For the next three weeks, a few of us are reading through Peter Enns' book Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. One day we were talking about how old the Hebrew language was and one thing led to another and so we chose this book for a few weeks.
We were divided over the tone of the book. As many of you will know, Enns was forced to resign from Westminster Theological Seminary to a significant degree over this book. As we read, some of us felt like Enns was rubbing it in the noses of Westminster and weren't surprised he lost his job. Others of us might not have put things quite as baldly as he does at times, but didn't think the tone was quite as confrontational as others did. All of us felt like if there was a problem with the book, it was the way he said what he said more than what he said.
So I want to mention some of the ideas both helpful and controversial in the first two chapters:
1. The Bible gives us incarnated truth. That is to say, when God speaks, He speaks to be heard. Thus the original audiences of the Bible could not have understood God if He had not spoken their language.
This would seem to be the main point of the book. It's too bad that we can't go back to 1848 and reframe the issues that so damaged Christianity these last 150 years. Enns is trying to steer clear of the fundamentalist-modernist polarization that took place. We shouldn't fear the fact that the Enuma Elish has a creation story with similarities to Genesis 1. We shouldn't fear the fact that the Gilgamesh Epic bears a lot of similarity to the Flood story. Why would we ever have thought that God would reveal truth in a bubble that was only vaguely related to all times rather than very related to the people to whom it was first being revealed?
Of course we should not be surprised that the legislation of Deuteronomy and the wisdom of Proverbs looks a lot like other ancient legislation and wisdom. Wasn't God revealing himself to them in their times before He used these words to reveal himself to us? The liberals said, "This teaching is obviously just like any other ancient teaching--it's not inspired." The fundamentalists said, "This teaching isn't like the other ancient teaching--it's inspired."
The right answer from the beginning should have been, "This teaching starts where the ancients were and leads them to God--it's inspired."
By the way, like I protest Mark Noll, I strongly protest Enns' use of the word evangelical in relation to his detractors at Westminster and elsewhere. Let's call them fundamentalists and strongly affirm that Westminster was founded from the very beginning as a fundamentalist institution. I resent Noll restricting the term "fundamentalist" to "ignoramuses" like we revivalists and Pentecostals, strangely exepting his own tradition from the label of "ignorant" in the way he goes about his historiography (Foucault is on line 1).
Those who deserve the label "fundamentalist" are those who fought the modernists intellectually and militantly (and their heirs) far more than those of our traditions that retreated from the battle into our own little conclaves. Enns is not battling against Wesleyan evangelicals. He is battling Calvinist fundamentalists. And that is the foundation of Westminster.
2. Revelation is thus not always unique in the sense that it has to be completely distinct from the world to which it is revealed. God meets people where they are. Given Enns' goals, he probably underplays the possible uniqueness of revelation as well. For example, to me the egalitarian aspects of Paul's teaching stand out to me precisely because those are the points where the New Testament is more unique in its cultural world. Enns points to the worship of Yahweh as the more unique aspects of the Old Testament more than its laws or customs per se.
3. I thought Enns discussion of the difference between historical event and historiography was helpful. All history writing is done from a certain perspective. Again, some of us thought he could have presented this content in a softer manner.
In another section he discusses the word myth in relation to the early chapters of Genesis. Despite Enns' pains to say that it doesn't mean "untrue," it remains for the time being a word almost impossible for some people in the church to use in relation to the Bible, no matter how carefully you define it. I'm not sure that he "redeems" the category in his treatment here, despite his attempt to use a more proper definition than the one in common use.
As I read these chapters, I also printed out the official Affirmations and Denials Regarding Recent Issues that was adopted by the Board of Trustees at Westminster Theological Seminary. Some of the statements sure sound like the Westminster Confession is the 67th book of Scripture, more authoritative than Nicea, the magisterium of the Calvinist tradition, the ex cathedra pronouncement of a Calvinist Pope. Take these lines, for example, "We affirm that the truths affirmed in the [Westminster Confession] are true for all times, all places, all languages, and all cultures." "We deny that the truths affirmed in the [Westminster Confession] are true only for their seventeenth century situation or only for some cultures or circumstances."
WOW! I'm glad I'm a Wesleyan. We have Articles of Religion that we wholeheartedly affirm. But I don't think any of our leaders are so arrogant as to think we are the tradition that finally has everything right, the wisest among the people of God.
More important, "if your heart is as my heart, put your hand in mine."
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9 comments:
I was one of those who complained about his tone though less-so the content (though I shook my head at his delight in using inflamatory words).
As for content he introduced nothing more than what any Old Testament 101 courses present, but I thought his tone seemed like he was spitting in the face of someone. (Maybe if I knew those folk they deserve it.) To me his tone was more problematic than many of the actual points he made. Again, I don't know many fundamentalists who deserve spit in their eye--maybe he does. Perhaps he is spitting on the most radical of the Calvinist-Fundamentalists and maybe they deserve it.
I did like the reminder of the church fathers' notion (that Scripture is in some way "incarnate" and of two natures at once just as Jesus is).
I was perplexed that he constantly assigned "revelation" to the text alone...it seemed like he was trapped in the box of ideas he was trying to push against.
Your accusation that Westminster is Catholic in their response is hilarious. LOL
What triggered my own interest in this book is asking when the Old Testament went from oral tradition to a written text. Was it in the 500's as some say? About 1000 as many now say? Or were there written "documents" before then, even before "Hebrew" as a language existed and in what language were these written? This is what I am interested in answering. Then I can piece together how the Old Testament was inspired and transmitted orally then in writing down to what we have today.
I always enjoy these lunch reading groups.
Nice to see this interaction. I was distressed at the publication of the requirements for members of the board of the W Theological Seminary. All institutions have limits, even my company, but putting them into words is very difficult and not by any means a legally watertight systemizable possibility.
So sorry I missed day one. My grandmother sat in the front row and silently sang every word to the song she had asked me to sing for her sister's funeral. There are not many gifts I can give to my 96 year old grandmother - but that was one I would not have missed for anything.
I didn't find the language all that strident in the first two chapters of Enns' book - though I am from outside the discipline. I have discovered that "fighting words" are different in the various disciplines.
Like several, I found his premise interesting, but not all that radical. That there are similarities to other stories and wisdom literature does not seem (to me) all that much out of the ordinary. If God were trying to break into the consciousness of people a few thousand years before Christ - and before written language, there would probably be a few stories about him throughout the oral tradition. Many of them may have had the details changed in teh telling. As Enns points out, the stories in Hebrew literature point to "one true" God, rather than a pantheon of deities.
It might be easier to avoid using the word myth altogether. Redefining a word in the common lexicon is rather problematic. Perhaps allegory would be a better word.
The thought that OT scripture might be both completely human and completely divine was an interesting concept that I would have liked to hear your comments on. I wonder, can the general revelation be treated similarly? Not in a patheistic way - but something else? Creator and sustainer?
Very interesting, with a lot new to me, as is the post that followed, though I did read about Enns in World magazine. I have been reading Olson's History of Theology. His section on K. Barth says Barth saw the word of God (divine revelation) as three-fold: Jesus Christ is God's word (ultimately), Scripture (a very human book) is God's word as it witnesses of Jesus, and then there is the Church, which he apparently sees as at the bottom, so to speak.
Knowing little about Barth, I wonder how much, if any, his work influenced the American evangelical movement. Where would WTS (for example) be in relation to Barth and other neo-orthodox theologians, sympathetic or opposed? I assume the latter.
I am also fascinated with your evaluation of the place WTS places the confession. Actually, this pretty much holds true of even the garden variety Calvinists I grew up with, who believed you could not really be a Christian (or the best "kind" of Christian without holding to the doctrine of perseverance.
P. S.
I liked how Olsen represented Barth, it made a lot of sense to me. Do you find yourself in agreement with him on this?
Barth is anathema to fundamentalists, even though some would consider him to be the final touches on Calvin (he was Reformed). In fact, in terms of the old Princeton/WTS rivalry, Barth currently reigns supreme at Princeton.
The problem that many had with Barth was his sense that the Bible became the word of God when God spoke through it. He argued against fundamentalism not least because it based things too much (in his opinion) on human reasoning rather than on divine revelation. I'm somewhere in between Barth (almost no natural revelation as the path) and the heavy rationalism of late modern theology in its many forms, both conservative and liberal.
One critique one person in our group had of Enns was that he nowhere thus far mentions Jesus as the supreme revelation but seems still to place the historic meaning of the Bible as the focal point of revelation.
Barth saw Jesus as the first order word of God, the Bible as the second order word of God, and proclamation as the third order word of God.
If you accept that the Scriptures have two meanings, and Christ has two natures, then there are two meanings to Christ's nature, a "spiritual" one and a natural one . One seeks to justify man with a scapegoat, while the other seek to have Christ represent all men...I think there are problems with both.
Scapegoating another is wrong, period, that is if Christ is human and not a gnostic "savior". The scapegoat was a useful term in Jewish thinking...but is not just, in organizational structuring of life, whether in families, or organizations, or government, as in laws...each man is responsible for his actions...
Not only is scapegoating wrong, but having Christ represent the "perfect" moral model seems wrong-headed as well, as there are many "models", which are different within different cultures that brought about social and political change, which represent good character, or moral or ethical principles...Christ is not a universal if we are talking about moral model, an "educational tool", and not some gnostic representative "head" (Adam as theollogizing Christ would do...otherwise, if you place the empahsis on Christ's divinity (faith), then you separate "truth" from reality, which is gnostic sounding to me...this is theologizing the "christ of faith" type of thinking...instead of Jesus of Nazareth type of thinking...Jesus was a real human being!!!! not some supernatural representative universal "god" figure...
As far as other religions/cultures having "supernatural" information, i would think that it was not "supernatural" so much as "representative" within their cultural frame...myth is sppropriate, as Scripture is not supernaturalistically "inspired", but rather, was the journaling of inspired men...whether one chooses to believe that there was a real eyewitness (which I doubt) or were scribes that used Greek mythological "universal" themes in story form....
Dr. Schenck,
Thank you for posting your interaction with Enns' book...please continue to post as you and your co-readers work your way through it.
You mentioned in the comment thread that your group hadn't yet seen Enns refer to Jesus as the supreme revelation. For that, I'd refer you to page 110 of I&I (which your group may not have gotten to yet), where he says it in a couple of ways, most importantly thus:
"Christ is supreme, and it is in him, the embodied word, that the written word ultimately finds its unity."
there's a lot more about that in chapter 4, "The O.T. and its interpretation in the N.T."
I hope that's helpful. Thanks again for your reflections on this.
Justin, you guessed right--we had only read chapters 1 & 2... Enns did jet to Jesus as the supreme Revelation by page 110 ;-)
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