54 FEMINIST VIEWS THAT UNDERMINE SCRIPTURE
to Oxford University), a member of the Committee on Bible Translation
for the NIV Bible, and the author of some widely respected commen-
taries on the Gospels. Another is David Thompson of Asbury Seminary,
whose work we considered in chapter 4.
France, in his book Women in the Church’s Ministry: A Test Case
for Biblical Interpretation, argues that the Old Testament and Judaism
in the time of Jesus were male-dominated and biased against women, but
that Jesus began to overturn this system, and that the New Testament
churches continued the process, and that we can now follow this “tra-
jectory” to a point of full inclusion of women in all ministries. France
explains:
The gospels do not, perhaps, record a total reversal of Jewish preju-
dice against women and of their total exclusion from roles of leader-
ship. But they do contain the seeds from which such a reversal was
bound to grow. Effective revolutions are seldom completed in a year
or two. In this, as in other matters, the disciples were slow learners.
But the fuse, long as it might prove to be, had been ignited.^1France later comments on “there is no longer male and female” in
Galatians 3:28 (NRSV):
Paul here expresses the end-point of the historical trajectory which we
have been tracing... from the male-dominated society of the Old
Testament and of later Judaism, through the revolutionary implica-
tions and yet still limited actual outworking of Jesus’ attitude to
women, and on to the increasing prominence of women in the apos-
tolic church and in its active ministry. At all points within the period
of biblical history the working out of the fundamental equality
expressed in Galatians 3:28 remained constrained by the realities of
the time, and yet there was the basis, indeed the imperative, for the
dismantling of the sexual discrimination which has prevailed since the
fall. How far along that trajectory it is appropriate and possible for
the church to move at any subsequent stage in history must remain a
matter for debate, as it is today.^2(^1) R. T. France, Women in the Church’s Ministry: A Test Case for Biblical Interpretation (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995), 78, italics added.
(^2) Ibid., 91, italics added.