolish it.
In addition, Webb shows no knowledge of the differences between the
horrible institution of slavery as it was practiced in America before the mid-
nineteenth century and the first-century institution described by the Greek
term doulos (the Greek word which is usually translated “slave” or “ser-
vant” in the New Testament, but which the NASB and NKJV often better
translate as “bond-servant” or “bondservant,” showing that it was a dif-
ferent institution). I have discussed the institution of being a “bondservant”
(Greek doulos) in detail elsewhere,^30 but it may be briefly said here that this
was the most common employment situation in the Roman Empire in the
time of the New Testament. A bondservant could not quit his job or seek
another employer until he obtained his freedom, but there were extensive
laws that regulated the treatment of such bondservants and gave them con-
siderable protection. Bondservants could own their own property and often
purchased their freedom by about age 30, and they often held positions of
significant responsibility such as teachers, physicians, nurses, managers of
estates, retail merchants, and business executives.
For example, note Jesus’ parable where some “bondservants” were
entrusted with huge sums of money:
(^28) William Webb, “Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic: The Slavery Analogy,” 382-400.
(^29) Ibid., 395.
(^30) See Grudem, Evangelical Feminism and Biblical Truth, 339-345.