Controversey at Westminster
Westminster Theological Seminary Suspended Professor Peter Enns effective at the end of this school year and will take steps to terminate his employment because of a book he wrote back in 2005 entitled Inspiration and Incarnation (review), which calls into question more conservative models of scripture while remaining wholly “[apologetic] and assum[ing] an evangelical faith in scripture from the outset.”1
Christianity Today has a write up on the suspension :Westminster Theological Seminary Suspends Peter Enns.
What do you think about the suspension? I know we have bloggers and readers that range from each end of the conservative to liberal spectrum when it comes to the verbal inspiration of scripture.
IMHO I don’t think that he should have been suspended at all, but then again, I tend to lean towards academic freedom and exploratory hypothetical theology which is left up to the students and readers to discern. I have not been in a position of power where Jesus’ words about causing one of these to stumble really apply as it would as being dean of a seminary. However, our view of scripture is not without its problems and it sounds like Enns has taken an honest and subtle look at the problem… and he is punished for it. Now, it is highly likely that this controversy will only boost his employability and sales of his book (my copy is on its way right now), but he now has to move his family, tear up his roots in a community, and evangelicals get a black eye from our own hand.
All of this reminds me about the unnecessary perils of venturing into the academic realm of evangelicalism. I want to be an evangelical scholar. We, as a community, are in desperate need of good scholarship if we are to both remain relevant and respected (listened to). But, if I teach or even consider that which is out of line, I am out of a job and perhaps blacklisted amongst the communities I wish/am called to serve. All of a sudden teaching at a small liberal arts college does not seem all that bad.
- see the linked book review [↩]
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Comments
Here is a “response” to Dr. Peter Enns’ work by RTS prof Dr. Richard Pratt and Peter Enns’ critique or comments on the lecture (Enns reproduces the lecture but it might be helpful to read the lecture without Enns’ comments interrupting the text). This might help people get into this area more from within the debate.
Westminster and Contemporary Reformed Hermeneutics (Pratt)
A “Conversation” with Richard Pratt’s “Westminster and Contemporary Reformed Hermeneutics” (Enns)
I have varied opinions of this incident and they do appear very conflicting. It takes me back to my days at SBU and the whole thing with Dr. Langston. He was a controversial teacher in his views of inspiration and inerrancy. I think three things come to mind.
1.) The seminary has the right as a private institution to allow in its classrooms whatever it deems fit. I have not heard that the Dr. Enns is no longer being allowed to teach anywhere and that his book is being banned from the public–I bet even students at Westminster can still pick up a copy of the text and read it for themselves. If the school deems Dr. Enns’ teaching unsuitable for their school, they have the right to terminate him (sounds harsh I know). Any business has that right. It seems like Dr. Enns’ violated the school’s statement of faith that I’m guessing he agreed to adhere to when hired and therefore can be terminated.
2.) When I think of the seminary not just as a place for academic conversation but as a place where future leaders of the church are being trained. Future elders and missionaries and church-planters are being trained up there to go across our little blue dot in the universe to make disciples of Jesus Christ. Thus these students must be given the correct theology for correct thinking and correct doing. If this is the approach that the school has taken in the matter and found that Dr. Enns’ teaching was dangerous theology (in their minds) and would hurt the people of God, then I applaud them for taking theology seriously and making sure that the students they raise up to be leaders are theologically sound (it may not be some people’s theology but I bet that the leaders of the seminary didn’t reach their conclusions any less honestly than Dr. Enns did). They made the decision to protect the future of the church by removing harmful theology (again, in their minds) and those that would teach it in their classrooms. The leaders of the school have that responsibility to their students and to the churches that they will lead (or converts they seek). Reflecting on this and what happened in my own experience at SBU, I’m not so hard on the leadership of the school for letting go Dr. Langston (he was postmodern in his epistemology and very skeptic of the historic reliability of the Bible, especially the OT). This really grew in me as I pastored a small church for a while.
3.) However, my time with Dr. Langston has done more to embolden my views on inspiration and inerrancy than to hurt them. He forced me to question my beliefs and examine them in light of the evidence. I no longer believed my views because that’s what I learned growing up, but I had now really seriously studied and reached the same conclusions. The students at Westminster will be missing out on that experience by loosing Dr. Enns. That is a shame because the theology they have will be because Dr. So-and-so said so (at SBU most people believed something b/c “Dr. Reeves believes it!” One of my roommates was notorious for that, made me sick by the time I left SBU). They will not, like Timothy had, make their faith their own and not that of their parents, or in this case professors.
Like I said, I have various views on this issue that are conflicting.