Book Review: “The Sin of Certainty” by Peter Enns

Enns, Peter. The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our “Correct” Beliefs. New York: HarperOne, 2016 (211 pages + Notes)

Peter Enns’ new book, The Sin of Certainty, will make you reflect on your life and question what you believe. That’s a good thing.

When I was a college student, I discovered the writings of the Catholic monk, Thomas Merton. His books helped shape my understanding of the life of faith. In his Asian Journal, he wrote: “Faith means doubt. Faith is not the suppression of doubt, it is the overcoming of doubt, and you overcome doubt by going through it. A man of faith who has never experienced doubt is not a man of faith.” Merton’s writings had a profound impact on my spiritual formation. He reassured me that periods of doubt and uncertainty are inevitable, and that faith wasn’t simply intellectual assent to a list of proofs and arguments. It was trusting God and stepping out in the midst of an uncertain and chaotic world to journey down the road of faith. It was admitting your own frailties and doubts, and starting down that road anyway, because you had put your trust in God, and had faith that He would see you through.

Somewhere along the line, though, this historical understanding of faith has been lost within Evangelicalism, only to be replaced by a rigid insistence of certainty of supposed facts, and politically-motivated holy crusades against anyone who dares deviate from such Fundamentalist certainty. Chances are either you know someone who has been deeply hurt by one of these holy crusades, or you have been wounded yourself. Or perhaps you are simply a believer who is plagued by doubt and uncertainty, and is on the verge of walking away from the faith.

If so, Peter Enns’ The Sin of Certainty, is for you. It is essentially Enns’ testimony of his journey of faith through some major life crises that resulted in periods of spiritual uncertainty and doubt. Enns’ message is quite simple: uncertainty and doubt are not only inevitable, they are God’s instruments to challenge us to grow into a deeper faith and trust in Him.

Enns had been a tenured Old Testament professor at Westminster Theological Seminary who found himself in considerable hot water with a new administration after he had written the book, Inspiration and Incarnation back in 2005. The basic premise of that book was that Evangelicals have to learn to read the Old Testament within its proper ancient Near Eastern context, and when they do, they might find a number of their assumptions about the Bible challenged. It turned out that many Evangelicals didn’t appreciate having their assumptions challenged. Inspiration and Incarnation was viewed as a threat to their theological certainty. Enns soon found himself without the security of a job, and suffering from sort of spiritual vertigo, questioning what he really believed. If you have been considerably hurt by a Christian community, you will be able to relate.

Enns’ primary thesis is that the Christian faith is not a matter of intellectual assent to a number of facts or doctrines, but rather a daily trust in a personal God. Or as Enns puts it, “The problem with trusting our beliefs rather than trusting God: “We are not actually trusting God at the moment. We are trusting ourselves and disguising it as trust in God” (21). This kind of faith, Enns suggests, is ultimately a kind of mental idolatry. This reminds me of something that Dr. Gordon Fee once said as I sat in his Romans class at Regent College: “When push comes to shove, we Evangelicals think that we have special status with God because we have our theology right. Our theology becomes the Evangelical idol.”

This, of course, is not to say that correct doctrine and theology aren’t important. Enns is not advocating for some sort of postmodern relativism. He’s simply arguing that we need to recognize that our ideas about God aren’t God. If we don’t realize this, chances are our ideas about God will soon become idols we feel we need to defend at all costs. The God of the Bible, though, doesn’t need to be defended. He wants to be followed, and following God can be a scary business, because the world is, after all, an uncertain and scary place.

And nothing scares Evangelicals more than anything that challenges their notion that the Bible is a “perfect” book. Anything that seems to threaten this notion is met with fierce opposition, for a common assumption within Evangelicalism is that in order for the Bible to be true, then it must infallibly accurate in every single historical and scientific detail. Never mind the fact that the Bible itself never makes such a claim, it is a claim that many Evangelical leaders ardently defend.

In light of that, Enns takes some time in his book give a brief historical overview of some of the biggest perceived “threats” to the Christian faith:

• The Scopes Monkey Trial, that was seen as Fundamentalism’s counter-attack to evolution
• The discovery of ancient Near Eastern mythological literature, that showed a considerable amount of similarities to the opening chapters of Genesis
• The emergence historical criticism, that made various claims like Moses wasn’t the author of the entire Pentateuch
• The fact that people have long used the Bible to justify slavery and racism
• The denominational chaos that was the result of the Reformation’s claims of “Sola Scriptura”

Enns not only discusses these historical challenges to the Christian faith, he also discusses five specific issues that often have caused many Christians to question or even lose their faith:

• The fact that in the Old Testament, God tells Israel to engage in mass slaughter
• The theory of evolution seems to call the reliability of the Bible into question
• The existence of so much suffering in the world calls God’s goodness into question
• With the emergence of multiculturalism, it is becoming harder to believe that Jesus is the only way
• The decidedly hostile and un-Christ-like behavior of many Fundamentalists who, in their zeal to “defend the Bible,” actually have deeply hurt many of their fellow Christians

Enns’ point in discussing these issues is pretty simple: Yes, they are tough issues. Yes, they might cause you to feel uncertain. Yes they might make you question what you believe. But maybe God wants you to step out in faith and embrace the challenge of wrestling with these issues. Maybe, just maybe, they are there to challenge us, transform us, and grow us up in our faith.

And here’s the kicker. If that thought scares you, Enns says, “Just read your Bible! It’s full of people doubting and questioning God…and God is okay with it!” With that, Enns shares his thoughts on a number of Psalms, as well as Ecclesiastes and Job, and shows pretty conclusively that the Bible itself bears witness that God prefers honest doubt and questioning, as long as you keep journeying down the road of faith.

But don’t be fooled, the road of faith is hard. It’s going to involve wrestling with uncertainty and doubt. It’s also going to include suffering, often at the hands of people who are certain that they must punish you for admitting your doubt. Nevertheless, like Jacob, when you wrestle with God, chances are you’re going to walk away with a dislocated hip, but you’ll also be given a new name, Israel.

Fredrick Buechner once said, “Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there was no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.”

The answer to that question is simple: God hasn’t revealed Himself in a way that leaves no room for doubt. Doubt is there because we are human, and doubt is the spur to get us to step out in faith. Enns writes, “Doubt is not the enemy of faith, a solely destructive force that rips us away from God, a dark cloud that blocks the bright warm sun of faith. Doubt is only the enemy of faith when we equate faith with certainty in our thinking” (157). And again, “Doubt isn’t a sign of spiritual weakness but the first steps toward a deeper faith” (158).

Peter Enns, the Old Testament scholar, has not written a book on Biblical Studies. He’s written a book about trusting God and living out the Christian faith. In doing so, he’s actually tapping into a long contemplative tradition within Christianity that goes all the way back to the early Church. It is a contemplative tradition that Evangelicals would do well to reclaim.

The Sin of Certainty is due out April 5th.