Science and an Incarnational Approach to the Bible

An Incarnational Model

Mesopotamian Myths and “Genre Calibration”

A weekend seminar with DR. TREMPER LONGMAN III & DR. PETER  ENNS

• “How can we think of ancient mythology as the word of God?”
• “Isn’t the God of the Old Testament nasty & vengeful? He’s not like Jesus at all!”
• “The Old Testament simply can’t be trusted.”
• “Modern science has made the biblical creation stories hopelessly out-of-date.”
• “How can Christians make sense out of the Old Testament?”

Most of us have heard or said something along these lines. In this weekend seminar, Professors Tremper Longman and Peter Enns, two highly respected Old Testament scholars, will speak to some of the issues that surround reading the Hebrew Scriptures.

Designed for curious skeptics and for committed followers of Jesus—and everyone in between—this seminar is designed to give an honest and faithful look at the “problems” of the Old Testament.

Friday, October 9, 7:00 – 9:00 pm
Saturday, October 10, 9:00 am – 12 noon
Rye Free Reading Room
1061 Boston Post Road
on the village green in Rye, NY
Admission is free

Professor Tremper Longman III (BA, Ohio Wesleyan; MDiv, Westminster Seminary; PhD, Yale) is the Robert H. Gundry Professor of Biblical Studies at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA, and the author of over twenty books, including How to Read Genesis (InterVarsity) and Literary Approaches to Biblical Interpretation (Zondervan).

Professor Peter Enns (BA, Messiah; MDiv, Westminster; PhD, Harvard) is an in-demand scholar, writer, and speaker, who has taught for 20 years at both the graduate & undergraduate levels. His 2005 work, Inspiration & Incarnation (Baker Academic), was written to help those struggling with questions such as these.

Sponsored by TRINITY PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, Rye NY
For more information, contact Trinity Church at 914.967.6247 or administrator@trinitychurch.cc. Office: 15 Elm Place, Rye, NY 10580.

Download a reproducible flyer for this event (PDF)

The Act 3 Biblical Forum presents “Reading the Old Testament as Jesus Did” with Dr. Peter Enns, October 30-31, 2009, at the Holiday Inn, Carol Stream, IL.

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Both Sparks and I have entered into the discussion in the comments. (My comments begin at #36.) Hint: In order to see the entire comment thread, you have to click the “Comments” link under the post.

It is no throwaway line when I relay, again, my appreciation to Waltke for being so candid in his views and for participating in this discussion. As readers of the previous posts have no doubt seen, Waltke and I have clear areas of disagreement on a number of important issues, and the sort of back-and-forth exhibited here is of the nature of academic discourse and vital for any progress.

As one can see in Waltke’s piece, he divides his comments into three sections: Introduction, The Old Testament and Theological Diversity, and The Old Testament Interpretation in the New Testament. I will reflect on each of these sections in turn. Waltke’s comments deserve a detailed response, so I think it is best to spread out my thoughts over numerous posts to appear over a couple of weeks or so. The first several posts will interact with Waltke’s comments in his Introduction.

Introduction

Waltke does well in laying out some of the overarching concerns he has both with I&I (Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament [Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005]) and with my previous interaction with him. I will list some of those concerns that strike me as most pertinent and offer some reflections of my own.

I&I and the Westminster Standards

I have already commented at some length on this website on how I&I relates to the Westminster Standards, but let me reinforce a point or two here.

I appreciate that Waltke does “not doubt” that I intend “to stay true to the Westminster Standards,” but this is not my goal. Neither the Westminster Standards nor any other ecclesiastical document is the lens through which we read Scripture, a point I learned as an M.Div. student at Westminster. My intention, rather, is to understand Scripture as the inspired yet historically conditioned document that it is, and to bring into that investigation not only previous theological formulations but true developments in biblical studies over the past several generations. In a word, my aim is synthesis.

I remain unpersuaded that either a 17^th century confession of faith or its defenders are in the position of chief adjudicator of the matters before us. This is not to relegate the Westminster Standards, or other ecclesiastical documents, to the trash heap, quaint relics of by-gone eras that can be dismissed without a second thought. Rather, it is to recognize that, despite their value, they are necessarily limited in scope and in need of ongoing critical discussion. The issues Waltke and I are debating are largely, if not exclusively, modern ones, and so cannot be left simply in the care of earlier thinkers, however much they are still worthy of serious attention and respect.

Truth is not determined by the degree to which one is faithful to a tradition. Rather, a tradition is evaluated by the degree to which it reflects the truth. And this, I continue to affirm, is an ongoing theological exercise. Hence, as I have argued elsewhere, the only model of confessional commitment that can maintain this conversation between the vital past and present challenges is one that maintains a self-conscious degree of flexibility, or better, an expectation of self-criticism, lest the confession become the church’s ultimate authority.

The same holds, I feel, for the history of Reformed thought. However important earlier figures may be, surely we must allow as a very real option the possibility of their being fallible in their knowledge, without being accused of “abandoning” the Reformed faith in the process.

To be sure, others are free to disagree. I have no personal qualm about that. But if intention to remain “true” to a “tradition” (which already assumes its non-growth) drives an academic assessment of real evidence (most of which was wholly unavailable when the tradition’s trajectories were set), one runs the risk of adjusting evidence to what one already “knows” to be true.  We do not tolerate such sloppy thinking in any other area of human discourse, but when it comes to theological discourse in some circles, it seems to be the preferred method of interaction. When one’s position is by definition unfalsifiable, any meaningful exchange of ideas functionally ceases. Any tradition that aims to promote truth rather than obscure it must be eager to be open to critical evaluation.

Waltke, however, despite his opening comment, knows better and his subsequent comments reflect in my estimation an authentic attempt to listen to Scripture (even if certain assumptions continue to rear their head, as we will see is subsequent posts).

Next post: Nonsense and Logic

A few days ago I received the following email from an agnostic reader of this website. The email is copied here in its entirety, with the permission of the sender. The question is direct, profound, and has been a nagging companion of Christianity since its beginning.

Since the Hebrew Bible (that you call OT) was written by Jews for Jews, and that obviously a large number of Jews did not follow Christianity and its appropriation of the Hebrew Bible, why should we trust a Christian interpretation of the Hebrew Bible instead of a Jewish interpretation?

I take this question with utmost seriousness, as I think all Christians should. It gets at the heart of several perennial issues in Christian theology, perhaps most importantly the NT’s use of the OT, which shows us the NT authors at work in articulating their understanding of the “connection” between the gospel and Israel’s Scripture. As I see it, this is really the heart of the matter. So, to rephrase the question, “Why should the first Christians’ claims about the OT (and how the gospel connects with it) have any merit in view of the fact that Christianity did not really take hold with Jews living at the time?” To put it yet another way, “Why should the Christian appropriation of the Hebrew Bible have any persuasive power, given that a larger number of Jews—whose Bible it was—rejected it?”

Read the rest of the response >>>

Defining “inerrancy” is certainly a topic of discussion among Evangelicals, and opinions are voiced from one extreme of maintaining older paradigms at all costs to jettisoning the term all together as hopelessly over-qualified in contemporary discussion.

I am among those who feel that the term inerrancy has become for Evangelicals severely overqualified because of the recognition of the tensions between older formulations of the term and the developments in our understanding of the Bible and its world. The Evangelical understanding has diversified and developed—sometimes begrudgingly, perhaps—over the last several generations, which is a fact that is both desirable and unavoidable.

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