“I’m glad that the elders at Bent Tree have stated their views so clearly and have opened up a public conversation. Although I disagree with them, I hope and pray the best for Bent Tree. I think the elders are mistaken on this one and would do well to reconsider what the Bible teaches.”

Last night I watched Pastor Pete Briscoe give his rationale for leading his church to welcome female elders to their leadership structure (see above). Briscoe pastors Bent Tree Bible Fellowship, a large congregation in the metro area of Dallas, Texas. His sermon amounts to a recitation of long-standing egalitarian readings of scripture. I admire that Briscoe and the elders made a public presentation of the decision and their justification for it. They have laid their cards on the table, and that is a good thing. But I still think their reasoning is flawed on many points. I am not going to give a point-by-point rebuttal. That would go beyond what is feasible in a single blog post. I would simply highlight three concerns that I think are salient in this particular case.

1. Briscoe and the elders say that they intend to be a “conservative” church that maintains a tenacious commitment to the inerrancy of scripture. That is something to be thankful for. There are many who join feminist readings of scripture to a more explicit repudiation of the Bible’s integrity and authority. Briscoe and the elders do not wish to do that. Still, whether they realize this or not, the theological rationale for their decision is at odds with a commitment to the Bible’s authority. On this point, I think Lig Duncan has well said:

The denial of complementarianism undermines the church’s practical embrace of the authority of Scripture (thus eventually and inevitably harming the church’s witness to the Gospel). The gymnastics required to get from “I do not allow a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man,” in the Bible, to “I do allow a woman to teach and to exercise authority over a man” in the actual practice of the local church, are devastating to the functional authority of the Scripture in the life of the people of God.

By the way, this is one reason why I think we just don’t see many strongly inerrantist-egalitarians (meaning: those who hold unwaveringly to inerrancy and also to egalitarianism) in the younger generation of evangelicalism. Many if not most evangelical egalitarians today have significant qualms about inerrancy, and are embracing things like trajectory hermeneutics, etc. to justify their positions. Inerrancy or egalitarianism, one or the other, eventually wins out.

Obviously, I am thankful for anyone who expresses a clear commitment to inerrancy. But that does not negate the very real concern about the hermeneutical principles that they have embraced.

2. Briscoe and the elders rely heavily upon William Webb’s trajectory hermeneutic. If you are unfamiliar with this, here it is in a nutshell. Webb argues that the Bible’s ethical position is often one of development, moving from an inferior ethic to an ultimate ethic. On this view, our goal is not merely to discern the ethical position of scripture but the ethical trajectory of scripture.

That trajectory suggests that we might reach an ethical ideal that is better than what is reflected in scripture itself. An example of this would be slavery. The Bible endorses slavery, but we now know that was wrong. So we reject slavery even though the Bible endorses it. Likewise, the Bible may teach male headship in marriage and church leadership, but we now know that was wrong. So we reject male headship even though the Bible clearly teaches it.

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