Theology for the Masses

As I was preparing for something this afternoon, I came across this passage in Inspiration and Incarnation.

“[F]rom one perspective, the entire narrative structure of the Old Testament is fueled by the back and forth, give and take between God and Israel.  The Old Testament portrays God as a being who can be acted upon, a being whose actions are in a meaningful sense of the word contingent upon what his people do: if they obey, then God will bless; if they disobey, then God will curse.  I am well aware that from a philosophical point of view, one can answer this quite simply by saying that God may acts as if his actions are contingent, but in reality they are not.  My concern, however, is with the Bible and what it says, with how God acts in scripture.  I am not all comfortable with describing God in a way that leads me to dismiss this dimension of how God himself wishes to be known.”  – Peter Enns Inspiration and Incarnation p.105.

What do you think about this?

I like the way Peter Enns articulates the problem of myth and biblical studies, especially given our discussions on the term.

The Following is from Page 40 of Inspiration and Incarnation:

Christians recoil from any suggestion that Genesis is in any way embedded in the mythologies of the ancient world.  On one level this is understandable.  After all, if the Bible and the gospel are true, and if that truth is bound up with historical events, you can’t have the beginning of the Bible get it so wrong.  It is important to understand, however, that not all historians of the ancient Near East use the word myth simply as shorthand for untrue, made-up, [or] storybook.  It may include these ideas for some, but many who use the term are trying to get at something deeper.  A more generous way of defining myth is that it is an ancient, premodern, prescientific way of addressing questions of ultimate origins and meaning in the form of stories: Who are we?  Where do we come from?

I think that is a definition we can all agree upon, no?

Dr. Peter Enns (yes the doctor who got into so much hot water this past spring over inerrancy and inspiration etc.) gives this definition to inerrancy,

I affirm that I am committed to the Bible’s inerrancy as a function of its divine origin. If I may offer a thumbnail definition, the Bible as it is is without error because the Bible as it is is God’s Word.

Before you respond to this definition, read the rest of the post to get more of a context for the statement. But I am interested to hear responses to this topic.

Inerrancy

I, like a lot of the Christian side of the blogosphere, have taken more than a fleeting interest in the Enns/Westminster controversy.

For a run down of what the hub-ub is all about, check out Kingdom People :: The Peter Enns Controversy:

1. Enns has been criticized for emphasizing the human nature of Scripture over against the divine.
2. Enns has written that the first chapters of Genesis are firmly grounded in ancient myth, which he defines as “an ancient, premodern, prescientific way of addressing questions of ultimate origins in the form of stories.”
3. Enns claims that Scripture is inspired and inerrant, however the way he describes Scripture seems to counter that belief.
4. Enns does not seek to harmonize seemingly-contradictory parts of Scripture because he believes the diversity of Scripture is complementary.
5. Enns rejects the idea of objective unbiased historiography.

Here is an exchange between Paul Helm and Enns about Helm’s review of Enns’ book.

• Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament by Peter Enns Review by Paul Helm
• A Response to Paul Helm’s Review of Inspiration and Incarnation
• Analysis Extra: ‘Inspiration and Incarnation’ one more time

Here is an interesting (and instructive) review of Helm’s review by Cdero’s Weblog entitled Bible Monopoly. Here are the central tenets of Bible Monopoly:

* An unwillingness to deal with the plural complexity of interpretation
* A failure to wrestle with the difficult matters of Biblical scholarship
* A failure to see the provisional nature of scripture
* An obsession with turning honest interaction with extra Biblical data into an evil foe of orthodoxy
* A tendency to use past theologians (the one’s they agree with) as the standard of Biblical interpretation

To say on top of what people are saying about this situation, check out Google’s Blogsearch and Technorati’s watchlist.