What Happens When I Post about Peter Enns
Maybe my next post will be “What Peter Enns Had for Breakfast This Morning.” Top 100 Evangelical Bloggers List, here I come!
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Maybe my next post will be “What Peter Enns Had for Breakfast This Morning.” Top 100 Evangelical Bloggers List, here I come!
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April 29th, 2006 at 2:02 pm
I noticed that my stats double whenever I have a new post on Pete. Happens when I get a link from you as well. Who knows, I might actually be worth something on blogshares one day.
April 29th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
Mark you should hardly be surprised by this. Enns has become a controversiall figure and when you take on people like Helm [and perhaps Carson(?) people are interested.
What is becoming increasingly clear is that the world of evangelecal scholarship is not embracing I&I which is interesting given that it is the very evangelical world who are the books intended audience. Even Enns’ most devoted fans must be concerned by this turn of events. One or two negative reviews do not a crisis make, but there is surely a trend.
April 29th, 2006 at 9:10 pm
Peter [not Enns]:
The “world of evangelical scholoarship is not embracing I&I”?
1. It is not geared toward evangelical scholars but evangelical
readers of Scripture, people who need these issues addressed in ways that some of the evangelical establishment — those reacting against the book — have not.
2. The negative reaction that accompanies “controversial” books is typically much more fierce than any positive support.
3. Saying that there is a “trend” of evangelical scholars against the book is certainly an overstatement. There have been largely positve reviews written by evangelical scholars such as John Armstrong, Joel Garver, Tremper Longman III (in Modern Reformation magazine [Nov/Dec 2005], no online version), and M. Daniel Carroll (Denver Seminary Journal, of all places), all of which came out very soon after the book was published. Each of these had some criticisms, but they all found the book beneficial and none of them saw it as anything but “orthodox” in its view of Scripture.
Additionally, the book was endorsed by Richard E. Averbeck, professor of Old Testament and Semitic languages, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School; H. G. M. Williamson, Regius Professor of Hebrew, University of Oxford; Bruce K. Waltke, professor emeritus of biblical studies, Regent College, professor of Old Testament, Reformed Theological Seminary; Bill T. Arnold, professor of Old Testament and Semitic languages, Asbury Theological Seminary; and David W. Baker, professor of Old Testament and Hebrew, Ashland Theological Seminary. (See the Baker Books site for their complete endorsements.)
Moreover, it is a bit too early to be talking about a wave against the book. It will take a fair amount of time to let all sorts of things settle rather than react on the basis of a few reviews.
April 30th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
FYI…(not sure if you posted this or not) Susan Wise Bauer’s review from this month’s Books & Culture is online. I’ve added the link at my site.
“Messy Revelation: Why Paul would have flunked hermeneutics.”
http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2006/003/3.8.html
April 30th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
So are we meant to agree with Bauer’s comments that…
“I believe in the Incarnation, but then on the other hand I have never had to stand face-to-face with a grimy, troublemaking, blue-collar worker who claims to be God.
I do have to stand face-to-face with the Old Testament and its excessive, contradictory, harsh, alien texts. Enns encourages us to recognize the Old Testament for what it is: the anteroom of the Incarnation, the practice ground where we are brought nose-to-nose with the true difficulty of believing that God ever came to earth.”
The Old Testament has “excessive, contradictory, harsh, alien texts…the practice ground where we are brought nose-to-nose with the true difficulty of believing that God ever came to earth.” This is not I think the view of Scripture that is either biblical nor reflective of reformed theology throughout the ages”
April 30th, 2006 at 7:10 pm
And now from the “I Wish I Had a Nickel for Every Time I’ve Repeated This Challenge” (and never had an answer) Department:
So, not-Enns Peter, what would you do with the “problems” of the OT that Professor Enns presents? Harmonize them? Ignore them? Simply rule them out-of-bounds for discussion because of your pre-defined theological category of “inspiration” or “inerrancy”?
Or do you deny the things he’s raised are even there in the text?
April 30th, 2006 at 9:48 pm
[All of which convinces me that I'll politely say "no" if ever asked to host a Peter Enns Weblog. My server might turn into a smoking pile of silicon! ;)]
May 1st, 2006 at 9:35 am
Mark:
I think Carson answers the questions you raise, let me give you just three examples….
1] On similarities between Genesis and ANE literature….
“…while Enns rightly asserts that there is no convincing evidence of direct borrowing between Genesis and the relevant ANE accounts of creation and flood, he does little to point out the differences. That the categories of thought are remarkably similar is obvious, and should cause no surprise among those who fully recognize how much the biblical revelation is grounded in history (more on that below); yet competent scholars have laid out the differences between Genesis and the other ANE accounts with penetrating attention both to detail and the big picture, and Enns does not interact with that literature. Had he done so, perhaps his argument would have been a tad less tendentious.”
On Diversity in the OT.
“Enns is right, of course, to point out that Scripture includes diverse theological emphases. And he is right to point out that Scripture is being domesticated if this diversity is flattened, whether by reading Mark and John as if they boasted identical emphases, or by reading 1 and 2 Chronicles as if their theological emphases cannot be properly differentiated from those of Samuel and Kings. But Enns expends too little energy in showing how these diverse voices sing in the same choir and harmonize rather well.”
On the relationship between the OT and the NT….
The failure to get this tension right—by “right,” I mean in line with what Scripture actually says of itself—is what makes Enns sound disturbingly like my Doktorvater on one point. Barnabas Lindars’s first book was New Testament Apologetic. The thesis was very simple, the writing elegant: the New Testament writers came to believe that Jesus was the Messiah, and that he had been crucified and raised from the dead. They then ransacked their Bible, what we call the Old Testament, to find proof texts to justify their new-found theology, and ended up yanking things out of context, distorting the original context, and so forth. Enns is more respectful, but it is difficult to see how his position differs substantively from that of Lindars, except that he wants to validate these various approaches to the Old Testament partly on the ground that the hermeneutics involved were already in use (we might call this the “Hey, everybody’s doing it” defense), and partly on the ground that he himself accepts, as a “gift of faith,” that Jesus really is the Messiah. This really will not do. The New Testament writers, for all that they understand that acceptance of who Jesus is comes as a gift of the Spirit (1 Cor 2:14), never stint at giving reasons for the hope that lies within them, including reasons for reading the Bible as they do. The “fulfillment” terminology they deploy is too rich and varied to allow us to imagine that they are merely reading in what is in fact not there. They would be the first to admit that in their own psychological history the recognition of Jesus came before their understanding of the Old Testament; but they would see this as evidence of moral blindness. As a result, they would be the first to insist, with their transformed hermeneutic (not least the reading of the sacred texts in salvation-historical sequence), that the Scriptures themselves can be shown to anticipate a suffering Servant-King, a Priest-King, a new High Priest, and so forth. In other words, Enns develops the first point but disavows the second. The result is that he fails to see how Christian belief is genuinely warranted by Scripture. No amount of appeal to the analogy of the incarnation will make up the loss.
May 1st, 2006 at 10:02 am
Clear reviews and criticisms of the book are just conveniently ignored. Rather, we just get a list of scholars who liked the book. This is most unhelpful
May 1st, 2006 at 10:16 am
Luke:
Your comment is exactly why I quoted extensively from the Carson review in answering Mark. Carson powerfully addresses some of the problems raised by I & I and it seems to me that defenders of the book need to answer his points.
May 1st, 2006 at 10:20 am
Luke, I posted this under Marks post “Books and Culture Reviews Inspiration and Incarnation.” You might consider it a (very) preliminary response to (rather than convenient ignoring of) Carson’s review of I&I:
I can’t help but notice that, with the exceptions of Armstrong, Garver and Bauer, all of the positive reviews of Enns’ book you’ve listed have come from Old Testament specialists. In fact, Averbeck serves on the same faculty as D.A. Carson (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) and Waltke on the same faculty with Paul Helm (Regent College). Nor can I help noticing that the “wave†of scholarly opposition has come from a New Testament specialist (Carson), a Philosopher (Helm) and an OPC pastor. For my money, I’d take the OT specialists’ assessment of a book focused on the OT over that of the philosophers and NT profs any day. I wonder if Carson spoke to Averbeck or Helm to Waltke about the book before writing their negative reviews.
Nor can I help but notice that none of the negative reviews ever really grasp the nettle of the particular issues Enns raises. The closest you get is with Carson, who very carefully picks his battles so as to take pot-shots (in a condescending tone for rhetorical force) at the easiest of Enns’ examples while leaving the more difficult issues untouched. For instance, when arguing against Enns’ section on theological diversity Carson attacks, of all things, Enns’ example of Proverbs 26:4, 5. Carson’s discussion of Proverbs makes it sound like Enns treats Proverbs 26:4,5 as being “mutually irreconcilable.†But Enns does nothing of the sort. Enns writes on these proverbs, “Both of these sayings are wise, even though–to state the obvious–they say the opposite. This one example already alerts readers that there is diversity within Proverbs. It is not just a book that hands out pearls of wisdom to be applied without further ado. Rather, the reader is expected to invest energy in discerning whether a certain proverb is relevant for a certain situation. To put it another way, there is more to wisdom than simply reading a proverb. One must also have wisdom to read the situation, to know whether a proverb is fitting.†(I&I, p.74) Carson seems to imply fundamentally the same thing when he writes, “The fact that these two lie side-by-side is strong evidence that the compiler did not think they are mutually irreconcilable. Indeed, the second part of each proverb hints at the different situations when one or the other might be most appropriate.†Carson seems to be implying that Enns would disagree (when he clearly does not) and that all of the examples Enns adduces are as silly as treating proverbs as “universal case law.†This is a straw man if ever I saw one.
When it comes to more difficult issues like Samuel-Kings and Chronicles, Carson is happy to say that they “harmonize rather well†and leave it at that. They “harmonize rather well� Tell me then Dr. Carson, how did Solomon gain his throne? Was David aged and bedridden, unable to attend Solomon’s hasty annointing amidst a coup staged by David’s sons (1 Kings 1:9) as in 1 Kings 1? Or did David preside over a national assembly, naming Solomon as his successor with Solomon receiving the wholehearted support of all the people, including David’s sons (29:24)? Any attempt to harmonize these divergent accounts in order to make them both out to be “historical†in the modern sense of the word will inevitably be an exercise in the most absurd sort fo special pleading. Similarly, Carson is quite content to simply flippantly pass the more difficult issue of the “moveable well†in 1 Corinthians 10 off to Thiselton without engaging that himself.
We could multiply examples but in my estimation Carson’s review is obscurantist.
Under His mercy,
D
May 1st, 2006 at 10:47 am
[Not Enns] Peter,
The discussion is going to get a little difficult here because it is currently taking place on several different threads. As to your first two points, that Carson has already answered the challenge of what we do with the first two of Enns’s concerns (similarities between ANE literature and the OT, and theological diversity in the OT), I refer you to David’s excellent critique in the thread about the Books and Culture review. In brief, David sees Carson as picking on relatively “easy” examples from Enns while ignoring or insufficiently dismissing the more challenging examples (and David does not concede that Carson adequately handles the “easier” examples either).
Your third point concerns the NT’s use of the OT. Why is it so disturbing to contemplate that when the NT writers presented interpretations of OT passages that radically ignore grammatical-historical exegesis they were at least in part able to do so because that was a common practice in their day? The fact is, if you do a study of 2nd Temple literature, what they did looks very much like what other 2nd Temple period writers did. It seems ludicrous to posit that they weren’t aware of this. Furthermore, this provides one more explanation for why their exegesis was so readily and unquestioningly accepted by their first readers: this was the kind of stuff people back then were used to reading all the time.
The second half of your final paragraph is a bit lost on me. Where does Enns “disavow…that the Scriptures…anticipate a suffering Servant-King, a Priest-King, a new High Priest, and so forth”? He nowhere disavows that in the book, and I know personally that he would not do so. In his classes, Enns teaches the redemptive-historical approach to Scripture that is taught by all Westminster professors. This view, in brief, sees God revealing his plan of redemption, which he had in mind before the universe was made, progressively across history. Thus the plan is there, but cannot be seen in its fullness until after the life, death, resurrection, and Spirit-sending of Christ. Nothing in the book disavows that approach. It is a complete distortion to say that Enns is saying that there was nothing in the OT that pointed toward or prepared the way for the Messiah. The focus of his concern in the third part of his book is not with what is or isn’t actually in the OT, but rather with the rather startling way that the NT writers exegete individual passages totally out of their grammatical-historical context. That they did this cannot be denied. Please interact directly with the examples Enns gives in the book, instead of alleging that he denies that God placed Messianic intent in the OT.
Furthermore, to say that the NT writers were exegeting OT passages in the “style” of other 2nd Temple exegetes in no way denies that they did so under inspiration of the Holy Spirit. To allege that Enns says they made up their interpretations out of whole cloth is simply not true.
May 1st, 2006 at 10:53 am
Luke wrote:
Luke, let’s not descend to that level. I tried hard to make clear that I was not posting those in a “let’s see who has the most scholars” contest, but merely to counter the claim that there is a “trend” in scholarship rejecting the book.
May 1st, 2006 at 11:53 am
Mark
Are you saying that Helm and Carson are not qualified to respond to I & I, because they aren’t OT scholars?
May 1st, 2006 at 2:07 pm
Mark:
I do think that Carson’s comments on NT use of the OT are helpful, and (to David) the one area where Carson is undoubtedly qualified to speak with respect to the book. I think he quite helpfully shows that the hermeneutical practices were not monolithic at all: think of Jubilees and its apologetic for the Law before the Law - so that you end up with an eternal/timeless Torah, vs. the things Carson points out in Hebrews, with the attention to historic progression of revelation.
This area was where I ended up as disappointed as any with the class. To lump all 2 Temple exegesis together is, as Enns is all too fond of saying about a theological center to the OT, too broad to be helpful. One finds different NT authors reading the OT in different ways!
Furthermore, the main critique by Carson (one which he is eminently qualified to make, as it concerns Chalcedonian orthodoxy; let’s hope all Christians could discourse on these things) has to do with the unqualified use of the term “incarnation.” This is the strongest point of the critique and I would say that it deserves qualification from Enns, perhaps in the form of a brief article?
May 1st, 2006 at 2:28 pm
Peter,
I think you’re crossing threads again. I didn’t say that. Someone else did, in another discussion. And I believe he didn’t say they were “unqualified,” he was just comparing fields of expertise. But I didn’t say it, so I won’t go there
May 1st, 2006 at 2:33 pm
Jason,
I’m hoping that David will continue to interact with you. He’s obviously read the Carson article (I still haven’t) and therefore is “uniquely qualified” (JUST KIDDING!!) to respond.
And to those of you quick to jump me because I haven’t yet read Carson’s article….if you want to take my Greek test on all of Galatians and a chunk of Acts, I’ll give you my online exam log in (REALLY JUST KIDDING!!!)
May 1st, 2006 at 2:51 pm
Peter,
Let this response count for both here and the Books and Culture Review. Did I say that Carson and Helm were not qualified to respond to Enns’ book? I certainly do not mean that they haven’t anything worthwhile to add to the discussion or anything like that.
However I would point out that their areas of expertise lie elsewhere. Generally, when seeking assessments on current cancer treatments, I look to the oncologists before turning to the local family practitioner. When seeking assessments of current theories in quantum physics, I turn to the physicists before turning to the biochemist or a philosopher of science. Similarly, when seeking assessments of books on issues in the OT (such as I & I), I look to guys like Williamson, Waltke, Longman, and Enns long before I turn to philosophers and NT scholars. This is not at all to say that those who do not specialize in the particular field in question have nothing to say. It’s just that common sense dictates that they’re less qualified than those who do specialize in that field. I meant to imply nothing more than that. In the same vein I would say that Carson is better qualified to speak to these issues, particularly the NT’s use of the OT, than Helm.
On the other hand, Peter, good credentials do not a good scholar make. Good scholarship means not attacking strawmen, not dodging the really thorny issues while painting oneself as a paradigm of intellectual honesty, not passing the buck to other scholars whenever one is pressed to account for specific data. I stand by my words, Carson’s review is obscurantist and its the best negative review I’ve seen.
Now, Peter, what do you say about the “rock which followed them” in 1 Corinthians 10? How do you reconcile 1 Chronicles 28 and 29 with 1 Kings 1? Tell us, how did Matthew come to think Hosea 11:1 was referring to Jesus? What do you do with the raqia in Genesis 1:6-8, 14-15, 17 and 20? Luke, feel free to jump in here too. Please do what Carson does not and show us specifically how the interpretive practices of Jesus and the NT authors differed from those of other 2nd Temple Jews with respect to passages like Matthew 2:15, Galatians 3:16, or Luke 20:37-38. Explain to us how Paul came up with the names “Jannes and Jambres” for the magicians in Pharaoh’s court (2 Tim 3:8) and where Jude got this idea about Michael and the devil quarrelling over who was to get Moses’ body (Jude 9). Be sure to interact adequately with the relevant sections of I & I before you post.
Blessings,
D
Under His
May 1st, 2006 at 3:15 pm
Jason,
At long last, I may be in substantial agreement with you on something. Well said.
May 1st, 2006 at 4:46 pm
David,
I dont’ think every example in the book needs to be discussed for Carson’s criticisms to stand. In the review he clearly states that he is not going to deal with every example, but rather just a few to make his point. You say that these are the “easy” examples that he deals with. I simply think that that is unfair. How can you read his article and then accuse him of being obscurantist for not dealing with every issue? He is not taking “pot shots” at Enns or being condescending, in my opinion. He quotes Enns in virtually every paragraph and often quotes him at length. He is careful to criticize the book within the bounds of its own stated purpose. He is fair in his assessment of Enns’ major points. He puts them in Enns’ own words, for crying out loud! How this is taking pot shots I cannot fathom.
He also talks a bit about how we are to deal with those issues that Enns raises. He talks about how Reformed scholarship has already dealt with those issues (e.g. accomodation in Calvin). He gives numerous examples as to how Enns has oversimplified the “problems” and not given adequate qualification in numerous places, as Jason points out.
Furthermore, I agree with Jason that by far the key criticism is the one that Carson makes regarding the unhelpful and ambiguous (at best) and possibly dangerous (at worst) use of the “incarnational” analogy. He also points out very carefully and fairly the issues that not addressing this carefully raise on a pastoral, hermeneutical, and theological level. I suspect (although I have not spoken with Enns about this) that Pete himself would agree with some of these criticisms that Carson offers on this level.
May 1st, 2006 at 6:46 pm
Luke,
I do not expect Carson to answer every example that Enns offers. Not at all. I am simply pointing out that his review rather neatly skirts the more difficult issues Enns’ book raises.
I’ve already given you an example of what I mean when I say Carson is taking “pot-shots” when I examined his treatment of Enns on diversity. I would have had not problem if he had ignored the Proverbs example (the easy one) and tackled Samuel-Kings and Chronicles (the tough one). To make matters worse, he botches the Proverbs example.
I haven’t time for a point for point rebuttal to Carson. But another example or two might help. Carson writes, “The problem is that to ordinary readers whom Enns wants to help, the disavowel of objective historiography will sound, rather, like the disavowel of historiography that tells the truth, which is quite a different thing. King Mesha provides a rather self-serving report: good observation. But one of the remarkable things about biblical treatment of biblical ‘heroes’ is that they are portrayed warts and all: think of David, Abraham, Moses, Peter, Barnabas, and so forth. Where are Mesha’s warts?” I see David’s and Solomon’s warts in Samuel/Kings. Where are their warts in Chronicles?
Carson writes, “If by ‘objective historiography’ Enns is holding out for an ideal in which historical events are portrayed in absolute comprehensiveness and perfect proportion, then it is a mere truism that there is no such thing as ‘objective historiography’: the bar has been raised so high that objective historiography is open only to Omniscience.” For one thing, rather than placing the bar of ‘objective historiography’ on the level of Omniscience, Enns compares it to the “objective reporting of an insurance adjuster” (I&I p.61). Nor does Enns imply that some historiography is ‘objective’ and some isn’t. “To be direct, there is no historiography that does not have a decidedly interpretive element” (I&I p.62) As I look again over Enns’ treatment of the nature of historiography, I have a hard time seeing how someone would get out of that section “the disavowel of historiography that tells the truth” unless they are willing to say that Newsweek or Time, or CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX never tell the truth (see I&I p.62). Once again Carson has botched an important part of his critique.
Now, Luke, for the record, I didn’t ask Carson to deal with the following questions: “Now, Peter, what do you say about the “rock which followed them†in 1 Corinthians 10? How do you reconcile 1 Chronicles 28 and 29 with 1 Kings 1? Tell us, how did Matthew come to think Hosea 11:1 was referring to Jesus? What do you do with the raqia in Genesis 1:6-8, 14-15, 17 and 20? Luke, feel free to jump in here too. Please do what Carson does not and show us specifically how the interpretive practices of Jesus and the NT authors differed from those of other 2nd Temple Jews with respect to passages like Matthew 2:15, Galatians 3:16, or Luke 20:37-38. Explain to us how Paul came up with the names “Jannes and Jambres†for the magicians in Pharaoh’s court (2 Tim 3:8) and where Jude got this idea about Michael and the devil quarrelling over who was to get Moses’ body (Jude 9).”
I asked you and Peter. Now are you going to try to actually engage the biblical data or just shut your eyes really tight, put your fingers in your ears and say to yourself “Carson is the best biblical scholar in the world. Carson is the best biblical scholar in the world….” I’m not trying to be mean, but either actually deal with the issues or stop posting. The conversation has moved beyond the point where we can just say “Oh yeah? Well, I agree with so-and-so. Have you dealt with his arguments?” It’s time to get down to the hard work of looking at specific issues and not just continually endorsing other people’s articles.
Blessings,
D
ps. It does not follow that “If 2nd Temple Hermeneutics was variegated, then NT authors were doing grammatical-historical exegesis.” I don’t think that’s what Jason was getting at, but it should be noted nonetheless.
Blessings
May 2nd, 2006 at 9:16 am
David,
Thanks, yes, as you know I am not saying the apostles were doing only GH exegesis (although I’m not afraid to say they may have done some).
With respect to 2 Temple interpretive traditions showing up in the NT, I’m not sure how far we should go with such things. It is definitely an interesting aspect of the NT, and one that any serious student of Scripture should grapple with. But what kind of answer can we really give about such instances?
a. The law was given by angels
b. Jannes and Jambres
c. The rock that followed them was Christ
We could posit at least two solutions:
a. Paul was talking to people who were familiar with these traditions. Perhaps they didn’t all believe all these traditions, but they knew about them. Paul refers to them because they are common ways of talking about the things he is talking about. But he didn’t believe they were in the Scriptures.
b. Paul was a product of his time. He is inspired, but inspired within 2 Temple interpretive traditions. He didn’t really know that these things weren’t in the Scriptures.
How do we resolve the issue? The locus of an answer is inside Paul’s own brain. How are we going to get there? We know what he said, but that’s it. We don’t know what he thought about what he said. So there’s really no answer to the question. Of course we could play with probabilities - he mentions things so casually that it’s as though he has no idea.
Or, conversely, maybe someone who was basically raised in Jerusalem and attended Gamaliel’s academy, where he would have been exposed to sacred and secular history and writings, and on top of that one who characterized himself as more zealous for the traditions of the fathers, and advancing more quickly, than his contemporaries, perhaps such a one would have known ‘pasa grafe’ better than us moderns? Perhaps we’re projecting our own C21 American thickheaded biblical IQ onto one who treated the Torah as the path to life.
Who can say? Unless Paul gets on here and tells us what he was thinking, there really is no answer. Perhaps that’s why I prefer what Vos does with the idea of angels giving the law: he says it isn’t in the OT, and then he actually takes time to see how Hebrews, Paul, and Stephen use this tradition in different ways in their argument.
Let me be clear: I have no problem with Pete’s article on the moveable well. I think it’s well within the bounds of orthodoxy, I think it’s defensible on a Reformed view of inspiration, etc. Well written as it is, I’m just not sure we can know why Paul said such a thing.
May 2nd, 2006 at 9:22 am
Matthew came to think Hosea 11:1 referred to Jesus because he was schooled in Christocentric/telic (whatever floats your boat) hermeneutics, based upon the teaching the apostles received from Jesus during his 40 days on earth prior to his ascension. Of course he wasn’t doing GH exegesis. It’s typology.
May 2nd, 2006 at 9:23 am
Mark:
Madelyn is extremely interested in your thoughts on the Carson article, and has volunteered to take your Greek exam right after her next poo-poo.
May 2nd, 2006 at 9:33 am
Jason,
Poo-poo is about what I expect to do on that Greek exam, so perhaps it would be just as well if Madelyn took it.
May 2nd, 2006 at 10:32 am
Jason,
If there’s one thing I certainly admire about you it’s your willingness to engage the issues. However, I find your handling of 2nd Temple interpretive traditions in the NT to be be unsatisfactory on a number of counts.
As you say, “How do we resolve the issue? The locus of an answer is inside Paul’s own brain. How are we going to get there? We know what he said, but that’s it. We don’t know what he thought about what he said. So there’s really no answer to the question. Of course we could play with probabilities - he mentions things so casually that it’s as though he has no idea.”
That can be said of any issue in the Pauline corpus (and by analogy any issue in the NT) if you take the locus of the meaning of a text to lie in authorial intention. What does Paul mean when he says, “eidotes [de] hoti ou dikaioutai anthropos ex ergon nomou ean me dia pisteos Iesou Xristou…” (Galatians 2:16)? Is that a subjective or an objective genitive? The answer lies in his intentions as an author, which are in his head. We know what he said, but that’s it. We don’t know what he thought about what he said. So there’s really no answer to the question. Sure we could play with probabilities - “even we have believed in Christ” would be a bit redundant in the verse if we take it as an objective genitive….
You need to understand, Jason, the way you’ve tried to invoke the so-called “intentional fallacy” cuts two ways. If we can’t use context (whether literary, historical, grammatical or whatever) to try and get at the authorial intent of the passage, whether we’re looking at Galatians 2:16 or looking at Galatians 3:19, then there’s really no point in doing exegesis at all. If what you say is true, we can’t get at Paul’s (or any other writer’s) meaning at all.
Furthermore, the probability that Paul speaks using 2nd Temple interpretive traditions while knowing better, using them with a sort of “Oh yeah, the Law was mediated by angels alright (*wink**wink*)” seems to me like special pleading. How would he have known better? If he knew better why does he use them as important premises in his arguments as in Galatians 3:19?
I’m still looking forward to Luke and Peter weighing in on these issues.
Under His mercy,
David
ps. Saul was practically raised in Tarsus, not Jerusalem.
May 2nd, 2006 at 10:36 am
pss. If Madelyn’s available, I have a Greek quiz this afternoon…
May 2nd, 2006 at 10:51 am
David:
Saul was born in Tarsus, but probably in Jerusalem by the time he hit puberty.
Further, the issue is not one of simple context. The point of a subjective vs. an objective genetive is one of context. But the whole point of the interpretive traditions (as Enns frames it) is what the author was consciously or unconsciously thinking. And this takes place in the mind of the author. It’s not a question that context can determine because it is necessarily an extra-textual issue. If Paul’s point in writing is _what he says_, not _the interpretive framework within which he speaks about what he says_, then the issue is unresolvable; it is in the mind of the author. And that is precisely my point about Vos. He doesn’t try to figure out why these things were showing up in the NT - he just answers the question of how they function.
And, I’m not saying that Paul was saying “oh yeah right wink - wink” as though it were just some silly thing and he was condescending. It’s just that he’s speaking in the idiom of his day and theological context.
May 2nd, 2006 at 11:22 am
It has been very interesting to follow this discussion. Concerning ‘Carson the great scholar’ I have decided to post my review of Justification and Variegated Nomism, volume 1 that I posted on amazon.com. Though officially that book and that review touch on Carson and his discussion of another issue(s), I wanted to put some thoughts on ‘Carson the scholar’ up on the blog for discussion. After reading Carson’s review of Enns’ book, I think much of the same Carson that I finger in my review is there in Carson’s review of Enns’ book. So, here it is…
This review was originally posted as a discussion topic in the section bellow. I have decided to add it to the reviews section. As you read bellow you will see that I actually think that this book, so far as the various contributors are concerned (excepting the short introductory essay by Carson and his lengthy conclusion-analysis essay at the end, and possibly Seifrid’s learned but wrongheaded, in my opinion, essay), is an excellent book. The various contributors provide excellent discussions of the areas of Jewish literature that they cover, especially from the angle/questions of the law, how the literature reflects Jewish understanding of it, the identity of Israel and the relation of that to the law, identity of Israel and eschatological hope, the literature’s covenantal-conception of Israel’s relationship with its God, how the Judaism reflected by each piece of literature understood ‘grace,’ etc. So, as a book discussing Judaism in the ancient world, especially early Judaism when Jesus was around (several of the essays do not touch on Judaisms contemporary with Jesus and/or prior to 70 CE and 135 CE, which makes a massive difference), this book is excellent. The one star rating reflects how I rate the book with respect to how people in general seem to perceive the book and its goal: to refute Sanders’ ‘Covenantal-Nomism.’ The one-star rating reflects what I think of Carson’s summary-analysis essay at the end that claims/presents the book as a triumph over Sanders in a way that people who do not like the (?) New Perspective on Paul (as I state bellow, that term means something different to different people; it seems that for most people who do not like the NPP, especially the ones who have not read anything by supposed-NPP scholars, it seems to mean some understanding of Paul that does not present Paul as espousing a Lutheran-Reformed theology; this is relevant as I have lost count of how many times I have seen scholars, who are not technically NPP scholars labeled as NPP who simply try to set Paul in a first century context with his letters addressing first century issues). Please read bellow to see some short comments on why I think that this book utterly fails to refute Sanders’ ‘Covenantal-Nomism’ as a helpful way to designate the pattern of religion exemplified by/in the various Early Judaisms.
First off, if you respond (or post a review in response) to this please indicate how much of this book you have actually read. Now, when I read this book last year I was struck by several things. After having read Sanders, it seemed that this book was the book out there that, basically, vindicated him! Each contributor that touched upon Judaism during Jesus’ time essentially said that Sanders’ ‘covenantal-nomism’ worked as an excellent way of describing whatever segment of Early Judaism (during Jesus’ time) that they were treating. The basic criticism of Sanders’ concept of covenantal-nomism as applied to Judaism contemporary with Jesus was that Sanders was using protestant-roman catholic categories for discussing Judaism; categories that may not be the most helpful.
There were other minor criticisms, but please understand that none of the contributors who touched upon Judaism when Jesus was around claimed that the Old-paradigm for understanding Judaism (semi-Pelagian works-righteousness…merit-seeking-l… etc) should stand.
From here I should move onto the most interesting part of my experience of reading the book last year: reading Carson’s summary essay. It seemed that the summary / analysis essay misrepresented the conclusions (import/significance of the contributor’s essays for assessing Sanders’ covenantal-nomism) to an amazing degree; to the extent of, basically, claiming the opposite of what the contributors wrote. I do not know how to explain this. I was astonished. Numerous people with whom I have spoken, who have read the book as well, concur with this assessment (I know that this is not really great documentary evidence…I would rather not name any names as some of them would probably be familiar to people reading this).
As a side-note, it is interesting that the contributor who treated 4th Ezra (I believe that it was Richard Baukham) claimed that it too fit the broad outlines of a covenantal-nomistic pattern of religion. For those of you who have read Sanders’ `Paul and Palestinian Judaism,’ you will know that that is his main example of an Early Jewish writing that did not exemplify a covenantal-nomistic pattern of religion but, rather, works-righteousness religion. So, at least according to one contributor, Sanders did not really go far enough with his covenantal-nomistic concept. This is one humorous example of how the contributors do not support Carson’s analysis/conclusions in the essay at the end of the book in which he tries to smuggle an old-perspective understanding of Early Judaism in the back door.
So, in semi-response to `A Reader’ who posted a non-review on May 31, 2004, this book does not challenge `the (?) New Perspective’ (it seems to mean different things to different people; for most opponents, especially ones who really have not read anything by any supposed NPP scholars, it seems simply to mean some reading of Paul that is not a traditional Lutheran-Reformed reading). Rather, it stands as an obstacle that challenges to `the NPP’ (or at least post-Sanders understandings of Early Judaism) must overcome. Lastly, this volume is one of the main reasons why volume 2 (The Paradoxes of Paul) is, in my view, not very helpful. Since the contributors to that volume basically presuppose Carson’s account of `the findings’ of volume 1, they set out in a wrong/uninformed direction. They also do not touch on the places where the serious debate needs to happen, what is/was Paul’s context(s)?
Lastly, (this section was not in the discussion post), Carson seems to argue against positions that his supposed opponents do not hold. From reading Carson one would get the impression that Sanders and those who follow him think Early Judaism to be one large homogenous unit, with no diversity. They would think that Sanders claims to have presented a systematic-theology of Early Judaism (again, Carson may acknowledge in some places that Sanders is not trying to present this, I do not remember. Nevertheless, from reading his negative sections; sections where he presents his findings in polemical-genre as though they are set against Sanders, it seems that he is thus presenting Sanders and his followers as thinking they have done what I described prior to this lengthy parenthetical). This, just like Carson claiming that Sanders has a Paul whose pattern of religion is also Covenantal Nomism (in lectures Carson gave concerning the NPP at RTS-Charlotte…instead, see Sanders’ section dealing with this question on pages 511-515 of ‘Paul and Palestinian Judaism’), is blatant misrepresentation of Sanders in the form of arguing against an opponent who does not exist/implicitly (sometimes explicitly) attributing to Sanders and his followers positions that they do not hold. This is all absurd. Sanders explicitly acknowledges the diversity of Early Judaism. In fact, the whole point of his calling covenantal-nomism a ‘pattern of religion’ is that he cannot present a systematic theology of Early Judaism because it is so diverse. In fact, Sanders does not even claim to survey all relevant Jewish data; note that his title has reference to Palestinian Judaism (lest someone, such as Carson, want to jump in and claim that thus Sanders sets up a false barrier between Palestinian Judaism and Hellenistic Judaism, etc, Sanders also notes that one cannot do this, but nevertheless he will restrict himself to Palestinian Judaism-literature for ‘practical’ pg2 reasons). One can find all of this in Sanders’ short (32 page) introduction section to ‘Paul and Palestinian Judaism.’ Lest one want to criticize Sanders for addressing those issues in the introduction and ignoring them throughout the rest of the book, he or she should read the rest of the book and see how conscious Sanders remains of all the introductory issues throughout the book. In fact, I recommend reading the introductory section that one can see what Sanders’ goals were, who he is arguing against, etc…basically to help set Sanders’ book in context and thus understand it better.
I hope that this pseudo-review has been helpful. I know that it is not really a review as it does not do the things that a typical review does. Nevertheless, I think it should be helpful as it addresses the concerns and questions that most of the people who are interested in ‘Justification and Variegated Nomism, volume 1’ have. It does not refute Sanders. It does not challenge the (?) NPP’s at all as it does not challenge the (?) new (for Protestants) view of Judaism that Sanders set Protestant scholarship on the trajectory to realizing. For people who think that Carson is just ‘the best evangelical scholar’ and ‘an authority in this area,’ please think again. Though he may be a great scholar, my interaction with his work, limited to this two-volume series and his lectures on the NPP at RTS-Charlotte to which I listened online, showed me ‘a Carson’ who misrepresents his opponents (most basically by arguing against positions that they do not hold in a way that makes it seem as though they hold them), obscures data and issues, twists the work/words of other scholars around greatly, and at the end of all this really succeeds in not actually addressing the issues that need to be addressed. Or, to put it another way, Carson throws up such a smoke-screen of jargon, twisting, and misrepresentation, that, with respect to this book, the questions that Sanders raised about understanding Early Judaism, other scholars’ tweaking and development of Sanders (especially in terms of learning to analyze Judaism in less ‘protestant’ categories and learning to ask better questions of the Jewish literature), etc are not touched in his summary-analysis essay. Instead, if one reads only his introductory essay and summary-analysis essay (as Carson recommends in his RTS-Charlotte NPP lectures) one comes away without any real substantive interaction with the issues and discussion of the contributors to the volume (perhaps Seifrid’s essay excepted). More than that, one comes away with a total misunderstanding of Sanders, his followers in understanding Early Judaism from his ‘covenantal-nomism’ trajectory-perspective, and the impression that, basically, all the contributors would be happy with an old-perspective understanding of Early Judaism.
So, please read this book. It is an excellent discussion of Judaism(s) in the ancient world with a specific set of questions in mind. The contributors themselves (besides Carson) do substantively interact with Sanders as well. But, if you are looking for a book to be able to simply hurl at supposed followers of ‘the NPP,’ the reason for which many seem to look to is, do not bother. In fact, if you are using it that way, simply mentioning the name as though it stands as the great critique of Sanders, you really should stop doing that. Lastly, as I mentioned above, it is because of this book that I find volume 2 to be, largely, a failure. Some of the essays within it are very helpful, see Westerholm’s essay summarizing ‘the NPP’ over the last 25 years, Silva’s essay (even though I tend to lean in the direction against which he is arguing) on the subjective vs. objective genetive reading of pistis christou in the context of faith vs. works of the law in Galatians that takes the ‘objective position’ and supplements its previous arguments with the findings of an article published by another scholar, and Hengel’s essay (which was previously published in the Tubigen symposium volume ‘Paul and the Mosaic Law’…Hengel is an excellent scholar). Even so, however, since the main exegetical contributions and related essays presuppose Carson’s understanding of volume 1, this volume thus does not really touch some of the most important ‘Paul in context’ issues that need to be touched in the discussion that volume 2 seeks to advance (critique it seeks to bring).
Well, there are some thoughts related to ‘Carson the Scholar.’
May 2nd, 2006 at 11:30 am
Please ignore my spelling of ‘below’ as ‘bellow.’ I do not know what I was thinking.
May 2nd, 2006 at 11:32 am
Now, I fully welcome people making fun of me for speelllyng wrongly in my comments. Nevertheless, I will be disappointed if people use that as an excuse not to engage with what I point up about Carson.
May 2nd, 2006 at 4:42 pm
My question would be why none of Enns’ supporters are more critical of him for including as evidence of historical contradiction so many examples of things he claims to be problematic, when Carson shows how very easily reconcilable they are.
As Dr. Carson has pointed out, one of the reason’s I’m most concerned about this book is because there are significant questions about motive (which none of us are qualified to answer…but the questions are unavoidably there). If the audience is to help questioning evangelicals, why does he spend so much time making the case for there being so many problems? Why isn’t that basically assumed and Enns’ solution offered? It certainly appears that he’s trying to make the case that there are problems, not that there are solutions.
Dr. Carson has said that he thinks there is coming in the near future another debate over inerrancy like the one which resulted in the Chicago statement. I think he’s right.
May 2nd, 2006 at 4:48 pm
And as for Stephen Young’s comments about Carson’s scholarship (which is agreed with by virtually no one in evangelical NT scholarship), isn’t it interesting that at this point, mainstream scholarship has already moved away from the New Perspective? The only people still talking about it are evangelicals.
I’d love to see Stephen’s list of people who would agree with his assessment of Carson as a scholar.
May 2nd, 2006 at 6:04 pm
Kirk,
In case you haven’t really been following the discussion thus far, we’re beyond the point where simple endorsements of scholars are of any use to us. We need you to blog like a big boy and deal with specific issues. So I ask you as I have asked Peter and Luke in the above discussion: “…what do you say about the “rock which followed them†in 1 Corinthians 10? How do you reconcile 1 Chronicles 28 and 29 with 1 Kings 1? Tell us, how did Matthew come to think Hosea 11:1 was referring to Jesus? What do you do with the raqia in Genesis 1:6-8, 14-15, 17 and 20? … Please do what Carson does not and show us specifically how the interpretive practices of Jesus and the NT authors differed from those of other 2nd Temple Jews with respect to passages like Matthew 2:15, Galatians 3:16, or Luke 20:37-38. Explain to us how Paul came up with the names “Jannes and Jambres†for the magicians in Pharaoh’s court (2 Tim 3:8) and where Jude got this idea about Michael and the devil quarrelling over who was to get Moses’ body (Jude 9).â€
You don’t have to answer all of these questions (there are more…far too many for me to expect any one person to answer). Just pick one. Pick your favorite. Or just keep beating the “I agree with whatever Carson says” drum.
If you want to know why Enns supporters are not very critical of him, it’s because he has honestly dealt with and has tried to give others a theological framework capable of dealing with the biblical data rather than avoiding them. I am beginning to wonder if Carson’s supporters are capable of actually engaging with this data. All I hear is “But…but…Carson is a good scholar!”
By the way, it is precisely because Enns believes in inerrancy that he forces home these issues. The point is precisely that God has not erred in speaking to His people through literary forms and genres utterly foreign to us and that make us (post-Enlightenment white Westerners) uncomfortable. Frankly, I think that attempts to explain away the biblical data instead of being transformed by it are attempts to “pare the claws of the Lion of Judah.”
Kirk, I say to you what I said to Luke: Either deal with the specific data or stop posting rubbish. Our Lord is not honored when His people refuse to really look at His Word because they’re afraid of what they might find.
Under His mercy,
David
ps. You have responded to Stephen’s comments on Justification and Variegated Nomism V.1 and Carson. However, you have none done what he asked by telling us how much of the book you have actually read and how much of Sanders’ Paul and Palestinian Judaism you have read. I would like to know how qualified you are to comment on the quality of Carson’s scholarship with respect to the aforementioned volumes. By the way, please indicate whether you’ve actually read Enns’ Inspiration and Incarnation as well. Thanks.
May 2nd, 2006 at 8:09 pm
Jason,
In light of Kirk’s posts, allow me to again express my appreciation for you. Thank you for engaging the issues.
But again, alas, I differ with you. I need to understand what you mean by “context” when you say of the question of interpretive traditions in the NT, “It’s not a question that context can determine because it is necessarily an extra-textual issue.” It seems like when you say “context” you have circumscribed that so as to include only the text immediately surrounding the verses and phrases in question and to exclude broader historical, cultural and literary contexts. If that is so, then I guess in a sense it is “necessarily an extra-textual issue” because we learn about these interpretive traditions by studying other 2nd Temple texts.
But you say that it’s an extra-textual issue because “what the author was consciously or unconsciously thinking…takes place in the mind of the author.” From this fact you seem to derive the conclusion that we can’t get at what the author was thinking about the interpretations he uses through “context.” My point is simply that to take that tack cuts us off from authorial intention on any point in any text whatsoever. Whenever you say that a text means “such-and-such” you are making a judgment about what the author was thinking, what he intended to convey by what he wrote. But if that is inaccessable simply on account of being in the author’s mind and therefore necessarily extra-textual we can’t get at the meaning of any text.
Why circumscribe “context” so tightly? Why not look at broader historical and literary context when making exegetical judgments about Galatians 3:19, 1 Corinthians 10 or 2 Timothy 3:8 the way you do when exegeting any other passage?
It seems to me that you draw the distinctions you do in order to keep from having to bite the bullet and say that Paul spoke his mind and meant what he said when he wrote using these interpretive traditions. I am reminded of our last conversation about Calvin and Genesis. Remember writing this:
“To apply Westphal’s analogy to Genesis 1 we would come up with something like this:
God told us he created the world in this way, speaking it into existence.
Therefore he wants us to worship him, not idols.
BUT
God didn’t actually create the world in this way, speaking it into existence.But it makes sense to humans for him to say that he did.
Therefore he wants us to worship him, not idols.
Does this really not seem problematic to anyone else?”
You seem to be trying to avoid having to say:
The rock didn’t actually follow the Israelites in the wilderness, the way Paul says it did. But it makes sense to 2nd Temple Jews to say that it did. Therefore don’t crave evil things.
Can your doctrine of Scripture handle affirming that Paul meant what he seems to have said?
Blessings,
David
May 2nd, 2006 at 9:33 pm
Kirk,
Please allow me to follow up David’s comments. You have commented in a way that we are trying to move beyond here. If you want to make little blanket assertions like you do about the ‘entire evangelical NT scholarship world’ and Carson (functionally: screaming ‘Carson, Carson, Carson…yippee!), you are not helping the discussion. The whole point of my post was to move beyond that. For people who want to continue screaming ‘Carson, Carson, Carson,’ I have asked you to back up what you scream. For example, read Justification and Variegated Nomism, vol. 1 and enter into dialogue. Or, if you can, go to a library and read the reviews of the book (noticing that my stance is fairly uniform among reviewers; please note that a positive review of the book as a whole does not necessarily reflect positive understanding of Carson’s debate-oriented conclusions; most reviewers agree with Sanders with the types of qualifications that the contributors to the book voiced). On another note, go read David’s comments about Carson’s review of Enns and engage in specific-detail oriented discussion with David’s criticisms of Carson’s review (also, please do indicate if you have read Enns’ book, just as David asked). Let me also point out in this context that circumscribing the court of appeal to ‘evangelical scholars’ is not helpful. Part of the issue that Enns raises is the problem within the evangelical world, which includes scholarship. But, since you do mention that, note all the reviewers that Mark has listed who, as evangelicals, favor Enns’ book. Concerning my specific stance on Carson as not showing himself to be a ‘good scholar,’ please note that I have circumscribed that to the specific works under discussion: Enns’ book and the Justification and Variegated Nomism volumes (and his NPP lectures). I might as well ask you to list bibliographic evidence supporting your assertion that the entire evangelical NT scholarship world agrees with you on Carson. But again, this is pointless; this is what we are trying to move beyond; this is where we want to actually discuss with specific examples rather than simply saying ‘Carson’s reputation puts him beyond critique.’ Please enter into the discussion.
Concerning your comments about mainstream scholarship, evangelical scholarship, and the NPP please unpack more what you mean and what you are trying to say. Perhaps it would be helpful for you to list relevant bibliographical data. Please also include what you mean by ‘the New Perspective on Paul.’ If you read my review above you will note that there is much terminology confusion and that different people tend to mean different things. Also, please indicate what you mean by ‘mainstream scholarship.’ Do you mean anything non American-Evangelical-Protestant-etc? such that Richard Hays, Douglas Campbell, John Barclay, Richard Longenecker, Luke T. Johnson, David DeSilva, Joel Green, Paul Achtemier, etc are mainstream? Or do you mean Bart Ehrman, etc?
Lastly, for people in general who are reading this blog and following the discussion, several comments. One of the main theological issues that Enns is trying to raise for Evangelicals is ‘how serious are we about really letting God come challenge us in His Word and Son about Himself?’ If we are serious about that, then we will be open to allowing God, by His Word, to fill out our understandings of what it means for something to be ‘God’s Word’ and how God did ‘behave’ in giving us His Word. This is actually an idolatry issue. To what extent are we allowing some god of Platonic-western-post enlightenment-rationalism to decide ahead of time what it means for something to be God’s Word? It must be ‘perfect.’ It must be ‘true’ with all its propositional teachings cohering together in a way that corresponds with that definition of truth: systematically-logically. If it ’says or thinks’ something about ‘history’ then that must be video-tape what actually happened. Where are we getting our definitions of ‘perfection?’ Where are we getting our definitions of ‘true?’ Are we presupposing them from our rationalism-modern understandings and filling out the content of what it means for something to be ‘God’s Word’ from there and then doing whatever we can to cover up all the places where the Bible does not behave as ‘it should?’ Or can we go to the places where ‘the Bible does not behave as it should’ and allow them, and the rest of the Bible’ to show us what it means for something to be God’s Word? Why are we, especially the Calvinists among us who follow Calvin in noting that our hearts are idol-factories, so reluctant to admit that perhaps our idolatry, in addition to pervading every other aspect of us, also extends to idols of who God is and how he must behave relating to Scripture? Why have we built a fence around our doctrines of Scripture and declared that they are off-limits; it is not possible that idolatry could have gotten in there. These are the issues that Enns is getting at. For those of you who are angry at him for trying to prove ‘the problems,’ please note that he spends so much space doing that so as to, theologically speaking and to split an infinitive, bring to light a hidden-idol in evangelicalism that he may then allow ‘the problem’ (the Bible, the Word of God, in this case) to go to work on us; challenging us and our idols with His real presence. Kirk, you had questions about Enns’ motives; here they are.
To get even more explicitly Gospel-oriented here, from one perspective the entire Gospel is about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the God of Israel coming to us to challenge us and/in all our idols with Himself. He did this climactically Himself, in His Son. People back then thought that the gospel was foolish. When the Corinthians thought that the message of the crucified Jew as Lord of the world was foolish, Paul did not respond with, ‘you are right, that is stupid and does not square with obvious conceptions of perfection, glory, etc. Let us discard it or let us modify it so as to make it glorious.’ No! He proclaimed that the YHWH had confounded the wisdom of the world in the Gospel. The foolishness of God is wiser then men! Why not with Scripture, that which is able to make us wise unto salvation; that which witnesses to Jesus Messiah and His work and the Gospel ultimately? ‘Dr. Enns, you are making the Bible out to be something that does not square with our pre-conceptions of inerrancy, perfection, systematic-logical-coherence, and correspondence-truth. We have no responses to the plausible exegetical issues that you raise. So, we will complain that Chalcedon was trying to guard against Arianism as well. We will complain that your target audience was supposedly one that already knew these things (even when we arrive at that by woodenly reading you ripped out of context). We will complain that D.A. Carson is qualified. We will complain that you did not write your book to address angry-traditionalist-Evangelical scholars who want to hold the line and rather addressed it to those who may encounter the things you bring up and/or those regular evangelicals who really want to know what the Bible shows us about being God’s Word. We will not, however, engage you in discussion.’ Just as YHWH confounded the wisdom of the Corinthians through Paul, so he confounds the ‘wisdom’ and conceptions of perfection, inerrancy, truth of 21st century evangelicals through His Word. The Bible is not God’s application to be your God; as though God says, ‘Here is my Word. I trust that you will find that it squares with all your ideas of perfection, truth, inerrancy, etc.’ He comes in His Gospel demanding allegiance and challenging idols; he comes in His word demanding our allegiance and challenging idols. One of the forms of such allegiance is allowing the Bible to define how we should think about that Bible. What does it mean to be inerrant; especially if your primary reason for positing inerrancy is that it is God’s Word and therefore true, and therefore cannot possibly be in error? This is what Enns is driving at. So, feel free to engage in specific discussion. Please do that. Engage with the examples and data Enns raises.
May 2nd, 2006 at 10:01 pm
By the way, I list Richard Longenecker in a list of scholars above. I meant Bruce Longenecker…
May 2nd, 2006 at 10:29 pm
I should add several things (yes, even after the above very-long comment). I by no means mean to rule ahead of time that the Bible, God’s Word is something that could not be systematically-logically-coherent, fitting traditional views of inerrancy, etc. I bring up those issues in the way that I did because they happen to be the view(s) that are common among traditional-American-Evangelicalism about Scripture and the ones that are most ardently defended. Reading negative responses to Enns’ book almost always affords an opportunity to find the negative reviewer angry that something along those lines is being threatened. Furthermore, such ‘ideas’ are really just presupposed as what it means for something to be God’s Word in almost every discussion I have ever had and in almost every Evangelical book on Scripture that I have ever read.
My point is that when we are not willing to allow them to be questioned; when we are not willing to entertain the possibility that what it means to be God’s Word may not entail our traditional ways of logical-systematic-coherence of the extractable propositional teachings of Scripture, I think we have encountered an entrenched idol. Simply reacting against examinations of those ideas in the light of certain understandings of the Bible because ‘they are to be defended’ and ruling discussion about them as out of bounds (having the attitude that to even question them is to have already thrown out appreciating the Bible as God’s Word) is very dangerous, I think. In my opinion, this should resound among true ’sola-scriptura’ adherents. Again, we are not ruling ‘those ideas’ out ahead of time. We are saying that they are up for theological discussion and examination in the light of the Bible just as all other doctrines are to be determined by Scripture. It seems to me that if you reject this, you are functionally and in principle rejecting sola-scriptura. I greatly appreciated a comment that James Dunn (yes, I know that mentioning him is ‘asking for it’ for many people…I am not involving him in any of his NPP views here) made in a debate with Roger Nicole concerning inerrancy. He writes, “I remain of the firm opinion that the inerrancy position only appears to respect the text of Scripture; it does not, however, properly subordinate itself to the text, i.e., by letting the text speak for itself, by acknowledging the priority of exegesis over the a priori logic of the inerrancy proposition…” (Dunn, The Living Word, 1988; p136-137). Note what he says here: it is the inerrancy (defined in traditional American-Evangelical ways that have a problem with Enns’ book, which need the rock/well to have actually followed Israel if 1 Cor. 10:4 is the way Enns argues it is; which needs the sky actually to be a solid dome holding back the water if Enns’ understanding of Genesis 1-11’s view of the world is correct; which needs systematic-logical-coherence of the extracted propositional teachings of Scripture, etc) people who have a low view of Scripture!
So, will we be serious about ’sola-scriptura’ or not? Will we be serious about appreciating that everything in the Bible is doing exactly what God wants it to do and actually looking at ‘what it does’ before deciding what ‘inerrancy’ means in the details? It may be that Enns has done shoddy work, poor exegesis and historical scholarship, read the Bible out of context, and thus has not been helpful and has not exposed any real issues that challenge any traditional conceptions. More importantly, continued and rigorous historical study of the Bible may continue to vindicate traditional-American-Evangelical conceptions of inerrancy and what it means that the Bible is God’s Word (logically-coherent-systematic-etc) and somehow vindicate those who want it hammered home as a presupposition of understanding Scripture (this is a tricky issue). Nevertheless, I think that unwillingness to engage in this study, ask these questions, etc (what Enns is trying to call for in his book) betrays a very ‘low-view’ of Scripture and reactionary, un-humble attitude towards God and His Word.
May 2nd, 2006 at 10:53 pm
wow.
Mark…
If this is what a post about posting about Pete Enns yields, I do wonder what would happen if you posted a post that talked about posting a post about a post about posting Pete Enns would generate. It’s analagous to the decision process you might go through when you decide whether or not you should do something questionable like put an unopened jar of peanut butter in the microwave, or maybe turning one of those giant underground particle physics supercolliders for the first time.
I can’t wait ’til Doug writes a book.
My most sincere respects and best wishes to the contributors- this is not a comment on a discussion I am not fit to join much less criticize. I just find this interesting on my own different level.
cheers
May 2nd, 2006 at 11:01 pm
Please bear with me in a little more foolishness (to steal from Mark and Paul)…
Concerning my comments above about how we need traditional-American-Evangelical notions of what inerrancy means and what it means for something to be God’s Word to be open for discussion under Scripture, and that people should engage with Enns and the Biblical points he makes rather than simply screaming the name of their favorite scholar, I must say that I imagine D.A. Carson would be in complete agreement with me here. This is why it is ironic that some of the Carson-supporters here seem to be so unwilling to engage in discussion, perhaps concerning points that David has made, about Biblical-data and points that Enns raises. Interestingly, they do not seem to really be ‘followers of Carson’ here. Just a thought…
May 2nd, 2006 at 11:03 pm
John,
‘Tis a wondrous thing during exam season to be able to set one’s blog on autopilot and watch it keep flying (perhaps straight into a mountainside? Who knows?).
Personally, I want to put the unopened peanut butter in the supercollider.
John Piper tells of a retired couple who spend their non-working final days collecting seashells in Florida. He wonders if they will stand before God some day and say, “Look, Lord, look at all our seashells!” I have a feeling we Reformed will stand before God some day and say, “Look, Lord, look at all the ink we spilled!”
May 3rd, 2006 at 2:33 am
not to pick on anyone, much less to distract from the heart of the conversation but kirk, you ask, “isn’t it interesting that at this point, mainstream scholarship has already moved away from the New Perspective? The only people still talking about it are evangelicals.”
there are a lot of things i am not able to engage with in the above comments but i can say with certainty that this is categorically false. i am just finishing up a NT course at Union Theological Seminary where i who rarely identify myself as an evangelical (for practical reasons, not really theological reasons) am the lone student who cares about affirming the authority of Scripture. the entire course was dedicated to re-thinking Paul and the rest of the NT writeres (or at least parts of them!) in terms of the Roman empire ala Richard A. Horsely and J.D. Crossan. “New” Perspectives on Paul or Jesus don’t seem to be going out of fashion here.
May 3rd, 2006 at 2:40 am
oh, and all of this knowledge about where Paul was born and when he went to Jerusalem to study reminds me that Second Temple exegetes aren’t the only ones working with an interpreted Bible.
May 3rd, 2006 at 8:51 am
Jed, I, for one, do NOT have an interpreted Bible. I am as certain that Paul was born and raised as a tentmaker in Tarsus as I am that there were three wise men at Jesus’ birth and that Nineveh converted to YHWHism after the preaching of Jonah!–*says David while angrily shaking his fists at Jed*
May 3rd, 2006 at 8:57 am
What’s more I am as certain that Saul was not in Jerusalem by puberty as I am that the Devil was in the garden of Eden, that is, before the Devil went down to Georgia looking for a soul to steal…
May 3rd, 2006 at 8:58 am
For all of Y’ALL who do not ‘know’…
the devil, he was in a bind, he was way behind, he was looking to make a deal…
May 3rd, 2006 at 10:38 am
David:
(a) In Paul’s day boys began religious training around the age of six or seven. Paul studied with Gamaliel. Gamaliel was in Jerusalem. You know me, I’m just trying to take historical context seriously! So, was he not there by puberty, or are you taking the roundabout way to say that the devil wasn’t in the garden?
(b) My earlier point is simply this: we can know what’s in an author’s mind when an author intends to set forth what he is thinking. But we can’t really know what Paul was thinking about the moveable well. He mentions it. So we know THAT he was thinking about it. But we don’t therefore know WHAT he thought about it, other than to say that it “was Christ.” I still believe the two options stand:
1. That Paul didn’t realize it wasn’t in Scripture. He thought there was a moveable well.
2. That Paul did realize it wasn’t in Scripture, but he referred to a common tradition. It’s as if I mentioned the three wise men. I know there weren’t three wise men, but it’s a common way of construing the story.
Now, note what I’m not saying here. I’m not saying that there are no problems if one adopts view 2. There is still the question of why Paul would have mentioned it. Why does something non-canonical (until Paul canonizes it!) show up in the Bible? So, you still have the same conclusion: God is comfortable working in this way. I’m also not saying that there’s no value in raising these issues. I’m also not saying everyone needs to agree with how I’m handling the issue.
So to say it again. If someone articulates a fact from out of a framework, all we can know about the fact is what they articulate about the fact. Yes, that includes attending to historical/social/cultural context. But we can’t really infer anything about how they conceived of the framework from which the fact came, because their goal was to articulate the fact, not the framework.
This seems self-evident enough to me, so I doubt I’ll change my mind. I’m happy to agree to disagree on this one.
May 3rd, 2006 at 11:12 am
Jason,
In view of your last comment, I’m not so sure that you and I are really at loggerheads with one another. I’m willing to assign a high probability to Paul’s believing the interpretive traditions he use. This is hard to get at when the traditions are used merely as examples as in 1 Corinthians 10 and 2 Timothy 3:8.
But the probability is certainly raised when such traditions are used as premises in arguments. For instance it would be difficult to account for Paul’s using the tradition of angels mediating the Law (3:19) as a key premise in his argument in Galatians 3 if he did not believe it was so. What good is using a premise that you know won’t stand up under scrutiny? But that tradition does indeed stand up under scrutiny when judged by the interpretive standards of Paul’s day. It just seems far more probable to me that WHAT Paul thought about THAT interpretive tradition was that it was in some sense true.
But nonetheless, my willingness to assign such probabilities and your decision to remain agnostic about them does not place our positions on this question too far apart to my thinking.
What I can’t figure out is how your position on this question squares with the position you have taken in our Genesis 1 discussion.
Blessings,
D
May 3rd, 2006 at 11:23 am
David:
What would you say my position on Genesis 1 is?
May 3rd, 2006 at 2:20 pm
I know I haven’t contributed for a while, so since we’re talking about context I thought I’d throw in a direct quotation:
“It appears that Enns is right.” - D. A. Carson
Justification and Variegated Nomism, Vol. 1, p. 546. You can look it up
May 3rd, 2006 at 4:35 pm
Jason,
I imagine that your position on Genesis 1 is some permutation of the “framework hypothesis” but with a particular nuance concerning the role of phenomenological language in the shape the account takes. You seem to be very concerned with the account “corresponding to objective reality” on a number of levels that I’m not sure is really a necessary concern. I got this impression from your comments on Westphal’s analogy:
“Westphal’s analogy does not take place at the point of correspondence in reality, but at the point of ethical response. Westphal’s analogy reduces to saying that it doesn’t matter what the objective (there I said it; I think there’s an objective reality, even if I can’t get above it and see it) state of affairs is; only that we react appropriately to what is revealed to us. To apply Westphal’s analogy to Genesis 1 we would come up with something like this:
God told us he created the world in this way, speaking it into existence.
Therefore he wants us to worship him, not idols.
BUT
God didn’t actually create the world in this way, speaking it into existence.
But it makes sense to humans for him to say that he did.
Therefore he wants us to worship him, not idols.
Does this really not seem problematic to anyone else?”
I think you’ve misunderstood Westphal’s analogy, but that’s another issue. The last thing I posted was to say that the language of Genesis 1 is “mythological” (in Enns’ sense) rather than phenomenological.
I don’t really understand how the concerns you voiced about Westphal’s analogy fit with your willingness to countenance 2nd Temple interpretive traditions in Paul. Wouldn’t that be an example of “correspondence not in reality but at the point of ethical response” in the case of 1 Corinthians 10 or 2 Timothy 3:8 or what have you?
Puzzled,
D
Peter, Luke and Kirk: We’re all waiting to hear from you. Are you just going to blog us and leave us? You don’t call. You don’t write….
May 3rd, 2006 at 7:43 pm
David:
Since I don’t really have a fully fledged position on Genesis 1, it was somewhat of an unfair question. I think some of the parts I do have worked out you are close on. But I would say this: I wouldn’t necessarily oppose phenomenological with “mythological.” If mythological means nothing more than pre-scientific (unless you’re abandoning Enns in order to get in bed with Strauss), then phenomenological and mythological are quite compatible. When I look at the sky, if I think it, then it does look like there could be a dome up there holding back water, with a light somewhere above it that moves every once in a while.
I think we are tripping up over Westphal. And perhaps I am misunderstanding him. I specifically took him to be saying:
1. Parent wants response out of child.
2. Child not interested in facts.
3. Parent intentionally lies to get response out of child.
4. Child responds.
It was the intentional lying aspect that I was picking up in Westphal’s analogy that made me uncomfortable. Thus, my confession of ignorance on microbiology - maybe there are green bugs with six legs actually on the coin. If not, I guess that’s the problem with analogies - they all break down somewhere and when one is presented as unqualified its up to the Subject to bring in a bunch of baggage and misread it.
Thus, what I meant by corresponding to objective reality was really an attempt to say that God does not intentionally give us some distortion of truth so that we’ll do what he says.
So, I don’t think the 2T interpretive traditions plays on this issue, because for me they are functioning at a different level of discourse.