Hi,
As much as I dislike cutting and pasting on discussion lists, I have
wanted to comment on Enns book but have found it difficult to put into
words how I feel about this book which I read a couple of months ago and
how important I think it is. So I am copying a review of the book by a
reformed pastor who I know on another discussion list (this review is
from his Blog at http://my.opera.com/barryhofstetter/blog/). He
addresses a number of questions (including how Enns thoughts fit with
issues of inerrancy) that have been posed in this thread and is
approaching the book as a person close to the controversy that has been
stirred at Westminster Seminary.
Regards,
Joel Duff
Akron OH
The Living Enns...
<http://my.opera.com/BarryHofstetter/blog/show.dml/253519>=20
Saturday, 13. May 2006, 03:25:06
Book Review
Peter Enns
Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old
Testament
Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005
N.E. Barry Hofstetter
It is fully granted that we should never approach Scripture with an a
priori theory of its character and impose that theory upon the
evidence... We derive our doctrine of Scripture from what the Scripture
teaches with respect to its own character - in a word, from the
testimony it bears to itself.
John Murray, "The Attestation of Scripture," in The Infallable Word, p.
10, 1946.
In what way shall we discover how the terms 'infallible' and 'inerrant'
can be applied to the Bible? We might conceivably approach the matter
with an a priori idea as to what infallibility should be and the proceed
to make the Bible fit into that idea... There is a much better way to
follow, namely, that of turning to the Bible itself to learn what
infallibility is.
E.J. Young, They Word is Truth, p. 113-114, 1957.
Recently, Peter Enns's Inspiration and Incarnation has caused something
of a stir in conservative evangelical circles. As it has been discussed
on certain online forums, Dr. Enns has been charged with compromising
the traditional evangelical understanding of the inerrancy and
infallibility of Scripture. However, as I looked at the quotations
adduced to support this assertion, I experienced a form of cognitive
dissonance, in that the citations did not appear to support the actual
claims. In fact, in several instances, I found myself saying "that
sounds suspiciously like something I might say, and I certainly don't
deny either the inerrancy or the infallibility of Scripture." I
therefore had to run out and purchase a copy of the book and write this
review.
I found that my suspicions were largely correct, and that Dr. Enns's
detractors simply did not appreciate the position that Dr. Enns was
advancing. Essentially what I see Dr. Enns doing is neither advancing a
novel doctrine of inspiration nor compromising with liberalism, but
attempting to take seriously the ideas cited above by his predecessors
at Westminster Theological Seminary, Mssrs. Murray and Young. In
paraphrase, the reader of Scripture must not impose a theory of
inspiration, including ideas of inerrancy and infallibility on the
Scriptures, and then expect Scripture to conform to that doctrine
(otherwise known as the eisegetical or etic approach). Instead, one
allows the Scriptures themselves to inform the reader concerning the
proper doctrine of inspiration (the exegetical or emic approach). In Dr.
Enns's own words:
The presence of theological diversity does not mean that it lacks
integrity or trustworthiness. It means that we must recognize that the
data of Scripture leads us to conceive differently of how Scripture has
integrity or is worthy of trust. Scripture may indeed "lack integrity"
if we impose upon it standards that have little in common with how the
Bible itself behaves. (p. 169, emphasis added)
For a number of years now, teaching courses such as "Introduction to
Theology" and "Biblical Theology," I have used what I call "the
incarnational analogy" in explaining the phenemonology of the
Scriptures, an idea inspired (pun intended) nearly 20 years ago when
first reading B.B. Warfield's classic treatments on the inspiration of
the Scriptures. Essentially, inscripturation is parallel but not
identical to the incarnation of Christ. In the incarnation of Christ,
the true God becomes true man, and the infinite, as it were, is
comprised by the finite, or as we might paraphrase Col 1:15, Christ is
the "invisible God made visible." In the Scriptures, the infinite mind
and thought of God is reduced to human terms, human language, in all its
generic diversity - historical narrative, poetry, prophetic utterances,
and apocalyptic visions.
Now, an important point to stress here is the "real reality" of both
inscripturation and incarnation. Recently I had an online exchange with
a couple of Jehovah's Witnessess who attempted to disprove the physical
resurrection of Christ by asserting that his bodily functions would
perforce continue even in eternity. I pointed out that the problem was
not Christ's bodily functions, but their assumption that there was
something wrong with his created bodily functions, which God had after
all called "very good" very early on in history. In other words, Christ
was and is really human, with all that this implies. He was made like us
in every way, excepting sin, and so experienced emotions such as anger
and sorrow, and states such as exhaustion or pain. If we were to meet
Christ during his earthly walk, we would meet a very human person, and
we would perceive him as such, even if spiritually we might recognize
that he was more than human. There would be a certain "messiness" (to
borrow a lexical item used several times by Dr. Enns) to our experience
with Christ, as we might see crumbs in his beard and stains on his robe.
To deny "that Christ has come in the flesh" is to enter the realms of
Gnosticism and Docetism.
Similarly, then, Scripture, to be understood by human readers must be
given in language and forms understandable by human beings. Thus we have
Hebrew and Greek, and the Greek is not even the quasi-artificial
literary language of the Classical period, but the type of language
spoken and read regularly throughout the Roman Empire, real Greek for
real people. The literary forms are similarly understandable in terms of
the cultural context in which they are given (more on this below). But
if we expect a certain "messiness" with Christ in his incarnation, why
do we avoid that implication with the Scriptures themselves? I have
discussed this idea with a number of individuals through the years, and
have noted several authors who make claims similar to Enns, Young, and
Murray. What I find interesting, even disturbing, though, is that they
are not consistent with these claims. Yes, Scripture accommodates to
human forms, but in practice most inerrantists seem to treat Scripture
in a nearly Gnostic fashion, seeking an artificial uniformity which is
foreign to the texts themselves. Rather, as I endeavor regularly to
point out, the unity of Scripture is not that of a single
editor/redactor (such as the Qur'an), but is much deeper. It is the
unity of a living organism, and not an artificial mechanism. Its
diversity is of such a nature as to avoid facile consistency, while
inviting the reader to contemplate its deeper thematic connections.
Scripture is not a "power point" presentation consisting of a number of
bulleted one-liners designed simply to impart information (however
ideally suited to the business context), but literature in various
genres meant to promote wisdom. In other words, the "difficulty" of
Scripture (cf. 2 Pet 3:16) is likely intentional of the Spirit who
inspired it, meant to evoke a deeper desire to understand, to delve its
depths. As someone once said, Scripture is like the ocean: on the shore,
the youngest "babe in Christ" can splash around, but even the greatest
theologians will never dive to the bottom. Why is Scripture like this?
It is incarnational: it is the word of the living God, inspired,
eternal, and absolutely true, but it also the words of human beings,
written by real people for specific occasions. As Warfield long ago
theorized, the Spirit does not overwhelm the human authors, but used
them in all their humanity to write his word, a humanity which also
implies the very diversity that we find in the Scriptures.
Now, I have given this quick review of my own thinking on this subject
in order to help the reader of this review understand why I was
extremely pleased, though not completely surprised, by Dr. Enns's main
thesis concerning the incarnational analogy for understanding the nature
of the Scriptures.
In the same way that Jesus is - must be - both God and human, the Bible
is also a divine and human book.... It was not an abstract, otherwordly
book, dropped out of heaven. It was connected to and therefore spoke to
those ancient cultures.... Because Christianity is a historical
religion, God's word reflects the various historical moments in which
Scripture was written. (p. 17-18, emphasis original)
This way of thinking about the Bible is referred to differently by
different theologians. The term I prefer is incarnational analogy:
Christ's incarnation is analogous to Scripture's "incarnation." [p. 18,
emphasis original]
What we have in this book is a thinker who is willing to take this
principle seriously, and begin to work out its full implications. The
reader may disagree concerning some of these implications, and even
disagree concerning some of the specific applications, such as Dr. Enns
makes in later chapters, but the principle itself is sound and helps
make a great deal of sense out of Scripture as we have it.
Rather than going chapter by chapter and analyzing the specific
arguments that Dr. Enns employs in supporting his thesis, I am instead
going to emphasize several theological principles that I think are
foundational for pursuing this study, and that hopefully will contribute
in at least a minor way to the discussion. I then wish to make some
observations pertinent to NT studies, since Dr. Enns is rather
myopically focused on the OT (but I am forced to forgive him,
considering his background).
1)Christ, who is the Lord of Scripture and the Lord of our personal
spiritual experience is also the Lord of history. The implications of
this are truly astounding once actually considered beyond the slogan
level. For example, are we to assume that God simply accommodated his
message to the cultural standards of the day, or may we at least
speculate that God arranged or controlled historical and cultural
development so that his truth might be expressed in the best possible
way, not only for the culture at the time, but for all time (hence
inscripturation)? It is possible, indeed probable, that God has planted
"redemptive analogies" in various cultures, analogies which make the
Gospel understandable to peoples even when they have no cultural
framework that has been influenced by Christianity. How much more so the
cultures in which God revealed himself and his plan of redemption? This
is really a matter of trust - do we really believe that God chose the
best way in which to reveal himself?
2)At the risk of sounding too Van Tilian, I'd like to suggest that the
ultimate theological "key" to understanding the unity and diversity of
the Scriptures is the Trinity, which is essentially infinite diversity
in infinite combination. While God is one, he is also three, and each
person of the Trinity has qualities peculiar to that person, which
describe him as a person and distinguishes him from the other two
persons. I see the Trinitarian principle not standing in opposition to
the incarnational analogy in any way, but rather an equal, complementary
truth.
3)We wish to avoid artificial harmonization while recognizing the
essential unity of the Scriptures. Just as we will never see all of the
implications of the Trinity, so we may never (this side of eternity,
anyway) understand all of the ways in which the diverse elements of the
Bible may be reconciled. But perhaps even seeking such surface
harmonization is not what is important, but the very pursuit of the
underlying principial unity. We are to grow chiefly in wisdom as our
character is transformed in the image of Christ. Having said that,
though, our cultural conditioning in Aristotelian logic is such that we
probably can't help trying to harmonize, but our attempts must be
thoroughly grounded in the logic of the Scriptures themselves, and not
any external principles.
With regard to the NT writings, I believe that there are some
characteristics peculiar to those documents which need to be considered.
One is the issue of genre: try as we might, we have never really found
any other literature from the first century era which approximates the
gospels. They appear to be sui generis, a form of theological narrative
which has elements of history and biography but are not really either of
these. What is of supreme importance to the gospel writers is their
vision of of the Gospel, and it is around this vision, as interpreted by
each author/redactor, that the details are organized and arranged. Quite
simply, the gospel writers are not concerned with accuracy in the same
way that our modern writers of history and biography are, and it is a
great mistake to impute to them this standard. Even the Greeks, and
their imitators the Romans, who invented and developed these genres did
not write them with the same standards as modern writers (one only has
to compare Herodotus with Thucydides, or Suetonius with Tacitus, to see
remarkable differences!). In fact, I believe that the best possible
antecedents for understanding the method of the gospels is not any type
of literature from the Greco-Roman world, but the OT, and particularly
what we normally call the historical literature, Samuel, Kings, and
Chronicles.
The epistles of the NT also call for a great deal more research in terms
of method. Paul's letters are obviously real letters, unlike the
epistolary genre occasionally employed in Greco-Roman literature (such
as the letters of Pliny the Younger). However, simply calling them
letters doesn't do them justice at all. There is a great deal of
difference between Paul's Epistle to the Romans and the First Epistle to
Timothy. The former is largely a theological treatise, probably sermonic
in form, while the latter is a series of practical instructions to a
relatively young man about to assume the leadership of a church. In my
mind, these are practically different genres, and this generic
distinction explains the difference in form, theological content, and
vocabulary.
I have neither the time nor the space in this particular forum to
elaborate at length, but merely wish to suggest that issues of diversity
and unity of the biblical writings must be recognized honestly along
with a full commitment to derive our ideas from the very structure, form
and content of the Scriptures themselves. At the very least, our own
method begins with understanding each Scripture in its own context, as
the author brings to bear his understanding of the particular truth with
which he is concerned. Only as we appreciate the diversity of the
Scriptural writings will be begin to penetrate to the deeper and very
real actual unity of the entire canon of Scripture.
It must be freely admitted that there are difficulties connected to the
doctrine of biblical infallibility. There appear to be discrepancies and
contradictions in the Bible...Furthermore, disingenuous and artificial
attempts at harmony are to be avoided, for they do not advance the cause
of truth and faith...But some difficulties, perhaps many, remain
unresolved. The earnest student has no adequate answer and he may
frankly confess that he is not able to explain an apparent discrepancy
in the teaching of Scripture...There is no doctrine of our Christian
faith that does not confront us with unresolved difficulties here in
this world, and the difficulties become all the greater just as we get
nearer the center.
John Murray, p. 6-7
--------------------------------------------------------
Dr. R. Joel Duff
Associate Professor of Biology
185 ASEC, Department of Biology
University of Akron
Akron OH 44325-3908
rjduff@uakron.edu
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Received on Tue Jun 13 02:47:02 2006
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