Ive been reading more stuff by Peter Enns lately. Just for a reminder, Peter Enns is a professor of Old Testament and Hermeneutics at Westminster Theological Seminary. His thinking on Biblical interpretation has been some of the most refreshing stuff Ive read on the topic in a long time. In fact, Id venture to say that its the first time in a really long time that Ive read something in the realm of Biblical studies that has truly stretched and expanded my thinking on the topic. Somehow, Enns is able to take these overworn debates between fundamentalism and liberalism, modernism and postmodernism, hermeneutical realism vs. deconstruction, etc. and just simply and almost casually turn both sides of these debates upside down. He realizes that these debates, when it comes to interpreting the Bible, are asking the wrong questions because they are assuming the wrong things about what the Bible is supposed to be or has to be in order to be the Word of God. Does the Bible have to be unique revelation in the sense that it doesnt borrow concepts, language, and even stories from the cultural surroundings that its authors lived in? Does the Bible have to be unbiased revelation in the sense that its authors didnt have their own personal axe to grind when they wrote it? Does the Bible have to be able to pass all of the scientific, historical, and literary tests that a modernist society might subject to it? Why should it be concerned with such tests when these tests didnt even exist at the time of its writing?
Enns argues that the Bible does not indeed have to be all of these things. It simply has to do what it sets out to do, which is to reveal the one true God and His unique authority over all creation. The Bible has done this in a variety of contexts using a variety of methods. No one society can critique it perfectly according to the standards of their time. Its a complex book, incredibly so, and it deserves all of the academic rigour and thoughtfulness we can bring to it. So the questions of our time about the Bible's cultural rootedness, and its scientific, historic, and literary accuracy are important questions. But we have to realize, that in a sense the Bible is much bigger than we are because it reveals a God who is much, much greater than we are. And we ultimately have to account for our relationship to this revealed God. We cannot simply dismiss him because His revelation doesnt meet our cultural criteria. We have to face Him because, like it or not, He is revealed to us, and soundly.
Im still trying to get my mind around this stuff, but I really like Enns' bravery on this topic. He manages to remain orthodox and conservative while still questioning to the utmost our unneccessary tendency to make the Bible out to be a "perfect" book according to our own skewed standard of "perfection."
This may not make a lot of sense. But I kind of have to write about it.
Posted by todd at July 10, 2006 09:10 PM