Discipline: What If Scripture Isn’t Politically Correct?
There lurks within every human heart an intractable rebel, bent on refusing the rightful lordship of Jesus Christ.
There is, of course, no answer to this defect other than the grace of God. The gospel changes the terms of the battle; the Spirit strengthens us; Scripture directs us in the fight. But even for believers the traitor remains. Sin exerts a constant gravitational pull on our hearts, and only the greater power of God’s grace can counteract it. Indeed, our fallenness is so profound that we can twist and distort even the Word of God to suit our fallen preferences.
An Example of Willful Distortion
One recent twisting of Scripture comes from William Webb, an author who views himself as evangelical.1 Webb testifies that he was always bothered by the Proverbs that describe corporal punishment of children. He observes that just like the texts on homosexuality or submission of women, these passages offend the sensibilities of modern readers.
His solution is as ingenious as it is devious. He begins with truths we all accept. Every passage of Scripture was written in a given cultural context. Scripture always reproved the culture of its time in redemptive ways, just as it corrects our own cultural context today. To this point his argument is sound.
But Webb goes on. In passages on slavery, homosexuality, or spanking, we can detect not only Scripture’s redemptive direction but also how it might have progressed further. In simple terms, while the Bible reproved its original setting, it didn’t go far enough.
This leaves to the modern interpreter the monumental task of unsorting the redemptive trajectory. According to this viewpoint, we must ask ourselves what Scripture would say about our society if it were written today. The actual statements of Scripture recorded in the text are not enough. We must extend the redemptive trajectory further.
There has never been a shortage of false teaching or hermeneutical schemes to support them, and in a certain sense Webb’s viewpoint is just one more bad idea. The problem is that when it comes to corporal punishment, many have unwittingly adopted his view without realizing the disastrous implications. Apparently, out of agreement with his conclusions on spanking, they have accepted teaching that is actually hostile to both the sufficiency and authority of Scripture. We must repudiate Webb’s view of corporal punishment, homosexuality, and feminism, along with his hermeneutic of “redemptive trajectories.” In the process, we can also glean three insights that direct us as students of the Bible.
1. Our agenda must be to understand the text as it stands. Webb’s argument begins with reducing the traditional understanding of the spanking texts to an absurdity.2 He first draws parallels with Mosaic laws that teach corporal punishment for adult lawbreakers. For him, the spanking passages actually describe severe beatings given to criminals rather than measured punishment of children. Furthermore, since severely beating criminals seems rather harsh today, we should simply dismiss the passages altogether. The result is that Webb manages to leave the spanking texts in Proverbs with no modern application or meaning at all.
Exegetical problems abound in his argument. There are strong interpretational reasons that the spanking texts in Proverbs do not describe corporal punishment for adult criminals.3 But the most basic problem is that Webb has begun with the ambition to falsify texts, not to honestly understand them. By his own confession, Webb’s starting goal was to remove the “offense” of these texts, not to earnestly submit to whatever they say.
And this becomes a clear lesson to us all. Are we reading the text to understand or to confirm what we already decided is true? Would we rather submit to the text or make the text submit to us? The litmus test will be whether we come to the Bible willing to obey it, whatever it says.
2. The standard of truth is the Biblical text, not our cultural context. Webb’s paradigm measures the “redemptive trajectory” of Scripture by comparing each text to its original setting. But the Bible does not tepidly complain about cultural sins. It states the absolute truth authoritatively. The Scriptures were written not only for the original recipients but “for our admonition” today (1 Cor. 10:11). If we must ask what the Bible would say to our present cultural milieu, the answer is simple—it would say exactly what it already says.
It is also apparent that Webb privileges contemporary predispositions and viewpoints. He contends that Scripture always reproved its ancient contexts—Scripture was out front, leading and correcting the culture. But ironically, the reverse is true in the contemporary context—culture becomes the control that tells us when to apply a “redemptive trajectory.” How is it that ancient culture was so deeply flawed that Scripture could only partially correct it, while modern culture is so virtuous that we must help the Bible catch up? How did our own time escape from being the “present evil age”? If Scripture clashed with the wickedness of ancient culture, wouldn’t the original readers have been troubled by what they read, simply because it exposed and corrected their sin? How then is it proof positive that our hermeneutics are wrong, just because certain texts trouble us today? Maybe these texts trouble modern readers because they are precisely the points where we most need to be corrected!
3. We must not re-create Scripture in our own image. This leads to the fundamental aberration of Webb’s paradigm— it usurps control from the text of Scripture and places it in the hands of the interpreter. Who determines which teachings must be “updated” and which can remain? The only answer is the one doing the interpretation—a frightening prospect indeed.
Scripture has always been countercultural and while the world remains in its sinful state it always will be. This also means that faithfulness to the Biblical text will lead to cultural conflict. If some texts are “troubling to modern readers,” we shouldn’t be surprised.
And that points to a reality about ourselves—we don’t naturally want to submit to the truth. Our own fallen hearts are subject first to our own whims or fancies and then to the viewpoints of our culture. Only by God’s grace do the demands of Scripture ever factor in at all.
A Call to Honesty
We should not expect the prevailing culture to come more in line with Scripture any time in the near future. As the antithesis grows between contemporary thought and Biblical teaching, it will become obvious who is willing to submit to Scripture. Spanking is only one example. Feminism and homosexuality (other topics Webb addresses) are also flash points where Scripture is “politically incorrect.” People will use any number of strategies and devices to diminish the conflict, but at the end of the day the question is relatively simple—will we submit to the text or will we domesticate it?
Are we prepared to read the eternal Word with the heart of a student and not a master? Are we ready to open our Bibles, willing to obey no matter what its teaching or demands? Our lives, ministries, churches, and even our families will soon show the difference.
Dr. Joel Arnold teaches national church planters at Bob Jones Memorial Bible College in Manila. He writes regularly at EveryTribeAndTongue.com.
(Originally published in FrontLine • November/December 2013. Click here to subscribe to the magazine.)
Photo by Jordan Whitt on Unsplash
- William Webb, Corporal Punishment in the Bible: A Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic for Troubling Texts (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2011). [↩]
- Proverbs 13:24; 19:18; 22:15; 23:13, 14; 29:15–17; Hebrews 12:5–11. [↩]
- (1) Based on the best Hebrew resources (BDB, HALOT) and usage (Exod. 2:6; Judges 13:8; 1 Sam. 1:22, and others), the key word (na’ar) can mean either “child” or “young man,” and the context of several of the Proverbs passages indicate that “child” is the better rendering. (2) In a number of the passages, Webb’s rendering is completely unworkable (Prov. 29:15; Heb. 12:6–10). (3) Proverbs 23:13, 14 is clearly in the context of Solomon instructing his son about child rearing. [↩]