Iron Ink

As part of the requirement for this Hermeneutics class that I am taking I am currently reading ‘Slaves, Women & Homosexuals – Exploring The Hermeneutics Of Cultural Analysis,” by William J. Webb.

I am on page 30 and I am already seeing a couple potential problems.

First, while Webb has spent a great deal of time talking about the interplay of the text and culture and whether or not any given text should be seen as cultural (earth bound and so potentially only time specific to when it was written) or transcultural (Kingdom bound and so absolute), Webb hasn’t spent a great deal of time telling us that he knows what culture is, or at least defining for us ‘culture.’ This is not a slight over-sight in my opinion.

If culture is theology incarnated then it seems Webb’s categories need to change from cultural vs. transcultural to something like semi-pagan vs. biblical since what Webb is contending is that texts that are saturated with his earth bound ‘cultural’ category are texts that can change over time and through cultures since those texts aren’t transcultural texts that are thoroughly imbued with God’s Kingdom culture. The most common example, and an example I suspect we will be turning to time and time again is slavery. It seems, according to Webb, that texts dealing with slavery are not transcultural, and so where we find them in both Old Testament and New Testament we are to understand that God was speaking in those texts in a way that was culturally relative.

The problem here is the ease with which Webb assumes that God’s explicit commands as it touches slavery was true only up until such a time where it was seen that God didn’t really mean what he said regarding the necessity for slaves to obey their masters. Now, this is a troubling issue, quite apart from and regardless of everybody’s agreement that slavery isn’t the optimum human condition under which to live. It is troubling because if God’s Word on slavery, which was taken seriously by the Church up until only a few hundred years ago, should be seen as culturally relative then we are left asking the question ‘what other timeless truths, such as the role of women or the the acceptance of homosexuality, is fair game to be readjusted in light of our cultural advancement?’

In a good deal of my recent reading I have seen this idea that the Church’s putative error on slavery proves that it is very likely that the Church is wrong on Scripture’s teaching on Women and Homosexuality. Because of this I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that if the Church is to hold fast against the sin of hyper-egalitarianism that would have us erasing the Scriptural distinctions between men and women and heterosexuals and homosexuals then it needs to revisit the issue of slavery to prove that Biblical slavery was not and is not sin. The Church needs to argue, that there remains a timelessness about God’s commands regarding the necessity of slaves to obey their masters – at least theoretically if such social arrangement existed. In brief, we need to argue again, that God’s explicit word did not err when he spoke to the social institution of slavery. If we agree that God only spoke the way he did about slavery because He was making non-explicit concessions to our cultural wickedness then we are left concluding that there may well be other things, like Biblical Patriarchy and the evils of Homosexuality, in Scripture to which God spoke wherein He made non-explicit concessions to our putative cultural wickedness on those issues. Either we make arguments that God was serious and His word was timeless when He spoke about slavery or we get beat about the head with arguments that seek to legitimize Feminism and Homosexuality in the same way that egalitarians and abolitionists made arguments that God’s speaking on slavery was culturally relative.

The second problem I am seeing so far with Webb is the idea of a trajectory hermeneutic. John Stackhouse Jr. in his book ‘Finally Feminist’ advances the same kind of trajectory hermeneutic. The idea of a ‘trajectory hermeneutic’ is the idea that in God’s Word we see a kind of starting point and a direction that the word is taking but the assumption is that God’s Word doesn’t give us a finishing point leaving us only with trajectory. The next step of the teaching is for exegete’s and theologians to come along and map out the direction the trajectory is moving – a direction that takes us outside of the canon of Scripture.

Now the most obvious problem with this is that God’s revealed Word, to my knowledge, doesn’t say anything about the necessity for us to figure out a trajectory of His revelation that takes us outside of His inspired word. This yields the next problem that with this kind of trajectory hermeneutic what we end up having is a canon beyond the canon. If it is left to subsequent generations to determine what the trajectory of God’s Word is then the implication of that is the creation of a canon outside of Scripture. Finally, Trajectory hermeneutics leads to a relativism since a trajectory is something that is never necessarily finished.

I will continue to read Webb’s trajectory hermeneutic (what he prefers to euphemistically call a ‘redemptive movement’ hermeneutic), but if Webb’s ‘redemptive hermeneutic’ is anything like Stackhouse’s trajectory hermeneutic then it will not bode well for positive conclusions regarding Webb. It really is the case that anybody with half an imagination can come up with almost any number of possible trajectories in Scripture – including trajectories that allow for a repudiation of the Church’s nearly universal repudiation of Women in office and a embrace of Buggery.

“… limiting the designation of marriage to a union ‘between a man and a woman’ is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute,”

California Chief Justice Ron George
Written Opinion Allowing Inverted Unlawful Carnal Marriage

In other California Supreme Court cases the Court was also quoted while striking from statute,

1.) “that limiting the designation of water to a union between two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute.”

2.) “that limiting the designation of boy as one who has a penis is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute.”

3.) “that limiting the designation of a solar day to 24 hours is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute.”

4.)"that limiting the designation of island as a body of land surrounded by water is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute.”

And finally,

5.) “that limiting the designation of Justices as those having a tinker’s damn worth of intelligence is unconstitutional and must be stricken from statute.”

As I am reading this literature on hermeneutics supporting women in office I am recalling how this issue resulted in many people leaving the Christian Reformed Church in the 90’s. Now, I think some of the same people who were put off by the hermeneutic that allowed women in office embrace a hermeneutic that rejects 6 day creationism.

Can anybody help me out here? How does someone who gets hot and bothered about women in office turn around and teach that Genesis 1 allows for day age, or upper register and lower register meaning, or any number of other theories?

The Ardsnarkian community, after years of debate, finally decided that instead of each family providing their own meals they would create ‘eat centers,’ where Ardsnarks, young and old, would go for their meals. This was a large step for a people who traditionally had been very independent in all their habits. They concluded however that ‘eat centers’ would save time and effort. The money to support these ‘eat centers’ would be provided by each family unit ‘donating’ what it would usually cost them to feed their own family, plus enough to pay the wages of those who would be dedicated to feeding all the Ardsnarks.

The Ardsnarks, being a people with a good deal of foresight, realized that they would need to set up ‘Eaters Colleges’ in order to train the future cooks, nutritionists and dietitians for the Ardsnark Eat Centers. The first President of the first ‘Eater College’ was a mann named Dewey Rugg-Ardsnark, and in his acceptance speech Dewey promised that the ‘Eater College,’ would ‘forever be a place where the most cutting edge dietary methods and techniques would be taught in order to keep average Ardsnarks in their place of health.’

At first this arrangement worked splendidly. What with the time free from meal preparation and clean up the Ardsnark women now had more freedom then ever and eventually many of them decided they could work a little in order to expand the family budget. Further, the arrangement worked well because the Ardsnarks were a community where meat and potatoes was the standard meal, therefore there was little murmuring by the meat and potato meal that was routinely offered.

Incrementally and imperceptibly, though, over the course of generations something to begin to happen to the Ardsnark community. Suddenly, the Eatists (thats what they called the Eat Center professional) started bullying the rest of their Ardsnarkian brethren. It started first by the ‘Eatists,’ in their brown shirt uniforms (better to hide the food stains they said) insisting that in order to do their jobs as Eastists properly they really needed to have full control over the food supply and manufacturing. They just couldn’t do their jobs adequately if they had to depend on Ardsnarkian farmers since the farmers didn’t ‘know how to farm in such a way to give the Eatists the optimum quality food.

Once the Brown Shirt Eatists took control of the food supply and manufacturing as well as the cooking some Ardsnarks, who still were retrograde enough do to their own home farming and cooking, began to notice that both that the Eatists seemed to be getting bigger and stronger while the rest of the Ardsnark community began looking kind of puny and reasoning as if their brains were suffering malnutrition.

Now these retrograde Ardsnarks began to try to bring this to the communities attention starting a campaign to warn of the ill effects of public eateries but the community, both the Eatists and the mainstream Ardsnarks, accused them of being conspiratorialists. The mainstream Ardsnarks, who were, on average, 25 pounds leaner, 5 inches shorter, and 15 points down on the non-adjusted Ardsnark I.Q. test, then their great great grandparents, insisted that “since they came out of the eat centers alright, their children would as well.” The Eatists who the retrodgrade Ardsnarks were now calling ‘Elitists Eatists’ insisted that the retrogrades were “trying to destroy the Ardsnarkian way of life,” which was absolutely true.

Over the course of time this division between the retro Ardsnarks (R.A.) and the Eatists Ardsnarks (E.A.) developed into an Ardsnarkian culture war, as the RA’s did all they could do withdraw from the orbit of EA influence while the EA’s kept trying to put all Ardsnarkia under their hegemonic control. Indeed, so vast did the difference become between these two warring Ardsnarkian elements that some of the Retro’s began bombing and blowing up the Eat centers and the Eaters Colleges with the more benign Retro’s writing heavy tomes quoting the early Ardsnarkian fathers who warned against the dangers of the Eatists and who prophetically and accurately, as it turned out, projected where these Eat Centers would lead. The EA’s on the other hand insisted that the orderly farming, production, and preparation of food required them to take over all Constabulary duties in the Ardsnarkian culture in order to better insure the free flow of food to all of Ardsnarkia, and so a nationalized ‘Food Police’ was created, (Black Shirted Uniforms in order to hide the non food stains) devoted to protecting the Ardsnarkian way of life.

The EA’s didn’t stop there. They insisted that prevention was to be preferred to law enforcement so they developed a Ministry of Information for Ardsnarkia dedicated to the purpose of canvassing and reaching the Ardsnarkia hinterland with the Gospel of Eat Centers. The motto of this new agency was “Nutrition or Death,” which fit nicely on a snazzy patch they had on their camouflage uniforms.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over the many volumes that run from my ceiling to my floor,
While I decided what I’d be reading, I recalled classis said I was needing,
To spend some time ‘reviewing’ what I was holding in my hand.
Their official hermeneutics that I held now in my hand,
On how to be emasculated and become a girly man

I remember well when classis proved to be among the girly masses
Saying “read this” egalitarian trash I sit here holding in my hand.
‘Come, come’ said they, ‘there’s no need to sorrow – you’ll feel better by tomorrow
For we’re confident that you’ll soon agree why we must take this stand.
Yes there’s no doubt you’ll soon agree that we must take this stand,
And like us limp-wristed masses become a girly man’

In my chamber with pages turning, all my soul within me burning,
Each word drilled me, each phrase filled me with an anger I could not stand
So that now to still the beating, of my heart I stood repeating
These books and those that gave ‘em’ can assuredly be damned
These books and those that gave ‘em’, together can be damned
I will not be emasculated and become a girly man.