6: “LATER DEVELOPMENTS” TRUMP SCRIPTURE 61lateral obedience or submission of wives to husbands, regardless of
cultural context, achieve the opposite of Peter’s intention. Rather
than promoting harmony with culture, they set Christian marriage
partners at odds with culture and thus heighten the tension, and
Christianity is perceived as undermining culture in a retrogressive
way. This is precisely what Peter is seeking to minimize.^16Davids then gives a paraphrase of 1 Peter 3:1-6 in which he says that
Peter’s words today do not mean “Wives, be subject to your own hus-
bands,” but “Wives, embrace your marital relationship.” Verse 6, which
says, “as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord,” can be paraphrased,
“Sarah was committed to Abraham and behaved accordingly within her
culture.”^17
But if the Bible simply means, “Follow what you perceive to be good
in the culture around you,” then why do we need the Bible? Davids, like
liberal Protestants before him, has simply decided that obeying cultural
expectations about marriage should be our standard, rather than obey-
ing what the Bible commands. This is a clear and significant step toward
liberalism.
To return to the “trajectory hermeneutic” argument of France,
Thompson, and Marshall, however, we should recognize that they all
think the trajectory found in the New Testament was heading toward
egalitarianism. But the process of determining a “trajectory” is so sub-
jective that the same argument could be used in just the other way.
Someone could take France’s view of Galatians 3:28 and argue that the
trajectory looks like this:
FROM PAUL’S TO PAUL’S LAST, TO THE FINAL APPLICATION
EARLY MORE MATURE TARGET FOR THIS TODAY
WRITINGS WRITINGS TRAJECTORY
Galatians 3:28: 1 Timothy 2–3; women cannot all ministry of all
women in all Titus 1: only men participate in any kinds must be
positions of can teach or be ministry in the done by men
leadership elders church
(^16) Peter Davids, “A Silent Witness in Marriage: 1 Peter 3:1-7,” in Pierce and Groothuis, eds.,
Discovering Biblical Equality, 224-238.
(^17) Ibid., 236, italics added. For a response to Davids’s argument that this is similar to what we
do regarding women’s clothing in church and braided hair (236), see Grudem, Evangelical
Feminism and Biblical Truth, 330-339, 397-402.