"The God of the universe"

peteenns

And as for violence, I think you continue to underestimate the sheer brutality of it in the OT, perhaps to preserve a fundamental continuity at all costs. Israel's God kills or sanctions killing humans to take the land and give it to his people. He also either orders or sits by as Israel takes captive women and children, and in at least once incident, allows the division of virgin women as spoil (Number 31). Do you really think the God of the universe was OK with that then?

That's an odd statement. Unless Enns is an atheist, he does believe that the God of the universe "sits by" while things like this happen. Even if he denies the historicity of the OT narratives, things like that certainly happen in the real world. Unless he's an atheist, he must at the very least believe that God is "OK" with allowing that to happen, even though he could prevent it, whether or not he commands it.

Temple and purity laws reflect ANE cultural conventions to which God allowed himself to be adapted and by which he allowed the ancient tribal Israelites to worship him. The Gospel teaches that these things are to be left behind and therefore their substance is critiqued.

That's revealing. According to Enns, divine accommodation means God allowed himself to be adapted to false worship. But that dissolves the distinction between pagan impiety and true piety. 

BTW, Enns tries to put Bible-believing Christians on the defensive. "How dare you believe God commanded these atrocities!" His attitude is usually indistinguishable from Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens.

Problem is, I think he still claims to be a Christian, so he needs to explain how he can straddle the fence between inerrancy and atheism. Since Hitchens and Dawkins don't pretend to be Christian, they are free to trash the Bible. (Mind you, they have difficulty justifying their moralistic value judgments.)

At least inerrantists have a consistent position. How can he continue to believe, assuming he still does, that Christianity is a revealed religion, yet constantly attack the revelatory source of Christianity? 

He's not entitled to be so judgmental when he's so intellectually duplicitous.