Author PETER ENNS
Publisher BAKER ACADEMIC
ISBN 0801027307
As the publisher name ‘Baker Academic’ suggests this book is not for casual reading. Actually it is extremely readable and very helpful. The author at the time of writing it (2005) was a professor at Westminster Theological Seminary and this will immediately assure some would-be readers that he is not likely to stray into liberal ideas as to the inspiration of the Bible. That there is something of an on-going argument as to just how trustworthy the Bible is and words like ‘inerrancy’ are anxiously discussed many of us will realize.
Peter Enns takes an approach that he calls ‘incarnational’ and argues, I think persuasively for what we could call the vital, living nature of the Scriptures and that we must not be locked into the common historical hermeneutical method so prevalent in Biblical exegesis. This trajectory breaks down the verses in their context but so often operates from a twentieth century mindset and imports into the texts meanings that in all probability the apostles would not have understood at all. Does the Old Testament set out to be scientific with emphasis upon literal days and the like in the matters of the creation or is it expressing God’s actions in time? Enns invents a helpful word when he shows how the writers of the New Testament interpreted the Old Testament primarily from the reality of Christ Crucified and His resurrection. It was not so much that they ‘saw Christ in every verse of the Old Testament’ but rather, say that all there led to Him. He emphasizes how the Bible is an utterly living book, unique in this sense.
This book is written for Evangelical Christians confident in Christ and those who read it will be taken on a helpful journey that broadens their appreciation of the wonder of the Christian Scriptures. This will include studies in the way the apostles apparently ‘read into’ their use of the Old Testament in a way that the usual evangelical approach to exegesis would frown upon and even totally reject. Enns takes us into an examination of the Second Temple methodologies of interpretation and shows how similarly the apostles use the Old Testament. As I read it through it tended to bring to mind two preacher writers that are properly honored in our day, John Piper and N.T.Wright. The first tends to represent that more familiar strict historical method of reading, interpreting and preaching from the New Testament whilst the second moves into a more ‘incarnational’ and, what appears to be to some, loose approach. It may be that Enns will fail to convince every reader of his position, but, as he says, he is not presenting a ‘finished’ idea but helping evangelicals in particular to consider a wider perspective.
I think he effectively succeeds in that and as he does so there is no diminishing of respect for the Scriptures God has given us, but on the contrary the reader is lifted to a place where he sees a larger horizon.
