Another example of a moderate might be someone who remains personally orthodox but who rejects inerrancy or is sort of a "soft" inerrantist who doesn't want to break fellowship over the issue. Back in the 80s when the term became popular, a moderate was often someone with Barthian or neo-orthodox views as opposed to confessional or inerrantist on the one hand or basically unbelieving anti-supernaturalism (liberalism) on the other. 20 years ago, evangelicals in the PCUSA could generally be said to be this kind of moderate. A good many of them went on to "discern" that that there wasn't a problem with committed same-sex relationships. Some argued that we don't read the Bible the way that Hodge and Warfield did anymore, so why should we be literalists on that issue?
Today in the SBC, for example, almost no one claims to be a moderate. There was an uproar a couple of years ago when a man who was elected President of the SBC was described as a "moderate" by the mainstream media, mainly because the opposition took a hard stance against CRT, etc. By the standards of the 80s it is true that he isn't a moderate, although he may be a number of other things.
Some who are orthodox will start emphasizing some sort of pragmatism such as church growth methods, eventually de-emphasizing doctrine. Eventually, "outdated" views on sexual ethics and other issues are also de-emphasized if not outright rejected.
In some hands inerrancy dies the death of a thousand qualifications, and it is no surprise when the next generation rejects it. Several evangelical scholars who are generally conservative and who even claim to be inerrantists could be named.
A drift toward some sort of moderatism seems to be happening at Dallas Theological Seminary. After a generation of Progressive Dispensationalism (whether or not we think that move toward covenant premil was an improvement over their old views, it nonetheless represented a drift away from their doctrinal moorings), some of the motivation of which was looking for a basis for social justice advocacy which had been precluded by their older stance, we increasingly see egalitarianism and wokeness on the part of faculty and graduates. They had also started pushing church growth methods back in the 80s or 90s.
At roughly the same time, there was also doctrinal drift at Westminster Theological Seminary. Unlike Dallas and some other schools, they have been able to right the ship from what I understand. But the other schools may not have had someone like Enns who represented such a clear and direct challenge to their doctrinal stance. Perhaps in part due to its constituency mainly consisting of independent congregations, Dallas also seems to have a less engaged alumni base. Whenever I've encountered a grad and asked about the current state of the seminary, invariably I'll find that he isn't very familiar with developments over the past 20-25 years. By contrast, in Presbyterianism, even though most of the seminaries are independent, due to connectional polity, elders can't help but have some familiarity with the kinds of graduates the seminaries are producing.
