6: “LATER DEVELOPMENTS” TRUMP SCRIPTURE 55And he says that he has found his “basic position” regarding women in
ministry
not in these few texts [1 Cor 14:34-36 and 1 Tim 2:11-15] but in a
trajectory of thought and practice developing through Scripture, and
arguably pointing beyond itself to the fuller outworking of God’s ulti-
mate purpose in Christ in ways which the first-century situation did
not yet allow.^3A similar position is argued by David Thompson in his 1996 arti-
cle in Christian Scholar’s Review:^4
Sensing the direction of the canonical dialogue and prayerfully strug-
gling with it, God’s people conclude that they will most faithfully
honor his Word by accepting the target already anticipated in
Scripture and toward which the Scriptural trajectory was heading
rather than the last entry in the Biblical conversation.... The canon-
ical conversation at this point closed without final resolution. But the
trajectory was clearly set toward egalitarian relationships.^5Both France and Thompson admit that the New Testament authors
did not teach the full inclusion of women in all forms of church leader-
ship. As France says, the first-century situation “did not yet allow” this
“fuller outworking of God’s ultimate purpose,” which he says should
be our standard today.^6
But this means that the teachings of the New Testament are no longer
(^3) Ibid., 94-95, italics added.
(^4) David L. Thompson, “Women, Men, Slaves, and the Bible: Hermeneutical Inquiries,”
Christian Scholar’s Review 25/3 (March 1996): 326-349. For a more detailed response to
Thompson’s article, especially his hermeneutical principles and his approach to the authority
of Scripture, see Wayne Grudem, “Asbury Professor Advocates Egalitarianism but Undermines
Biblical Authority: A Critique of David Thompson’s ‘Trajectory’ Hermeneutic,” CBMW News,
December 1996, 8-12 (also available online at http://www.cbmw.org)..)
(^5) Thompson, ibid., 338-339, italics added.
(^6) It is significant that France and Thompson basically agree with the complementarian inter-
pretation of Bible passages that restrict some church leadership roles to men. They do not have
to invent new interpretations of those passages because they simply say the passages are no
longer binding on us today. This seems to be a pattern among evangelical interpreters: those
who think the passages are not binding for us today agree that the passages prohibited women
from teaching or governing the whole church for the situation in which they were written. On
the other hand, those who say the verses are binding on us today have devised several new inter-
pretations to argue that the verses did not prohibit women in general from governing or teach-
ing the whole church even in the first century.