A Book Review of “Inspiration and Incarnation” by Peter Enns (Part 1): A little bit of my personal story, why I think Enns is great, and how the book helped get me fired…

Back in 2005, I had no idea who Peter Enns was. I was simply a high school English and Worldview teacher at a small Evangelical Christian school in Arkansas. Yes, I had gotten a couple of Master’s degree in both the Old and New Testaments, and I was in the middle of working on my PhD in the Old Testament, but I was quite content teaching British Literature and getting the chance to occasionally teach a few biblical units in my one Worldview class.

At some point that year, I happened to come across a new book entitled, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, by someone named Peter Enns. In any case, as I read the book, I found myself agreeing with Enns on virtually every page. If I had to summarize the basic argument of the entire book, it would be this: if you truly take the inspiration of the Bible seriously, you have to realize that what God inspired, He inspired to address an original audience of Israelites who were living in the ancient Near East. Therefore, if you want to truly understand God’s inspired message, you have to read it in light of it historical and literary contexts.

Now, this wasn’t a brand new revelation to me. When I was at Regent College in the mid-90s, I remember Gordon Fee hammering home the point that in order to do proper biblical exegesis, you have to read any given passage within its original context. Therefore, despite what “End-Times” prognosticators like Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye might claim, the locusts that come out of the Abyss in the book of Revelation were not 20^th century Blackhawk helicopters. That would have made no sense to the first century Christians to whom the Apostle John was writing, and therefore would have been completely irrelevant to them. In order to properly interpret the Bible, one has to first understand what any given passage meant back then and there, because that message is the one that God inspired.

I took that to heart when I later wrote my Master’s thesis on the book of Jonah. It was written during the post-exilic period, to the Jews who had since returned from the Babylonian Exile. Therefore, as I did my work in Jonah, I was constantly asking, “How would this have been understood by that original audience after the exile?”

I continued to take that to heart as I was working on my PhD thesis on Isaiah 7:14 (“Behold, the virgin is with child, and she will give birth to a son, and will name him ‘Immanuel’”). Yes, Matthew quotes it in his infancy narrative and applies it to Jesus, but how would that verse have been understood during the time of the prophet Isaiah in the 8^th century BC? If I was going to have a better understand what Matthew was doing with Isaiah 7:14 in his gospel, I should first understand what Isaiah 7:14 meant in its original 8^th century BC context.

All that is to say, when I first read Inspiration and Incarnation back in 2005, it was a reaffirmation of what Gordon Fee had impressed upon me ten years earlier, and what I had tried to do myself in my own research. But not only did Enns’ book reaffirm all that, but Enns provided numerous other insights and well-researched examples that further solidified for me the importance of taking the original historical and literary context of Old Testament seriously, and letting that guide one’s research, study, and theology.

Simply put, when I read Inspiration and Incarnation, it made sense. I never even once considered what Enns wrote could be considered controversial in any way.

What Happened Next…
The reason I share all that is to set the stage for what I have to tell next. At the end of the 2005-2006 school year, the Worldview teachers at the school were asked to go through their respective curriculums and revise them as necessary. Since I was one of the 11^th grade Worldview teachers, I got together with the other 11^th grade Worldview teachers, and we implemented a number of revisions to the 11^th grade Worldview curriculum.

One of the units consisted of comparing Genesis 1-11 with Greek mythology. When I taught that unit the previous year, I didn’t feel like it worked all too well. And so, I suggested to the other 11^th grade Worldview teachers that, if we were going to compare Genesis 1-11 to mythology, we should compare it with the mythology of the ancient Near East, and not Greece, because after all, ancient Israel was a part of the ancient Near East—it simply made more sense.

All the teachers agreed it would be a good idea, so I revised that particular unit with some of the material I had used at my previous school, when I covered Genesis 1-11.

The school year of 2006-2007 began, and 11^th grade Worldview opened with the Genesis 1-11 unit, seemingly without a hitch. To make a long story short, a couple of months later, shortly before the Thanksgiving break, the new principal called me into his office to tell me that the interim headmaster had made the decision to temporarily suspend me from teaching Worldview until he could investigate whether or not what I had taught in the Genesis 1-11 unit violated the school’s statement of faith. For some reason, despite the fact that there were four other 11^th grade Worldview teachers who taught the same unit, only I was singled out.

The rest of that year turned out to be quite an ordeal for me, and it’s not a story that I am ready to tell just yet. But I did want to tell a little bit about the beginning of that ordeal in order to tell about a rather interesting connection all of that had with Peter Enns book, Inspiration and Incarnation.

Here it is…

When I was temporarily suspended from teaching that one Worldview class, I was quite scared. I had never intended to do or teach anything really controversial. I was simply sharing what I had learned from my graduate work at Regent College and Trinity Western University—both highly respected, Evangelical graduate schools. Reading Genesis 1-11 within its ancient Near Eastern historical and literary contexts was just good biblical exegesis—what could be so controversial? I was honestly mystified at how anyone could think that.

But the fact that the interim headmaster had taken away my Worldview class over this had gotten me really scared. And so, I wanted to do everything I could to assure both the headmaster and the new principal that what I had taught was absolutely not controversial, and that it was simply what many good, Evangelical scholars taught. Therefore, I brought Inspiration and Incarnation to the principal one day to try to show him that what I (and the other 11^th grade Worldview teachers) had taught in the Genesis 1-11 unit wasn’t some far-out heretical craziness, but was simply good, Evangelical biblical scholarship.

I’ll never forget the principal’s reaction. When I showed him the book in my attempt to reassure him that I wasn’t a heretic, he picked it up, looked at it, and said very suspiciously, “Hmmmm…I’ve heard of this guy.” It was obvious that not only was he not impressed, but that my stock as a teacher at that school had dropped significantly as well.

I never was allowed to teach Worldview for the rest of the year, and by end of the 2006-2007 school year, I was looking for another job. It was only a year later, when Enns parted ways with the school at which he had taught, that I realized just how controversial Inspiration and Incarnation was considered to be within Evangelicalism. And so, I say in a rather tongue-in-cheek fashion, I’d like to think that thanks to Peter Enns,  Inspiration and Incarnation probably helped contribute to me getting fired.

And that is entirely okay, because Inspiration and Incarnation is a great book that more Christians who are serious about understanding the Bible need to read.

Since That Time…
Over the past ten years, I happened to stumble my way into the current creation/evolution debate. Believe it or not, back in 2007, I had never heard of Answers in Genesis, never thought anyone really took young earth creationism seriously, and yet at the time I would have said that I didn’t believe evolution was true at all. Simply put, I didn’t yet know anything about the creation/evolution debate, and therefore it is important to emphasize that my view of Genesis 1-11 was not in any way shaped by it.

Also since that time, I have read many other of Peter Enns’ books, The Evolution of Adam, The Bible Tells Me So, and The Sin of Certainty, and have loved them all. I might not agree with every single one of his arguments, but I think he has done a great service to not only biblical scholarship, but to the Church as a whole.

Therefore, since Inspiration and Incarnation is now ten years old, I thought it would be a good idea this summer to write a few posts on it, and talk about some of the basic observations and arguments that Enns discussed in that book.

But I must warn you, no matter how convincing the arguments in Enns’ book might be, no matter how often you might find yourself saying, “Well, that certainly makes sense,” the fact is that for some reason, there is a rather larger segment of Evangelicalism these days that find Enns’ views dangerous. I still really do not understand why. It is good, solid, challenging biblical scholarship that can only serve to strengthen one’s faith over the long haul, if one, in fact, steps out in faith enough to truly wrestle with what the Bible actually says.