Many believe (and I have frequently been told) that if a 7 day literal creation did not occur or the entire world was not covered by water in Noah’s flood, or Jonah was not literally swallowed by a fish then we can’t trust scripture and we can’t trust God. This is why creation is so important for many. When we think of scripture as primarily from God and not written by humans with a particular point then it is easy to have our faith shaken by any threat to scripture. Similarly scripture is from God but still human written. (And some don’t believe that the bible was inspired at all.) Enns’ main metaphor in Inspiration and Incarnation was that we should think of scripture like we think of Jesus’ incarnation. Others believe that the biblical authors were inspired by God, but God gave them freedom to do the writing on their own. Some believe that it was directly (word for word) inspired by God. Most Christians know that the bible was written by humans. But these ideas are often disconcerting to those that are coming to them for the first time. After a few years of reading about Hermeneutics (theory of how we interpret) and being frustrated by Enns and Christian Smith and others, I have come to an equilibrium on the matter. The main point of the book is that the modern understanding of Scripture as rule book or guide-book or science book actually changes scripture to something that is different from what early Christians understood and how the writers seem to have intended. Popular level look at how we understand scripture As he explores questions progressive evangelical readers of Scripture commonly face yet fear voicing, Enns reveals that they are the very questions that God wants us to consider - the essence of our spiritual study. The Bible Tells Me So chronicles Enns's spiritual odyssey, how he came to see beyond restrictive doctrine and learned to embrace God's Word as it is actually written. Is this what God really requires? How could God's plan for divine inspiration mean ignoring what is really written in the Bible? These questions eventually cost Enns his job - but they also opened a new spiritual path for him to follow. Rejecting the increasingly complicated intellectual games used by conservative Christians to "protect" the Bible, Enns was conflicted.
But the further he studied the Bible, the more he found himself confronted by questions that could neither be answered within the rigid framework of his religious instruction nor be accepted among the conservative evangelical community.
Trained as an evangelical Bible scholar, Peter Enns loved the Scriptures and shared his devotion by teaching at Westminster Theological Seminary.
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