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A review by jmcphers
The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It by Peter Enns
3.0
Having grown up in churches that view the inerrancy of Scripture as a fundamental doctrine, I always found some of its content a little difficult to stomach. I studied apologetics, which should have helped, but only made it worse (why would God write something in such a way that it seems so contradictory with both itself and science, and requires all this head-twisting logic to sort-of justify?).
The problem [in my mind] was that if you drop scriptural inerrancy on the floor, what are you left with as "authoritative"? If you view the Bible as a bunch of stories told by ancient tribes, how do you keep Christianity from devolving into a bunch of people who get to believe whatever they want based on whatever *they* think is in the Scripture?
Peter Enns does not answer this question, and I was kind of hoping he would.
What he does answer is the question of why it's so very hard to defend Scripture in the way I was attempting to. He explains how a reasonable person might interpret Scripture in its historical context, and while reading this book I think I understood the perspective of more liberal theologians for the first time. There is in fact a middle ground between the view of Scripture as a perfect historical record and the view of Scripture as a bunch of fairy tales, and this book opened my eyes to that view.
While the content was wonderful, personally I really disliked the tone of this book. It's written with lots of jokes and modern pastor-speak (count usages of the words "wrestle", "journey", "process", and "reality"). When I'm having the entire bedrock upon which my Christian faith has been based challenged, I like it done with some gravitas and erudition, not a transcript from the comedy club. But maybe that's just me.
The problem [in my mind] was that if you drop scriptural inerrancy on the floor, what are you left with as "authoritative"? If you view the Bible as a bunch of stories told by ancient tribes, how do you keep Christianity from devolving into a bunch of people who get to believe whatever they want based on whatever *they* think is in the Scripture?
Peter Enns does not answer this question, and I was kind of hoping he would.
What he does answer is the question of why it's so very hard to defend Scripture in the way I was attempting to. He explains how a reasonable person might interpret Scripture in its historical context, and while reading this book I think I understood the perspective of more liberal theologians for the first time. There is in fact a middle ground between the view of Scripture as a perfect historical record and the view of Scripture as a bunch of fairy tales, and this book opened my eyes to that view.
While the content was wonderful, personally I really disliked the tone of this book. It's written with lots of jokes and modern pastor-speak (count usages of the words "wrestle", "journey", "process", and "reality"). When I'm having the entire bedrock upon which my Christian faith has been based challenged, I like it done with some gravitas and erudition, not a transcript from the comedy club. But maybe that's just me.