7: “REDEMPTIVE MOVEMENT” TRUMPS SCRIPTURE 79For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants
[plural of Greek doulos] and entrusted to them his property. To one
he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each accord-
ing to his ability. Then he went away (Matt. 25:14-15).A “talent” was a monetary unit worth about twenty years’ wages for a
laborer. To put this in contemporary (2006) terms, a laborer working at
$10 per hour would earn about $20,000 a year, so a “talent” would be
20 X $20,000 or $400,000. Five talents would be $2,000,000. Jesus tells
this parable as if that were the kind of thing that “masters” did with their
bondservants, entrusting them with much responsibility and consider-
able freedom.
This first-century institution of “bondservants” is far different from the
picture that comes to mind when modern readers hear the word “slavery.”
This helps us understand why the New Testament did not immediately pro-
hibit the institution of “bondservants,” while at the same time giving prin-
ciples that led to its eventual abolition. And it helps explain why the
Christians in England and the United States who campaigned for the aboli-
tion of slavery based on the moral teachings of the Bible saw it as a far worse
institution, one that was not at all supported by the Bible but was so cruel
and dehumanizing that it had to be abolished completely and forever.
Webb is wrong in thinking that his system is needed to show that
the Bible opposes slavery. Yes, some slave owners tried to use the Bible
to support slavery in nineteenth-century America, but opponents of slav-
ery used the Bible too, and they were far more persuasive, and they won
the argument. They did this all without needing to go beyond the moral
standards of the Bible as Webb would have us do.
HAVE CHRISTIANS ALWAYS USED A SYSTEM LIKE WEBB’S?
When Webb claims that “A redemptive-movement hermeneutic has always
been a major part of the historic church, apostolic and beyond,”^31 and
therefore that all Christians believe in some kind of “redemptive-move-
ment” hermeneutic, he is not representing the history of the church accu-
rately, because he fails to make one important distinction: evangelicals have
always held that the redemptive movement within Scripture ends with the
(^31) Ibid., 35.