Archives for “Peter Enns”
He begins with a starkly stated proposition:
The factual contradictions within Scripture or between Scripture and extrabiblical sources cited in my previous blog are not, in my view, the most serious difficulties that Christians face in the Bible. More troublesome are those cases where a biblical text espouses ethical values that not only contradict other biblical texts but strike us as down-right sinister or evil.
He then goes on to highlight the clear incongruence between Mat 5.43-45 and Deu 20.16-18.
Says Sparks, “These words from the lips of Jesus and the Law of Moses are profoundly different. How can one biblical text admonish us to love our enemies and another command Israel to commit genocide against ethnic groups because they have a different religion?”
I am quite familiar with most of the involved justifications for the ritual act of consecration-by-destruction, or “ban” as it used to be called, known as ḥerem. In my undergraduate Apologetics class (or was it Deuteronomy?) I devoted a paper to arguing how truly ethical and even merciful it was for God to want those men, women, children, and babies murdered.
- The lost art of humility: homosexuality and usury Most of the hullaballoo surrounding Knapp-gate seems to have blown over for the time being, but its implications and the probability of similar future incidents continue to grow. Undeniably, a...
- Thinking “Outside the Box” about the Bible My friend Cliff Martin has written one of the best, most concise descriptions of the nature and purpose of the Bible that I have ever had the privilege of reading....
- Human interpretations of Scripture and nature This is long for a “quote of the day,” but it’s so well stated that I couldn’t resist. It’s from an article by Kenton Sparks, author of God’s Word in...
I have really enjoyed Pete Enns‘s contribution to BioLogos of late. His latest frames the Adam/Eve question in an interesting and honest way. Here’s an excerpt related to my last post:
What if we affirm that Paul’s view of human origins does not settle the matter for us today? Of course, this leaves us with a pressing question: how do we think about Adam today?
This is where the conversation begins for those wishing to maintain a biblical faith in a modern world. And whatever way forward is chosen, we must be clear on one thing: we have all left “Paul’s Adam.” We are all “creating Adam,” as it were, in an effort to reconcile Scripture and the modern understanding of human origins.
….
[O]nce you move to [the above affirmation], you have left Paul’s Adam and are now working with an Adam that is partially and even largely shaped by your own understanding and worldview. You are in an entirely different discussion.
It sounds bleak, but I have hope that efforts like the BioLogos Foundation, if they continue on their current trajectory, will begin to push through.
Related posts:- The BioLogos campaign at work An article from Karl Giberson and Darrel Falk of the BioLogos Foundation appeared in U.S. Today on Sunday (August 9, 2009). Admittedly, its title (“We believe in evolution – and...
- The significance of the Adam/Christ parallel Damian at Castle of Nutshells found an interesting article by Mike Heiser on the subject of “Adam’s Sin and Old Testament Theology.” Heiser brings home the fact that “there isn’t...
- The trouble with intramural accommodationism Can one be consistent in accepting both the common form of inerrancy as described in the Chicago Statement and universal common descent? This question is something I struggle with when...
Not that I have all the answers, of course.
I thought I’d reproduce a summary of my current thoughts on the issue that I formulated in an interesting comment exchange under a post on another site.
I asked what sort of question the authors of Genesis 1 etiology intended to answer:
[1] why the world exists,
[2] how it got made, or
[3] both.
One commenter (whose opinion I highly respect) essentially agreed with me that the answer is [3], but added that Genesis 1 only answered [1] by implication of its primary goal of answering who is responsible, namely YHWH. I have sympathy for this, but I explained why I wrote [1] as I did.
I think Genesis 1 primarily attempts to answer the question of why everything is here as it is by instructing the Israelites/Jews that YHWH tamed chaos in order to subjugate and commission creation for His purposes. Things work as they do (=are “functional” in Walton’s terms) because it was He who intended the sun to shine, the fish to inhabit the ocean, man to hold dominion over nature, etc. The reason the world works as it does is because it was intended to work that way (“God saw that it was good”). There is certainly a strong element of the “who” answer intimately integrated into this, but I think another key aspect of Genesis 1 is a worldview shift toward the common Judeo-Christian belief that the chaos we see in our world is somewhat apparent rather than real.
Related posts:- Chaos in Genesis and Germanic mythology Dr. Enns has recently reminded us that the Ancient Near East conceptualized the beginning of creation as a battle between order and disorder, the gods vs. chaos. We see the...
- N.T. Wright on “unfaithful”, “flat” readings of Genesis The BioLogos Foundation hits another home run by soliciting and sharing this gem: Bishop of Durham Tom Wright, while no fundie, is generally regarded among scholars and many evangelicals as...
- Explaining Genesis to our children I haven’t yet had the talk RJS asks about with my inquisitive, but trusting, science nerd second-grader, but I think she’s become aware of the science/creationism conflict, particularly as regards the...
Dr. Enns has recently reminded us that the Ancient Near East conceptualized the beginning of creation as a battle between order and disorder, the gods vs. chaos. We see the chaos of the natural world represented as an antagonist in the Genesis cosmogony. The forces of chaos are never quite given the dignity of a name, but the functionless void upon which the curtain opens in Genesis 1.2 and God’s actions of appropriating already existing material in that chapter clearly demonstrate that He is not tasked with creating a world from scratch but with the more typically king-like duty of bringing order out of disorder, as John Walton has been arguing.
But this “cosmic battle” between order and chaos is by no means a peculiarly ANE leitmotif. Although separated by hundreds of years from the ANE, Germanic mythology as it shows up in the Scandinavian stories is characterized by the same dualism. As fitting for a people thriving in a harsh environment, the mythology of the Scandinavians as represented in Old Icelandic (“Old Norse”) literature shows this motif in the form of the continuous struggle between the gods and the ancient, formidable, grotesque giants, the frost giants in particular for obvious reasons. The world itself was born of chaos: from the gap between the realm of fire and the realm of ice a mountainous frost giant Ymir was formed, the father of all giants from whose body the earth was made after being slain by the gods (there is good evidence that many of these motifs go back to common Indo-European mythology). The delicate balance of power between the cruel and pitiless forces of nature and the order maintained by the gods is evident in Snorri’s highly entertaining rendition of “Thor and Utgard -Loki” (also called “Thor’s visit to Jotunheim”): while the two gods and accompanying human are clearly somewhat at the mercy of the giants in Jotunheim (“Giantland”), the prospect of encountering the wrath of Thor’s hammer keeps the giants from exploiting their better position.
Related posts:- Why Genesis 1 was written Not that I have all the answers, of course. I thought I’d reproduce a summary of my current thoughts on the issue that I formulated in an interesting comment exchange...
- N.T. Wright on “unfaithful”, “flat” readings of Genesis The BioLogos Foundation hits another home run by soliciting and sharing this gem: Bishop of Durham Tom Wright, while no fundie, is generally regarded among scholars and many evangelicals as...
- Contextual interpretation in Genesis: Cain’s mark I suppose it goes without saying that approaching the Bible as contextually bound literature leaves you asking different questions and giving different answers. In the comments of one my posts...
All Christians generally agree that the Bible was written down by humans, and most agree that in some way their writings are reflective of their individuality; the question comes in with the nature of divine influence. Where do we draw the line between the human and the divine in Scripture?
Proponents of inerrancy posit that all information in Scripture was directly contributed by God; the specific form of the information as presented is normally regarded as reflective of the personalities and writing styles. A softened version of this view, which I myself held until fairly recently, was of theological concordism, the belief that despite errors in the authors’ understanding of peripheral matters, all pertinent information in Scripture was (directly or indirectly) contributed by God.
Related posts:- The Bible made flesh I have read summaries of the incarnational model of Scripture as developed by Peter Enns, late of Westminster Theological Seminary, but too little of Enns himself. I think this recent...
- Human interpretations of Scripture and nature This is long for a “quote of the day,” but it’s so well stated that I couldn’t resist. It’s from an article by Kenton Sparks, author of God’s Word in...
- On judging Scripture (and finding it wanting) — TIL #4: “Pray for You” At the suggestion of a certain rather busy diplomat, I decided to treat this trending ditty as a Theologically Interesting Lyric. It is indeed theologically interesting, because it dovetails into...
I have read summaries of the incarnational model of Scripture as developed by Peter Enns, late of Westminster Theological Seminary, but too little of Enns himself. I think this recent post clarifying his model is quite useful.
Related posts:The incarnation is essentially and inextricably a divine/human phenomenon. This means that, in speaking of the nature of the Bible, one cannot table the “human dimension” and prioritize the divine any more than one can do that of Christ and still speak of Jesus of Nazareth.
This is a very practical point, as it happens far too often that explanations of why, for example, the Bible contains very significant tensions on both the historical and theological levels, is explained in view of the ultimate “perfection” of the Bible that is deemed necessary on the basis of “priority of the divine.”
- Thinking “Outside the Box” about the Bible My friend Cliff Martin has written one of the best, most concise descriptions of the nature and purpose of the Bible that I have ever had the privilege of reading....
- Finding God’s hand in Scripture All Christians generally agree that the Bible was written down by humans, and most agree that in some way their writings are reflective of their individuality; the question comes in...
- The Bible as literature and what that means to us Mike Beidler pointed me to an article entitled “The Bible as Human Literature” that culminates in the provocative question, “If Jesus is really raised from the dead, what do we...