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Corporal Punishment in the Bible: A redemptive-movement hermeneutic for troubling text. Maybe you read that and thought, ok cool, cool, cool. Or maybe you were like me without a clue and scratching your head. In case you’re on Team Head-Scratcher, here’s a hand: Biblical hermeneutics is the science of interpretation of the Bible and the methods of that interpretation. You could call a hermeneutic a specific interpretive lens. Webb provides a lens to look through when trying to understand troubling text like corporal punishment text (or even slavery text) found in Scripture. This book is not a light read, but it made a profound impact on me, and reveals a fascinating observation that Scripture shows a “redemptive trajectory” when compared to the culture of near Eastern ancient history. And that today, we continue in that trajectory with spanking because it goes “outside of the concrete specific text.” This movement is good- but still leaves room for better ethics. And this movement firmly rejects pro-spankers claim to be applying the Bible literally, while in fact, they have moved beyond, or outside, what the Bible says.
The thing that made a profound impact on me is the compassion Webb has for leaders in Christian parenting that endorse spanking as a disciplinary method. Confession time: I sure don’t. I mean, I realize this is a problem and I’m working on it. But with Webb’s help, I have a newfound appreciation of their ethical framework through this “redemptive movement” lens. They have moved beyond the ethics of the Biblical text and that movement is in line with Christ’s redeeming love. They, as well as culture, are slowly moving towards treating people better. There was a time when people used scripture to justify slavery, but we’ve moved beyond that ethically. There used to be a time when people used scripture to justify husbands using force to obtain submission from the wife. The movement towards better ethics is slow, but it is happening and I know soon that those who believe spanking is Biblical, will see it’s actually nowhere in the Bible. Soon, our desire to reflect Christ to our children in all areas of parenting, including discipline, will be universal.
Read my two-part article on corporal punishment here if you’re interested in a deeper dive.
If you’ve read this book (or any of the books I review) I would love to hear how it impacted you and continue the conversation- just reply below.
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