A new method of interpretation
In recent years we have come across an increasingly common idea: that to find Christian truth - and especially ethical truth - all we need to do is to find the general direction Scripture seems to be pointing.
Once that direction is detected, where we ultimately land on the landscape of morality does not really matter. Even if it is outside of Scripture. And sometimes even if it seems to contradict Scripture.
The example always lauded is slavery. It is argued that slavery is never outrightly condemned within Scripture, but today we all believe that slavery is wrong. How come we have arrived at that "extra-biblical" or "post-biblical" conclusion? Answer? Because the general trajectory of Scripture is anti-slavery.
So, when it comes to determining the rightness or wrongness of a particular sexual behaviour, for example, we do not seek the answer in the Bible itself, 'chapter and verse' so to speak (after all there are new moral issues which the authors never could have imagined).
No, to discover right and wrong, we go a hunting for trajectories. And once we have sussed the general direction of Scripture, it matters not where the arrow actually landeth.
A grain of truth in a barn full of error
Satan very rarely tells a bare faced lie. That's just plain stupid. He sugar coats his lies with just enough truth that we at least taste, if not swallow, the devilish deception.
So there is an ounce of truth in this hermeneutic.
"God has more light to break forth from his Word" said a wise ancient. We should be continually amazed at the way details of Scripture hitherto overlooked were deliberately placed there by the Holy Spirit anticipating future usefulness.
Take Paul's advice to the pornified city of Corinth: "But since there is so much immorality, each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband." (1 Corinthians 7:2). In other words surrounded by so much sexual temptation it is better to marry than to burn.
But look again at how specific Paul is. He could have said "since there is so much immorality get married." But the omniscient Holy Spirit knew that one day someone would twist such a loose statement like yea: "Look Paul just says get married, he doesn't say who you should get married to."
The same-sex loop hole was closed by the Holy Spirit the moment Paul's pen left the papyrus.
So the Scriptures do indeed point forward....there's the grain of truth.
All ethics known by God
...but not the way our modern interpreters insist.
They would say, for example, that the situation of a faithful same-sex relationship was never conceived by the writers of the New Testament who, poor things, were pretty unenlightened fellows.
All Scriptural condemnations of homosexual behaviour - few in number, did you not know, and all revisable, have ye not heard? - were based on scientific ignorance. They were opposing promiscous one-night stands, not monogamous faithful same-sex relationships.
We "now know" that faithful same-sex relationships are possible.
So how do we assess the moralilty of faithful same-sex relationships? Well according to trajectory theory such relationships are OK because the trajectory of the New Testament, according to these folks is love and faithfulness.
If a relationship is loving and faithful, therefore, it satisfies the general criteria and trajectory of Scripture.
A Barnful of Errors
Now for the barn. Where is this hermeneutic going wrong?
First, the idea that God the Holy Spirit has ever been caught off-guard is erroneous. The notion that the divine Holy Spirit who inspired the Scriptures failed to anticipate future ethical dilemmas is at best a mistake and at worst a blasphemy.
The fact that the Holy Spirit worked through ordinary human writers does not confine their writings to what they could personally understand at the moment of writing. The prophets, for example, explains the apostle Peter, didn't really understand the messianic things they wrote about, try as they did, for they were serving a future people. (1 Peter 1).
There is not a single sexual sin possible to mankind that is not mentioned and put to judgement in Scripture. For the God who designed sex in the first place is all-knowing.
Second, any behaviour could be made permissible by this new hermeneutic. Anyone could discover a trajectory in Scripture to justify a human behaviour - no matter how bizarre. Morality by trajectory is completely open ended. Unlike a proscriptive command, a trajectory ethic is a slippery eel. My subjective trajectory may be completely different from yours. Who is to decide whose trajectory is correct?
Third, the motive for Trajectory Hermeneutics (TH) is not difficult to discern. It is a blatant attempt to justify, by clever reasoning, what is denied by plain text. For some inexplicable reason it is still thought necessary to consult Scripture (why? Why not just give up on the Word?) and since everyone knows what the Scriptures teach based on a plain hermeneutic, it becomes essential to invent a new and clever hermeneutic in order to deny orthodox historic conclusions.
Fourth, TH denies explicitly what the Scriptures teach about themselves:
"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." (2 Timothy 3:16-17)
All of the Bible is inspired, all of it is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, and so broad is its scope that every man or woman of God can be thoroughly, not partially, equipped, for every good work. The Scriptures are self-sufficient for all we need in this life. True they are not exhaustive, but they are sufficient.
Fifth, every issue for which TH is brought in as the knight in shining armour concerns contemporary issues such as sexuality and gender. On these issues the Bible is startlingly clear in two ways.
Take human sexuality as our example.
There are relatively few (around seven) Biblical texts which explicitly speak against same-sex sexuality.
(This paucity of prohibitions is regarded as a weakness by revisionists who take these texts one by one and attempt to deconstruct them - with remarkably little success, except to the pre-convinced).
Seven prohibitions only, because seven are all we need.
But the Biblical teaching on human sexuality is not confined to seven negative prohibitions! It is set in the context of a thousand positive endorsements of heterosexual marriage.
It's the way God works. There are hundreds of permitted trees in the garden of life and only one prohibited.
The setting of all-Scripture and the background assumption of all-Scripture is heterosexual, from the opening chapters with Adam and Eve to the closing marriage between Christ (the 'male' bridegroom) and the Church (his 'female' bride).
That's why we only need seven prohibitions, because we have, in addition, a thousand endorsements of heterosexual marriage.
Come to think of it, we would need only one prohibition. The Lord has been generous in giving us seven, to make things perfectly (☺) clear.
Summing Up
But we're drifting off course here...
All the ethical truth we need to know is inside of Scripture. This Amazing Book speaks way beyond the confines of its human authors to people of all time, because these authors were inspired by a single Divine Author.
Returning to slavery, the Scriptures, all by themselves speak against the wickedness of treating any human being cruelly or beneath the dignity of being made in the image of God. This truth is plainly inside of Scripture, not an arrow that fell, like Jonathan's dart, beyond it.
The arrow of truth never falls outside of Scripture, but always within it.
AI Image: Dalle "Paint a picture which shows an arrow of time shooting out of the Bible"
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