Recently I began an absolutely fascinating book by Peter Enns called Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. Pete Enns primarily teaches at Westminster, but he also teaches occasional courses at Biblical. I had the privilege of taking a course with him that dealt specifically with the New Testament authors' use of the Old Testament. It was absolutely fascinating - it put a lot of pieces together for me in terms of odd things about the NT, while simultaneously opening a whole different can of worms. More on that to come - I plan on sharing more from this book. It's one that I think everyone who's serious about theology, biblical studies, contextualization, and scripture should read.

One thing in particular that I've been pondering, though, is the nature of scripture. Enns makes the point, and I think rightly so, that although evangelicals claim to take scripture seriously, we often don't. In particular, we fail to do so when we don't allow scripture to speak for itself, but instead force it to conform to a predetermined standard of what we believe scripture should be. Generally speaking, evangelicals don't do well with the diversity of theological opinion that is present in the text. Often, these various perspectives that are obviously present in the text itself are smoothed over and made to say the same thing, not in the interest of hearing what it is that the text actually says, but in an attempt to protect it from contradiction. However, the idea that scripture cannot contain divergent opinions and remain scripture is an assumption, nothing more. Forcing the text to conform to this predefined standard, rather than protecting its integrity, may instead actually prevent us from hearing what it is that the text is actually trying to say.

There are plenty of examples that I could cite to demonstrate what I mean. A classic set of divergent opinions exists between Samuel-Kings and Chronicles, for example. However, I'll leave the examples for later posts. What I'm pondering at the moment is the fact that a diversity of interpretations is not necessarily a bad thing. Scripture itself, rather than being monophonic, contains a chorus of voices that all exist in dialog with each other. Often, different authors can be read as saying, "Yes, but..." to another part of the text. And what is significant is that these tensions are not resolved, but are left to stand in the text itself. This should communicate to us in a significant way that we should be open to alternate readings of the text, alternate interpretations and emphases. To do so is not to devalue scripture - it is to take it seriously enough to allow its form to influence the way we understand it.

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