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Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament
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From the Back Cover
Inspiration and Incarnation addresses Old Testament phenomena that challenge traditional evangelical perspectives on Scripture and suggests a way forward. This tenth anniversary edition includes a substantive postscript that reflects on the reception of the first edition."Peter Enns has done the evangelical church an immense service by challenging preconceived notions of what the Bible ought to be by insisting on building his high view of Scripture on what God intended Scripture to be. When the first edition appeared, it started important and healthy conversations about the Bible in spite of efforts to dismiss or marginalize Enns's viewpoint. One does not have to agree with all his conclusions to understand why this book has helped and will continue to help many people to embrace Scripture as God's Word to us. Everyone who loves the Bible ought to read this important book."--Tremper Longman III, Westmont College"The first edition of Peter Enns's Inspiration and Incarnation has been a superb resource for helping students of the Bible take the human dimension of this ancient text seriously. This second edition, with its profound concluding reflections on the nature of Scripture after ten years of responses to the first edition, promises to be even more effective in helping students of the Bible appreciate more fully the inscripturated Word made flesh."--Richard Middleton, Northeastern Seminary, Roberts Wesleyan College"I have used this book to great effect in the classroom. Divinity students welcome Enns's invitation to think theologically about history--how the historical 'problems' of the Bible may in fact be a crucial aspect of its theological witness. Of course, the incarnational analogy can be pressed too far, and there are other models on offer. But Enns's model is traditional, illuminating, hospitable to other models, and urgently needed by Christians still caught in late modern debates about inerrancy, inspiration, and revelation. This book continues to strike a chord that resonates."--Stephen B. Chapman, Duke University"Some of those most dedicated to biblical studies unfortunately begin from inadequate theological presuppositions. If everyone who identifies as a conservative evangelical would read and absorb this book, the field would be better for it--and so might the church and the world."--Christopher B. Hays, Fuller Theological Seminary
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About the Author
Peter Enns (PhD, Harvard University) is the Abram S. Clemens Professor of Biblical Studies at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pennsylvania. He has authored or edited numerous books, including The Bible Tells Me So and The Evolution of Adam.
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Product details
Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Baker Academic; 2 edition (September 22, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0801097487
ISBN-13: 978-0801097485
Product Dimensions:
6 x 0.6 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.4 out of 5 stars
84 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#55,784 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Peter Enns's book, "Inspiration and Incarnation" may be the most honest contemporary theology book I've ever read. Just finished reading it for the second time. There is a total absence of pretense, no apparent axe to grind, and he's never afraid to say, "I don't entirely understand 'x' or 'y'," which means he's a rare theologian who is comfortable not only with the limits of his intellect, but also publicly admits them. Just a thoughtful scholar sitting down with the Bible and saying, "Let me see what this says, rather than telling it what it must be saying in order to fit into my presuppositions about it." If the nature of Scripture is a front-burner issue for you, it's an excellent read. If you're someone who wants to do theology honestly, it should be mandatory.
I think the book had some good things to say. I think because it covers ground most evangelical books fail to discuss, it became controversial. I have read some very bad defenses of biblical inerrancy in my day, so the author's candor is refreshing. I do not think inerrancy needs to be abandoned, and neither does Dr. Enns. He should not be branded a heretic for raising these issues. Nor should inerrancy mean that our theological understanding of it is inerrant and not in need of improvement---and the more extreme harmonizations to special plead for inerrancy need to stop. I am not against attempts to harmonize difficulties, but some of the extreme examples I have read do more harm than good and make conservatives look like idiots. I thought better of Westminster. I will have to re-evaluate my stance toward them if they don't repent of shooting their own in the foot. This is not the first time.Dr. Enns overstates his case at times, to be sure. By the time he gets around to voicing his more conservative views, he has lost a good part of his conservative audience. I am sure that by now he wishes he had taken a different strategy, for example fleshing out where he is conservative first, then introducing more thorny issues for serious and advanced students of the Bible. I would discuss inerrancy in two halves: how the doctrine came to be formulated, and what the Bible's own self-testimony is. Discuss areas where our understanding can be improved, showing all the while his commitment to the Bible's authority as the word of God, and not merely containing word from God hopelessly mixed in with human error. The incarnational model demands that we accept Jesus as fully human, yet in so being He is without sin. So too the Scriptures. Yes they are fully human, yet they together become one fully divine Word. There are many things that we confess God to be. We say that God is omniscient, so by definition Jesus "ought" to be omniscient. Yet He clearly says that He is not. There are things that only the Father knows.(Matthew 24:36, Mark 13: 32) This does not mean that Jesus wasn't divine. He claims authority to forgive sins, which according to Isaiah belongs to God alone ( Mark 2: 1-12 and parallel accounts; cf. Isaiah 43:25). In Isaiah 43: 11, 12 God declares, "I, I am Yahweh, and there is no Savior but Me. I alone declared, saved and proclaimed, and not some foreign god among you. So you are my witnesses." Yet Jesus' own name, meaning "Yahweh saves", declares unequivocally both His divine nature and mission. ..."and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." (Matthew 1: 21) If Jesus is his people's savior, then he either is God incarnate in human nature or the divine declaration in Isaiah 43: 11,12 is a lie. There can be no merely human savior.Returning to Dr. Enns' book, when we flesh out Biblical testimony regarding the incarnation (a task that he only barely outlines, and it has unfortunate consequences for the reception this book has received), we often come up with surprising data, such as Jesus' confession that He was not omniscient, as the Father is. This data must be fully engaged into our understanding of Jesus, along with His equally clear equations of Himself with God ("I and the Father are one, "He who believes me, believes the Father". "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath", "In order that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, I say to you, take up your mat and walk", "Before Abraham ever was, I AM.")It is unfortunate that Dr. Enns fails to flesh out what his incarnational model means, and having failed to construct an outline of it, quite frankly it falls apart.It fails to outline the points of comparison between scripture as human and Christ as human, scripture as divine and Christ as divine. An even deeper comparison that is overlooked is Scripture as word of God and Christ as the Word of God. Again, a systematic theologian would undertake this task better. In fact, why not collaborate with a systematic theologian and expand the book?I found numerous logical errors and inconsistencies in the book. I fail to see, for example, why similarities with Ancient Near Eastern literature, and the fact that some ANE literature predates the Bible tells against the Bible's unique authority (something Dr. Enns appears to agree with). So I am not sure what he is implying by his comparisons. Evangelical scholars do not think of the Bible as dropping out of the sky. On the Biblical model anyway, don't we think that the human race has a common origin, and that stories close to the Fall event would have been more accurate at the beginning and gradually become distorted over time? And there would normally be preserved truths even as stories became distorted, or there would be nothing to distort. The older ANE literature could easily preserve truth that the Biblical authors later used.Dr. Enns rightly says that the uniqueness of the Bible lies in its proclamation of the One living and true God, Yahweh, as being the creator of the world. Its uniqueness is not a private history dropped out of heaven to Israel alone, but His unique self-disclosure in and through Israel to the larger culture of which Israel was a part. Again, this is not well-developed in the book. And here is where biblical theology, Dr. Enns' specialty, has made great contributions to our understanding. In fact, some of the comparisons between later Old Testament history and ANE literature in Dr. Enns' book were highly enlightening and informative. Examples that come to mind the Siloam Tunnel and Mesha inscriptions.What does seem to be deficient in the book are comparisons and contrasts. Almost all of the argumentation is regarding similarities between the Old Testament and ANE literature. But what of the contrasts? I have a hard time believing that the major difference between the Bible and other comparable stories is solely that Yahweh is behind it all.I happen to have worked with flood stories (I refuse the term "myths" or "legends" for the same reason Dr. Enns expresses dislike for such terms, that they are understood as "fairy tales", having little or nothing to do with fact--I prefer "foundational stories" to keep value-judgments out of the term).Stories regarding the flood are common not only to the Bible and ANE literature, but are a worldwide phenomenon, common to every continent but Antarctica, including island chains such as Hawaii. There are many commonalities, such as that the flood is caused by a God or gods, or at times a conflict among the gods. A man is often instructed to build an ark on which a few people and various animals are delivered. Sometimes, not always the flood is seen as divine wrath on humankind--one exception is where the flood is seen as a result of a war among the gods. Many times the ark is said to settle on the peak of a tall mountain, sometimes named in flood stories as a locally known peak among the native people who preserve the story. The dimensions of the ark vary widely. It can range from a large raft to dimensions that far exceed those reported in the Bible.But there are also contrasts. One strange example has the god urinating on the earth, thus causing the flood.The Bible account has some remarkable and unique features. To be sure, that it is attributed to one God, as opposed to many or one among many gods, is outstanding, but that is not all. An outstanding feature is that in places it reads like a ship captain's log, reporting the rise and egress of the flood waters over many days. This is rare if not unique among flood stories. It records both immense amounts of rain and geological upheaval as sources for the waters that flooded the earth. This is not so in all flood stories, and surprisingly, it is a common misconception even today that the flood was due entirely to rain.To say the least, I am skeptical that that the only meaningful contrast between ANE literature and the Bible is that Yahweh is the protagonist of the Bible.Even with my objections, I commend Dr. Enns for his efforts. I would like to see an expanded edition of the work that lays out the incarnationalmodel more clearly, laying out more precisely in what sense he sees the human and divine elements played out in Scripture.If I were him, I would be careful about loud calls for doctrinal "reform", especially if you are not very clear as to what the reform will entail. It is a good effort in calling us to think. However I am not sure that that he is in any sense clear as to where we should go. That being said,calls to overhaul long-standing theology and doctrine sound too much like he is going in directions the church has gone before, and suffered for it.I hope Dr. Enns will take this as a friendly, not hostile review of his work. He undertakes a huge task. Quite honestly, a collaborative effortbetween Old Testament scholarship, New Testament scholarship, systematic theology and Christians with a good grasp of philosophical logic would be necessary to cover an issue this important.I would like to see laid out before the reader both good and bad attempts at harmonization in Old Testament and New Testament scholarship.I would like to see laid out before the reader both similarities and contrasts between the Old Testament and Ancient Near East literature, and if there is literature beyond the Ancient Near East (as is certainly the case with the Great Flood narratives), comparisons and contrasts made there as well. To do comparison without contrast gives the reader an unbalanced picture of the full reality of the situation. To emphasize contrasts without due attention to similarities will also give the reader an unbalanced picture. Even including a companion volume that would give advanced students access to the documents so that they can make their own comparisons would be worth the effort. I realize that I suggest an enormous work. But the issue virtually demands it.I felt a little short-changed by the end of the book. I don't believe that the goal was accomplished. I felt that I had good answers to many, if not all of his concerns. I am sure that many conservative scholars who have read this work feel the same way. Yet no such direct engagement with this scholarship is made in the book as far as I can see, and, frankly, I don't see how that is possible. At least this began to happen with subsequent reviews and replies, but I fear that the communication process has since deteriorated, and for that I am deeply grieved. The issue deserves better on all sides.Dr. Enns would benefit much, were he to consult a good analytical philosopher, like Alvin Plantinga, not to make his book impossibly technical, but to clear away confusion, and to make his points more clear.to both everyday and more advanced readers.Ludwig Wittgenstein said it well. "What cannot be stated clearly must be passed over in silence." This little volume is far too short to state clearly what needs to be said on this issue..Traditionally, inerrancy has entailed acknowledging human agency, but denying that such agency introduces error. Yet what of discrepancies which seem to say otherwise? Are they errors? Are they part of the human element of Scripture that must be accepted? Enns appears to me to be deficient in delineating what inerrancy is, and what inerrancy isn't. Unfortunately, Dr. Enns is a biblical theologian, whereas this has traditionally been the domain of systematic theology. That is precisely where Dr. Enns gets himself into trouble with his more conservative peers; he steps out from his own domain into territory that is not his own. Granted, systematic theologians need to deal with the hard and messy data that biblical theologians often uncover, but it cuts the other way as well; how does all this fit together with the Bible's self-testimony that it IS the word of God.And sadly today, too many theologians of all stripes are deficient in their training in logic, to spot, sift through, and clear up confusion. The result is too often sloganeering in place of careful, reasoned dialogue, where good reasoning and progress in the truth prevail.
Sorts out the (impossible) demands of the Chicago inerrancy statement against the clear characteristics of Scripture. The statement attempted to establish a standard of inspiration that no one imposed before the 20th century and paints one into a corner when confronted with the way new testament writers loosely utilized old testament texts to make their point - this time selecting from the Hebrew text, that time from the Greek text. The new testament documents are inspired but still retain the human composition and editorial gifts of the writers. The spirit incarnated those writers but did not overwhelm their sensibilities.
In a very lucid, concise, and well written style, Peter Enns helps us to better understand certain challenges in the Bible. He discusses how some of the most important archeological discoveries in our time, such as King Ashurbanipal's ancient library in Nineveh, the Code of King Hammurabi from Babylon, and the Dead Sea Scrolls near Qumran have affected the way we interpret the Old Testament today. Everything from the Genesis creation story to Noah's flood to the different wording in the Ten Commandments found in Exodus and Deuteronomy is viewed through these landmark discoveries.For those interested in hermeneutics Enns also gives incredible insight into how the New Testament authors were influenced by Second Temple interpretive traditions when quoting the Old Testament (such as when Jude quotes the book of Enoch). It is a fascinating read to say the least, and extremely insightful. And Peter Enns's proposition that the incarnation of Jesus is analogous to the human and divine particularity of the Bible is a compelling one. This book may be a challenge to some, but Peter Enns writes with genuine humility and a heart that seeks intellectual honesty for the honor and glory of God. I highly recommend this book.
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