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• “Modern science has made the biblical creation stories hopelessly out-of-date.”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

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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.

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One of these issues is the very real challenge to Christians of OT morality. In defending the faith, there has been a tendency to laud the moral supremacy of the Bible over other religions and especially over atheism. NA is quick to point out that no reasonable, compassionate person would model his or her morality by much of Old Testament behavior.

Much of what we find in the OT is, to use an NA phrase, “Iron Age tribalism”: our god is better than your god, and he told us to take your land, kill all of you, and keep the booty. When Christians respond that the OT also carries the injunction to “love your neighbor,” NA responds that one’s ”neighbor” in the OT is fellow Israelites. God is not telling the Israelites to walk on over to the Canaanites and “love them.” Rather, he is telling them to wipe them out and take their land.

I don’t think this observation by NA is cynical or driven by a blind bias (as some of their observations are). Rather the observation is correct. Here the Christian reaction, motivated as it is to defend their understanding of the Bible against criticism, is unconvincing.

Rather than protecting the Bible against such criticism by justifying such instances of OT morality, I think Christians would do better to understand the nature of the OT, accept it for what it is, but then do the necessary theological thinking to give a reasonable and sophisticated account of things. Central to that necessary theological thinking is to bring the NT into the discussion.

The issue of one’s neighbor is treated in the NT in the well-known story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). Jesus is speaking to a crowd, and an “expert in the law” sought to challenge Jesus by asking him what one must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus asked him what the law said, and the man responded with the well-known confession: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus commends him for his answer, but the man asks Jesus, “and who is my neighbor.” This is not an innocent question, but one that seems to be motivated by his desire to draw as small a circle of love around him as he could (hence the comment in the story that this expert in the law was seeking to “justify himself”).

Jesus responds with that wonderful story of the Samaritan who sees on the side of the road a Jewish victim of a mugging, and goes well out his way to help him, even to the point of incurring personal expense. Samaritans were hated by Jews, yet—if I may get to the point of the story—even this hated Samaritan had more a sense of God’s love than these “pious” Jews (a priest and a Levite) who did not hesitate to step over a countryman in need.

“I will tell you who your neighbor is,” Jesus says. “Let your hated enemy show you. Are you Jews humble enough to see that the love of God transcends these nationalistic and sociological boundaries?” Jesus blows these boundaries away. “Love your neighbor” is given a broader and rather unsettling meaning. Whatever such boundaries existed in the OT, no longer do.

NA misses this entirely. Christianity is a faith that is not bound to every OT expression of morality. Rather, it has built into it a moral trajectory that goes beyond the culturally informed moral limits of the OT period. Where Christians box themselves into a corner is when they fail to see that moral trajectory and try to maintain the notion that everything in the Bible is of equal ultimacy.

The Christian reaction to what NA says about OT morality may seem to some to be a “high view of Scripture,” but it actually fails to take into account the moral trajectory of the NT. Ironically, both NA and the Christian reaction share a sub-Christian understanding of the Bible.

This is why so many Christians still have trouble assimilating the Sermon on the Mount, where a similar moral trajectory is clearly seen. There Jesus contrasts his teaching with not only the added burden of legal tradition upon the OT law, but with the OT law itself. In both the Sermon on the Mount and the Good Samaritan, Jesus is saying “I’m here now and things are going to be different.” (Jesus’ views toward the dietary laws and the Sabbath similarly show how the NT passes beyond OT “boundaries” of another sort.)

The NT represents a moral trajectory vis-à-vis the OT. Rather than feeling threatened when NA points out what is fairly clear in the OT, Christians should be as ready to accept what is plain to all in the OT, but then to round out the picture with an understanding what the gospel brings to the discussion.

We should also note well that such a realization on our part must face squarely the notion that the Christian Bible itself presents such a moral trajectory, which means not everything written there is equally ultimate. I realize that other Christians explain the problem of OT morality differently. For example: the slaughter of the Canaanites is not a moral problem, but a preview of God’s judgment on sinful humanity. It is a demonstration of what all humanity deserves, an acting out on God’s part of what the fate of all would be were it not for his grace.

Everyone will have to decide what model best explains the phenomena. As for me, the “preview of God’s judgment” explanation creates more problems than it solves, and the “moral trajectory” explanation seems to be precisely what I see the NT doing. Jesus “completes” Israel’s story, to be sure, but part of that completion is to go beyond the OT, to break new ground that would leave both Jew and Gentile shaking their heads.

For some this way of thinking may pose quite a theological burden, since it requires an adjustment in thinking about the nature of the Bible. For me, however, this approach is a natural and straightforward way of addressing the problem, and exposes the truncated observations of NA.

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

It is clear that, after initially being in warm support of the project represented in Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament (I&I) (see his blurb on the back of the book), Waltke has had a change of heart after a second reading. He and I discussed this matter at some length over the past year or two, and we both thought an exchange in WTJ would be fruitful. I appreciate Waltke’s candor in his views and the respectful tone with which he presents them.

I am posting these articles because I think they lay out clearly two very different approaches to dealing with some pressing matters of biblical interpretation and perhaps lay some groundwork for how those with training and interest in biblical studies can further this conversation.

Waltke and I clearly have sharp differences on a number of issues but this exchange is (I trust) free of rancor and condescension. What has struck me in the last several months is the considerable gap there is among some between the manner in which important matters are discussed and the basic ethic that Jesus promulgated, an ethic that even the most ardent secularists throughout history have taken note of and even admired. This is not to deflect the importance of debate and sharp disagreement, as I hope this exchange demonstrates, but neither Watlke nor I want to contribute to such dysfunction in the church. We hope, rather, that the complex and perennial academic points can rise to prominence, as they should. I hope readers enjoy and profit from this exchange.

Download Revisiting Inspiration & Incarnation by Bruce Waltke (PDF)

Download Response to Bruce Waltke by Peter Enns (PDF)

(Hint: Due to the somewhat bizarre user interface at Beliefnet, you have to click the word “Comments” at the end of the post to see the whole comment feed; otherwise, you’ll be popped somewhere in the middle of the conversation.)