Waltke and Enns on Enns

The recent edition of the Westminster Theological Journal has an exchange between OT scholars Bruce Waltke and Peter Enns on Enns’ book Inspiration and Incarnation, which I commented on recently here. (They are re-published at Peter Enns Online.)

Waltke concludes,

A theory that entails notions that holy Scripture contains flat out contradictions, ludicrous harmonization, earlier revelations that are misleading and/or less than truthful, and doctrines that are represented as based on historical fact, but in fact are based on fabricated history, in my judgment, is inconsistent with the doctrine that God inspired every word of holy Scripture. To be sure, the Scripture is fully human, but it is just as fully the Word of God, with whom there is no shadow of turning and who will not lie to or mislead his elect.

Waltke claims that his comments and conclusions are strictly exegetical and a posteriori, which is to say that he is not writing out of his pre-determined theological commitments. Enns, in his response, gently ribs Waltke for his “apparent claim to have achieved exegetical objectivity” (p. 97).

I have to agree with Enns on that point. Exegetical objectivity is a pipe-dream, IMO (although I am as close as anyone I know)*. We all live and study in the sometimes vicious turmoil of the hermeneutical spiral.

Of course, Enns is perhaps a bit condescending when he speaks of allowing a “a responsible reading of Scripture to challenge our own fallen notions of Scripture, God, the gospel, and so forth” (p. 100). It is hard to imagine that Enns means by “responsible reading” anything other than his own approach. His tenor, both in I&I and this response seems to indicate that anyone who doesn’t read it his way is not reading responsibly.

My point is saying that is not to impugn Enns. I do not know him. Waltke affirms his belief that Enns is a man of personal integrity and “unflinching honesty.” Fine. My point is simply to say that Enns, like Waltke (and all of us), can be too in love with our own thinking and not able to see that others might be as “responsible” or perhaps more “responsible” than we are in the reading of Scripture, and still come to different conclusions.**

Having said all that, I think Waltke is right, as I previously expressed. I  think Enns bibliology is woefully lacking. I do not think he has wrestled with inerrancy and inspiration (and incarnation for that matter) in a responsible way. (I recently heard someone say that even the metaphor of incarnation works against Enns because Christ, in human flesh, was sinless. He did not partake of these foibles that Enns would like to thrust on the Scriptures.)

I think Waltke has successfully shown that Enns’ proof-texts can be handled in responsible ways that do not arrive at Enns’ conclusion. I think Waltke has a more coherent view of inspiration.

Enns says he has arrived at this position because has has no other option. I have no problem with that. I am a soteriological Calvinist and a traditional dispensationalist for the same reason: My conscience in the study of Scripture leaves me no other option. But we all (myself and Enns included) must recognize that good-faith study does not make us right. We might mean well and still be wrong.

In this case, Enns makes some good points. I agree with his conclusion that many of these issues are not “open and shut cases” (p. 114). But I still think he is wrong.

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*I am kidding … Lighten up.

**Which reminds that I recently saw someone fairly young, obviously theologically and socially immature, accuse a more than 40-year veteran of seminary teaching of being clearly wrong. Having witnessed some of the exegetical process and conclusions of both, it is fair to say that some people would be better served by not speaking up, even when you think it.