PETER ENNS AND THE DENIAL OF CERTAINTY

For many years, I had struggled with painful doubts about the Bible and even my salvation. Painful? These doubts were devastating! Fortunately, there were no local churches to assure me that certainty is “impossible.” Fortunately for me, there was no one available to flatter me that my doubts were the result of being a deep and thoughtful person. If so, I might have given up my quest for assurances.

However, today there are many churches and theologians available to teach against any expectation of certainty and confidence in the Gospel. Just recently, Peter Enns, theistic evolutionist and a former professor at Westminster Theological Seminary, came out with a new book: “The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust Not Our Correct Beliefs.”

Certainty has now become a sin, at least for some modern theologians, but is it designated as a sin in the Bible? If so, Luke was a sinner and his Gospel was sinful:

·       Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have CERTAINTY concerning the things you have been taught. (Luke 1:1-4)

In a glowing review, John Seel, “a millennial thought leader, cultural renewal change agent, speaker, author, and consultant,” writes:

·       Children of evangelical parents are at risk. Raised with the belief that the truth can be cornered, they live in a world that suggests quite the opposite. As cultural pressures increase, parents and pastors double down. The kids feel torn and are left without meaningful onramps to a more open and humane framing of faith.

Oddly, Seel also believes that “truth can be cornered” or acquired, since he has a lot to say about his own brand of truth. Seel praises Enns for his “humane framing of faith,” intended to enable the young Christian to fit into a world of growing “cultural pressures.” What about Enns’ “The Sin of Certainty?” Seel continues:

·       The tripping point for them [the children] is the dogmatic religious certainty of their parents and childhood churches. For these young people, as for most millennials today, faith is a fusion of belief and doubt, coupled with skepticism that any one person or group has it all figured out.

This is a typical strawman argument – misrepresent the opponents’ position to make it look ridiculous in order to easily blow it over. No Christian is saying that he “has it all figured out.” However, far from being a sin, Paul prayed that believers would be filled with a confident understanding of the Gospel:

·       That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may KNOW what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints. (Ephesians 1:17-18)

·       That their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. (Colossians 2:2-3)

Admittedly, Paul’s prayers were an acknowledgement that many Christians had yet to acquire the “riches of full assurance of understanding.” However, his prayers demonstrated that a robust confidence in the faith represented “treasures” and not sin. Even more, this “full assurance of understanding” is essential to living a robust Christian life:

·       And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. (Hebrews 6:11-12)

Without this “full assurance of hope,” it is difficult to conceive how we would not become “sluggish” and eventually fall to the side.

In contrast, Enns preaches a form of Biblical sluggishness. How? By downplaying the Bible’s teachings in favor of a substance-less, belief-less, amorphous trust!

·       “We have misunderstood faith as a what [doctrine] word rather than a who [God] word—as primarily beliefs about rather than as trust in.”

However, this distinction is foreign to the Bible, where we find that belief and trust are inseparable. In contrast with Enns, if we trust in God, we believe His teachings and do what He tells us to do. As Jesus taught, we cannot separate trusting God from His Word and commands:

•  “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him...If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.” (John 14:21, 23-24)

In order to follow these commands, we need some degree of certainty about what He is commanding us to do – the very thing that Enns claims to be sinful.

In fact, living the Christian life is impossible without some degree of certainly about what Scripture teaches. Exhorting, correcting, disciplining and even loving require some degree of certainty or confidence about what the Bible is teaching us to do. Without confidence in the Bible’s teachings, evangelism certainly becomes impossible.

Besides, in order to trust someone, we have to know something about him! Likewise, to trust in God, we have to know Who it is we are trusting. Consequently, trust in God is inseparable from the Gospel of God.

To trust God, we need to know what He has promised us? How am I not hate Him unless I am convinced that He forgives my sins (1 John 1:9), loves me (Ephesians 3:17-20), and will never let me go (Romans 8:38-39)? How can I trust Him if I fear that He might grow tired of me?

In contrast to Enns’ uncertainty theology, Paul confidently asserted:

·       …our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher, which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I KNOW whom I have believed, and I am CONVINCED that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me. (2 Timothy 1:10-12)

We too must “know whom [we] have believed” and be “convinced that he is able to guard…[us].” To not be convinced of these things, is to live in fear and timidity and to default into acquiescence to the prevailing culture and its temptations.

We are not free to trust in God in a way that merely feels right to us. It has to be according to His Word. King Saul had decided to serve God in a way that felt right to him, but in God’s sight, this was rebellion:

• “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as idolatry and teraphim. Because thou hast rejected the word of Jehovah, he hath also rejected thee from being king.” (1 Samuel 15:23 ASV)

Consequently, if we are to honor God, we must honor His Word, His truth:

• “I will worship toward thy holy temple, And give thanks unto thy name for thy lovingkindness and for thy truth: For thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name.” (Psalms 138:2)

Instead, Enns doesn’t seem to believe that we can trust in God’s Word:

·       “Here is the temptation,” Enns explains, “we can forget that we are human and delude ourselves into thinking that we can transcend our tiny place in the human drama and see from on high, as God sees.”

Instead, God has given us His Gospel so that we can know:

·       He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this we KNOW that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may KNOW that we are in him. (1 John 2:2-5)

However, Enns disparages any “correct thinking,” even thinking based upon Scripture:

·       “Life’s challenges mock and then destroy a faith that rests on correct thinking and the preoccupation with defending it. And that is a good thing. Life’s challenges clear the clutter so we can see more clearly that faith calls for trust instead.”

For many of us, “Life’s challenges’ have actually validated the Bible and its teachings. We are not saying that we need not labor to reconcile the Bible with our experiences and to defend it. Admittedly, society contradicts our faith in many ways. This is why we are required to meditate on His Word “both day and night.” However, the Bible consistently teaches us that it is defendable and that we are required to make a defense for our hope:

·       But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, ALWAYS being prepared to make a DEFENSE to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.” (1 Peter 3:15)

Instead, Enns has renounced his responsibility to defend the Biblical faith. Meanwhile, he has written much in defense of his own faith:

·       “Maybe my purpose on earth isn’t to be the thought police first and love others after all their ideas line up as they should. Maybe my first order of business is to risk my own sense of certainty about God and love others where and how they are no matter how they do on my theology exam.”

However, sometimes love requires us to correct. We must correct our children, our dogs, and those who wish to hurt others. Love requires us to correct our neighbor who intends to join ISIS or even the neighbor who disturbs the entire neighborhood with his blaring boom-box.

Besides, love requires Biblical wisdom. We need to have some sense of moral and Biblical certainty about how to love. Not everyone requires the same thing. We would need to understand how loving Hitler would be different from loving a 15 year-old who is ready to jump off a building because her boyfriend had just jilted her.

In their dogmatic defense of uncertainty, Seel and Enns have narrowed their lives to the point that life becomes unmanageable. What has led them to take such a myopic and needlessly constraining stance?

This seems to be the stance that just about all theistic evolutionists have adopted. Why? When they embraced Darwin, they had to take a “humble” and uncertain stance in terms of biblical revelation and interpretation. Why? Ultimately, the two – Jesus and Darwin – cannot be successfully and coherently married. There always exists tension between their many discordant elements.

It is like trying to button your shirt after starting with the wrong button. Every subsequent button will be out-of-place. This is the inevitable result of the unholy marriage between Darwin and Jesus. This is why theistic evolutionists consistently tell me, “We have to be humble about our interpretation of Scripture.” If only they were so humble about Darwin!

Enns is wearing a shirt that will not properly button together. Therefore, he flees from trying to justify it. Such a shirt will ultimately prove costly.

And what about my own excruciating doubts? My pain forced me to plunge on, as King David who written:

·       It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes. The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. (Psalm 119:71-72)

HOW THEISTIC EVOLUTIONIST PETER ENNS UNDERSTANDS THE BIBLE

The Bible is both a human and a Divine set of documents. While it often reflects the vocabulary, situations, and interests of its individual authors, the Bible uniformly insists that it is also fully God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16) so that even the slightest markings are of God and, therefore, must all be fulfilled (Matthew 5:17-19).

However, many scholars, even Evangelical scholars, only interpret the Bible from a human perspective - from the perspective of the “culture context” of the author and his audience, as if God played no part in Scripture’s authorship.

Theistic evolutionist and former Professor at the Westminster Theological Seminary, Peter Enns, does this very thing to discredit the historical content of the first several chapters of Genesis:

·       Is it not likely that God would have allowed his word to come to the ancient Israelites according to the standards they understood, or are modern standards of truth and error so universal that we should expect premodern cultures to have understood them? The former position [of understanding the Bible in terms of their cultural setting] is, I feel, better suited for solving the problem. The latter is often an implicit assumption of modern thinkingers, both conservative and liberal Christians, but it is somewhat myopic and should be called into question. What the Bible is must be understood in light of the culture context in which it was given." (Enns, Peter. Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005. 41)

Enns is correct in trying to understand the Bible in terms of how the original readers would have understood it. However, Enns assumes that it is myopic to disregard the cultural context, and that, since the Bible’s creation account was based on the faulty cosmological understanding of the Ancient Near East (ANE), it is not historically accurate.

However, since the Bible is more than a collection of human documents, it must also be understood as the Word of God, which transcended the understanding of the original audience. Peter warned us of this reality:

·       Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. (1 Peter 1:10-12)

Even angels didn’t entirely get it! Peter claimed that it was revealed to the Prophets that they were not always writing for their original audience but to those who would hear the Gospel hundreds of years later. Besides, the Prophets were not writing a message that always had been adapted to the culture. Instead, God is the primary Author of Scripture. Therefore, their prophecies represented a timeless message from God Himself (2 Peter 1:19-21; Daniel 9:24; 12:9, 13).

This is damning to Enns’ assumption that God’s Word came “to the ancient Israelites according to the standards [concepts] they understood,” embedded in the unscientific ANE cosmology. Sometimes, it didn’t!

Why does he make such a mistake? Enns limits his understanding of the Bible to the assumption that it is just the word of man and can be understood solely from this limited perspective.

PETER ENNS, SCRIPTURE, AND THE AUTHORITY OF MODERN SCHOLARSHIP

What does it mean to be faithful to the text of the Bible? For Peter Enns it means understanding the Bible according to the lens of skeptical scholarship (including evolution):

• So, things like genomic studies, the fossil record, and ancient Mesopotamian creation myths help us see that the genre of Genesis 1-11 is not science or history.

Reconsidering our interpretation of the Bible is a healthy and Godly thing. However, it seems that Enns wants us to do this through an unbiblical lens and an alien authority:

• The findings of science and biblical scholarship are not the enemies of Christian faith. They are opportunities to be truly “biblical” because they are invitations to reconsider what it means to read the creation stories well—and that means turning down a different path than most Christians before us have taken.

According to Enns, what does it mean to be “truly biblical?” To see it for what it is – an errant document, which requires some tweaking. However, instead of the Bible being placed under the authority of the scholars, the Bible is to place all other claims under its own scrutiny:

• The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:4-5)

Spiritual warfare is a matter of placing all of our thinking, saying, and doing under the authority of God’s Words.

How then can Enns, who had once taught at Westminster Theological Seminary until he was discharged because of his defective view of the Scriptures, justify subjecting Scripture to the skeptics? Enns assumes that the Bible contains many errors. Well, how do we determine which historical statements are true? Through his experts! For example, they claim that Jonah was written after the exile to Babylon and its history represents a revision according to their theological “growth”:

• The prophet Nahum rejoices at the destruction of the dreaded Assyrians and their capital Nineveh in 612 BCE, but the prophet Jonah, writing generations later after the return from exile, speaks of God’s desire that the Ninevites repent and be saved.

By assigning a very late date to Jonah, Enns denies its historical accuracy. However, Jesus did not:

• He [Jesus] answered, "A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here. (Matthew 12:39-41)

 Unlike Enns, Jesus affirmed the historical accuracy of Jonah. Neither did the first commentary to which I turned. It dated Jonah more in keeping with Scripture’s many assertions that is entirely God breathed (2 Tim. 3:16-17):

• Since 2 Kings 14:25 relates Jonah to the reign of Jeroboam II, the events in the Book of Jonah took place some time in Jeroboam's reign (793-753 b.c.). Jonah's prophecy about Israel's boundaries being extended may indicate that he made that prophecy early in Jeroboam's reign. This makes Jonah a contemporary of both Hosea and Amos (cf. Hosea 1:1; Amos 1:1). Jonah's reference to Nineveh in the past tense (Jonah 3:3) has led some to suggest that Jonah lived later, after the city's destruction in 612 b.c. However, the tense of the Hebrew verb can just as well point to the city's existence in Jonah's day. (The Bible Knowledge Commentary)

Should we interpret the Bible in accordance with Enns’ alleged errors or in accordance with the consistent claims of Scripture that it is entirely God-given (2 Peter 1:19-21)? Enns also claims that there are inaccuracies in the historical books:

• In fact, Israel’s entire history is given a fresh coat of paint in the books of 1 and 2 Chronicles, which differs remarkably, and often flatly contradicts, the earlier history of Israel in the books of Samuel and Kings.

However, in the talk that he gave at Michigan State, based on his new book, How the Bible Forces Us to Be Unbiblical, he cites no alleged contradictions. However, he claims that Israel’s later reworking of their history gives us license to also rework the Bible in light of recent scholarship. After all, even Jesus reshaped Scripture with “fresh twists”:

• I could go on and talk about how the theology of the New Testament positively depends on fresh twists and turns to Israel’s story, such as a crucified messiah and rendering null and void the “eternal covenant” of circumcision as well as the presumably timeless dietary restrictions given by God to Moses on Mt. Sinai. What happened? Jesus forced a new path for Israel’s story that went well beyond what the Bible “says.”

Well, if Jesus went beyond the Bible, so can we! Indeed, there are several instances where certain features of the Old Covenant are called “eternal.” (Interestingly, the Mosaic Covenant is never called “eternal,” while all of the other covenants are called “eternal.”)

Some have argued that “eternal” has several meanings as does almost any word. In this case, “eternal” might mean “to endure throughout the time of the Old Covenant. Perhaps instead, these features are eternal in terms of their spiritual fulfillment. For example, circumcision might be eternal in the form the circumcision of the heart.

In any event, the consistent promise of the coming of the New meant a termination of the Old Covenant:

• "The time is coming," declares the LORD, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them," declares the LORD. "This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time," declares the LORD. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the LORD. "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." (Jeremiah 31:31-34; Heb. 8:13)

Jesus wasn’t inventing new ideas; He was drawing His theology from the Old – from what was prophesied to come! In fact, He only had the highest regard of the Scriptures, explicitly claiming that they couldn’t simply by bypassed:

• "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” (Matthew 5:17-18)
  

Jesus did not set Himself above Scripture as its judge to decide which verses were truly inspired, as does Enns. Instead, He received it all as God’s Word. If Jesus had regarded the Word as errant in some respect, He would never have said “until everything is accomplished.” Instead, He might have said, “Until every part that is WITHOUT ERROR is accomplished.” Rather, He continually insisted that everything had to be fulfilled.

When tempted by the Devil, He relied exclusively on Scripture:

• Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" (Matthew 4:4)

Enns claims that because Jesus went beyond Scripture, we can also. However, there is no evidence that Jesus had gone beyond Scripture. Instead, He reprimanded those who failed to pay sufficient attention to Scripture:

• He said to them [on the Emmaus Road], "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?" And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself… He said to them, "This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms." Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. (Luke 24: 25-27, 44-45)

Notice how Jesus opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, rather than His own words. Instead, Enns would open our minds to go beyond Scripture into the arms of the skeptic.

However, whenever Jesus quoted from the Scriptures, it was always affirming what Scripture had said. Never once did He disparage Scripture. Instead, He castigated those who didn’t know the Scriptures:

• Jesus replied, "You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. (Matthew 22:29)

They didn’t know Scripture because they didn’t esteem it, despite their protestations to the contrary:

• "But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?" (John 5:45-47)

In contrast, Enns would have us subject Scripture to the authority of the skeptics. Consistent with his approach, he believes in evolution. Consequently, he is forced to deny the historicity of the early chapters of Genesis in order to accommodate to evolution. However, Jesus affirmed their historicity:

• He [Jesus] answered [the Pharisees regarding divorce], “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female [quoting Gen. 1:26-27], and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’ [Gen. 2:24]! So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has [historically] joined together, let not man separate.” (Matthew 19:4-6)

Had not God historically and actually joined together the man and the woman, Jesus’ argument against divorce would have fallen apart. To reject Jesus’ view of Scripture as entirely God-given is to reject Jesus’ teachings, and this is precisely what Enns does:

• Simply put, seeing the need to move beyond biblical categories is biblical—and as such poses a wonderful model, even divine permission—shall I say “mandate”—to move beyond the Bible when the need arises and reason dictates.

There is no “divine permission” to go beyond Scripture. Paul explicitly stated to not “go beyond what is written (1 Cor. 4:6). Nevertheless, Enns claims that he has a higher view of Scripture than the rest of us, because he claims that he takes Scripture for what it is – an errant document, which requires modern scholarship and “reason” to separate its wheat from the chaff. Instead, to have a biblical view of Scripture is to adopt Jesus’ view of Scripture – the very view we find throughout the NT.