"Inspiration and Incarnation" by Peter Enns, part 2

Sorry about the wait on part two.  Sorry about there being two (or maybe three) parts at all.  I just don't ever want reading to become a chore again, so I only read (and write about stuff I read) when I want to.

With that said, on to the exciting part - topic #2!

Topic #2: "The OT and Theological Diversity"

In this chapter, Enns addresses the issue of different places in the OT saying different things about God.  He opens the chapter with yet another common assumption, this one held by both evangelicals and liberals:

"God's word and diversity at the level of factual content and theological message are incompatible." (73)

For evangelicals, the seeming differences between OT authors are explained away as best as is possible.  For liberals, the OT must not be inspired by God.

One case study which Enns discusses is the fact that the first books of the Bible often talk about God as being the most powerful God rather than the only one.  One could read this as a contradiction: if God is the only God, why do some parts of Exodus make it seem as if there are others which God simply overpowers?  Enns solves this by arguing that God reveals himself slowly over a long period of time.  The early Israelites were not culturally prepared for the idea of there being only one God.

This argument is a bit confusing to me.  It seems a bit preposterous to claim that they wouldn't have been able to comprehend there being only one God.  Isn't the whole point that there is only one God?  Then again,  modern Christians believe there is only one God, and yet we worship so many other things.  Enns, too, points this out, saying:

"We also know that anything other than God, if it becomes an object of devotion (spouse, career, money, fame), is an idol.  But the Israelites of the exodus were living in the infancy of their national existence amid a polytheistic world." (102)

In any case, arguing over whether or not the Israelites would have been able to comprehend the other gods surrounding nations worshiped being fake will cause us to miss Enns' main point: the fact that some parts of the OT speak of God being more powerful than other gods while other parts claim him to be the only God should not cause us to assume the OT to be uninspired.

Enns also covers other seeming contradictions in the theology of the OT, including proverbs that directly contradict one another as well as differences between the history presented in Chronicles and that of 1 & 2 Kings and 1 & 2 Samuel.  I'm going to skip over his analysis of these subjects in order to get at his main argument, but I, of course, highly recommend reading the book in order to understand the evidence for his argument more fully.

Enns argues that the diversity of the OT speaks to the many sides of God, and that we should approach the Bible with humility and an open mind and heart, letting it speak to us on its own terms.  He writes:

I feel bound to talk about God in the way(s) the Bible does, even if I am not comfortable with it...God gave us the Bible so we could read it, not so we can ferret our way behind it to see how things really are." (106)

According to Enns, modernity requires consistency, so modern evangelicals attempt to mold the Bible in this way.  The Bible itself, however, challenges the idea that things can't be diverse. (108)  Furthermore, confessing at the outset that the Bible is God's word gives us freedom to more honestly explore what God has revealed to us about himself.  Tensions in the Bible show us that God incarnates himself throughout Israel's history.  Incarnation isn't a one-time deal.

The question is, should we accept the above claim, which is a central argument of Enns' book?  Is it theologically sound to claim that the Bible is just as much human as it is divine, and that this lends itself to historical and factual inaccuracies?  Perhaps Enns isn't arguing that it is (theologically speaking) entirely defensible.  Maybe he's simply saying that God worked that way with Jesus, so he may also work that way with His Word.  In some way the whole "incarnational analogy" argument seems to be an interesting but maybe unnecessary way to dress up the simple fact that it makes no sense to speak to one culture through the lens of another.  Although objectivity and "accuracy" are important to us today, it has not always been that way.  After all, Enns argues that the Bible is historiography; it is biased.

And finally, Enns writes the following in summing up the heart of his argument:

"The Bible is God's word in written form; Christ is God's word in human form...The written word bears witness to the incarnate word, Christ." (110)

More to come soon.  :)