A muddled mess...

Classic quote...

When I click the link to the story, I get a "bad url" message.

The Enquirer article was pretty factual, though it didn't quite get everything right. But the outcome is certainly unusual: a seminary reverting to its roots? Who would have thunk it?

a) Enns firing comes at the end of 4 year investigation sparked by his pre-publication internal review of his 2005 I & I book. Only when the outcome was pretty well fixed (since he would not retract any of the statements made in his book), did the faculty vote last December.

b) Of the 12 faculty that voted for Enns, 3 live and work in Dallas, 2 are affiliated with the "Counselling Center" and are therefore not teaching faculty at WTS, and 1 had already been terminated. So the faculty vote was actually in line with the trustee vote.

c) Sam Logan, the former president of WTS, wasn't removed for liberal bias, though it was that legacy which has caused the deep divisions in the faculty, but he was removed for financial irregularities that were systemic and prolonged. Unfortunately, it will be a long while before WTS returns to its pre-Logan status, and l'affaire Enns is neither the first nor the last unwinding of its theologically precarious position. It may have been the worst though.

I am apparently the only one who emailed Mr. O'Reilly about his article. He wanted to know more detail. He's on vacation for the next week. I plan to send him the following response. If anyone wants to co-sign it, let me know. Or send him a kindly response of your own.

---------------------------------------------

Mr. O'Reilly,

I appreciate the courtesy of a personal reply! I actually didn't expect one. Not that you would be rude in ignoring me; you probably get tons of email.

The denomination of which I am an officer (the Presbyterian Church in America, or PCA) gets many of its pastors from Westminster Theological Seminary (WTS), and thus our officers watch what goes on there with no small degree of interest. So I'm also surprised that mine is the first correspondence you've received about your article. I appreciate also your desire to accurately portray the issues at WTS, and to wonder with what authority I speak. I do not speak for the PCA, and certainly not for WTS. I am a ruling elder (an educated layman, roughly equivalent to a deacon’s or trustee’s board member in other denominations) in my local PCA church.

It must have been frustrating to try to write an article about a controversy when the primary figures in the controversy all refuse to speak to you! In the conservative Reformed community, of which WTS is a part, there's been no shortage of discussion about Enns and his book this year. If you’re looking for an authority to read and/or quote, the briefest helpful analysis is by Dr John Frame, professor at WTS' sister campus in California:

http://www.frame-poythress.org/frame_articles/2008Enns.htm

As the religion reporter for your paper, you obviously must be at least somewhat familiar with Christian doctrine, probably a lot more than just “somewhat.” But I don't know your theological experience with the distinctives of my tradition, so if my explanation below seems over-obvious, just bear with me. I don't intend condescension.

Christians in the conservative Presbyterian tradition (including WTS and my own denomination, the PCA) hold that Jesus was fully God and fully man, yet without sin. We don't fully understand how that can be; it's an article of faith. In a somewhat similar manner, we hold that the Bible is a divine/human product, yet without error. As to the human aspect of the Bible’s human authorship, the distinctive writing styles and thematic interests of the various human authors are obvious as one reads the Bible, especially to those who can read in the original languages (a brotherhood which does not include me). Thus Enns titled his book “Inspiration and Incarnation” in an attempt to draw parallels between our Presbyterian doctrines of the divine/human production of the Bible, and the divine/human nature of the Incarnate Christ.

I can see how a cursory glance at the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) might have left you with the impression that WTS believes that the human authors of Scripture were “utterly passive” scribes of God’s dictation. WCF 1.4 specifically identifies God as the “author” of Scripture, and there’s no comparably explicit statement about the role of the human authors. For Presbyterians, strong statements about the divine authorship of Scripture are in harmony, not contrast, to acknowledgement of the human authorship of Scripture. Thus you’ll note that Frame takes Enns to task not for believing that humans were non-passive in the writing of the Bible, but rather for what Enns believes is *entailed* by this joint human/divine authorship. Frame responds to Enns’ three central thoughts:

1) The Bible is not unique; similar thoughts can be found in other ancient writings, sometimes in the same or nearly the same wording.

2) The emphasis of the Bible differs between its constituent books, sometimes to the point of apparent contradiction.

3) The New Testament writers quote and then apply the Old Testament in ways that, for some readers, seem to do violence to the original context.

So the debate is not over whether the Bible shows the fingerprints of its various human authors, as well as the stamp of God. Rather, the debate is over what it means for such to be the case.

I don’t know how much time you’d like to devote to reading about this topic, but here are two other scholars discussing Enns. Richard Gaffin is (or was; I think he recently retired) a colleague of Enns at WTS. His discussion of the theological, personal, and institutional issues of this case can be found here:

http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/a-word-from-dr-richard-b-ga...

Gaffin’s comments are quite lengthy and refer extensively to academic esoterica, but as with Frame’s comments, the complaint is never made that Enns believes the Bible to be the product of human and divine authorship. Again, this is because that point is not disputed; only its consequents are. Indeed, Gaffin repeatedly appeals to the intentions and experiences of the human authors as explaining why they wrote the things they wrote. He says at one point,

“Much is made by Dr. Enns of the similarities between the hermeneutics of the Second Temple period generally and the NT. But, whatever similarities there are and even whether or not we knew a thing about Second Temple hermeneutics, we know from the NT itself, because it God’s written word, that the methods the NT writers use in interpreting the OT, as distinct (not divorced) from their purpose, are appropriate for disclosing the meaning of a given OT text. These are methods appropriate to ***the OT text at the point of its origin, human as well as divine, and in both its divine and human intention, a divine-human sense that is unified*** (“not manifold but one,” Westminster Confession, 1:9). What I find Dr. Enns not only lacking an awareness of but also calling into question is the organic unity, that is, the unified coherence and didactic harmony, there is between the OT and NT documents, with God as the primary author of each and considered in terms of the human as well as divine intention of each.”

More accessible, if no less lengthy, is the following by Dr. Don Carson, Research Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. While Carson is not associated with either WTS campus, his writing on Enns’ book has been regularly cited in this discussion, not least by Frame’s essay above. Carson’s URL has moved, however, from the link Frame provides in his footnotes. Here’s the current URL, which reviews Enns’ book as the middle third of the following super- essay:

http://www.reformation21.org/shelf-life/three-books-on-the-bible-a-criti...

Thanks again for responding to my concern. I hope your vacation left you well. I appreciate your desire to rightly convey the sense of the recent debate at WTS.

Dr. Berman,

A letter with needful points! In the interest of tweaking for accuracy, since the good journalist needs the facts:

Dr. Frame is now at RTS-Orlando.

"Westminster Seminary California," as it is now called, is no longer a "WTS campus," or technically a sister school to Philadelphia. I suppose you could call it an offshoot.