“The fact that God used men as his vehicles for inscripturation does not entail that their own thoughts were not a part of the information that was included into the Sciptures.”

MSH: I’d agree.

“We call it the “Word of God” because we affirm that God is the primary Author and that the human authors are “secondary authors”. We know that Scripture is “theopneustos” because 2 Timothy 3:16 asserts it.”

MSH: This statement apparently solves something for you, but for me it just begs what I think is an obvious question: In what sense are humans secondary authors? That is, your statement gives a position, which I’d agree with, but it explains nothing about how it worked, which has repeatedly been the issue here. You also don’t explain what is meant by theopneustos – your seem to assume that the presence of the word has some sort of self-evident meaning. It doesn’t – there are a couple ways it could be understood, and that issue will be the centerpiece of my next post.

MSH: I didn’t comment on Enns because I really don’t care how Enns parses the comparative material. I didn’t start the thread to discuss Enns, and I’ve already stated that I wouldn’t parse things the way he does all the time. He isn’t the issue.

I think my turn in the next post to try to describe where I’m at will be better and produce more comments that will help me tweak things. Your input has helped convince me that’s the way for me to do a better job of moving the discussion along.

The biblical evidence clearly teaches that the human authors did use personal research (Luke 1) and invariably their own personalities and their cultural settings also influenced what they wrote (cf. Acts 17 and Paul’s use of their own Greek poets). The fact that God used men as his vehicles for inscripturation does not entail that their own thoughts were not a part of the information that was included into the Sciptures, indeed we know that to be a fact (e.g., the every personal portions from his salutations in Paul’s epistles). But this does not detract from the fact that the Bible is “God’s Word.” When we preach, we do not call the Bible the “Word of God AND the Word of man.” We call it the “Word of God” because we affirm that God is the primary Author and that the human authors are “secondary authors” (to quote the Westminster Addendum). We know that Scripture is “theopneustos” because 2 Timothy 3:16 asserts it. Notice Paul did not say “kai anthropopneustos.” Why? After all, wasn’t Paul as an apostle aware that the Spirit was using him to write Scripture? Did he not have the right to say, I, as the human author, have just as much claim to authorship on this text than God Himself? No, he did not claim that because Paul was functioning as the “secondary author.” He knew that his own words and even apostleship were genuine (despite his detractors who denied his apostolicity) ONLY because he had God’s calling upon his life (remember the Damascus road conversion) and he ultimately had God’s approval as an apostle in the church. Now, you didn’t answer my question: How do you reconcile the phrase “as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” in 2 Peter 1:20-21? What does that mean? They were inspired by the Spirit to speak and write what was intended by God and were kept from error in the process. Now where does the human come in? I believe that God used human authors to accommodate his Words to us (cf. Calvin). For example, the Bible uses phenomenological language to describe “scientific” facts or events. We moderns know that the sun does not literally “rise” or “fall,” but it would not be deceptive to write “sundown” or “sunrise.” From the vantage point of the human author, the sun does in fact “rise” and “fall.” I would encourage you to read Grudem’s Systematic Theology on this. He also deals with many of your questions, pp. 90-103 on “The Inerrancy of Scripture.” Grudem is a graduate and supporter of the current faculty at WTS and his views on Scipture and inerrancy are generally in keeping with the position of the Seminary.

Also, you make this assertion that we are relying on Christian dogma that originated in the 17th century and that Christian interpreters did not know Northwest Semitic and did not have access to the ANE texts in order for them to be translated. But this is also to misrepresent the case! Peter Enns is, by no means, the first to suggest that the similarities between the Old Testament and the ANE myths present a problem; he is not the first to use the “incarnational analogy” within the Westminster tradition (that began with his teacher, Raymond Dillard, cf. his 2 Chonicles commentary in the WBC series), he is also heavily influenced by Dillard in his comments on the differences between Samuel-Kings and the Chronicler’s history, etc. Old Testament professors from Old Princeton-Westminster, such as Joseph A. Alexander, William Henry Green, Robert Dick Wilson, Oswald T. Allis, Edward J. Young, and Meredith G. Klineall all studied Hebrew and at least half of these men knew Northwest Semitic languages. Alexander, Wilson, Allis, and Young all studied under the German historical-critical heavyweights. By the time Young and Kline were teaching the majority of the ANE myths had been unearthed and translated. There has been a lot of work done by these scholars with regard to the apologetic nature on the Old Testament text… you just need to have the patience to wade through their materials. This is also where Enns is also surprisingly disingenuous. He has summarily dismissed the work of his predecessors and yet has claimed to be the logical progression of these still-valuable Old Testament scholars.

MSH, you also did not comment on the following regarding Enns’ one-sided treatment of the ANE comparative evidence:

“But the way that Enns is painting the correspondences with a broad brush is not a fair treatment of the correspondences between the texts. I have read and studied as you have the ANE texts (such as the Baal cycle, Enuma Elish, etc.) but there are more differences than similarities. For example, the gods of the ANE are human-like meaning they get angry because they can’t sleep because of the noise of the younger gods, there is a case where a god engages in bestiality, they have no general concern for mankind, etc. Besides all of this, the ANE texts are blatantly mythical! They do not read like the Hebrew biblical narratives in anyway, with the exception of some of the Semitic grammatical conventions. Why doesn’t Enns speak about these differences and non-similar aspects of the ANE myths? Yes, God and the human writers of the Old Testament were aware of these ANE myths (being that most of the OT parallels postdate their ANE analogs), but that does not mean that they were not the first to propagate such stories. Oral tradition could have played a major role in the propagation of these stories and certainly divine revelation also must be factored in. The thing I don’t get is if the Bible makes the claim that its creation account is the “right one” or “correct version” versus the other ones (Atrahasis, Enuma Elish) then why should we chalk it up to the Scripture’s humanity and say “Oh well, nice try.” For example, evangelical OT scholars who do this, such as Kenton Sparks, are doing the evangelical church much spiritual harm and a great disservice in suggesting that it was P (the Priestly Writer in the post-exilic period [ca. 400 BC]) who finally wrote the account of creation after having learned it from the Babylonians (this is a recent JBL article). This is clearly a viewpoint that originated within German liberalism that dates back to the Friedrich Delitzsch and his infamous lecture, “Babel und Bibel” which Bill Arnold in a JBL article has clearly shown that Delitzsch had an anti-semitic agenda.”

Thank you for the dialogue.

Nevertheless, that the oracular experience may in part arise from an ecstatic state seems self-evident, or at least warranting further investigation. What else are we supposed to think when we find John or Daniel “in” a vision with angels telling them what (and what not!) to write? What does Ezekiel mean when he reports God as saying “I have put my words in your mouth”? How did he do that? (Why, eating scrolls, of course.)

And God forbid Paul ever be “in the spirit” and find ink and papyrus lying nearby, or else he might accidentally have dabbled in the occult! (At this point one imagines the apostle sitting with a Ouija board, listening to Zeppelin backwards. No letters please! I have already repented.)

Or is it just that ecstatic production is an ogre that shall not pass the moat philosophers and divines have dug around the pure intellect of God and his writers? Is this yet another question that cannot be asked in polite company?

One more kiss before we part: Why must the entirety of scripture be produced one way and not the other? God employs a variety of authors and genres. Might he just as easily employed a variety of modes? Doesn’t the author to the Hebrews open his letter by saying just that?

Leave but a little room for the mystery, is all.

I don’t think I’m misreading the “God alone” position of the Westminster (seminary) statement. Maybe you can parse it for me. Here it is again:

>>
For the Reformed, God was the author of Scripture, and men were the ministers, used by God, to write God’s words down. Scripture’s author is God, who uses “actuaries” or “tabularies” to write His words, who are themselves instrumental secondary authors.7 Reformed thought has been careful to see God as the primary author, and men as instrumental secondary authors. And, if instruments, then what men write down is as much God’s own words as if He had written it down without human mediation (a point that will be mentioned below with respect to Kuyper’s discussion of an Incarnational analogy). So, WCF I/4 notes that Scripture’s author is God, not God and man. “The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man, or Church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof…” This notion of divine authorship is in keeping with the Scripture’s notion of itself, i.e., that it is theopneustos (“God-breathed,” 2 Tim 3:16); it is not theo- and anthropopneustos.
>>

Now here’s what I need: (1) explain to me how this statement affirms human decisions in the final product of the biblical text in such a way that (2) you also explain why those who wrote this statement needed to write it – and to be so explicit as to say it’s “theopneustos and not anthropopneustos.” To me, this is a denial that the final product is in any way from humans. (3) if it isn’t in part anthropopneustos (what a word! – that is, if it isn’t in part human-produced), what did the human authors do? How can they write the material, colored so clearly as it is by their culture, worldview, etc. and not be responsible for it? Frankly, I think this avoidance of human authorship would go well in a dictation view, since if the authors were “taken over” (some sort of automatic writing situation), then we could excuse them from any responsibility. Lastly, how does the Westminster view solve the problems we’ve blogged about thus far?

jjyeo: How would you improve upon the definition of “inerrancy” since you have found WCF and the Chicago Statement’s wanting. You claim that you believe in “inerrancy,” but then you point to certain aspects of the NT and OT individually as well as to the NT’s use of the OT to illustrate how the human authors were involved in the process of inscripturation. Why would this be in conflict with the Confession and the Chicago Statement?

MSH: I don’t quite know yet – that is the purpose of this blog thread. I just know what I wouldn’t say in certain respects. I want better wording than I’ve been offered in these statements so I know what to say. If you’ve read the entries through, you’ll know I don’t think the Chicago Statement is worthless or any such thing – it’s just not sufficient in some regards, and deficient in a few, in my judgment. I think we can and need to do better, so I’ve solicited help via the blog.

jjyeo: That’s fine, but your initially objections to the Westminster “addendum” and the Chicago Statement did not seem to be sympathetic disagreements. You seem to be quite convinced that Peter Enns is correct, when there are many evangelical scholars such as G.K. Beale, D.A. Carson, Paul Helm, John Currid, John Frame, Richard Pratt, John Walton, et al. who have been outspoken with respect to his views on the nature of Scripture. Of course, you are free to disagree with them, but I think we are talking past one another unless we have at least read some of those who have reviewed Enns’ work.

jjyeo: “You claim that you believe in “inerrancy,” but then you point to certain aspects of the NT and OT individually as well as to the NT’s use of the OT to illustrate how the human authors were involved in the process of inscripturation.”

MSH: First, it isn’t a “claim” – it’s real. Second, why it raise an eyebrow on your part (such that you used the word “claim” to question my honesty perhaps) that I would note the human side of inspiration when Scripture does so with abundant clarity?

jjyeo: My sincere apologies, I questioned your claim simply because of the way you articulated your doubts about the addendum and the Chicago Statement as it related to the doctrine of inerrancy. If I mistook your statements, I am happy to be corrected.

“Why would this be in conflict with the Confession and the Chicago Statement?”

MSH: It wouldn’t, depending on what part you’re reading and how you take the wording. The human element is more denied by the Westminster “addendum” than the Chicago Statement.

jjyeo: I don’t know if you’re familiar with the language of the Westminster Confession of Faith (which you may be), but WCF 1.4 asserts, “The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man, or Church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it as the Word of God.” The addendum was only trying to clarify what was contained within the WCF with respect to the authorship of Scripture. After all, if God inspired Moses to write the books of the Pentateuch, would it not be truly “God’s Words” that He inspired to be inscripturated? We would also, of course, say without hesitation that the Pentateuch is of Mosaic authorship, but, as 2 Peter 1:20-21, no prophecy originated in the will of man, but from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

“As I’m sure you’re aware, the orthodox doctrine of ‘inspiration’ (from an evangelical Reformed perspective) rejects the ‘dictation theory’ generally, i.e., God alone is the exclusive Author.

MSH: There’s a disconnect here. Yes, I know the orthodox view (thankfully) denies the dictation theory. But the way you word this suggests that, once the dictation theory is dispensed with, we are left with “God alone” authorship. We aren’t. God can still supervise a human process without dictation. I’m guessing you’d agree with that, but I wasn’t sure by your wording.

jjyeo: I wasn’t saying that once we dispense with the dictation theory we are left with God alone authorship. I was simply clarifying what the theory of dictation was, i.e., God alone as exclusive Author. In other words, if you believe in a dictation theory, it is 100% God and 0% human.

jjyeo: “Evangelicals have always affirmed that God inspired human authors to write and were kept them from error as he carried them by the Holy Spirit. “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:20-21).”

MSH: Yep – so it makes me wonder why the Westminster crowd would say what they said. If humans are involved, the process is human (!), but that doesn’t mean it’s ONLY human. The reverse is also true. IF God is involved in the process, it’s a divine process, but that doesn’t mean human agency isn’t involved. The “addendum” seems to deny any genuine human input or decisions resulted from this process (the “all of God” idea). I think that’s a bogus position and antithetical to Scripture, much less the reality of the text as we have it (and as God preserved it).

jjyeo: No, I know for a fact that they would agree with you and Enns that the process of inspiration involved human agency. They are not guilty of what Enns calls the Docetic heresy as applied to Scripture. Westminster Seminary would hold, as did B.B. Warfield, that God so superintended the process of inspiration that mistakes and deceptive manipulations were kept from inscripturation.

jjyeo: “Now unless you think of me as an ignorant ‘fundamentalist’ I am, as you are, trained within the Old Testament and historical criticism (Westminster Seminary, M.A. Biblical Studies; Fuller Seminary, Th.M. Old Testament; University of St. Michael’s College (Univ. of Toronto), Ph.D. Old Testament). I do not see a conflict here whatsoever between the doctrine of inerrancy and the affirmation of the human side of scriptural authorship.

MSH: Good – then we agree. But does Westminster? No. And that is part of my concern. I should add for those reading the comments that I could care less what degrees any contributor to the blog has. Clear thinking trumps degrees.

jjyeo: I am glad to hear you say that, but the only reason I included my degrees is because of the present discussion with Enns who is untouchable unless you have studied Northwest Semitic languages and the religions of the ANE. Respected scholars such as D.A. Carson and G.K. Beale are disregarded because their specializations are non-Old Testament or ANE comparative studies. You also made a similar insinuation in an earlier blog: “It’s really been appalling to see how the side opposite Enns seems to be painfully unaware of the reality of the issues the book raises and has retreated to 17th century articulations of inerrancy as authoritative, or to more recent articulations produced by scholars who seem under-informed (i.e., they aren’t in the field of OT, the ANE, and Semitics) as to what Enns is trying to address. Like me, Peter’s field is OT and ancient Near East (his PhD is from Harvard). He is quite aware of the ‘cost’ of contextualizing the OT in its ANE environment — something everyone says they want to do and needs to be done, but few seem to take as seriously as Peter did. I guess now we know why.”

jjyeo: “As in the prologue to Luke’s gospel, God did clearly use the research and writing conventions of the human author’s cultural milieu, but this does not detract an iota from the Bible being primarily ‘God’s Word.’”

MSH: Agreed – but you use the word “primarily”. Naughty! You have to use “only” to jive with the decision of Westminster against Enns. They apparently want to deny genuine human decisions and human context behind the text. Read the quote again in my clarification post about the Westminster addendum — and it isn’t the only place in that document that this position is put forth.

jjyeo: MSH, I think you need to reread the Westminster faculty who oppose Enns on this. You are completely misreading and, therefore, misrepresenting them as a “straw man” on your blog. They do not “want to deny genuine human decisions and human context behind the text.” They are interested, however, in maintaining the primacy of God’s authorship just as 2 Peter 1:20-21. You claim that you are getting your cues from Scripture, but how do you reconcile this passage in 2 Peter?

jjyeo: “In other words, if we affirm Enns, then we have to admit that Scripture is ‘messy’ and that there are theological conflicts and contradictions that are part and parcel of the Word of God.”

MSH: So the messiness goes away if you vote against Enns? No, it doesn’t go away. If you don’t like the way Enns solves the problems (and I wouldn’t be with him all the time in the way he words or handles things), then go at it yourself (which is what I’m trying to do – so help us here!). It does no good to do away with Enns and then think the issues he raises disappear or are resolve. They just aren’t. We have the providentially preserved, inspired text before us, produced by a process whereby God used imperfect humans to write. I believe that the result of it should be called inspired and inerrant, but current explanations of these terms don’t help resolve the “messiness” – but that doesn’t mean we are left with errancy. It means (to me) we need to do better. People in the 17th century weren’t faced with a lot of the issues Enns brings up (things like comparative cognate parallels – some of them very close and deep to the biblical material, literary and genre issues, mytho-poetic parallels (again, often explicit). Why? Because the comparative material hadn’t been discovered yet, or hadn’t been translated yet. This task is left to US. And we had better be honest about it for the next generation.

jjyeo: Yes, this is where Enns’ book does have some value with respect to the evangelical church. As an Old Testament professor, I am a student of the Old Testament’s relationship with the ANE. But the way that Enns is painting the correspondences with a broad brush is not a fair treatment of the correspondences between the texts. I have read and studied as you have the ANE texts (such as the Baal cycle, Enuma Elish, etc.) but there are more differences than similarities. For example, the gods of the ANE are human-like meaning they get angry because they can’t sleep because of the noise of the younger gods, there is a case where a god engages in bestiality, they have no general concern for mankind, etc. Besides all of this, the ANE texts are blatantly mythical! They do not read like the Hebrew biblical narratives in anyway, with the exception of some of the Semitic grammatical conventions. Why doesn’t Enns speak about these differences and non-similar aspects of the ANE myths? Yes, God and the human writers of the Old Testament were aware of these ANE myths (being that most of the OT parallels postdate their ANE analogs), but that does not mean that they were not the first to propagate such stories. Oral tradition could have played a major role in the propagation of these stories and certainly divine revelation also must be factored in. The thing I don’t get is if the Bible makes the claim that its creation account is the “right one” or “correct version” versus the other ones (Atrahasis, Enuma Elish) then why should we chalk it up to the Scripture’s humanity and say “Oh well, nice try.” For example, evangelical OT scholars who do this, such as Kenton Sparks, are doing the evangelical church much spiritual harm and a great disservice in suggesting that it was P (the Priestly Writer in the post-exilic period [ca. 400 BC]) who finally wrote the account of creation after having learned it from the Babylonians (this is a recent JBL article). This is clearly a viewpoint that originated within German liberalism that dates back to the Friedrich Delitzsch and his infamous lecture, “Babel und Bibel” which Bill Arnold in a JBL article has clearly shown that Delitzsch had an anti-semitic agenda.

jjyeo: “Also, with respect to his incarnational analogy, the human side of Christ was still ’sinless.’ But he has argued that the messiness of Scripture must be accounted for because of its humanness… this is directly at odds with the Chalcedonian Creed that Christ is 100% God and 100% man.”

MSH: And what kept Christ the man sinless? Yes, the fact that he was deity. What is there to keep the human authors from doing something boneheaded? The fact that God is in the process. While Jesus never sinned, did he never make a mistake? When Jesus was learning to be a carpenter, did he get everything down in the first lesson (or perhaps instruct Joseph)? When he was learning to handle a spoon, did he master it perfectly the first time? When he was learning to go pee-pee, did he never miss? Come on. My point is NOT that we can view mistakes by the biblical writers as okay because they aren’t sins. Rather, my point is that the incarnational analogy doesn’t break down because of the reason you gave. Granted, this doesn’t by itself to help us articulate how to address some of the problems I’ve blogged about already (like the pre-scientific worldview), but it ought to tell us we can make SOME use of an incarnational analogy. So you don’t like the incarnational model. Big deal. Let’s scrap it. Now what? The problems are still here. Peter Enns is to be commended – not condemned or slighted – for trying, for raising the issues. If we can do better, let’s do it. I don’t think Enns would mind.

jjyeo: I think your points here sound as if you believe in a limited inerrancy position. You wrote, “What is there to keep the human authors from doing something boneheaded? The fact that God is in the process. While Jesus never sinned, did he never make a mistake? When Jesus was learning to be a carpenter, did he get everything down in the first lesson (or perhaps instruct Joseph)? When he was learning to handle a spoon, did he master it perfectly the first time? When he was learning to go pee-pee, did he never miss? Come on. My point is NOT that we can view mistakes by the biblical writers as okay because they aren’t sins. Rather, my point is that the incarnational analogy doesn’t break down because of the reason you gave.” So you admit that the biblical writers made mistakes? How do you square this with the current evangelical doctrine of inerrancy? I ask because the word means “without error.”

Thanks for taking time to read this long post.

You asked: “How would you improve upon the definition of “inerrancy” since you have found WCF and the Chicago Statement’s wanting.”

MSH: I don’t quite know yet – that is the purpose of this blog thread. I just know what I wouldn’t say in certain respects. I want better wording than I’ve been offered in these statements so I know what to say. If you’ve read the entries through, you’ll know I don’t think the Chicago Statement is worthless or any such thing – it’s just not sufficient in some regards, and deficient in a few, in my judgment. I think we can and need to do better, so I’ve solicited help via the blog.

“You claim that you believe in “inerrancy,” but then you point to certain aspects of the NT and OT individually as well as to the NT’s use of the OT to illustrate how the human authors were involved in the process of inscripturation.”

MSH: First, it isn’t a “claim” – it’s real. Second, why it raise an eyebrow on your part (such that you used the word “claim” to question my honesty perhaps) that I would note the human side of inspiration when Scripture does so with abundant clarity?

“Why would this be in conflict with the Confession and the Chicago Statement?”

MSH: It wouldn’t, depending on what part you’re reading and how you take the wording. The human element is more denied by the Westminster “addendum” than the Chicago Statement.

“As I’m sure you’re aware, the orthodox doctrine of ‘inspiration’ (from an evangelical Reformed perspective) rejects the ‘dictation theory’ generally, i.e., God alone is the exclusive Author.

MSH: There’s a disconnect here. Yes, I know the orthodox view (thankfully) denies the dictation theory. But the way you word this suggests that, once the dictation theory is dispensed with, we are left with “God alone” authorship. We aren’t. God can still supervise a human process without dictation. I’m guessing you’d agree with that, but I wasn’t sure by your wording.

“Evangelicals have always affirmed that God inspired human authors to write and were kept them from error as he carried them by the Holy Spirit. “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:20-21).”

MSH: Yep – so it makes me wonder why the Westminster crowd would say what they said. If humans are involved, the process is human (!), but that doesn’t mean it’s ONLY human. The reverse is also true. IF God is involved in the process, it’s a divine process, but that doesn’t mean human agency isn’t involved. The “addendum” seems to deny any genuine human input or decisions resulted from this process (the “all of God” idea). I think that’s a bogus position and antithetical to Scripture, much less the reality of the text as we have it (and as God preserved it).

“Now unless you think of me as an ignorant ‘fundamentalist’ I am, as you are, trained within the Old Testament and historical criticism (Westminster Seminary, M.A. Biblical Studies; Fuller Seminary, Th.M. Old Testament; University of St. Michael’s College (Univ. of Toronto), Ph.D. Old Testament). I do not see a conflict here whatsoever between the doctrine of inerrancy and the affirmation of the human side of scriptural authorship.

MSH: Good – then we agree. But does Westminster? No. And that is part of my concern. I should add for those reading the comments that I could care less what degrees any contributor to the blog has. Clear thinking trumps degrees.

“As in the prologue to Luke’s gospel, God did clearly use the research and writing conventions of the human author’s cultural milieu, but this does not detract an iota from the Bible being primarily ‘God’s Word.’”

MSH: Agreed – but you use the word “primarily”. Naughty! You have to use “only” to jive with the decision of Westminster against Enns. They apparently want to deny genuine human decisions and human context behind the text. Read the quote again in my clarification post about the Westminster addendum — and it isn’t the only place in that document that this position is put forth.

“In other words, if we affirm Enns, then we have to admit that Scripture is ‘messy’ and that there are theological conflicts and contradictions that are part and parcel of the Word of God.”

MSH: So the messiness goes away if you vote against Enns? No, it doesn’t go away. If you don’t like the way Enns solves the problems (and I wouldn’t be with him all the time in the way he words or handles things), then go at it yourself (which is what I’m trying to do – so help us here!). It does no good to do away with Enns and then think the issues he raises disappear or are resolve. They just aren’t. We have the providentially preserved, inspired text before us, produced by a process whereby God used imperfect humans to write. I believe that the result of it should be called inspired and inerrant, but current explanations of these terms don’t help resolve the “messiness” – but that doesn’t mean we are left with errancy. It means (to me) we need to do better. People in the 17th century weren’t faced with a lot of the issues Enns brings up (things like comparative cognate parallels – some of them very close and deep to the biblical material, literary and genre issues, mytho-poetic parallels (again, often explicit). Why? Because the comparative material hadn’t been discovered yet, or hadn’t been translated yet. This task is left to US. And we had better be honest about it for the next generation.

“Also, with respect to his incarnational analogy, the human side of Christ was still ‘sinless.’ But he has argued that the messiness of Scripture must be accounted for because of its humanness… this is directly at odds with the Chalcedonian Creed that Christ is 100% God and 100% man.”

MSH: And what kept Christ the man sinless? Yes, the fact that he was deity. What is there to keep the human authors from doing something boneheaded? The fact that God is in the process. While Jesus never sinned, did he never make a mistake? When Jesus was learning to be a carpenter, did he get everything down in the first lesson (or perhaps instruct Joseph)? When he was learning to handle a spoon, did he master it perfectly the first time? When he was learning to go pee-pee, did he never miss? Come on. My point is NOT that we can view mistakes by the biblical writers as okay because they aren’t sins. Rather, my point is that the incarnational analogy doesn’t break down because of the reason you gave. Granted, this doesn’t by itself to help us articulate how to address some of the problems I’ve blogged about already (like the pre-scientific worldview), but it ought to tell us we can make SOME use of an incarnational analogy. So you don’t like the incarnational model. Big deal. Let’s scrap it. Now what? The problems are still here. Peter Enns is to be commended – not condemned or slighted – for trying, for raising the issues. If we can do better, let’s do it. I don’t think Enns would mind.