Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?

6: “LATER DEVELOPMENTS” TRUMP SCRIPTURE 63

FROM JESUS’ TO PAUL’S TO THE FINAL APPLICATION
TEACHINGS TEACHINGS TARGET FOR THIS TODAY
TRAJECTORY
No local church Increased authority Worldwide authority We should submit
officers or given to elders and given to the pope, to the authority of
governing structure deacons cardinals, and bishops the pope and the
mentioned Roman Catholic
Church

It is difficult to say how the approach of France, Thompson, and
Marshall could in principle guard against this conclusion. But the
Reformation principle sola Scriptura was formulated to guard against
the kind of procedure France, Thompson, and Marshall advocate,
because the Reformers knew that once our authority becomes “Scripture
plus some later developments” rather than “Scripture alone,” the unique
governing authority of Scripture in our lives is lost. On several grounds,
then, this trajectory argument must be rejected as inconsistent with the
view that “all Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Tim. 3:16), and as
inconsistent with the command,

Every word of God proves true....

Do not add to his words,

lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar (Prov. 30:5-6).

By undermining the authority of what Scripture actually teaches,
and by substituting imagined later developments for the teaching of
Scripture, the trajectory hermeneutic viewpoints of R. T. France, David
Thompson, and I. Howard Marshall are another step on the path
toward liberalism.