Here are some or the responses and reactions from “ordinary” readers to Inspiration and Incarnation received since the book’s publication. In the comments section below, please feel free to add your own response, or to ask a question about the ideas in the book. All comments will be held for moderation, and appropriate comments will be posted here after review by the site owner.
I just saw that your boyhood home was Passaic, NJ (I think that’s spelled right) which is where my Marine (then Lt.) son lived on coming back from Desert Storm (1st war). He went to Pratt Institute and of course commuted from NJ but he really liked the town and since has become a lawyer and a BIG fan of Alexander Hamilton.
Having defended your book against an unfair review in one denominational monthly magazine years ago, I can appreciate that academia is no place for the faint hearted and thin skinned. The review made statements that you believed certain things that were not directly stated in I & I. Perhaps they were true, perhaps not, but it was a book review, not a place for personal attack. And the misunderstood criticisms that I got at the time were hard on me. I hope that your Website will shed more light than heat but I doubt it since “…those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.”
Nevertheless, I hope that from this dialogue enough honest and insightful critique will emerge and a follow-on book by you covering the issues will be forthcoming. I will probably refrain from writing a review, however!!!
Best wishes, RL
Just finished reading your book, Dr. Enns, and enjoyed it thoroughly. I was already familiar with many of your ideas, having read some of your previous writings, but I&I still read like a breath of fresh air. Thanks for making Evangelicalism viable again.
(Incidentally, I read this book alongside ‘Making the Bible Impossible’, and the two go quite well together.)
I found I & I to be a profound and deeply challenging book. The section on Genesis 1 on pages 49 to 56 was brilliant. It made sense of a passage that I had been grappling with for many years. Some months after I finished it I discovered through wikipedia that it ended up costing the author his job, which is regrettable, and I’m sure was highly traumatic at the time.
FYI, I discovered the book through it being promoted on Rachel Held Evans’ website.
First, I want to say that, as of the present moment, I have not read your book. However, having read your responses to common criticisms, it recalls my days at Westminster Seminary, studying Old Testament literature and history. In my undergraduate years in Biblical studies at Geneva College, I wrote a paper on the debate over inerrancy, a paper which, entering into my research, I had an almost fundamentalist understanding of the Bible. However, I became very suspect of evangelical scholarship because of what I found to be strained harmonizations and what in many cases bordered on outright dishonesty. A particularly memorable example of shoddy scholarship was Harold Lindsell’s Battle for the Bible. I went into Westminster Seminary, hopeful, but not optimistic that my faith
restored. Well, it was. But how so? It was because of the honesty of men like Ray Dillard, Tremper Longman and Moisés Silva, who honestly faced difficulties, not sweeping them under the rug. They taught us, as you have indicated, not to approach inerrancy with pre-conceived idea,demanding “twentieth-century precision” or seamless intersecting of “fact” between writers writing, even among themselves, in vastly different times and cultures.I can’t get into all the ins and outs of this in this short space,but let me say that, it brought me to a deeper appreciation for the truth of scripture,it’s multitude of genres, and how our presuppositions as to how scripture “ought” to be,especially when those presuppositions are unconsciously assumed, block us from hearing God in the way that He intends. Let me add finally that it was my professors’ honesty in tackling difficult issues that restored my faith in the Bible and PREVENTED me from going over into the liberal camp.
Sir, I somehow stumbled onto the discussion of your book which I have not read. I have encountered the sort of theological criticism you have also run into. I was raised in “Westminster Circles,” knew Van Til and Murray as a child. I thought both to be kind individuals, although Murray was scary to a kid with his glass eye and dark clothing. He almost crushed me with his hugs.
I could no longer work in the same context as I see evident in the reports about your both on Inspiration and Incarnation. The parameters of what is permissible would prevent me from flourishing.
Thank you for persevering in theological work.