Craig

Thanks again for your comments @73 Gengwall. I think what you have said is very true and helpful.
Regarding #74 the author William Webb seeks to give us various criteria on which to judge whether an issue in the bible is cultural or transcultural. He deals not only with the issues of slavery, patriarchy and homosexuality but also with such things as primogeniture, foot washing, head coverings, monarchy, righthandedness, long hair, meat offered to idols, holy kiss, vegetarianism, sabbath etc.
He believes slavery and patriarchy are cultural, while the bible’s opposition to the practice of homosexuality is transcultural. (I hope that doesn’t spoil the excitement for those who haven’t yet read the book 🙂 )
You said “First, we had better be able to make universal proclamations based on situational or cultural biblical passages, or nothing in the bible matters”.
I think he would say that there are underlying principles to the situational commands and that these universal principles matter and are relevant to us today.
CBMW have many reviews and comments about the book so they apparently thought it was an important book to refute. I haven’t read these reviews yet.
So far, I think he is making some interesting points, but his hermeneutical approach for some passages doesn’t seem necessary to me because the bible isn’t really saying what he thinks it is saying. For example, he sees the possibility of patriarchy in Gen 1-2, and he thinks 1 Tim 2 says that women in general are more easily deceived than men. So he then has to explain why these things were thought then but are not universal things for today.