The scandal of the evangelical heart and mind

[P31Woman]

David Johnstone, "Peter Enns’s ideas, as set out in Inspiration and Incarnation, are to be strongly criticised. Peter Enns was a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary — “traditionally a bastion of uncompromisingly conservative Reformed scholarship” — but was suspended in 2008 due to his views on inspiration and subsequently left the seminary. Enns’s idea (see also this) is that inspiration is analogous to incarnation, so like Christ, Scripture is both fully divine and fully human. Enns focuses on the human side, which means that


“God, in order to communicate effectively with ancient peoples, adopted their ways of thinking, their worldviews, and their ways of interpreting Scripture … As a result, Scripture contains mistaken ideas, discordant teachings, and (in the NT) attributions of meaning to the OT that was not originally there.” (p. 130) Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation

 

[P31Woman]

Interesting article on Liberation Theology - http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/ask-a-liberation-theologian-response

Yep, typical man made theology. Use the bible to create a god that serves man here and now. No cross

 

[Deborah13]

It's an interesting set of passages, I'll need to pray on it. But you're right, it is about the heart. My questioning is not designed to tear God or the bible down, quite the opposite. It's to build then up and my understanding of them up. Sometimes to build you need to first dismantle the existing structure (I'm referring to the understanding)

Yes, understanding not just believing someone else's understanding. Only when you understand yourself can it become a part of you on the inside and then you own it.
When you get around to Job here's two telling scriptures. Job 40:14 and Job 42:1-6 It's in relation to Job's understanding. If we don't understand then we can get alot of goofy ideas about God.

 

[Grazer]

Yes, understanding not just believing someone else's understanding. Only when you understand yourself can it become a part of you on the inside and then you own it.
When you get around to Job here's two telling scriptures. Job 40:14 and Job 42:1-6 It's in relation to Job's understanding. [B¡If we don't understand then we can get alot of goofy ideas about God.[/B]

Indeed we do, that's why questioning and reflection are things to be encouraged.

 

[P31Woman]

Indeed we do, that's why questioning and reflection are things to be encouraged.

You do understand the people you are reading and post about are not so concerned about answering the questions as they are destroying the authority of scirpture, right.

 

[Mike S]

Through all of Church history it would be difficult to find a more serious apologist of our Christian faith than Saint Agustine. Here is what Augustine had to say about interpretation of scripture.


Saint Agustine, Confessions -
http://percaritatem.com/2006/03/25/augustine-on-interpreting-scripture-always-a-plus-of-meaning/

“Having listened to all these divergent opinions and weighed them, I do not wish to bandy words, for that serves no purpose except to ruin those who listen. The law is an excellent thing for building us up provided we use it lawfully, because its object is to promote the charity which springs from a pure heart, a good conscience and unfeigned faith, and I know what were the twin precepts on which our Master made the whole law and prophets depend. If I confess this with burning love, O my God, O secret light of my eyes, what does it matter to me that various interpretations of those words are proffered, as long as they are true? I repeat, what does it matter to me if what I think the author thought is different from what someone else thinks he thought? All of us, his readers, are doing our utmost to search out and understand the writer’s intention, and since we believe him to be truthful, we do not presume to interpret him as making any statement that we either know or suppose to be false. Provided, therefore, that each person tries to ascertain in the holy scriptures the meaning the author intended, what harm is there if a reader holds an opinion which you, the light of all truthful minds, show to be true, even though it is not what was intended by the author, who himself meant something true, but not exactly that?”


What does this mean?

It means that even if we can, through meditation, reason and revelation, understand what the author meant, that isn't the end of the story. Augustine’s recognition that meanings other than those intended by the writer can legitimately be discovered in the sacred text is grounded in his conviction that the God of truth who inspired the writer and guarantees the text abides in the minds of believing readers, and that though God makes use of human words, they are never adequate to fully express his mystery; there is always a ‘plus’ of meaning.

 

[P31Woman]

since we believe him to be truthful, we do not presume
to interpret him as making any statement that we either know or suppose to be
false.

Peter Enns would not agree with the above statment. Agustine seems to be talking about only "true believers" not wolves in sheeps clothing.

 

[Mike S]

Peter Enns would not agree with the above statment. Agustine seems to be talking about only "true believers" not wolves in sheeps clothing.

I don't know if Enns is a true believer or not, he's just another voice I can either agree with or ignore. I ignore most of what he has to say, at least what little I know about him.

 

[Grazer]

I don't know if Enns is a true believer or not, he's just another voice I can either agree with or ignore. I ignore most of what he has to say, at least what little I know about him.

To answer that, we'd have to establish what it means to be a true believer and/or who gets to set the criteria. Once that near impossible task is done, you'd then have to decide who gets to make the judgment call on who is a true believer or not.

I love that Augustine quote. To me, part of what he's saying is "this is how I look at it but I know I've not got it all figured out. There are other explanations which are equally valid" He was very aware that we are limited but God is not.

If the bible was easy to read and understand why would we need God? The bible is how it is so we have to go to God for guidance on it. There are some very seemingly crazy things in there; talking snakes, 4 headed creatures. But there's also some very disturbing things in there like the Canaanite genocides (yes, I still use that word to describe it) and I think they're in there for us to wrestle with. In Genesis 32 Jacob wrestles with God and gets his hip dislocated for his troubles. That's what happens in wrestling, you can get hurt. I've been down a lot of wrong paths and got hurt (and indeed hurt others) as I've wrestled with certain issues. But Jacob wouldn't stop wrestling even after being injured until he got what he went for. I'll probably be wrestling with things until the day God calls me home. Only then will I truly understand and can stop.

I'm not into character assassination, were all trying to make sense of the text we have. Peter Enns has his way which takes into account the historical, archeological and scientific evidence that we have (and crucially, didn't have before) He doesn't go "external evidence seems to contradict my reading of the text therefore it must be the external evidence that's wrong". Francis Bacon was onto something when he said;

“There are two books laid before us to study, to prevent our falling into error; first, the volume of the Scriptures, which reveal the will of God; then the volume of the Creatures, which express His power. To conclude, therefore, let no man … think or maintain that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God’s word, or in the book of God’s works; divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavour an endless progress or proficiency in both.â€

But my favourite is from Augustine;

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of the world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion

 

[P31Woman]

Peter Enns has his way which takes into account the historical, archeological and scientific evidence that we have (and crucially, didn't have before) He doesn't go "external evidence seems to contradict my reading of the text therefore it must be the external evidence that's wrong".

Corrent Enns has decided the scriptures are wrong.