Category: Scripture and Prolegomena

Does Learning from the Academy Include Reading Historians?

Published on by D. G. Hart8 Comments

Pete Enns yet again thinks in the standard evangelical-vs.-mainline categories when thinking about appropriating biblical scholarship for the church:

Or consider the following: it’s been known within the evangelical community to encourage promising seminary students to pursue doctoral work at major research universities, but for apologetic purposes: infiltrate their ranks, learn their ways, expose their weaknesses. Or, related, they are told to “plunder the Egyptians”—a phrase actually used. To appropriate whatever in critical scholarship can aid the cause and either ignore or fight against the rest.

And so you have three postures by this faith community toward the threat posed by the academic study of the Bible: gatekeeper, spy, or plunderer. What lies beneath these postures is a deep distrust of the academy.

But the academy isn’t just a problem for evangelicals or other conservatives. On the other end of the spectrum we have the mainline church and theological interpretation—which is a movement to recover scripture for the church (the mainline church) in the wake of the historical critical revolution, which has not always been friendly to life and faith.

This is no rejection of the academy, though. What’s done is done. We’ve passed through what Walter Wink calls the “acid bath of criticism,” which has done the necessary job of stripping us of our naïve biblicism. But now, what’s left? What do we do with the Bible? How does it function in the church? What does it say about God? What should we believe? So, whereas evangelicalism distrust the academy, the mainline has felt a bit burned by it.

What if those are not the only options and what if Enns himself studied at a school where biblical scholars thought about matters of faith and criticism differently? What if, in fact, Enns ever broke up the evangelical world into its Wesleyan, Baptist, and confessional Protestant wings? If he did, he might find a guy like Mark Noll — when will biblical scholars learn from the academy (read academic historians) — writing about Westminster’s Ned Stonehouse in these terms:

Stonehouse abandoned the widespread assumption that the evangelists wrote history according to the canons of the modern period. For him exact harmonization became considerably less important than it had been for other evangelicals. Mark, for example, did not set out to write a biography of the modern sort, but rather was proclaiming “the glad tidings of Jesus Christ, and this presupposes something different from the interest which a biographer has in his subject . . . . The gulf that separates Mark’s historical method from the typical modern one is seen most clearly in the almost complete absence of the notion of development.” Luke, for his part, “is least concerned with the chronological and topographical settings of the incidents and teachings which he reports.” . . . In these and other assertions, Stonehouse broke with a long evangelical tradition that had regarded the evangelists’ sayings as simply reports of facts largely unrelated to the author’s theological intentions. Stonehouse’s final purpose in these protoredactional studies was anything but liberal or radical. It was precisely the truth of the message, the reality of the historic Christ, which Stonehouse expected to enhance by noting the literary purposes of the gospel-writers . . . (Between Faith and Criticism, 107-108)

Not only was Stonehouse doing something thoughtful in the world of believing and academic biblical studies, but he also served as a churchman in the OPC on any number of standing committees of the General Assembly.

In other words, when you read Enns you get the impression that the Society of Biblical Literature or the Evangelical Theological Society are the only hermeneutical games in town. If he had only gone to Dallas Theological Seminary and then to Harvard, I might understand that construction of the alternatives. But he went to Westminster where Stonehouse taught and where the faculty studied the Bible differently from either the evangelical or mainline worlds. In fact, he went to seminary with guys who apply academic rigor to the preparation of two sermons a week.

Those are some of the same students who would likely use a careful study of the Bible to warn Enns away from Protestant churches that hand out icons.

The Tale of Two Petes

Published on by D. G. Hart16 Comments

Peter Leithart takes Pete Enns to school on reader-response criticism:

Enns is correct to emphasize that the Bible doesn’t function like an owners’ manual. Proverbs more often proposes riddles than it gives simple pious advice. Still, Paul says that the Scripture is useful for training the man of God for “every good work,” so there must be something owner-manualish about the Bible.

These are old arguments, not to be resolved in a blog review. What’s most interesting about Enns’s book is his self-positioning as a defender of Scripture. This isn’t new either. Others have taken up the task of defending the Bible from the fundamentalist hordes. Enns does it cleverly. The Bible doesn’t act the way we want it to, so we have a choice: “either change our expectations to conform to what is actually in the Bible or find some way to force the Bible into our mold” (76). He claims to be doing the former, and his “unsettled faith is a maturing faith” (238). Enns’s critics are pre-classified as immature, fearful abusers of Scripture who want to press the Bible into their own modern molds. At that point, it’s difficult to know how a debate can continue.

When Jamie is Good He is Very Good

Published on by D. G. Hart23 Comments

From James K.A. Smith’s review of Pete Enns, The Evolution of Adam (thanks to our Florida co-editor):

The meaning of Scripture is not limited to what human authors intended—which is precisely why the meaning of prophetic texts outstrips what human authors might have had in mind. As Richard Hays puts it, in some ways Christians read the Bible back to front. But the dominant methodology that Enns reflects has no functional room for appreciating this point, which is why he seems to think that defining what the “authors of Genesis” had in mind settles the matter. It doesn’t.

This sort of a-canonical approach also explains why Enns sees such a strange relationship between Genesis and the apostle Paul as a reader of Genesis. “Paul’s reading of Genesis,” he comments, “is driven by factors external to Genesis. Paul’s use of the Old Testament, here or elsewhere, does not determine how that passage functions in its original setting” (87, emphasis added). Well, that might be true; and Enns is exactly right to offer a corrective to irresponsibile habits of Bible reading that are little more than baptized eisegesis, reading into the Scriptures what we want to find there. But is the “original meaning” the determinative factor for the meaning of Genesis for us? We receive a canon of Scripture that recontextualizes each book—situating every book in relation to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, which is why the “location” from which we read the Bible needs to be the practices of Christian worship. Worship is the primary “home” of the Bible and it is in worship that we cultivate those habits and virtues we need to read Scripture holistically.[8] That will certainly generate meanings of Old Testament books that could never have been intended by their human authors; but that doesn’t mean they were not intended as meanings to be unfolded “in front of the text” by the divine Author.

Enns’ approach leaves little room to recognize such recontextualization within the canon—nor does he accord any positive, constructive role to tradition (cf. 114). In fact, if it becomes a contest between “the authors of Genesis” and Paul, Enns sides with “the original meaning” of Genesis as the determinative meaning: “what Genesis says about Adam and the consequences of his actions does not seem to line up with the universal picture that Paul paints in Romans and 1 Corinthians […]. I do not think the gospel stands on whether we can read Paul’s Adam in the pages of Genesis” (92). To use Enns’ language, Paul attributes something to Genesis that the “authors of Genesis” are not trying to give us. Again, this account is entirely “from below,” as if it is Paul alone who “invests Adam with capital he does not have either in the Genesis story, the Old Testament as a whole, or the interpretations of his contemporary Jews” (135).

But now the problem above comes home to roost: what if there is an Author who is the author of both Genesis and 1 Corinthians? What did he intend? And could he intend meanings in Genesis that outstrip what the “authors of Genesis” intended? The church has always staked its reading of the Bible on the conviction that Scripture’s meaning exceeds what the original human authors could have intended. So we can’t neatly and tidily settle the cross-pressures we feel at the intersection of Genesis and contemporary science by simply limiting the meaning of Genesis to what was intended by its Ancient Near Eastern authors.

It seems to this average historian, this point is one that all of the discussion surrounding Christocentric vs. Christotelic readings misses. And Smith points to the importance of reading the Bible as a whole and as a book that may be best understood within the church rather than the Society of Biblical Literature.

Inerrancy's Big God

Published on by D. G. Hart10 Comments

Pete Enns thinks that inerrantists harbor a view of God that is too small:

Perhaps the root theological misgiving for me is that inerrancy prescribes biblical interpretation too narrowly because it prescribes God too narrowly.

The premise all inerrantists hold to on some level—albeit in varying degrees—is that an inerrant Bible is the only kind of book that, logically, God would be able to produce, the only means by which a truth-telling God would communicate.

As I see it, the rhythmic, recurring, generational tensions over inerrancy within evangelicalism are fueled by the distance between this a priori theological expectation about God and how his book should behave, and the persistently non-cooperative details of biblical interpretation.

On the contrary, the inerrantists with whom he studied had a pretty big view of God:

God hath all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of himself; and is alone in and unto himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which he hath made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them. He is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things; and hath most sovereign dominion over them, to do by them, for them, or upon them whatsoever himself pleaseth. In his sight all things are open and manifest, his knowledge is infinite, infallible, and independent upon the creature, so as nothing is to him contingent, or uncertain. He is most holy in all his counsels, in all his works, and in all his commands. To him is due from angels and men, and every other creature, whatsoever worship, service, or obedience he is pleased to require of them. (Confession of Faith 2.2)

From that view followed an understanding of the Bible that made it significant — God’s most direct revelation — but by no means encompassed the deity:

Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men unexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal himself, and to declare that his will unto his church; and afterwards, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing: which maketh the Holy Scripture to be most necessary; those former ways of God’s revealing his will unto his people being now ceased. (Confession of Faith 1.1)

I’ve always wondered whether Pete had to create an abstract inerrantist in order to make his own view plausible. Now I wonder if the difference goes deeper and whether Pete needs to put his cards on the table about how big or small God is. After all, an inerrant Bible tends to restrain those who attempt to decipher divine ways. Without inerrancy, human interpreters can think themselves pretty big.

Bible-Thumping Clericalism

Published on by D. G. Hart21 Comments

Reading Steven Wedgeworth’s comments about the clericalism of Reformed confessionalists reminded me of an important point about ministerial authority that seems worthy of comment. Buried within the Confession of Faith’s first chapter, arguably one of the best presentations of the Protestant doctrine of Scripture, is a point about the necessity of knowing the Bible’s original languages:

8. The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the native language of the people of God of old), and the New Testament in Greek (which, at the time of the writing of it, was most generally known to the nations), being immediately inspired by God, and, by his singular care and providence, kept pure in all ages, are therefore authentical; so as, in all controversies of religion, the church is finally to appeal unto them. But, because these original tongues are not known to all the people of God, who have right unto, and interest in the Scriptures, and are commanded, in the fear of God, to read and search them, therefore they are to be translated into the vulgar language of every nation unto which they come, that, the Word of God dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship him in an acceptable manner; and, through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, may have hope.

That paragraph has all sorts of implications for distinguishing Protestants from Roman Catholics: 1) Protestants were generally humanists who valued and benefited from the discovery of the most reliable manuscripts of the Bible as opposed to Rome’s doubling down on the Vulgate; 2) Protestants advocated the translation of Scripture into the vernacular for the laity to read but Roman Catholics opposed such access to Scripture (which was by the way a literary boon to national languages such as German and English); 3) (In the category of Duh!) Protestants put the authority of Scripture above the Pope and/or magisterium.

But Protestants did not advocate a Bible-study free for all where any reading of the Bible was as good as any other. That’s where the business about needing to know Greek and Hebrew provides ammunition for Presbyterian and Reformed clericalism. In all controversies of theology and church life, believers are to rely upon the Word of God as opposed to tradition. But the version to be consulted is not the NIV, KJV, or ASV. The church is supposed to consult the Bible in the original languages in the hope of deriving the most authentic understanding of God’s revelation. This means that laity and even your average Presbyterian elder bishop can only stand by and watch as assemblies of commissioners appeal to the Greek and Hebrew either in committee work or on the floor of presbytery or General Assembly. After all, to be a member of the church, you don’t even have to be able to read — though it helps with singing and other parts of worship. And you certainly don’t need to read Greek or Hebrew to be a member or even an elder bishop. But to be a minister in a Reformed church, you need to know Greek and Hebrew. For instance:

The Recommended Curriculum for Ministerial Preparation in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church

This Recommended Curriculum was approved by the Fifty-fourth General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church to serve as a guideline to ministerial candidates, presbyteries, and seminaries (Form of Government, Chapter XXIII, Section 3). The elements in the Curriculum are not to be understood as additions to the constitutional requirements stated in the Form of Government (XXI, 3, 4; XXIII, 3, 6) regarding the preparation and evaluation of qualifications of candidates for the ministry of the Word. Seminary course work by itself may not ensure fulfillment of the Recommended Curriculum for candidates whose presbyteries use the Curriculum as a guideline; therefore presbyteries may expect supplementation of a candidate’s seminary course work through individual guided study, supervised ministry experience, or other means.

SCRIPTURE

I. Bible Content
Study of the English Bible
The candidate should be required to read through the Bible in English.
Course work should include areas such as archaeology, history and geography, emphasizing the significance of these disciplines for the grammatico-historical interpretation of Scripture.
Required comprehensive examination on Bible content

Goal: The candidate should have a thorough knowledge of the content of the English Bible and an ability to communicate it.

II. Biblical Languages
Hebrew
Grammatical forms
Syntactical principles
Exegetical procedures
Required readings in the Hebrew Scriptures
Greek
Grammatical forms
Syntactical principles
Exegetical procedures
Required readings in the Greek New Testament

Goal: The candidate should be able to exegete the Scriptures from the original languages in the preparation of sermons and Bible lessons, using lexical and grammatical tools.

III. Hermeneutics (or, Principles and Methods of Interpretation)
Principles of Interpretation
Biblical Theology
History of and Issues in Biblical Criticism (Higher and Textual)
Special Hermeneutical Issues
Old Testament
New Testament

Goal: The candidate should understand the principles, procedures and problems involved in the interpretation of God’s Word, and should demonstrate a growing proficiency in the faithful exposition of Scripture. He shall be able to read the Bible as God intended it, in its organic unity and its historical diversity. The centrality of Christ, the covenant and the kingdom in the Scriptures determines our understanding of the Scriptures as a whole and as individual texts. The Bible is the progressively unfolding history of the redemptive acts and words of God, climaxing in the coming of Christ and his kingdom, ushering in the new age, the last days.

Christ has accomplished this through his death and resurrection, and the sending of his Spirit to the church on the day of Pentecost. The Bible also holds out the blessed hope to Christ’s church that this new covenant kingdom, which is not yet consummated, will appear in the fullness of God’s glory with Christ’s return on the last day.

IV. Use of the Bible in Ministry
The candidate should be required to prepare advanced exegetical papers on assigned Old Testament and New Testament passages.
The candidate should be required to use his interpretive skills and tools in the preparation of sermons and Bible lessons/courses.

Goal: The candidate should be able to faithfully explain Scripture for the building up of God’s people, moving from a careful study in the original languages through the interpretive process, and arriving at a clear exposition of the text’s meaning and application for the church today.

So while Roman Catholics appeal to apostolic succession as the basis for episcopal authority, Reformed Protestants appeal to ministers who can actually read and make sense of what the apostles wrote.

I Wonder as Jason Wonders

Published on by D. G. Hart153 Comments

That’s one way of asking it:

As I continued wrestling through the issues of church authority and its relation to Scripture, one of the questions I kept returning to was that of likelihood. “All things being equal,” I would ask myself, “which is more likely: that Jesus had intended to establish his church in such a way that it was to be governed by Scripture alone (with leaders whose role was to interpret Scripture to the best of their abilities), or that he intended his church to be governed by leaders who, in some way and under certain conditions, were protected from error when exercising their authority?”

Here’s another:

All things being equal, which is more likely: that Jesus intended to establish his church in such a way that it was to be governed by pastors and elders who ministered and taught Scripture under the oversight of other church officers, or that he intended the church to be governed by a pastor in Rome (the city of the beast), far from the original churches in Jerusalem and Asia Minor where his chosen apostles labored?

That’s why we call them loaded questions (sort of like how would Jason know apart from Scripture of Christ establishing a church — oh wait, tradition — the pastor in Rome — told him).

Biblical Scholar Alert

Published on by D. G. Hart11 Comments

Pete Enns continues to mystify with the following:

Lincoln thoughtfully and clearly articulates the responsibility of theologians and teachers to reflect on ancient creeds in terms of present states of knowledge. Frankly, I’m not sure a good argument can be made for not doing so.

To think otherwise invariable leads to the bizarre thought that the Creator needs to be protected from the wonders of his own creation.

In light of our current understanding of the cosmos, the creedal claim “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth” is not diminished but magnified beyond comprehension.

Does Pete actually think that science or history will answer the question of how to be right with God? Might the Bible’s answer to that question be a reason for maintaining that Scripture is unique, authoritative, and worth defending? Might the significance of Christ be a reason for claiming the Bible’s truthfulness? Or is Scripture just one important part of the religious experience of humankind?

Then again, if you think the Bible speaks to all of life — like Shakespeare, plumbing, and trigonometry — then Pete might have a point. But who believes that? Not the church creeds — no chapter on literature, architecture, or math.

If Only He Had Read the Book All the Way Through

Published on by D. G. Hart16 Comments

Pete Enns introduces his forthcoming book:

If we come to the Bible expecting (as so many do) something like a spiritual owner’s manual complete with handy index, a step-by-step field guide to the life of faith, an absolutely sure answer-book to unlock the mystery of God and the meaning of life, we are setting up an expectation the Bible simply is not designed to handle.

The end product is a fragile, nervous faith. Faith like that produces stress, because it has to be tended and defended with 24/7 vigilance in order to survive—like a sickly baby robin in a shoebox. And even with constant tending, it still may not survive.

Is a life of faith in God truly supposed to be this stressful? Is this what God wants for us? I don’t think so. So let’s stop making it that way by setting the Bible up to be something it’s not prepared to be and then anxiously smoothing over the rough parts to make it fit false expectations. The cost is too high.

I’m all for avoiding the Bible as a how-to manual. Show me Jesus. But that makes the debates about inerrancy all the more poignant.

Enns still hasn’t figured out the stakes of inerrancy. If the Bible is wrong about somethings, it could be wrong about Christ? And if wrong about Christ, my faith is not merely nervous but as Paul says “vain.”

And Pete still hasn’t figured out the Reformed game face; he spent too many years thinking evangelicalism and Reformed Protestantism are the same. Reformed Presbyterians don’t believe in victorious Christian living because we are theo-political refugees during the last stages of a cosmic war.

[10] Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. [11] Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. [12] For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. [13] Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. [14] Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, [15] and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. [16] In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; [17] and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, [18] praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. (Ephesians 6:10-18 ESV)

Six days of work and waiting, one of rest in when we enjoy a foretaste of the rest to come.

Sola Scriptura Has Its Moments

Published on by D. G. Hart31 Comments

Carson Holloway explains why the Roman Catholic Church teaches what it does about marriage and divorce (and in doing so sounds like a Protestant):

It turns out, then, that the Church’s rather rigorous teaching on marriage is based not on the words of some little known celibate old man, but on the words of one very well known and important celibate young man. The teaching is based on the words of Jesus Christ, whom faithful Catholics believe to be God. Perhaps, then, Christians at least, and even all those people who claim to respect Jesus as a moral teacher, could cut the Church some slack and acknowledge that it has good reason to think that it is not just imposing some man-made morality on human beings but in fact preserving what was delivered to her by her divine founder.

And there you have the logic of Protestantism, a form of reasoning that makes sense to most Christians unless they are trying to protect the prerogatives of specific offices. Sometimes the word of God really is a lot more compelling than the word of men (even episcopal ones).