Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals

Short Review: I think this is a helpful (although a bit dull) book on how to parse out cultural and transcultural aspects of scripture and how to think think about our own culture and how we put scripture into practice within that culture. We cannot read scripture without our culture. We are not transcultural beings. But there are things we can do to try to identify cultural blind spots and all scripture to speak to us in our cultural setting.

Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals presents 18 criteria for cultural evaluation of scripture according to his Redemptive Movement Hermeneutic. Although it is long and complicated, I am basically in agreement with the concept. I am not sure I agree with the results of his analysis of the three subjects (Slaves is a neutral subject that he assumes most Christians now agree is sinful, Women in the church is one that he thinks is a positive answer and acceptance of gay marriage in the church is one that he thinks is transcultural command and is his negative example.)

There is no way, even in my long review to work through all 18 criteria. But I do think they are helpful and worth working through.

My nearly 1200 word review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/webb/ ‎