The Bible made flesh
September 14th, 2009 | 8 Comments
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.
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.”
The problem here is that what “divine” means is divorced from the incarnation, as if we can apprehend the former apart from the latter. But incarnation, be it Christ or the Bible, is the means God himself chose to reveal himself to his people. In other words, one cannot get “behind” the incarnation to what God is really like and then judge the Bible (and those who read it differently) accordingly—as if God said, “Listen, I have this divine essence I want you to grab a hold of and be sure to maintain its priority, but the best I can do is to give you a divine/human expression of that essence. Your job is to use the incarnation to move beyond it, to see whether you can discern what is ‘really’ going on beyond this unfortunate divine/human mess I have had to deal with.”
A slight caricature, perhaps, but my experience is that such a view is not too far below a more sophisticated veneer. I do not think I am the only one to sense the Platonic, even Gnostic, overtones of such thinking.
Although he adds a bit more divine into the mix than I’ve grown accustomed to attributing to Scripture (I tend to view the divine as the catalyst and the response as thoroughly human), I do respect it. I really like his point about the error of the “priority of the divine” and his observation that such an emphasis betrays certain affinities to the theology of the Gnostics. I suspect, however, that Professor Enns might not appreciate my tendency to go the opposite direction and downplay the divine “nature” of Scripture.
Related posts:
- Christocentric readings of the Bible in the blogosphere Although I was once critical of “Christocentric” readings of Scripture in general, I have recently considered that there is really only one brand of it...
- “We might like it, but it’s not in the Bible, so…” This is a companion piece to another post of mine, “We might not like it, but it’s in the Bible, so…” Occasionally I see people...
- Bible contradictions: why they matter, and why they don’t This has been out for a while now, but here’s a stunning chart commissioned for Project Reason by Sam Harris attempting to map out contradictions...
September 14th, 2009
Tags: Bibliology, Inerrancy, Peter Enns, Scripture, Theology
