6

“LATER DEVELOPMENTS”

TRUMP SCRIPTURE

Some evangelical feminists say our ultimate authority

is found not in what is written in Scripture but

in developments that came after the Bible

Another step on the path toward liberalism is found in a process of

interpreting the Bible that is called “trajectory hermeneutics.” The word
“hermeneutics” just means “a method of interpreting the Bible” (from
the Greek word herm∑neuø, “to interpret, explain”). The phrase “tra-
jectory hermeneutics” means a method of interpreting the Bible in
which our final authority is not found in what is written in the Bible
itself, but is found later, at the end of a “trajectory” along which the New
Testament was progressing at the time it was being written. This view
would claim that the New Testament authors did not reach the final des-
tination of these developments, but we can sense the direction or the tra-
jectory along which they were moving, see where they were headed, and
carry their thinking further, until we reach the destination they were
moving toward but did not reach in their thinking and writing. This
means that our authority is the point toward which the New Testament
authors were progressing in a trajectory, not what the New Testament
actually taught.
One author who advocates trajectory hermeneutics is New
Testament scholar R. T. France, the former principal of Wycliffe Hall,
Oxford, England (an evangelical school and research center connected