Speaking of Origins

This is an interesting post by Ken Ham critiquing a 2006 review by Susan Wise Bauer of a Peter Enns book. Who are all these people you ask? Ham is the president of Answers in Genesis an organization which believes in a literal seven day creation of the universe. His organization owns and runs the Creation Museum in Kentucky. I have heard Ham speak once, but other than the above information I don’t know much about him. Susan Wise Bauer is one of the leaders of the “classical education” (not important what this is for the purposes of this post other than to say that she is a big wig in Christian education) movement, and the publisher of the aforementioned Enns’ book. I’ve read one book by Bauer a good primer on classical education, but other than that I don’t know anything about her. Enns is a Christian (if one may be so bold to use that term) that believes in evolution. He was the professor of Old Testament studies at Westminster Theological Seminary until writing the aforementioned book. Thereafter he was canned by the school. Before this controversy, I had never heard of him (Not quite accurate, I vaguely recall hearing about a Westminster professor getting fired over his belief in evolution a while back. I am assuming it was the same guy.). In other words I don’t know any of these people too well so I don’t have an axe to grind. I am using them as an illustration only.

A few weeks ago Ham began a war of words against Enns and Bauer over what he believes is a movement to undermine the Scripture. He “outed” Enns’s views on evolution to the homeschool community on the eve of the homeschool convention in Cincinnati, allegedly criticizing not only Enns, but also Bauer and the group that ran the convention for allowing Enns to participate. Ham was told he was no longer welcome at the convention where he was scheduled to speak. I’m not sure whether Enns or Bauer have made any statements on the controversy, but Ham is still on the offensive, this time clearly going after Bauer. I was able to track down a link to Bauer’s review in full. My comments are interspersed in hers via parenthesis.

Messy Revelation
Why Paul would have flunked hermeneutics.

[Note to the Ken Hams of the world, Bauer is not really saying that Paul was bad at hermeneutics, but that our modern hermeneutics are incorrect.]

by Susan Wise Bauer

Sometime this past year, I was reading Sumerian poetry (for work, not for pleasure) when I came across a 4,000-year-old epic describing the Sumerian paradise, a garden city free of evil and sickness where

the raven utters no cry
the lion kills not,
the wolf snatches not the lamb,
unknown is the kid-devouring wild dog.1

If this doesn't bring you up short, turn to Isaiah 11, where the prophet tells us that when the Messiah returns, the wolf will live with the lamb, the lion will eat straw like the ox, and that the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. The words in which Isaiah describes the great hope of the believer, the words that inform John's own vision of the new heavens and earth: those words don't seem to have originated with, well, with God.

This is the opening dilemma of Peter Enns' Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. The uniqueness of the Old Testament as a piece of literature has been seriously dented by the discovery of more and more ancient texts that predate (and anticipate) biblical forms. Creation story, flood story, prophecy, proverb: all of these were in use in Mesopotamia long before the first biblical book was penned.

[The things written in the Old Testament are true. They are truths that everyone on earth at one time knew. They were stories told to each succeeding generation. They are yearnings that whisper in the heart of every person ever born. Why shouldn’t we expect those truths, those yearnings to echo, if only faintly and corrupted, in other cultures even prior to the time they were written down in the Old Testament? These facts far from causing me to doubt the veracity of the Old Testament, only serve to bolster it. If the Old Testament were completely unique, then I would begin to get worried . . . As if the Jews or the Christians had the corner on the Truth market . . . sheeesh.]

So how can we claim that the Old Testament - and it alone from all the texts of that pre-Christian age - is divine communication from God to man?

[Because the Incarnate Christ and his apostles said it was.]

It's an interesting question, but it turns out to be small potatoes compared with the next problem that Enns, professor of Old Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary, sets before us: It seems as though the Old Testament was also puzzling for Matthew and Luke and Paul. In fact, from where we sit, it looks as though the apostles were lousy at exegesis.

[For the Ken Hams of the world, she is not saying that Paul was lousy at exegesis. She is claiming that what we call exegesis is not the proper method of interpreting Scripture, and she is using the examples of the apostles to bolster her case. The key words here are “from where we sit”. Where we sit is wrong according to Bauer.]

Enns gives us a number of startling New Testament passages that use the Old Testament by wrenching the original words violently out of context and even altering them. For example, Matthew 2 tells us with confidence that Jesus' trip down to Egypt as a boy (and his eventual return to Galilee) fulfilled Hosea 11:1, "Out of Egypt I called my son." But Hosea 11:1 is simply describing the Exodus; it is a passage, Enns points out, which "is not predictive of Christ's coming but retrospective of Israel's disobedience." In other words, Matthew is shamelessly proof-texting, in a way that would get any student enrolled in Practical Theology 221 (Expository Skills) sternly reproved.

Or consider Paul's use of Isaiah 59:20 in Romans 11, where he winds up an argument by announcing, "And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: 'The deliverer will come from Zion.' " But Isaiah says something quite different: "The Redeemer will come to Zion," he tells us.

[Matthew and Paul had every right to make these assertions. I speculate that they were merely passing on to the reader something the Christ and the Church had always taught, and/or they were interpreting the Scripture under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. In other words he had the authority to do so. You and I do not.]

Changing the words of Scripture to suit your own purposes? Paul wouldn't get past the first week of New Testament 123 (Hermeneutics) like that. He is breaking every rule of thoughtful evangelical scholarship, which holds that the proper way to approach inerrant Scripture is with careful grammatical-historical exegesis: painstaking analysis of each word of the Scripture and its relationship to other words, the setting of the sentence in the verse, the verse in the chapter, the chapter in the book, and the book in the historical times of its composition.

[It is this method of interpretation that Enns and Bauer have a problem with, and which Ham is seeking to defend in his own unique way. Of course Ham thinks that he is not defending his interpretation of Scripture but arrogantly, he believes that his interpretation is Scripture itself. Thus in his eyes he is merely defending Scripture. This is why he does not get the point.]

Of course Paul breaks those rules, Enns says; they are our rules, not Paul's.

[Absent authority to read Scriptures otherwise, they are cautious conservative rules which in general we should follow; however, we should never automatically assume that they are correct method to use in interpreting a passage.]

Inspiration and Incarnation offers us passages from such extrabiblical texts as the Wisdom of Solomon and the Book of Biblical Antiquities in order to show that, far from doing something extraordinary and super-apostolic, Paul and Matthew were doing exactly what most of their contemporaries did. Both apostles had been trained by the scholars of their day, the so-called "Second Temple" period, to come to a text looking for the "mystery" beneath the words: the deeper truth that an untrained reader might not see. Both of them came to the Old Testament already convinced that they knew what that mystery was: the incarnation, death, and resurrection of God in Jesus Christ.

[Both were under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, thus the difference in outsome between them and their contemporaries.]

Paul knows, by faith, that this truth underlies all of the Old Testament. He knows that it will be in Isaiah; he looks for it in the 59th chapter, and - as we might expect - he finds it. And if he has to change a preposition or two to make this "mystery" clear to the rest of us, he is not violating any sort of interpretive rule. His own principles of exegesis allow him to "read into the prophet's words," as Enns puts it, what he "already knew those words were really about."

[And how did he know what those words were about? Hmm . . . could it be . . . SATAN?]

This is the exactly the kind of exegesis that terrifies most evangelicals. The man who admits that meanings can be "read into" Scripture stands on the fabled slippery slope, right above a sheer drop-off, while below him churns a sea of relativism, upon which floats only a single overloaded lifeboat, captained by a radical feminist gay & lesbian & transgender activist who is very anxious to make the final decision about who gets pitched overboard.

[When an apostle does it I’m not particularly terrified. When someone else does this, I ask the question by whose authority do you interpret this passage? If they have no authority to do so, then I get worried . . . or I just dismiss them as kooks.]

Nevertheless, Enns is willing to plant his feet on the slope and stand there long enough to ask two disturbing questions.

[How very brave of him. He is willing to stand there long enough to ask his questions and then he dives right over the cliff.]

The first is this: Are we really saying that the apostles used an interpretive method that was not particularly inspired, and which in the hands of many Second Temple scholars led to enormous distortions of the original texts?

[The method used in the hands of the right person was absolutely inspired.]

And that this "mishandling" of the Old Testament produced, somehow, an inspired and trustworthy New Testament? Enns' answer to this is an unequivocal yes.

[For the Ken Ham’s of the world the scare quotes are there for a reason. She really doesn’t think that the apostles mishandled the Old Testament. She is saying that it is mishandled only if you assume that the above method is always correct one to use. Yippee! Enns believes that the New Testament is inspired and trustworthy, but Bauer doesn’t explain why.]

"This makes revelation somewhat messy," he writes, "but it would seem that God would not have it any other way.

[For the Ken Hams of the world, this statement is not stating the Scriptures are messy. They only appear to be messy from our perspective.”]

For the apostles to interpret the Old Testament in ways consistent with the hermeneutical expectations of the Second Temple world is analogous to Christ himself becoming a first-century Jew."

[Context is everything but Enns gets it wrong. The context for correct interpretation is the Church, not whatever culture you happen to live in. More on this later.]

In other words, the God who spoke to man through Christ also speaks to man through Scripture, and in much the same way: he enters into our world and uses our own cultural patterns to reveal himself.

[I don’t think I understand this, but then again I don’t have a PHD. God doesn’t use our own cultural patterns to reveal Himself. He reveals Himself through the Scripture within the context of the Church.]

We cannot insist that there is a separate, ahistorical, all-divine message in any part of the Bible that somehow triumphs over all contemporary thought and custom. This, Enns writes, is a modern version of the ancient Docetic heresy, which held that Christ only seemed human.

[No Susan this is relativism, and Enns just did a half twist somersault in the pike position. Is Enns really stating that unless we embrace that the Scriptures really don’t mean anything, we are in fact claiming the human element is only incidental? Last time I checked I don’t know of any person that believes that Bible fell from the sky, leather bound and gold embossed.]

"What some ancient Christians were saying about Christ," he writes, "is similar to the mistake that other Christians have made (and continue to make) about Scripture: it comes from God, and the marks of its humanity are only apparent, to be explained away."

[Yep that’s what he’s saying.]

Which leads Enns to the next disturbing question.

[Wait a minute. That was already two questions.]

If Paul and Matthew use Second Temple techniques to interpret the Old Testament, should we follow their example

[We individually have no authority to do so.]

- beginning with what we know to be true, and taking our interpretation from there?

[What exactly do we KNOW to be true? Hmmm . . . could it be . . . . EVOLUTION?]

This question gets a conditional yes: as long as we begin with the same central mystery as Paul and Matthew, the "reality of the crucified and risen Christ, [which is] both the beginning and the end of Christian biblical interpretation."

[But . . . but . . . I KNOW to be true that virgins do not give birth and dead men don’t raise to life and God doesn’t become man. Why do these things get a pass? One of the other central mysteries that Paul and Matthew began with was that Scripture (the Old Testament) was God breathed and useful for a whole lot of things, and they were completely wrong about that. Why should I trust them on this?]

This reality, not the method which we use to affirm it, should be at the center of our doctrine of inerrancy.

[I agree that Christ is the center of the doctrine, and that no method of interpretation is inerrant - contra to Ham.]

This means, unfortunately, that we cannot cling to the comforting notion that grammatical-historical exegesis is a kind of high road to truth.

[Sorry Ken, I agree with them on this; however, it is interpreting the Scripture in, by and through the Church is the high road to truth.]

Like the Second Temple exegesis of Paul and Matthew, it is a method - the method produced by our own time and place. Like the Second Temple exegesis, it can produce both truth and error. "Our own understanding of the Old Testament - and the gospel - has a contextual dimension,"

[Sorry Ken I agree here as well. Of course the context is not our own culture, but the Church universal. I didn’t realize that PHD’s could be so boneheaded.]

Enns writes. "As subjective as this sounds, it is nevertheless inescapable.

[Wait a minute I just escaped it . . . ]

If any of this is troublesome, it may be because we have not adequately grappled with the implications of God himself giving us Scripture in context."

[The only troublesome aspect is your erroneous conclusions that context means relativism.]

Well, of course it is going to be troublesome, and Enns, who knows the evangelical community well, is perfectly aware of it.

[Obviously he didn’t know it well enough to realize that this book was going to get him canned.]

But Inspiration and Incarnation makes clear that Scripture, like the Incarnation itself, is a scandal: like Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the wise. It takes ancient and unreal images, like the lion and the lamb together, and demands that we look back on them with faith in the resurrection of Christ. It claims, against all common sense, that this faith will transform the dead pictures into a living hope. It is loaded with problems and imperfections.

[Did she just say that the Scriptures were loaded with imperfections? My orthodox alarm is going off. . . . Unorthodox alert. . . . Unorthodox alert. Danger! Danger! I could forgive her for all the other crap, but that is in fact heretical. Maybe I misunderstood.]

And it is the Word of God, which means that we must engage in as much prayer as study of Hebrew vocabulary, as much faith as reading up on the history of the ancient world, as much charity (something remarkably lacking in most of the debates over how to read Scripture) as Greek grammar.

[Agreed but no one would disagree with this . . . that is except a strawman.]

It means that when an evangelical scholar like Enns - teaching in an evangelical seminary,

[Not anymore.]

a faithful member of his local church - writes, "There do not seem to be any clear rules or guidelines to prevent us from taking [the process of interpreting Scripture] too far,"

[Only if you completely disregard the Church and her creeds, which unfortunately is all too common for evangelicals. Without Her you are indeed set adrift.]

we must recognize this as an honest and truthful statement of the difficulties

[No difficulties just very bad epistemology.]

rather than an open door to chaos.

[Why wouldn’t this lead to theological chaos. Oh yeah, because of . . . .]

It means, in the end, that we must take incarnation seriously.

[pbbbbbt Whatever that means. For the Ken Hams of the world I’m not really questioning the incarnation. I’m saying that they can not account of nor define the incarnation by their own epistemology, nor explain why this exception has been carved out of their relativistic world.]

Do we know what we are saying when we stand in an American church on a Sunday morning in 2006 and recite, "He was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried"?

[Yep. That a real event happened in real time.]

This polished, grammatical, creedal acknowledgment, transmitted to us via centuries of church tradition, of liturgy and Advent custom and carols, of Bible-school illustration and triumphant hymnody, has scrubbed up and made deceptively commonplace the essential weirdness of God becoming man.

[I couldn’t agree more. Christ is all too familiar to us.]

I believe in the Incarnation, but then on the other hand I have never had to stand face-to-face with a grimy, troublemaking, blue-collar worker who claims to be God.

I do have to stand face-to-face with the Old Testament and its excessive, contradictory, harsh, alien texts.

[Did she just say contradictory? Beep . . . .beep . . . There it goes again.]

Enns encourages us to recognize the Old Testament for what it is: the anteroom of the Incarnation, the practice ground where we are brought nose-to-nose with the true difficulty of believing that God ever came to earth.


In Summary: There is no proper way to interpret Scripture, therefore the gloves are off and we can read it however we want to, except curiously that we must believe that Christ came, died, was buried and rose again, beyond that everything is relative. This cleaver attempt at epistemology does two important things. It gives us a sufficiently fuzzy view of Scripture so that we can hold our evolutionary views or whatever other contemporary views we want to hold, at the same time it allows us to avoid falling off the cliff into out right relativism regarding the person and work of Christ (al la liberal theology). It is also rot.

What’s funny at what lengths one will go to justify their beliefs.
What’s even funnier is that Ham seems to completely miss the point. He says this.
“Really—I believe the correct “review” of Enns’ book (which when understood does mean he has a different view of inspiration from that held by orthodox Christians down through the centuries including us at Answers in Genesis) can be summed up by Bible scholar Moises Silva:
If we refuse to pattern our exegesis after that of the apostles, we are in practice denying the authoritative character of their scriptural interpretation—and to do so is to strike at the very heart of the Christian faith.
– Silva, Moises. 1983. “The New Testament Use of The Old Testament: Text Form and Authority,” in D.A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge, eds. Scripture and Truth. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, p. 164.”
Um . . . Ken . . . The whole point of the exercise was that they wanted us to be able to interpret the Scriptures just like the apostles, except whole fact that they are not guided by the Holy Spirit thing.