Honest Questions

I've begun reading a book called Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problems of the Old Testament by Peter Enns. It cropped up on a few bibliobloggers' Top 5 books lists, and so I thought it might be worth checking out. Little did I know that this has proved to be quite the controversial work. For instance, this is what the president of Westminster Theological Seminary has to say about Inspiration and Incarnation. It

has caught the attention of the world so that we have scholars that love this book, and scholars who have criticized it very deeply…. We have students who have read it say it has liberated them. We have other students that say it's crushing their faith and removing them from their hope. We have churches that are considering it, and two Presbyteries have said they will not send students to study under Professor Enns here.

In fact, the writing of this book has led to Peter Enns parting ways with his former employers Westminster Theological Seminary, whose chairman saw the book as being incompatible with the Westminster Confession of Faith. Interesting.

Anyway, here is a quote from the first chapter of the book, which introduces us to Enns' provocative perspective on that other book we call the Word of God:

It is somewhat ironic, it seems to me, that both liberals and conservatives make the same error. They both assume that something worthy of the title word of God would look different from what we actually have. The one accents the human marks and makes them absolute. The other wishes the human marks were not as pronounced as they were. They share a similar opinion that nothing worthy of being called God's word would look so common, so human, so recognisable. But, when God speaks, He speaks in ways we would understand.