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glowbird's review
hopeful
informative
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
This was very pleasant and Enns raised some interesting points. But overall this was a bit lightweight.
tamara_joy's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Minor: Car accident, Death, Racism, Religious bigotry, and Medical content
mave5's review
5.0
Een erg interessant boek die laat zien hoe smal onze blik vaak is van God, en dat hij/zij veel groter en complexer is dan we ons kunnen voorstellen.
pattydsf's review against another edition
3.0
“The big lesson I learned from wrestling with my own curveballs is how deeply my faith in God had been cemented in fear—which is to say, how I viewed God as very much antagonistic toward me. And so any thought on my part of listening to my experiences and interrogating my inherited faith—to inspect its boundaries let alone climb over its walls—was seen as a crisis that had to be averted or at least resolved immediately.”
Enns and I come from different parts of Christianity. Science has been part of my faith for a long time - he is still working that part out. I am not sorry I read this, but Enns was not writing to me.
I actually sent him an email because I felt he needed to be looking at more women scholars when doing his research. His assistant thanked me.
Enns and I come from different parts of Christianity. Science has been part of my faith for a long time - he is still working that part out. I am not sorry I read this, but Enns was not writing to me.
I actually sent him an email because I felt he needed to be looking at more women scholars when doing his research. His assistant thanked me.
mattlefevers's review
5.0
Curveball, as Enns notes in the acknowledgements, is a bit of a departure compared to his other works. His very early books are somewhat theological and abstract, and the loose trilogy of Bible Tells Me So, Sin of Certainty, and How The Bible Actually Works then honed that academic focus to a sharp point, making these scholarly insights even more engaging and readable. Similarly, his podcast with Jared Byas exists to translate the somewhat remote and arcane world of biblical criticism to 'normal' people who might be interested. I'm used to Enns living firmly in the academic world, and then tying it here and there to our daily lives.
With Curveball, he pivots headfirst into a more practical, personal direction... not, "what do Hebrew Bible scholars think about when the book of Daniel was written" or "how much of an impact did the Babylonian exile have on the composition of the Bible", but instead, things like: "how do we think of God, given what we've learned about our universe through modern science?", and, "what does it mean to have an exclusivist idea of Christianity that doesn't include the vast majority of humans who have ever lived?". (To be clear: I am a turbo nerd and in many ways am more comfortable in that first world. But spending some more time in the second one would probably do me good.)
Enns talks about himself and his journey much more in this book than in the entirety of his past bibliography combined. It's plain that these questions (and others) were major forks in the road for him — 'curveballs', to use the terminology of this book — and he has spent many years working out the implications of them. If you've ever found yourself torn between living here in the 21st century, where new exoplanets are discovered every week and quantum physicists are testing hypotheses most of us can't even understand, and following the God of the Bible, this book will make you feel much less alone, and maybe even encouraged and inspired.
I admit that in the past I've fallen into the trap Enns discusses at one point in this book, of trying to sort of cram or mangle current science into a Biblical framework ("maybe 'Adam' was the first homo sapiens to branch off from other hominins?", "maybe the primordial waters in Genesis 1 could be the raw elements of the solar system before they coalesced?") but I've felt the tension and... kind of desperate 'trying too hard'ness of those explanations. So I admit I find Enns's 'third way' very appealing... not trying to mash a square peg into a round hole, but allowing the discoveries of modern science to lead to a reconsideration of our idea of God. His vision of a universe evolving ever forward, towards a God who is already out in front of it, not trapped somewhere in an idealized past, fills me with a great deal of hope and refreshing honesty.
"To unleash our imaginations to speak of God," Enns writes, "is not to float adrift in unbelief, but to forge by the sweat of our brows a connection between two very different conceptions of reality." Some of the ideas he touches on as he goes — universalism, cosmology, a life after death — are things that have preoccupied me all my life. Others I admit I've spent less time puzzling over... I certainly had some conception of how many people must have lived and died before the Abrahamic religions were founded, but in his chapter on 'the other 99%', Enns puts that question into focus in a way that I'll be thinking about for a long time. This sentence absolutely stopped me in my tracks: "Does the God of Abraham look lovingly upon ancient cave drawings and temples dedicated to the only gods ancient humans could have known?"
Diehard followers of Enns' work like I am will find some previously-trodden ground here, especially in the sections on rethinking the Bible in light of changing times (a key theme of How The Bible Actually Works), and his musings on quantum physics and theology echo some of Rob Bell's books. But from start to finish Enns tackles both old and new topics with a matter-of-factness and a sober curiosity that I found extremely engaging, especially in the world of progressive Christianity. He doesn't zip off into flights of fancy or new-agey strangeness, nor does he get bogged down with pessimism and doom, but explores paradigm-shifting ideas with wit and humility and a hopefulness that left me feeling curious and optimistic, excited to keep turning these ideas over in my mind after I put the book down.
With Curveball, he pivots headfirst into a more practical, personal direction... not, "what do Hebrew Bible scholars think about when the book of Daniel was written" or "how much of an impact did the Babylonian exile have on the composition of the Bible", but instead, things like: "how do we think of God, given what we've learned about our universe through modern science?", and, "what does it mean to have an exclusivist idea of Christianity that doesn't include the vast majority of humans who have ever lived?". (To be clear: I am a turbo nerd and in many ways am more comfortable in that first world. But spending some more time in the second one would probably do me good.)
Enns talks about himself and his journey much more in this book than in the entirety of his past bibliography combined. It's plain that these questions (and others) were major forks in the road for him — 'curveballs', to use the terminology of this book — and he has spent many years working out the implications of them. If you've ever found yourself torn between living here in the 21st century, where new exoplanets are discovered every week and quantum physicists are testing hypotheses most of us can't even understand, and following the God of the Bible, this book will make you feel much less alone, and maybe even encouraged and inspired.
I admit that in the past I've fallen into the trap Enns discusses at one point in this book, of trying to sort of cram or mangle current science into a Biblical framework ("maybe 'Adam' was the first homo sapiens to branch off from other hominins?", "maybe the primordial waters in Genesis 1 could be the raw elements of the solar system before they coalesced?") but I've felt the tension and... kind of desperate 'trying too hard'ness of those explanations. So I admit I find Enns's 'third way' very appealing... not trying to mash a square peg into a round hole, but allowing the discoveries of modern science to lead to a reconsideration of our idea of God. His vision of a universe evolving ever forward, towards a God who is already out in front of it, not trapped somewhere in an idealized past, fills me with a great deal of hope and refreshing honesty.
"To unleash our imaginations to speak of God," Enns writes, "is not to float adrift in unbelief, but to forge by the sweat of our brows a connection between two very different conceptions of reality." Some of the ideas he touches on as he goes — universalism, cosmology, a life after death — are things that have preoccupied me all my life. Others I admit I've spent less time puzzling over... I certainly had some conception of how many people must have lived and died before the Abrahamic religions were founded, but in his chapter on 'the other 99%', Enns puts that question into focus in a way that I'll be thinking about for a long time. This sentence absolutely stopped me in my tracks: "Does the God of Abraham look lovingly upon ancient cave drawings and temples dedicated to the only gods ancient humans could have known?"
Diehard followers of Enns' work like I am will find some previously-trodden ground here, especially in the sections on rethinking the Bible in light of changing times (a key theme of How The Bible Actually Works), and his musings on quantum physics and theology echo some of Rob Bell's books. But from start to finish Enns tackles both old and new topics with a matter-of-factness and a sober curiosity that I found extremely engaging, especially in the world of progressive Christianity. He doesn't zip off into flights of fancy or new-agey strangeness, nor does he get bogged down with pessimism and doom, but explores paradigm-shifting ideas with wit and humility and a hopefulness that left me feeling curious and optimistic, excited to keep turning these ideas over in my mind after I put the book down.