Finding the Purpose of a Christian Institution
April 2, 2008 - 11:46am by ThomasPeter Enns, one of the leading evangelical professors of Old Testament, has been suspended from his tenured post at Westminster Theological Seminary after debate about how his book Inspiration and Incarnation matched up with the institution's doctrinal statement. I don't go to Westminster, I don't know much about it other than it is named after the confession it espouses, and I only know of a friend of a friend who goes there. I will steer clear of any rash judgements and leave the explanations to this Christianity Today article: Westminster Theological Suspension.
My concern, as with the Shane Claiborne incident at Wheaton, is that Christian institutions are using religious and theological smoke and mirrors games as power plays of political ambition and as battlegrounds for influence. The kinds of reactions that some presbyteries are quoted as having in the CT article smell of hyperbole and guilt by association tactics. Peter Enns is an evangelical theologian, I would not even classify what I have read of him (all articles back in my PBU days) as moderately liberal, and he is certainly not a lunatic.
The deepest question for any Christian institution of higher learning must be what your purpose is: are you a copy machine or are you an academic institution? Do you put doctrinal allegiance before academics or vice versa? This is a choice that an istitution has to make, and it is one that affects the foundation and legacy it will have for decades. Think of the reputation of Princeton Theological Seminary versus Dallas Theological Seminary for a moment. Princeton is a crapshoot: you can get a rock solid conservative or a agnostic liberal out of the same institution; however, with Dallas you know exactly what you get with each graduate: conservative, neo-Baptist, dispensational. Each institution has a specific commodity it is trying to market with its graduates. Princeton graduates are free-thinking, top knotch researching types, while Dallas markets a product that has gone through doctrinal quality control: each product of Dallas is delivered with a stamp of approval that what you are getting is a pastoral candidate who can be trusted to not drink, not chew, not go with girls who "do" and will never go off his rocker and become an amillennialist. This is not to say that there are not great thinkers at Dallas (Derrill Bock as an example, or former graduates like Gary Schnittjer whom I had Old Testament and doctrine classes under at PBU) or dispensationalists at Princeton (they have to be hiding somewhere, I suppose). But each institution has a primary objective for its graduates, whether it be the quality of learning or the consistency of learning.
Westminster, from what I have heard is a great seminary, and I certainly don't think that because an institution like them choses consistency to win out over quality of learning doesn't mean that their education is not a quality one---it certainly is. But when it comes down to back room dealings (without cigars of course) and Christian institution politics, either quality/freedom of learning or consistency/doctrine of education have to win out.
Today it might appear that at Westminster to the jot and tittle doctrinal consistency will win out over the quality of learning that Professor Enns provides.
More information:
A message from Westminster's board of trustees
Peter Enn's blog
Comments
Call me old-fashioned, or judgmental or whatever, but I feel very strongly that Westminster Seminary is completely within their rights to take this action. An established belief that aligns with what the Bible says about itself is one to hold fast too. To begin to go down the slippery slope of questioning the inerrancy of the Bible is to start down a road that can only draw one farther away from God.
Knowledge is a good thing, something we all should strive for. But knowledge in itself is incomplete and can be deceiving. Knowledge with wisdom is ultimately better. Where can we gain wisdom? From the Word of God!
For Enns to say that scripture is both human and divine is an interesting thought, but when God's own Word says that scripture is divinely inspired, God Breathed, that closes the case for me. I think we can all agree that each and every human that walked this earth is flawed, except for one, Jesus. To intimate that scripture has a human substance to it is to say that scripture is flawed. Of course Jesus was fully divine while being fully human and if what the Professor is saying is that Scripture is both divine and human is interesting, but supported nowhere in scripture. And I believe that Scripture is pure and holy, without flaws. Call it blind faith; I prefer to call it complete trust.
Hi Mr. T. Have you read Enns' book? Enns doesn't question scripture's inspiration, nor does he question inerrancy per se. What he does is try to define what "inerrancy" might mean in relation to the actual scriptures God gave us.
On the incarnational analogy, I think you're missing the point. Enns uses a Christological analogy, which does indeed suggest that the Bible is human in a sense similar to the way in which Christ was human. So, if we can say Christ was fully human without "flaws," then we can also say the Bible is human yet without "flaws."
But the key question here is what we mean by "flaws." We don't say Christ had no "flaws"; we say he had no "sin." Surely, if Jesus was fully human, he sometimes made mistakes. I'm sure that when he was a carpenter, Jesus had to learn his trade. Learning implies a progress in skill. No doubt many times Jesus bent the nail, or splintered a board, or dropped the hammer on his foot. More to the point, scripture itself tells us Jesus grew hungry, thirsty, and tired, just like the rest of us human beings. Being human, he also would had runny noses, passed gas, gotten sweaty and smelly, had bad breath after eating fish -- just like the rest of us. The mystery of the incarnation means this takes nothing away from Jesus' divinity.
In the same way, the fact that scripture is obviously a human product -- written in human languages, reflecting human cultural backgrounds and the limitations of the human writers -- subtracts nothing from its divine inspiration.
Hi, dopderbeck. First, I would like to ask for your forgiveness for jumping in to this without doing my homework. I have not read the book and I was defensive and reactionary. I prayed about it last night and meditated on my words this morning and recognize that my approach was wrong. I did go on Professor Enns’ website and read his paper on the subject after reading your comments. I must say, to me this appears to be a big hubbub over a rather innocuous idea, although I can certainly see both sides. I just wonder, not having all of the details, how they were not able to resolve things? Anyway, help me to understand more clearly a concept that you seem to grasp. I am an uneducated lay person and not a theologian, so have patience while I ramble through my thoughts on this. Is Professor Enns saying that the writers of scripture, being human, brought that “flawed” humanity into scripture? I agree with you that Jesus was both Human and Divine, but how does that equate to scripture? Your illustration of the human flaws of Jesus does not, in my mind, have any bearing on Jesus’ ministry. When Jesus was preaching, ministering, healing, etc He was doing his Father’s good and “perfect” will. The writers of scripture wrote while under the influence of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, being part of the trinity, is without flaw or error, so would not have any influence that would bring flaw or error into scripture. So, following that train of thought, the only place error would come into scripture is through the human writers. Would God allow that? Or would God, through his omnipotence, direct the writing of scripture, and in every detail germane to its message and purpose, control the finished product to the point of preventing error? I have always believed, and still believe, that any perceived incongruity was due to lack of understanding and imperfect knowledge. I have difficulty believing that there is any error in scripture, because once I start down that road I would have difficulty knowing where to stop. Mr. T
Hi Mr. T, thanks for the discussion.
I think Jesus' humanity did have a bearing on his ministry -- indeed it was foundational to his ministry. There are many examples, but maybe the most poignant is in Mark 15, when Jesus cries out from the cross, "my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" This is one of the most mind-blowing moments in all of history: the third person of the triune God is asking in anguish why the first person of the triune God has "forsaken" him! In his divinity, Jesus knew from eternity that God's plan for creation involved his incarnation and atoning death, and yet at that most awesome of moments, Jesus in his humanity cries out "why!" This is a mysterious aspect of the "kenosis" referred to in Phil. 2:7 -- the fact that Christ "emptied himself" to become man.
You ask, "following that train of thought, the only place error would come into scripture is through the human writers. Would God allow that?" I think a big problem here is what we are defining as "error." Let me illustrate with a story: a number of years ago, when my daughter was young, we decided to have another child. When the pregnancy began to show, my daughter asked, "why is mommy's tummy so big." I told her, "because there's a baby in mommy's tummy." "How did the baby get there," she asked. I replied, "mommy and daddy prayed that God would give us another baby, and he did!"
Did I communicate "error" to my daughter? Yes, if the definition of "error" involves a certain kind of facticity. The truth was that the baby was in the womb and that it "got there" because mommy and daddy had sexual relations. But my daughter was too young at the time to understand those concepts. So, I communicated to her in a way she could understand. The baby wasn't "literally" in mommy's "tummy," but the description communicated to her the essential truth that mommy carries a baby inside her body. And we did, in fact, pray for God to bless us with another child, and we believed God had, in fact, answered that prayer, even though a full description would have involved our free will and a discussion of sex, sperm and eggs. As a loving father, I "condescended" to my daughter's level and explained this in a way she could comprehend. I wouldn't consider this "error."
In the same way, God condescends or "accommodates" to our human limitations in scripture. We are not God, and we are incapable of processing God-like knowledge. So God, as a loving father, communicates to us in scripture through the broken vessels of human literature and language. If that human literature and language sometimes seems to contain "errors" as defined by some human standard, this does not mean God has "erred" in scripture (I believe, along with Enns).
Let me offer one specific example of this, which I think is a good one because it doesn't involve any controversial theological point in itself. In Leviticus 11:6, scripture says that the the hyrax (a kind of hare) is among the unclean animals that chew cud. The hyrax, however, does not chew its cud. The text here is simply wrong.
How do we account for this? Accommodation is probably the best answer. The hyrax makes a side-to-side chewing motion that looks much like that of cud-chewing ruminants such as cows. It likely appeared to the people who first received the Levitical law that the hyrax was a cud-chewer. God did not override the writer's misimpression here -- he accommodated to it and allowed this aspect of the dietary law to be expressed in terms the contemporary people would have commonly understood.
Concerning "why" God would communicate in this way, I don't know that we can fully answer such a question. Why did God give us scriptures written over thousands of years with various literary styles in different times and cultures? Why were the scriptures communicated in an age without automated word processing technology? Why didn't God appear in the sky with a flaming sword and an army of angels to deliver his message? Why did God send the redeemer of creation to appear as the baby of a Jewish carpenter in a backwater of the Roman Empire? It is all part of the kenosis, God's gracious emptying of himself to meet us, which is at its end a mystery.
I wanted to add something on the "where to stop" question as well. Anyone, including me and Enns, who recognizes the principle of accommodation and who takes scripture seriously acknowledges this problem. If I admit the hyrax doesn't actually chew its cud, what else do I have to admit? There is no simple answer to this question. I think the response lies in a few places: the historic confessions of the faith; the best Biblical, historical, archaeological, linguistic and scientific scholarship; and the interpretive community of the Church.
The historic confessions (e.g., Nice and Apostle's Creeds) identify some core concepts that Christians have affirmed as central for millennia. They provide a center of gravity for our exploration of what scripture means for us doctrinally today. Solid scholarship helps us understand the contexts of scripture so that we can continually refine our understanding of what the text is communicating. The interpretive community of the Church is the setting in which we read scripture and respond to it as it transforms us.
This doesn't allow for the kind of certainty some people want from scripture. But, it does not by any means just leave us blowing in the wind. I'd even suggest it reflects God's design for scripture -- that it is how God the Father points us to a relationship with Christ, God the Son, the living Word, and to fellowship in the transformative community of the Church, the living body of Christ, which is indwelled by the power of the Holy Spirit.