Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Inspiration and Incarnation

I am putting together a theology curriculum for my new job. I found a review by Susan Wise Bauer on Peter Enn's book Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. I have not read the book, but Wise Bauer's review of it causes me to believe that it would be a helpful resource for biblical study. Here's an excerpt from her piece on Enns' book:

[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. 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. "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.

To insist on an "a-historical, all-divine message in any part of the Bible" is--as Wise Bauer says of Enns book--to fall prey to the Docetist impulse (a brand of Gnosticism particularly influential in the early church) and fail to see the fundamental nature of the Incarnation not only to the Christian faith but also to all of reality and knowing.

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