Peter Enns's Blog, page 13

“aha” moments: biblical scholars tell their stories: (17) Michael Halcomb

Today’s “aha” moment, the 17th in the series (and counting) is by T. Michael W. Halcomb (Ph.D., Asbury Theological Seminary, in New Testament), founder of the Conversational Koine Institute, a language teaching outfit that seeks to help folks learn ancient languages via a conversational and immersive approach. He has four degrees in biblical studies and [Read More...]

Jesus didn’t read his Bible like we do–(from The Bible Tells Me So)

We see here Jesus handling Psalm 110* in a very ancient, creative way. We might think he is “misreading” the first line of Psalm 110—and from the point of view of the writer of the psalm he is, since Psalm 110 doesn’t say what Jesus says it says. But in Jesus’s day, such creative handling of [Read More...]

the Bible’s diverse God–(from The Bible Tells Me So)

Looking to the Bible to find out what God is like seems like about the most obvious thing the Bible should hand you on a silver platter. But it doesn’t. You have to work for it. The God we meet there sometimes knows everything, and other times he’s stumped and trying to figure things out. [Read More...]

stories work–(from The Bible Tells Me So)

Stories work. Stories are powerful. Stories move us deeply, more so than statistics, news reports, or textbooks. We all know that. We only need to think about what holds our attention and makes us long for more—that book, film, or TV series that we wish wouldn’t end quite so soon, that story told of some [Read More...]

the Bible, history, and storytelling–(from The Bible Tells Me So)

Stories of the past differ because storytellers are human beings. No storyteller is all knowing about the past, but limited by his or her own time and place, and the fact that no human sees every angle of everything. Stories also differ by what storytellers are consciously trying to “do” in their stories, what their [Read More...]

when inerrancy no longer works: Carlos Bovell on Robert Yarbrough

Today’s guest post is by Carlos Bovell, a frequent contributor to this blog (for a recent post go here and work backwards). Bovell is a graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary and The Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto. He is the author of Inerrancy and the Spiritual Formation of Younger Evangelicals (2007), By Good and Necessary Consequence: A Preliminary Genealogy of Biblical Foundationalism (2009), an [Read More...]

honoring your evolving faith

Many historians, philosophers, and spiritual teachers now agree that collective history itself is going through an evolution of consciousness. We can readily observe stages of consciousness or stages of “growing up” in the world at large (e.g. today Christians do not believe that slavery is acceptable, but many at one time did). The individual person [Read More...]

“aha” moments: biblical scholars tell their stories (16): Jeannine Brown

After a 2 week break (my daughter had the audacity of getting married in the middle of one of my blog series), we are back today with the 16th “aha” moment, this one by Jeannine K. Brown (Ph.D., Luther Seminary, MDiv, Bethel Seminary), Professor of New Testament at Bethel Seminary, San Diego and St. Paul. [Read More...]

my Liturgists Podcast interview on The Bible Tells Me So (plus an extra bonus thingy)

Last week I was interviewed over at The Liturgists podcast by “Science Mike” McHargue, Michael Gungor, and Lissa Paino, and here it is. We talked about the Bible and hit a lot of themes I cover in The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It (available for pre-order now and officially out [Read More...]

faith is messy–which is where God is found

As long as you can deal with life in universal abstractions, you can pretend that the usual binary way of thinking is true, but once you deal with a specific or concrete reality, it is always, without exception a mixture of darkness and light, death and life, good and bad, attractive and unattractive. We who [Read More...]