Peter Enns: Reading the Bible Critically as a Spiritual Journey

Last updated on: January 18, 2015 at 10:11 pm by David Bokovoy

Peter Enns: Reading the Bible Critically as a Spiritual Journey 2015-01-18T22:11:27-06:00 David Bokovoy

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I’m going to make a confession. No offense to Peter Enns, but his book, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It is not the type of book I would typically read. It’s not that I don’t appreciate this type of book. I do (I’ve even been working on a somewhat similar project for an LDS audience). It’s just that I do a lot of teaching combined with a lot of commuting. This means that my reading time is sacred and when I get it, instead of a religious read, I want an academic book that doesn’t explore questions of faith but simply focuses on the Bible from a historical-critical perspective.

But I really enjoyed listening to Dr. Enns’s podcast with Blair Hodges while I was driving in between some classes (part of the Maxwell Institute’s impressive series that includes an interview with Dr. Marc Brettler). In fact, I enjoyed it so much, I went ahead and picked up a Kindle version of Dr. Enns’ book. And I’m soooo glad that I did! I simply cannot recommend this book highly enough for religious readers of the Bible interested in adopting a critical perspective as part of their spiritual reading.

On a personal note, in many ways, Dr. Enn’s journey parallels my own. In fact, I’m going to admit that I was sitting in Church the other day reading his book (probably something I shouldn’t do, but…), when with a huge grin on my face, I started highlighting some of Dr. Enn’s words and excitedly handed the Ipad over to my wife to read. She agreed. It was almost perfectly parallel to things that I’ve said and experienced (not that that makes it a good book, but it’s always nice to find someone you relate to in terms of thoughts and life experiences). I just wanted to say how personally grateful I feel to Dr. Enns for having written this beautiful book that shares the story of his adoption of a critical perspective.

I thought I would provide readers with just one example of what awaits them in this wonderful read. Toward the beginning of the book, Dr. Enns discusses all of the slaughtering God either does himself or commissions in the Bible. And there’s a lot of it. The Biblical God is a god of violence. After discussing this trend, Dr. Enns writes:

“Many readers of the Bible feel the strong impulse to get God off the hook for acting this way, which means finding a good way to end the following sentence: ‘It’s a perfectly fine and right thing for God to order the extermination of Canaanites and take their land because. . . ‘

“The need to end that sentence well comes from an owner’s manual mentality about the Bible: What the Bible tells use about God simply has to be the way God is. God said it; I must believe it; and so it must be true. That mentality has produced all sorts of stressful solutions, not to mention a few atrocities…

“Is this really the kind of God we believe in, the God who created the world and loves it? Is this the God that greets us when we rise in the morning and think of when the day closes? Is this the kind of God we tell others about, or do we opt for the nicer version, since we know the other version won’t cut it? Westboro Baptist Church might get giddy over a God like this, but they’re wacky. I wouldn’t trust them to save a drowning kitten.”

Well, that’s fun. But don’t worry. Despite his critical approach, Dr. Enns doesn’t just abandon religious readers with a worthless Bible devoid of spiritual merit. Instead, he presents reading the Bible critically as a religious journey that allows believers to find a deeper faith in God than they would by approaching the Bible as an “owner’s manual” concerning divinity.

But you’re going to have to read the book to find out how he does it. Trust me. You won’t be disappointed.

Bible

Historical Criticism

Peter Enns

The Bible Tells Me So

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