Review of Peter Enns', Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament
Many people have recommended this book to me because of my present interest in the Old Testament. The author, Peter Enns, is a controversial figure in the theological world at the moment. A 14-year professor at Westminster Seminary, he resigned/was fired partly due to flack from this book, though it was voted within orthodox boundaries. Quite aware of this antagonizing atmosphere, Peter Enns urges readers in his epilogue to be humble, loving, and patient when dealing with such (I think) enormous theological endeavors. He is right, though. It seems that modern understandings of the OT relationship to Christ is in dire need of development, especially in light of the 20th century discoveries. (or, I really need to read more. Probably this). Thesis of the essay: We accept the OT for what it is. Not simply a text that records history, but one that operates under its surrounding near eastern culture. Just as Christ became man, to condescend to our level, the Book does the same, being incarnated into the world in the guise of the world so that it might have a potent message for the world. This, Enns calls "Incarnational Theology." In a sense, the logos of Christ is incarnated into the Bible, and as such, it takes the form of human endeavors full of human fingerprints. The OT is no Qu'ran.
Though the book is certainly an interesting read, I am not currently sure if I am altogether willing to approve of incarnational theology as the starting place for such the endeavor. Enns, he confesses outright, is not trying to say definitively how we ought to think, but only to get the ball roling.
In Incarnational Theology, Enns kinds of just drops this on the reader, and although I am sure that its theology has been developed somewhere, it just doesn't seem to me very convincing. This might be because two reasons. a) it seems a bit of a cop out since it doesn't necessarily have to be about the Bible as an Incarnation, but rather, simply a Christ-like Parallel to the Incarnation of Christ. It is simple and elegant, though (two things that can never be trusted! *shifty eyes). b) there is no Criteria provided why it is only the OT that must be considered under "Incarnational Theology." Why not the Iliad, or the Odyssey? Or a Upanishads? It seems to me that there needs to be boundaries provided in which Incarnational Theology is the appropriate "type" of theological device to use. Just because it fits for the OT doesn't preclude its match with other religious texts.
I do, however, wholeheartedly agree with this statement:
"The reality of the crucified and rise Christ is both the beginning and end of biblical interpretation." (Enns, 163)
In a way though, Scripture, precisely because it is written from a or many perspectives, serves as a dynamic interface between the historical moment and its interpretation. The moment inspires the interpretation of that moment, incarnated into Scripture, while Scripture points back to the reality of that moment.
Of course, there are problems with this as well, the largest being the serious claim that the identity of this perspective is not, in fact, God, but the human redactors of the OT. Faith in God then is kind of just topped on top of these very human redactors, making God the proverbial cherry atop ice cream. Enns solves this by pointing to Christotelic Hermeneutics, showing that regardless of their intent, Christ is the culmination and the climax of the OT. (What does this mean for the many many Christian prefigurements?) Also, how do we do justice to the original setting of the book and the authorial intent while still agreeing applying Christotelic Hermeneutics? Is it simply a book of "Create-your-own-adventure?"
Another problem is, if we see the moment interpreted by the author of a book, that author must be speaking out from his own sitz im leben (life setting). Then why should I trust the normative prescriptions of someone else' sitz im leben? The Bible ceases to be the absolute point of moral departure if we see the Bible as interpretation of a specific moment in time. (I can hear the objections flooding in). Only when the Bible is seen as out-of-time, or time-less, and not pertaining to a moment but to all humanity, can we agree that the prescribed morals are indeed even appropriate for our age. (Of course, I would make distinctions between the Jesus' own words and the apostles, as even Paul is careful to note, "Not I, but the Lord" and "Not the Lord, but I") .
I think I could write an essay on what could be fleshed out in the book, but since it is summer time, I'll refrain.
Verdict: Read it if you're interested in this field, but stay far away from it if you just don't care. If you're not interested and you read it, or if you're not a Christian, it might not serve you very well. If you are interested, read the book and join the conversation.
Next Book to be Reviewed: John P. Meier's, A Marginal Jew
Following: Robert Alter's, The Art of Biblical Narrative
(In these long summer days, I am very quickly running out of books: Recommendations welcome!)
7 comments:
Thanks for the interesting review.
I am a former student of Enns's and am currently the webmaster for his personal site, http://peterennsonline.com
A few comments.
I don't think anywhere in the book Enns called what he has proposed an "incarnational theology." The term he uses, rather, is "incarnational analogy." The distinction is important. He was not attempting to develop a full-blown theology of the OT or theology of Scripture. Instead he was simply posing that the incarnation of Christ is useful as an analogy of the phenomenon of Scripture.
To really understand Enns, I think you have to understand the problem he is trying to address. While much of early biblical criticism was over the top in its conclusions, it is undeniable that scholarship has necessitated a much different view of the OT than we would have had a little over 100 years ago. Discoveries like the Dead Sea Scrolls and thousands of other Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) manuscripts have given us a much clearer picture of the situations out of which the OT arose. In sum, the OT is much more similar to other documents which we think of as fully human-produced than is comfortable for most evangelicals to admit.
Enns adds to this two more problems. 1) There appears to be theological diversity in the OT (not what we're told to expect in a "unified Divine Word"), and 2) the often bizarre, out-of-context way the NT authors interpret and use OT passages.
Enns recognized that awareness of these problems had, both in the past and present, driven many to conclude that the Bible simply isn't divine at all, and to cast it (and their faith) aside. He proposes the incarnational analogy as a way of saying you neither have to turn off your brain (i.e., deny or ignore competent scholarship) or lose your faith: the Bible shows fully human traits because that's the way God intended it to be. Just as Jesus exhibited many fully-human traits (weariness, limited knowledge, etc.), so does Scripture.
Also, I don't agree with your implication (if I am understanding you correctly) toward the end of your review of an either-or relationship between "timeless, ahistoricity" of the Bible and the "usefulness" of its "moral teachings." First off, one could go on at lenght about the validity of the Bible as a collection of "normative prescriptions." That's a nice idea in theory, but it just doesn't work in reality. Do you keep slaves? Do you punish your children with death for disobedience? Does you wife wear a head covering in church? These and many more are moral prescriptions found in the Bible that most Christians today no longer follow. So we all squeeze the Bible through our own hermeneutical and sitz im lieben filters. Enns is simply proposing that accepting both the humanity and divinity of the Bible as comfortable with each other as a better way of dealing with the Bible as it actually is, rather than trying to squeeze it into some "timeless truth" mold that it can't fit into.
Hello Foolish Sage! :)
Thanks for your comment. You are absolutely correct that it is incarnational analogy and not a full blown incarnational theology. That is a huge oversight on my part and I'll attempt to clarify my comments.
The incarnational analogy, though, still does not address the uniqueness of the OT. From the way I understood it, it is an instrument for understanding the OT from the unique perspective of a Christian. If this is the case, why should it be limited to simply the OT? I think there needs to be criteria that Prof. Enns carefully lays out to show why it is appropriate to use incarnational analogy in the first place. It is not enough to note the similarity to Christ's incarnation into the world, or even that the Old Testament is a "part" of the Bible. From my perspective, as it stands now, there is no reason why we cannot apply an incarnational analogical approach to any other religious text, and argue from that text that Christ is the climax of that story instead. Why is it only the OT that should be considered?
I should clarify the other points as well. Prof. Enns argues that there is inner-biblical theological diversity in the Old Testament. I think he is reacting to the picking and choosing of passages outside of their contexts. In this way, and through his usage of the Christotelic hermeneutics, Enns brings forcibly into the conversation the chronological "development" of the way that God reveals himself. The differences in these historical moments are supposed to reveal different aspects of God, and these differences are part of his "diversity." (Enns does go into other aspects of diversity, particularly Wisdom literature, etc.)
But it seems to me that this all hinges on the reflex of Christians to interpret Scripture with Scripture, which (I do not think at least) cannot be done without our closed canon. But this is the root of the matter. Modern scholarship studies in units, as good methodology should. What it has unearthed is that what Enns would call theological diversity or expressions of the same God, are simply differences in the different groups that compiled the OT, not to the same God. Perhaps this is my problem, though. I see how Enns was writing as a Christian to other Christians who hold similar views of Scripture with him, but I wish that he would still address why it must expressions of the same God, and not different groups' notions of God as they conceived it. Are these different groups' notion washed over once the canon is closed? How do we respect their positions while holding unto our own? This problem is really because, as I am sure you are aware, different sources preserve different traditions of biblical figures and God.
As for the final comment, I think this is a problem not just for the Bible. What Prof. Enns rightly points out is that the bible itself is an interpretation of historical moments, that there is a reality behind the Scriptures. He notes, "The reality of the risen Christ drove them to read the OT in a new way." (153) also in the page before, "they began with what they knew to be true and on the basis of that fact reread their Scripture in a fresh way." (152) If this is true, perhaps the question is, do I believe in the Bible or the historical moment behind the Scriptures? If the latter, then I would agree that Bible is the closest approximate as a recording of what happened, but it certainly would not be fallible. It is simply someone's interpretation of events, and because it is someone's interpretation of events, that interpretation is conditioned by their mores. Therefore, it changes from a normative prescription to description of that time period's norms. (or am I wrong?)
Perhaps the larger root of the issue, is that simply I am confused. :) As of now, I'm struggling to understand the Bible in a way that preserves both the academic and the devotional aspect, and I have yet to find a narrow path that bridges them.
Hey Jae! enjoying your posts....keep it up!
Thanks for the reply, Jae.
Let me try to address your first question (about why such an approach should be unique to the OT). To Enns, a Christotelic hermeneutic is not some kind of general principle that could be applied to anything and everything. In fact, it never could have occurred at all but for a highly unique and singular circumstance.
The event that Enns thinks caused the NT writers to re-evaluate the whole OT and reconstruct it's meaning around Christ was Christ's resurrection. The key insight here is that the resurrection wasn't just Jesus' final magic trick to prove he could save our souls. It was his vindication as Israel's Messiah, and thus as True Israel, the one who came to fulfill the mission originally given to ethnic Israel (to become New Adam and set right what First Adam had ruined). So if Christ becomes New or True Israel, then the NT writers felt that they had to reinterpret the entire OT story of Israel as actually his story. Enns's additional insight is that to do that sort of thing was entirely consistent with Second Temple era practice. The DSS's and other discovered documents show us that is was very common for communities to reinterpret ancient documents as applying to their present circumstance.
Since the NT writers' christotelic interpretation was inextricably linked to the resurrected Christ as the New/True Israel, it follows that such a hermeneutic can only and uniquely be applied to the story of Israel.
Not sure I completely understand your second response (about diversity of theology in the OT), so if my reply misses the mark, please clarify.
Enns's section about theological diversity in the OT is responding to a certain assumption of conservative evangelicals (especially those of the inerrantist stripe), that because the Bible is divinely inspired, and because God cannot be divided within himself, there can be no real contradictions in his revealed word. This extends to theological issues. The assumption is that God must have one, unified theology, therefore the Bible must present one, unified theology.
Enns, addressing that audience, tries to make a strong case that an honest reading of th OT confronts one with undeniable cases of diverse (and sometimes even contradictory) theologies; certainly with expressions of diverse theological communities within the history of Israel, each with its own particular concerns.
As part of his incarnational approach to Scripture, Enns wants to assure the evangelical that s/he doesn't need to ignore or apply very strained harmonizations to these diversities. They are there because God is perfectly comfortable with them. The OT presents us with the record of a developing ANE culture that over a long period of time struggled with its perception that it had been uniquely formed and called by the One True God. They didn't get it all at once, and part of what we see in the OT is the record of their struggles, attempts, and sometimes missteps in trying to apprehend what YHWH was about and up to.
It is only in Christ that we have the final and full revelation of God. That is NOT to say that since NT times we have been able to inerrantly and completely develop some kind of "perfected" theology. That would show profound ignorance of church history, and even of some of the struggles apparent even among the NT writers (e.g., Paul's and James's very different approaches to faith and works). But the coming, death, and resurrection of Christ set us on the right track.
And your final issue...
...yeah, I'm there too ;-)
The outcome of all this investigation is that the Bible is nowhere near as simple and straightforward as some of us were led to believe by our early teaching. What we do with that...well...yeah.
Haha, thanks for your insight.
This is really the first "theological" book that I've read. After studying religion from a historical and/or literary critical perspective, it's difficult for me to "reorient" myself to think through this book. I think that theology and history occupies different "spaces" that sometimes overlap but must be approached by different methods, and perhaps the "historical" methods are not appropriate for "theological" discussion, though they should inform the other. (I think)
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