A Book Review of “Inspiration and Incarnation” by Peter Enns (Part 2): A Look at Chapter 1

So what was it about Inspiration and Incarnation by Peter Enns that was so controversial? When I first read it back in 2005, I found it to be an insightful, honest, and truthful book that addressed some of the most fundamental tenets of solid biblical exegesis. Sure, I knew full well that, like any book about biblical exegesis and biblical interpretation, no one would agree with everything Enns said, but I found so much of it just basic common sense, I never thought anyone would have a real problem with the book.

Sadly, given my experiences over the past ten years, I’ve come to realize that—I’ll just be honest—there is a rather significant segment within American Evangelicalism that is intimidated and afraid of solid biblical exegesis for one basic reason: it threatens their pre-packaged assumptions about what the Bible should be. And so, they are afraid to admit what the Bible is.

When I read Inspiration and Incarnation, I found it to be a refreshing re-affirmation of many of the things I had come to understand and positively love about the Bible. And so, over the next week or so, I am going to go through each chapter of the book and share Enns’ main arguments, as well as a number of my own reactions and observations about the book. This post will cover Enns’ first chapter, “Getting Our Bearings.”

What Did Enns Hope to Accomplish?
In his first chapter, Enns laid out his basic motivation for writing his book: he felt that too many Evangelical biblical scholars were rather hesitant to really engage with the full doctrinal implications modern biblical scholarship raises. The problem, as Enns saw it, was that in the course of the 20^th century, Fundamentalists and Evangelicals had engaged is somewhat of a battle with theological liberalism over the Bible itself. They felt that modern, historical-critical biblical scholarship was just out to attack the Bible, to call it into question, and to deny that it was the inspired Word of God.

Although Enns didn’t go into the details about this “battle for the Bible,” I would explain it as follows: 18^th-19^th century theological liberalism did tend to deny the veracity of much of the history of the Bible, as well as the miraculous claims in the Bible. And yes, there were some early historical-critical biblical scholars who were rather intent on trying to prove that the Bible was nothing special, and that it was just full of ancient superstitions and outdated beliefs.

The modern-day Fundamentalist movement started in response to all that. And because many liberal theologians were claiming that the Bible was filled with errors, and was nothing more than ancient writing, just like any other piece of ancient writing, the Fundamentalist (and later Evangelical) movement focused on a thorough defense of the veracity and infallibility of the Bible. No longer was it good enough to say the Bible was true and inspired; it had to be inerrant and infallible—and that came to mean, “It must be 100% historically accurate from cover to cover, there can’t be any error or historical discrepancy at all, and it can’t be anything like the writings of the pagan cultures that surrounded ancient Israel.”

And because of that mindset (and if you grew up within Evangelicalism, you can probably attest to that), many Evangelicals simply cannot deal with the clear, historical and literary discoveries over the past 150 years or so that relate to the Bible. Simply put: we have learned a ton of stuff about the ancient Near East and Israel’s relationship to it—and instead of embracing what we have learned and coming to a better understanding of both the ancient world and the Bible itself, many Evangelicals feel really threatened by it.

Therefore, Enns wrote Inspiration and Incarnation in order to encourage Evangelicals to wrestle with what we have discovered, and to accept the Bible for what it truly is, not what they think it should be.

Three Issues
So what is the Bible? For one, Enns completely affirms that the Bible is God’s word. That being said, the Bible did not drop out of heaven. It was inspired within the time and place and culture of the ancient Near East—and therefore, Enns argues it shouldn’t surprise us to realize that what is in the Bible is going to have a lot of similarities with that culture of the ancient Near East. Yet for some reason, coming to this realization has proven to be rather difficult for some.

In particular, Enns highlights three specific issues regarding the Bible that Evangelicals have tended to trip over:

1. The Old Testament looks a lot like other literature from the ancient Near East. The reason why some are frightened by this thought is that they think that means that the Bible is no longer unique. If it looks like other literature from the time, does that mean it’s not special?
2. There is theological diversity in the Old Testament (i.e. Different parts of the Old Testament say different things about the same thing). Some are frightened by this because they think that would mean that the Bible is no longer trustworthy. Saying different things about the same thing is a contradiction, right? Are you saying there are contradictions in the Bible? Are you saying the Bible isn’t inerrant?
3. The way the New Testament handles the Old Testament seems really odd sometimes. It looks like New Testament writers are just yanking things out of context. Many Evangelicals don’t even want to acknowledge this (and so, they just assume that whenever the NT quotes the OT, that it must be a prediction, even those that don’t seem to be predictions must be predictions because they had hidden meanings…let’s just not think about this too much).

And so, that’s the “problem” Evangelicals tend to have with the Old Testament. If they read it within its original ancient Near Eastern context, it seems that the Bible isn’t unique, isn’t trustworthy, and isn’t inerrant—it might not be a “perfect” book. And that scares some people.

The Incarnational Analogy
Well, Enns argues that there is no need to be scared, and that we can see the Bible in a similar way we see Christ. Yes, Christ was fully God, but he was also a real human being who lived in a particular point in history, and who spoke a particular language. His being a real person does not diminish his divinity. In the same way, the Bible is fully inspired by God, but it is also the product of real people, living at certain points in history within certain cultures, and therefore communicates things with real language, idioms, figures of speech, etc. It is what Enns calls an incarnational analogy. It is a way of affirming that the Bible is fully inspired and yet also fully incarnate (so to speak) within the ancient culture in which it was written.

And this is what Enns says: “[The Bible] belonged in the ancient worlds that produced it. It was not an abstract, otherworldly book dropped out of heaven. It was connected to and therefore spoke to those ancient cultures” (5). Simply put, it shouldn’t bother us to admit that since the Bible was originally addressed to ancient people, that it would be written in the way ancient people wrote. Rather, it should bother us when we find people either denying or downplaying that very thing, for such people are ultimately denying the very human element of the Bible. And that, as Enns points out, is somewhat similar to the heresy of Docetism that claimed Jesus only appeared to be human, but really was just fully God.

And yet sadly, this is precisely what we see happening with many Evangelicals’ view of the Bible. They seem to what a pure and “perfect” book, unsullied by human hands. But by denying that human element, they are unwittingly denying the very purpose of the incarnation itself: God becoming man, getting into the mud of human history, and communicating to human beings in human language, within real, human cultures. Sure, that makes the Bible a bit messier than some people are comfortable with, but again, isn’t that what the incarnation is all about?

The Human Marks of Scripture
Enns ends his first chapter by highlighting five examples of what he calls, “the human marks of Scripture.” These are things about the Old Testament that we just need to accept:

1. The Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek (with a little Aramaic).
2. The Old Testament world was a world of temples, priests, and sacrifice.
3. Israel as well as the surrounding nations had prophets that mediated divine will to them.
4. Through much of its history, Israel was ruled by kings, as were the nations around it.
5. Israel’s legal system has some striking similarities with those of the surrounding nations.

None of that really should be surprising. Yet at the same time, if you really think about it, those “five human marks of Scripture” will affect how you interpret many things in the Bible, and sometimes you might be shocked at what you find and realize. Far from frightening, I find that invigorating and challenging, and it makes me love the Bible even more.

I highlighted two other quotes from Enns at the end of Chapter 1 that I feel really capture the heart of what Enns is really trying to convey. I’ll end this post with those quotes:

“It is essential to the very nature of revelation that the Bible is not unique to its environment. The human dimension of Scripture is essential to its being Scripture” (8).

“That the Bible bears an unmistakable human stamp does not lead to the necessary conclusion that it is merely the words of humans rather than the word of God. To those who hold such a position the question might be asked, ‘How else would you have expected God to speak? In ways wholly disconnected to the ancient world? Who would have understood him?” (9).