Last week I gave a brief plug for Peter Enns’
Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, saying that it provided an essential dimension to the doctrine of inerrancy. His basic thesis is that Biblical revelation comes in the form of enculturated human expression, and that affirming the humanity of Scripture doesn’t negate it’s divine origin – it actually affirms it, because it follows the pattern of Jesus’ own divinity as the incarnate God.
Enns isn’t the first to suggest the incarnation as a theoretical model in which to understand Scripture, but his articulation of it does put him at odds with certain sectors of his own tradition. The book has drawn some criticism, in part from those who remain puzzled that more people aren’t aware of Gleason Archer’s definitive resolution of these issues years ago.
Others simply dismiss it on the grounds that the Westminster confession never envisioned the proposal. But it’s also drawn criticism from more notable evangelical stalwarts.
In his review, Paul Helm, Emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of London, called the book a superficial theological and epistemological “failure”. Don Carson,
in a tripartite review, criticized the book for giving more space to fighting the “docetist” (i.e. the over-emphasis on the divine) than to fighting the Arian (i.e. the over-emphasis on the human). In the end he finds Enns to be decidedly “non-pastoral”. Unfortunately (and ironically) the criticisms are more troubling than anything in the book, because they fail to take seriously both the audience and the pastoral problems which Enns is addressing.
I’m not sure which churches Don Carson has attended in his lifetime, but from the sound of it they are highly sophisticated, gingerly nuanced and impressively level-headed pulpits. Either this is a pleasantly uncanny experience or an intentionally blind optimism. In either case, with statements like “Most of us glory in the fact that God has disclosed himself to us in space-time history, in real words, to real people, in real languages” and “[ANE parallels] should cause no surprise among those who fully recognize how much the biblical revelation is grounded in history” one wonders if Carson has ever been to an average conservative church meeting in his entire life. One of my Sunday school attendees was shocked and horrified at a remark that Jesus’ teaching sprung from His study of the Law and the Prophets, declaring that He didn’t need to “study” because He was God and His teaching was a “direct revelation from God”! A few families left a neighboring church because of their outrage at the preacher’s suggestion that Paul was in any way affected by his surrounding culture.
The fact is that evangelical pulpits typically ram an apologetic agenda through the text of the Old Testament to the degree that the text becomes a side-issue. Maybe I’m in the backwoods of conservative evangelicalism, but I’ve never heard a sermon in Genesis that didn’t comprise your basic “creation vs. evolution” seminar. I’ve never heard about ANE parallels and similarities to ANYTHING in the Law (much less the creation story) coming from the pulpit. Moreover, I’ve never, not once, heard the call to honor the Scripture’s diversity coming from my Sunday School class, and the models for resolving “apparent conflicts” which were held out to me have consistently been the voices of steam-rolling harmonization. What both Carson and Helm seem to miss is that this experience is much more typical than they’d like to admit, and the failure for evangelical scholars to admit it is one of the chief reasons doubt arises in the hearts of young students who have been nourished on the very over-simplifications and polarizations Enns is seeking to correct. In other words, where Carson wants scholarly nuance and fine-tuning in Enns’ characterizations
are precisely the points at which most haven’t ever heard such nuance and fine-tuning. And that’s the point of this book. Many of those who would reject the tenents of this book would be equally queasy about the Longman book Carson recommends instead. Though Carson’s first criticism is that Enns doesn’t really understand his audience, the shoe appears to be on the other foot – it’s Carson who doesn’t seem to understand the dissatisfaction of disaffected students who are looking for evangelical scholars to recognize the polarized messages they’re actually hearing in their pulpits and classrooms (a longing he labels “the angry young man syndrome”).
Likewise Helm, who states in the opening lines of his review: “[Enns] writes about the identity and purpose of the Bible by concentrating on the difficulties of interpreting some Old Testament data. This should immediately arouse our suspicions.” Such a statement will provide little comfort for those who are tired of having theological glaze poured over what seem to be real difficulties in actually interpreting the text (the place where we’re supposed to get our theology) - in other words, the audience of this book. It’s no surprise, therefore, to hear these criticisms coming from two
systematic theologians. Both Helm and Carson interpret the book as giving “priority” to the human marks of Scripture (which is really the source of Carson’s complaint that “too little time is given to the doctrine of incarnation”; i.e. too little time spent on the divinity side of the analogy) – but such a criticism demonstrates a studied blindness toward exactly where the pendulum actually is in conservative churches today. In their continued fight against encroaching liberalism conservative evangelicals aren't struggling with Arian tendencies – they’re struggling with docetic ones. Perhaps fighting rabid docetism isn’t best suited to the strategy of giving “equal time” to fighting Arianism. Regardless of such a judgment, though, neither Carson nor Helm ever present what an alternative to Enns’ proposal might actually mean. Surely the CONTENT of what is gained in the process of interpretation is the divine Word of God; and certainly the PROCESS of enscripturation is divinely ordered – but in what sense is the
mode of expression “divine”? The authors were “born along by the Spirit”, but what “heavenly” qualities should we expect to find in the actual words of Scripture? For all the protest against Enns’ supposed “interpretive naiveté” in regard to Arianism, beyond giving attention to the cultural, historical, and linguistic temporalities of the text, I’m not sure what else is an interpreter is to do.
Enns book really seeks to stimulate the imagination as to how the Bible can be a product of human culture and still be the divine Word of God. His answers are meant to be suggestive, not comprehensive, and though Carson states his criticisms as not “to ask Enns to write an entirely different book”, that, in the end, are what his criticisms amount to. Helm’s review falters under a grosser failure, namely the refusal to reckon with the core of Enns’ vision, which will resonate in the minds of many students – namely that the
actual phenomena of Scripture (not merely Scriptural affirmations of its reliability) should be at the bottom floor in formulating our understanding of how Scripture works. Instead, he simply states that “he starts at the wrong end”. That accusation misses the point not only because starting with the phenomena of Scripture IS HIS PROPOSAL, but also because of the degree to which apologetics has defined the agenda in conservative sectors of OT studies, and have fueled the very excesses the book seeks to curb. Both Carson and Helm glibly bypass the most difficult examples of diversity within the OT canon, Carson by offering his own potential harmonization of the less significant examples and Helm by skipping the actual data altogether (how Helm can accuse him of “fideism” and at the same time recommend “staring from dogma instead of difficulties” is beyond me). For these reasons, and a few more from which I will spare you, I believe
Inspiration and Incarnation stands up under scrutiny; not because the criticisms are devoid of useful critiques, appropriate cautions or valid suggestions, but because Enns' words, like apples of gold in settings of silver, are provocatively delivered in exactly the right circumstances.
Foolishness to the Greeks is one of those books I've been meaning to read, if for no other reason than to understand the footnotes in just about every OTHER book I've already read. In this most classic of his many writings, Newbigin details the stormy interface between the Gospel and Western culture, replete with discussions of science and politics. All of the hype surrounding the word "missional" finds its substance in Newbigin, and that from an experienced missonary in (from my experience, anyway) one of the most culturally Gospel-inocculated countries in the world - India.
The Drama of Scripture is among the first books I've recieved and it is the one I'm currently reading. In the tradition of Cornelius Plantinga's Engaging God's World it's intended as a primer for college students in which Bartholomew and Green give the basic framework for interpreting all of life's experiences. Taking its cues in part from N.T. Wright and Al Wolters, the concept of story guides this treatment of the Christian worldview in six (as opposed to Wright's five) acts. Though the authors are informed by such philosophical luminaries as Alasdair MacIntyre and Nicholas Wolterstorff technical discussion never ends up hogging the camera, as the Biblical story takes center stage. It's proving to be a highly recommended read already. If you're interested in the topic, check out their website, based on this book.
Being compared to C.S. Lewis in any light is high praise, and Wright's book has recieved plenty of it. With Lewis' Mere Christianity haunting every page, Wright gives compelling reasons for intelligent unbelievers to consider taking Christianity seriously. The primary differnce bewteen the old classic and Wright's likely candidate for future canonization is that the former attempted to reason from commonly held first principles to Christianity along a track of logical necessity whereas the latter simply (note the title) presents the essence of Christian belief with all its internal logical consistency. The result is something that may have been lacking by the end of Lewis' treatment, namely the aesthetics of Christianity. If Lewis addressed the issue of truth, Wright builds upon it an edifice of beauty.
Having read Francis Watson's impressive and astute Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith and being a huge fan of anything by Kevin Vanhoozer, I'm really looking forward to this little book. I've been interested in the topic of theological hermeneutics since I started reading the Scripture and Hermeneutics Series (I'm currently on volume six), and though I've seen others interact with him some, I've never read anything by Stephen Fowl. With the renewed interest in the topic (even recently spawning a new SBL study group) there's a torrent of literature available, which makes collections of essays one of the more efficient ways to keep up. Vanhoozer's recent book The Drama of Doctrine attempts to maintain propositional elements lost in postliberal approaches, and seeks to give standards for normative interpretation outside an often wayward Church without falling into the pitfalls of supposedly neutral "scientific" approaches. I'm interested in seeing his interaction with Fowl and Adam on the issue.
One of the recurrent themes in Joel Green's work, both exegetical and theological, is his attempt to bridge the gap between Biblical Studies and dogmatics. Historically at odds with one another, the divide is best seen by the distrust each discipline manifests toward the other. Commentaries repeatedly warn of the danger of importing one's theology into the text while theologians warn of the danger of atomizing the Biblical text, at the same time reminding us that without theology the Bible remains nothing more than an interesting archaeological artifact. In Between Two Horizons: Spanning New Testament Studies and Systematic Theology, Green and Turner have collected several exciting essays both describing the problems and paving the way for possible solutions. Contributors include Stephen Fowl, Robert Wall, John Christopher Thomas, John Goldingay, Steve Motyer, Trevor Hart and N.T. Wright, as well as an introductory essay by the editors.
I pre-ordered this book by Norman Wirzba based on the title alone. I don't know anything about the author, and I wasn't really looking for something on the subject - but the idea of a Christian theology of enjoying life derived from Israel's Sabbath practices is just fascinating. Working with youth, I've encountered two sorts of kids, both of which see relaxation as a brief worldly respite from the rigors of Christian discipline. The difference is that one kind of kid is cool with the worldly nature of enjoying life (in moderation), while the other isn't. It's the classic divide between libertinism and legalism, and everyone I know (including myself) leans in one direction or the other. I'm hoping this book helps in filling out a third way to a very practical problem.
That's one of the noises one makes when gurgling in his own blood, which was a metaphorical posture I took while reading Steve Hays 
The helpfulness of the book is its honest presentation of the challenges presented by the Old Testament - a presentation that may linger irritatingly for OT scholars to whom the issues are old hat (and to a more educated audience like Steve, who are anxious to rush to their preferred answers to long-known questions). But for new students who are newly coming to grips with these glaringly terrestrial marks of Scripture, it is an exceedingly wise introduction because it takes their context seriously - namely that of the raging Bible wars between liberals and conservatives, marked by a posture of defense in conservative evangelical churches. The "doceticism" described by Enns in relation to the Bible is, in my judgment, a wise strategy for acknowledging the popular emphasis on Scripture's heavenly origin over against marks of its human composition. That - not an attempt to present a comprehensive theological (or hermeneutical) model for understanding Scripture - is the goal of this book. That's also why Carson's desire for a more detailed exposition of the incarnation analogy misses the point. Again, my criticism wasn't that Carson is an idiot - it's the opposite. He's an impressively credentialed biblical scholar. But this book wasn't written to whet his academic appetite, it was written to deal with what can be a crisis for students who have consistently heard only one side of the story.
There's more to say, especially about Steve's suggestions about apostolic exegesis (and perhaps about Enns repeated assertions that demonstrate his unwillingness to admit of "errors"), and perhaps I'll do that later. But I should probably end my explanation with a reminder about the mode of communication being utilized here. Blogs, for me, anyway, are somewhere in between an email and an essay, both in their manner of expression and their content. Like an email they are often informal codifications of a person's thoughts, and aren't meant to be taken with the precision of a serious publication. So while they bear certain marks of an essay, with argumentation, critical reflection and even a certain polemical edge, they shouldn't be taken as final pronouncements as much as an invitation for discussion. More importantly, like email, they're not very good reflections of what a person is really like. Steve seems to take me for an unfortunate blend of talent and egomania. I fear that this appraisal may come from taking me even more seriously than he's convinced I take myself. His apparent distaste for my presence at the Boar's Head Tavern, for instance, seems to assume that its very much like a denominational association of some kind rather than an attempt to meet new people, make new friends, and talk about areas of interest. After feeling thoroughly clobbered by his comments it did me some good to remember the potential for distortion refracted by what bloggers write during a few minutes of distraction from the rest of their busy lives.
