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• “Modern science has made the biblical creation stories hopelessly out-of-date.”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)

So, below are some thoughts about the IA that I think may help move us toward greater clarity.

Analogies are by definition incomplete

The IA is an analogy, a model, a metaphor. Therefore, it does not aim at complete identification between Jesus and the Bible, and to argue that it should, or that I am claiming such a thing, or that the analogy is faulty because of this failure of complete identification, is to misunderstand not simply the IA but the nature of any analogy.

Hence, I understand that Christ has a divine and human nature and there is a hypostatic union, whereas these things cannot be said of the Bible (of which we can speak of divine and human authorship). This difference between the two is not an observation that cripples an incarnational model as if to say, “See, Jesus and the Bible cannot be equated, so you can’t speak of the Bible incarnationally.” The very function of analogy is lost when such identification is expected.

There are other viable models of Scripture

The IA is not the only useful model for describing the Bible. It may not even be the best, and I remain open, as I always have, to other models. For some, a Trinitarian model is more effective, where the Bible is analogous to the Spirit’s voice rather than the incarnation. Still others employ an ecclesial model, where the Bible is analogous to the church (i.e., made of up diverse voices each coming from different perspectives, no one of which tells the full story, etc., etc.). My use of an incarnational model is driven by its simplicity and conceptual accessibility for lay readers.

The challenges to traditional formulations, whether from advances in biblical studies or increasingly persuasive scientific paradigms, are quite serious, and I think Christians will have to be more exploratory rather than less in working out viable and persuasive ways of talking about the Bible.

An incarnational model is descriptive

The IA is descriptive, not prescriptive. It does not safeguard inerrancy or any other model of Scripture, and this does not detract one iota from its viability. It has no value in making sure one does not “go too far” in what one concludes about specific biblical phenomena as judged by the standards of competing models. In fact, if it has any prescriptive value, it is in calling into question the hegemony of alternate models.

It is also worth pointing out that even the most Fundamentalist of inerrantist models do not have the prescriptive value some claim, as can easily be seen by the diversity of interpretations even among members of that Christian sub-culture. An inerrantist model does not guarantee unanimity in interpretation.

The incarnation is an irreducible entity

An incarnational model states that, as Christ is both divine and human, so too does the Bible have a divine and human element. Both the divine and human are present fully, and both Jesus and the Bible cease to be what they are if any element is marginalized or relegated to secondary status.

I realize—as does anyone with even a cursory exposure to these things—that the divine is ultimate insofar as it is the point of origin for the incarnation—“God so loved the world that he sent his only son….” I am not calling that into question. But, this divine initiative has produced a product that is irreducible and sui generis. And what God has joined together let no theologian put asunder. The incarnation is essentially and inextricable a divine/human phenomenon. This means that, in speaking of the nature of the Bible, one cannot table the “human dimension” and prioritize the divine any more than one can do that of Christ and still speak of Jesus of Nazareth.

This is a very practical point, as it happens far too often that explanations of why, for example, the Bible contains very significant tensions on both the historical and theological levels, is explained in view of the ultimate “perfection” of the Bible that is deemed necessary on the basis of “priority of the divine.”

The problem here is that what “divine” means is divorced from the incarnation, as if we can apprehend the former apart from the latter. But incarnation, be it Christ or the Bible, is the means God himself chose to reveal himself to his people. In other words, one cannot get “behind” the incarnation to what God is really like and then judge the Bible (and those who read it differently) accordingly—as if God said, “Listen, I have this divine essence I want you to grab a hold of and be sure to maintain its priority, but the best I can do is to give you a divine/human expression of that essence. Your job is to use the incarnation to move beyond it, to see whether you can discern what is ‘really’ going on beyond this unfortunate divine/human mess I have had to deal with.”

A slight caricature, perhaps, but my experience is that such a view is not too far below a more sophisticated veneer. I do not think I am the only one to sense the Platonic, even Gnostic, overtones of such thinking.

What we have to work with is God’s preferred means of communication, which is scandalously incarnational. To divide the two and presume to know the one without the other is a fantasy. The fact that the application of an incarnational model can be problematic for a “divine priority” approach does not call into question the former but the latter.

“Error” in an incarnational model

A consistent application of the IA would say that, as Christ is both divine and human but without sin, the Bible has divine and human elements but is without error. This is true as far as it goes, but only so long as it is not presumed what “error” is apart from understanding that the Bible is an irreducibly “incarnate” phenomenon.

For example, Jesus was human but without sin, but that does not mean that he was not a product of his culture and embodied the limitations of any human being. The fact that Jesus showed fully all the marks of humanity is part and parcel of the incarnation—the atonement and resurrection depend on it. No element of humanity was withheld from him, other than sinfulness. In other words, any aspect of Jesus’ life that speaks to his human limitation is not a function of his sinfulness but of his humanness, for example: that he bled, got hungry, got sick, did not know when the end would come, thought the world was flat, did not understand String Theory, could not speak French. These things do not make Jesus less the Son of God, but are part of what is inherent in Immanuel, God with us.

The Bible participates in an analogous state of human limitation. So, the theological and historical tensions in the Bible, mentioned above, are not “error,” and therefore merely illusions or only apparent (rather than real) because, as a divinely written text, we “know” that ultimately all these things cannot be and all will be reconciled for us either in this life or the next. Rather, diversity—real diversity—is a function of the incarnate nature of the Bible. It is not an unfortunate mark of a Bible that we “know” will ultimately be shown to have none of these “problems.” It is rather a mark that is indicative of its irreducibly “incarnate” status.

Theological diversity is just one area of application of the IA, others being the ANE context of the OT and Second Temple context of the NT, both of which are virtually limitless fields of inquiry. Another very practical area of application concerns the continued synthetic work of bringing science and Christianity into meaningful dialog with each other.

**************

There is much more that can be said, and as things come to mind I will address them here. Also, if there are issues that you feel need to be addressed, either about this post or other aspects of an incarnational model, please pass them along and I will interact with them.

The IA is a useful and adequate accounting of why the Bible behaves the way it does. It is not exhaustive or perfect, but neither is any other model. Its great benefit is in accepting the Bible for what it is rather than laying over it a complex system of expectations where ubiquitous biblical behavior becomes a theological problem.

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.

Read more >>>

In some cases, my exegetical disagreements with Waltke are simply in-house, intramural matters that are not relevant to the issue of the nature of Scripture (e.g., Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Job, and others). In other cases, the exegetical differences stem from the more programmatic differences between us outlined in the first series of posts. On those issues, I remain of the opinion that what is needed is not the reassertion of doctrinal prolegomena but a re-examination of hermeneutical foundations. In this exchange between Waltke and me, that re-examination has barely begun, but it has begun, in my opinion. No one in this debate—Waltke, me, or anyone else—is free of blind spots.

Our handling of Scripture is never pure, never free of some bias (which was one of my major points against Waltke in my first response, where he claimed exegetical objectivity). For people like Waltke, me, and many, many others trained in the rich, complex, and challenging world of biblical studies, there is always some conversation going on in our heads between the methods we employ and the theological circles we call home. As the past several generations of evangelical scholarship have amply demonstrated, this internal conversation has brought tremendous progress in our understanding of the Bible, but not without some significant theological tensions.

The problem is that these tensions are often seen as (1) wholly destructive, and (2) the “fault” of biblical scholarship. Both assertions are false. Challenges to accepted structures of thinking create tensions, but this is not necessarily simply “destructive” of some erstwhile pure system of thought. Tension, however uncomfortable, is the place where growth and progress flourish. Moreover, the fault may not lie with the challenging nature of biblical scholarship so much as with the inflexibility of theological systems.

I have said this on other occasions and it bears repeating: the tensions in conservative American Christianity that began in earnest in the 19th century were not so much “caused” by higher-critical scholarship, but by the clash of some very legitimate newer insights into the Bible (e.g., pentateuchal authorship, the ANE background to Genesis, etc., etc., etc.) with older theological paradigms that were not suited to address these newer insights. I understand that the matter is a bit more complicated than I lay out here, but the general contours are clear to me. The resulting liberal/fundamentalist divide was perhaps an inevitable perfect storm, but neither option does justice to the rich possibilities before us.

If I may continue a rather reductionistic analysis (which is not accurate on the level of historical analysis, but is alive and well, nonetheless—indeed, perpetuated—in some popular circles): liberals looked at our developing knowledge of the ancient world of the Bible and said “A ha, I told you. The Bible is nothing special. Israelite religion is just like any other ancient faith. You conservatives need to get over yourselves.” The fundamentalist response was (fingers firmly planted in ears) “La la la la la la, I do not hear you. There may be a millimeter of insight in some of what you are saying, but if what you are saying is true, our theology—which is the sure truth of Scripture, handed down through the ages—is false, and that is unthinkable.”

Battle lines were drawn rather than theological and hermeneutical principles reassessed.

I am drawing out this point somewhat because I am hoping that this exchange with Waltke can be seen, on both our parts, as a conscious attempt not to repeat past mistakes of drawing lines in the sand prematurely and so encourage yet another “battle for the Bible.” It may be time, as my teen-age daughter tells me, to “seriously chill” (I need to remind her of what an oxymoron is) and ask afresh, with now several generations of mountains of data and reflection behind us, “What is our Bible, anyway? What is it here for? What do we do with it? What is it prepared to say? What does it mean to handle it properly?”

For some, I am sure, these are a discouraging, unnecessary, or heretical set of questions to be asking. For others, they offer a cool breeze of possibility that neither God nor his word can be so easily captured to do our bidding. This, at least, is what I am aiming at in these exchanges with Waltke. It is not a competition between us, to see who can bench press more, academically speaking, and impress those watching. We are each trying to explain why our Bible looks and acts the way it does. Each of our paradigms offers explanatory power while also being the fruit of exegetical work, and that hermeneutical circle is irrevocably unavoidable regardless of where you land on individual issues. At the end of the day, it is the paradigm that is deemed most coherent and persuasive in explaining our Bible that will rise to the surface (see my article “Some Thoughts on Theological Exegesis of The Old Testament: Toward a Viable Model of Biblical Coherence and Relevance“), provided we are ready and willing to allow our own thoughts on the matter to be challenged along the way.

Read Final Reponse to Bruce Waltke: The OT and Theological Diversity and the OT in its interpretation in the NT

This completes my responses to the Introduction of Waltke’s critique. All eight parts are now published  as one document in PDF form under the I&I tab on this site (or download directly here).

Read Part One of my response here.

Read Part Two of my response here.

Read Part Three of my response here

Read Part Four of my response here

Read Parts Five & Six of my response here

Read Part Seven of my response here

Here is part eight of my response to Waltke’s follow-up piece:

My Model Destabilizes Students’ Faith

I reject the blanket criticism that an incarnational model, however assertively it is offered, destabilizes faith. It certainly can do so, but in those cases we would do well to consider how those very students might have been set up for a fall by being ill-prepared to deal with the data. (For example, someone’s faith will indeed be shaken if they encounter the synoptic problem after being told that God’s word must be historically accurate in every detail lest it no longer be the word of God.)

What of those whose faith is not shaken but affirmed and strengthened because of an incarnational model? Do they count for nothing? Or is their newly strengthened faith on the basis of this faulty theological model simply more evidence of how far lost they are and in need of correction?

I also do not believe that there is a great unwashed mass of ignorant people out there who are so easily swayed by me, Waltke, or anyone else. I have found that students and readers are pretty clever, if also a bit resilient. They do not live in isolation from the world, are not immune to its challenges, and they are certainly not looking to the scholarly world to do their thinking for them.

I have had this same conversation many times before, once with Waltke himself about five years ago (and I do not presume that he should remember). It is true that exposure to developments in modern scholarship can shake people’s faith, but that does not mean they should be shielded from them. Rather what needs to happen is that scholars like Waltke should be offering students alternate theological paradigms that are equipped to address the data. People lose their faith for all sorts of reasons. One of those reasons, easily documented but not often discussed, is the inflexibile and outmoded answers given to real and difficult problems.

As I have said in other contexts and to Waltke several years ago, I understand people’s faith can be shaken by what I am advocating (as they can by things Waltke advocates about Isaiah, evolution, etc.). But I am as concerned about people whose faith has already been shaken because of bad answers they have gotten to good and necessary questions.

I have a folder (electronic and paper) of people who used to be Christians but are now atheists, or were evangelical and now don’t know what they are, not because of people like me, but because the only options open to them when they encountered the world of modern biblical scholarship was “you either believe the Bible or you believe the critics.” This is an absurd dichotomy. To those knowledgeable about the very real and difficult challenges presented by biblical scholarship, and who are presented with these two options, there is no contest: the critics win. The question is whether these are the only two options available.

Both Waltke and I would agree that there are other options open to us that move beyond this dichotomy. We disagree on the best path to take. My main point in all of this is that the challenges we face in the present moment—and have been facing for generations—will not be settled without rethinking how persuasive past approaches have been.

It is regularly observed that the kinds of issues being raised by me and others are issues that have “already been settled” in evangelical scholarship, and so need no reexamination. Rather, what is required is to get in line. Yet, the same issues keep coming up regularly among evangelicals on both the popular and academic levels. The question is why. I realize that will be answered differently by different people, but the question is valid, even urgent. Neither “side” is going away, and unless the matter is addressed constructively, divisions will be exacerbated. For those of us who recognize the value of true dialogue, this would be a sad development.

Read Part One of my response here.
Read Part Two of my response here.
Read Part Three of my response here
Read Part Four of my response here
Read Parts Five & Six of my response here

Here is part seven of my response to Waltke’s follow-up piece:

I Am too Sure of Myself, I Fail to Give Options Other than My Own, and I Give the “Appearance of Certainty” 

This is all probably true, but so is it of Waltke and pretty much anyone I read who is worth the time. We are all “sure of ourselves,” to a certain extent, convinced that what we have to say is worth listening to, which is why we write. Accusations such as this have little weight, since, as we have seen above, they are universally applicable.

Also, this type of accusation is really an indirect attempt to discredit the content of an argument and really has little to do with the manner of presentation. Had I argued for a model more to Waltke’s liking, and done so with as much vigor as he displays, would the same charge still be offered? Unlikely. To the contrary, I would be commended for taking a strong stand.

Of course, other options than what I offer are indeed possible. Other options are always available. If the history of biblical interpretation has shown us anything it is that anything is possible provided you have certain assumptions in place and you try hard enough to argue your point. The ultimate value of the different options, however, is to be determined by how persuasive they are in accounting for the data, not whether one fails to offer other options.

Later Revelation May not Contradict what “Earlier Texts Present as Truth”

The issue Waltke is addressing here concerns monolatry vs. monotheism in ancient Israel, i.e., whether at some point in time ancient Israelites believed that Yahweh was one god among others, but was the only one worthy of worship, or whether they only ever thought that Yahweh was the one and only divine being in existence.

Waltke seems to be saying that Israelites could not have moved from monolatry to monotheism, for, if this were the case, they would have moved from a “false” notion to a true one. Since God’s word can contain nothing false, this type of progressive revelation is a priori out of bounds.

Waltke does not seem to consider as theologically viable the notion that God can accommodate himself to ubiquitous ANE notions. Moreover, there are clear monolatrous statements in the Old Testament, statements, in other words, that can be shown to be monolatrous by rigorous exegesis (or not even all that rigorous). 

The issue of the advent of Israel’s understanding of monotheism is a perennial theological and historical problem (or better, it is a theological problem because it is a historical problem). It is not an issue that can be moved aside by appealing to God as the “inerrant Source” of Scripture, as Waltke does, unless it can be convincingly argued, contrary to exegesis, that the inerrant Source would not do such an unacceptable job at accommodation.

Read Part One of my response here.
Read Part Two of my response here.
Read Part Three of my response here
Read Part Four of my response here

Here are parts five and six of my response to Waltke’s follow-up piece:

(5) Failure to Define Precisely What Divine Inspiration Entails with Respect to Scripture

That is correct, and is also correct of anything I have ever read on the topic, including Waltke’s recent articulations. Failure to “define precisely” describes us all. The point of books and articles is to move toward further precision and clarity, sometimes by offering grand, programmatic pieces, other times more focused studies.

An incarnational model is an attempt to define what inspiration entails by giving an account of the breadth of biblical phenomena, a small fraction of which was covered in I&I. The model may not be to Waltke’s liking, but pointing out imprecision, which is ubiquitous and unavoidable in these discussions, is not a counter-argument. The accusation of failed precision can find universal applicability, and so is not a compelling criticism.

Rigorous Exegesis is Needed to Defend an Incarnational Model
This criticism follows somewhat upon the previous one.

I want to stress that an incarnational model is not “my” model, which Waltke seems to imply. To be sure, I am applying it to issues that others have not and to an extent that some may not be comfortable with. I am very much aware of that. But the model itself is not one of my own devising.

I would say, though, that no model, including an inerrantist one, can be demonstrated on the basis of ‘rigorous exegesis.’ In fact, it is precisely rigorous exegesis that led me to question the model of inspiration Waltke seems to profess, and I am advocating something that I find more compelling as a point of departure, one that I argue accounts better for why the Bible looks the way it does.

(6) “The Community of Faith Must Judge”

I have heard this before and I remain puzzled by it. Who, exactly, is this community of faith, and in what sense do they judge? What does this even mean?

Does Waltke mean an ecclesiastical court or a judgment in the eyes of popular opinion? If the latter, is it a matter of trading anecdotal evidence? Or do we leave it to the self-proclaimed gatekeepers, of which there seems to be no lack nowadays. If the former, which court? Which denomination? And more importantly, on what basis should that court be judged competent to pass judgment on others on some of the technical matters under consideration?

This does not mean that Waltke is entirely wrong. In fact, I would say that submitting ideas to a community of faith for judgment is precisely what Waltke and I are engaged in here. We are a part of that process by which God’s people gain clarity. Rather than there being a court, outside of this discussion, popular or “official,” to which Waltke or I need to submit our work, we are an important step in that process. We are, in fact, among those whose advice any “court” should seek in an effort to reach informed conclusions.

I know what that sounds like: “Enns is arrogant. He thinks that you need a Ph.D. in Biblical Scholars in order to determine doctrine because they are the only ones who have enough expertise in the Bible.” No, I don’t mean that. But, neither do I find at all constructive the unguarded statements of those not trained in these matters who dismiss with little forethought the work of modern biblical scholarship, and make sweeping and binding pronouncements. And yes, these issues do require training in biblical and related studies to handle well on the level of sophistication needed. Neither ordination nor expertise in related disciplines qualifies one to determine the direction of these discussions.

I am not in any way, shape, or form advocating a separation of disciplines. Actually, I am calling for the exact opposite. As I have said on numerous occasions [e.g., this article, published in the Calvin Theological Journal], what is needed is true discussion among scholars of various disciplines to seek greater clarity about the nature of the Bible at a time when there is, to say the least, growing dissatisfaction with formulations that have been worked out in isolation from the very challenges we face.

Times have changed. We cannot rest on the comfort of a familiar past. There is much work to be done. There is no place for fence building or posturing.

Read Part One of my response here.
Read Part Two of my response here.
Read Part Three of my response here

Here is the fourth part of my response to Waltke’s follow-up piece:

Waltke is No Fundamentalist
I can understand why, in view of my previous response, Waltke would want to point out that he holds views that are considered progressive and therefore problematic by fundamentalists. He is open to multi-authorship of Isaiah, an exilic date for the final form of the Deuteronomy, and theistic evolution. I am already aware of this, although those who look to Waltke to champion their fundamentalist causes should take careful note how much Waltke is conceding on these points. Waltke is to be commended for expressing himself so clearly.

Still, given the groundwork that Waltke has laid thus far, I wonder if he would not be more consistent if he did maintain a fundamentalist posture on these issues. For, as Greg Beale has recently reminded us (The Erosion of Inerrancy), any talk of multi-authorship of Isaiah is to discredit the very words of Jesus himself, who quoted from various portions of the book but referred consistently to “Isaiah.” If, after all, Scripture is the very truth of God revealed, and if there can be no foible or misrepresentation of historical fact, must we not take Jesus’ “testimony” with utter seriousness, lest we attribute to Scripture “nonsense” and “human error”? How can we arrive at conclusions Jesus himself did not and would not accept? The same goes for pentateuchal authorship, and most certainly for evolution. To accept these progressive views, even as a possible options, seems to me to be more problematic for Waltke than he admits.

I would suggest that for Waltke to maintain his progressive (and correct) views, he must employ a hermeneutic and derivative doctrine of Scripture that are more subtle than the principles he employs with respect to my arguments. In other words, I don’t think he can have it both ways. The manner in which he argues against some of my views discredits some of his own more progressive views.

Continuing my series of unsolicited testimonials I’ve received in response to my book Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament.

Dr. Enns:

I’m sure you’re getting emailed to death. However, as a medical 
doctor who has struggled with the issues expressed in your book, I  appreciate your work.

Those of us who are true to science have always been confronted with 
 a false dichotomy from our fundamental friends, science and modern 
 thinking vs
 a “high” view of scripture..Many times i have almost had to walk 
 from my faith to keep my integrity.. Your incarnational model respects the Word of God but realizes it is 
culturally bounded and must to a degree be unlocked by critical 
intelligent reading. Anyway, know that there are educated Christians who appreciate your  putting your neck on the block.

Keep up the good work

Read why I am posting these and more I&I testimonials >>>