Honest Questions - #3

We’re at the third stage of our whistle-stop tour through Inspiration and Incarnation, the provocative book penned by Peter Enns which consequently saw him thrown out of Westminster Theological Seminary and branded a heretic leave Westminster Theological Seminary by mutual consent.

Last week I drew attention to Enns’ statement that our problems with the Bible are more to do with our preconceptions of how the Bible should behave as opposed to how the Bible itself behaves. Enns sees his task as precisely this: to listen to how the Bible behaves and allow its own voice to shape our doctrines.

He hones in on three issues that he thinks have not been handled well in the theology of that umbrella term “evangelicism”. These three issues are:

1. The Old Testament and other literature from the ancient world
2. Theological diversity in the Old Testament
3. The way in which the New Testament authors handle the Old Testament

Here are some of his honest questions (and perhaps some of yours and mine too) which arise from an examination of these issues:

“Why does the Bible in places look a lot like the literature of Israel’s ancient neighbours?” “Is the Old Testament really that unique?” “Why do different parts of the Old Testament say different things about the same thing?” “Why do the New Testament authors handle the Old Testament in such odd ways?”

Can you relate to this inquisitiveness? Have you uncovered any answers to these questions?

Enns observes that each of the three issues listed above present challenges to traditional doctrines of Scripture. The first issue challenges the Bible’s uniqueness, the second challenges its integrity, and the third its interpretation. We expect something called God’s Word to be unique, we expect it to be unified in its opinion on things, and we expect it to be handled responsibly, especially by those who wrote our New Testament. And so the evidence in and outside of the Bible appears to pose great problems to those of us who regard Scripture as God’s Word. However, as Enns wisely notes,

What is needed is a way of thinking about Scripture where these kinds of issues are addressed from a very different perspective--where these kinds of problems cease from being problems and become windows that open up new ways of understanding.

Enns’ book proposes such a way -- an Incarnational Analogy. “As Christ is both God and human, so is the Bible”. That is, the Bible is both a divine and human book, with both elements being equally important to its nature. It is not an “otherworldly” book, fallen from heaven into Israel’s lap, full of eternal musings which much be deciphered. It is a book that wholly belonged to the world in which it was produced; “it was connected to and therefore spoke to those ancient cultures”.

Enns thinks that too often we minimise or down play the human fingerprints found in the Bible, just as the Docetic heresy proposed that Jesus only appeared to be human, with his humanity merely something to be explained away. “Scriptural docetism” is what Enns calls this phenomenon, and he is surely right to reject it. After all, Scripture is full of human marks, such as the following:

• The Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek (with a smidge of Aramaic)
• Temples, priests and sacrifices were common throughout the Mesopotamian world
• Prophets were widespread, and not restricted to Israel
• Israel, like the other nations, was ruled by a king
• Israel’s legal system bears similarities with those of surrounding nations

To some, this humanness represents a major headache, but not to Peter Enns, whose incarnational analogy embraces -- even demands -- these obvious human marks. In fact, as he makes a point of noting, “the human dimension of Scripture is essential to its being Scripture”. Why?

When God reveals Himself, He always does so to people, which means that He must speak and act in ways that they will understand.

This is our starting point as we hover over the evidence (both external and internal) and allow it to bear positive fruit.