The Limits of a Redemptive-Movement Hermeneutic: A Focused Response to T. R. Schreiner

Abstract

Should one take the redemptive spirit within the slavery texts and the women texts beyond certain time-locked components of the NT? Does the redemptive movement, begun in the OT and extended in the NT, need to be extended even further beyond the NT? Or, should we expect the NT to express a totally realized ethic or a completely finalized expression of redemptive-movement meaning in all of its concrete particulars? Thomas R. Schreiner’s critique of the book, Slaves, Women and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis levels a central criticism against a redemptive-movement hermeneutic (RM hermeneutic), namely, that it fails to rightly appreciate the NT as God’s final and definitive revelation. Schreiner’s central criticism expresses his conviction about limiting the Christian use of a RM hermeneutic to the OT only; a RM hermeneutic ought not to be applied to the NT. In reply to Schreiner, this article attempts to correct a fundamental misunderstanding in the debate as well as to argue the alternative thesis that indeed a RM hermeneutic ought to be applied to the NT.