Is Christotelism code language for secularism?

Peter Enns has a new book out. Here's a review that's all the more damning because it's a sympathetic review from a fellow liberal:

However, critics will likely remain dissatisfied with the radical nature of Enns’ proposal. And in key respects it is radical. While Enns is certainly committed to the historical nature of Christ’s life, death and resurrection, he sets aside the question of history for vast tracts of Israel’s story, including the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob), Moses, the Exodus, the giving of the Law, the occupation of Canaan, and so on. 

What is more, while Enns spends more than two hundred pages discussing scripture, one is hard pressed to find a clear statement of Enns’ own doctrine of inspiration. Instead, one finds statements that will strike many critics as vague and understated. For example, he observes that the Bible is “the main way for Christians today to learn about God, the go-to sourcebook for spiritual comfort, guidance, and insight.” (3) This certainly is true. The question is why. What is it about this text that makes it unique? Later in the book Enns states: “The Bible carries the thoughts and meditations of ancient pilgrims and, I believe, according to God’s purpose, has guided, comforted, and informed Christians for as long as there have been Christians.” (234, emphasis added) This is a good statement and it is surely correct. But it is also inadequate for a doctrine of inspiration since Augustine’s Confessions would fit this description equally well. Once again we’re left wondering, what is it about the Bible that makes it unique? Just how does this incarnation metaphor function vis-à-vis scriptural inspiration and authority? 

I also see Enns being vulnerable to the consistency charge. Enns lays out his operative principle when discussing the extraordinary nature of the stories of Genesis and Exodus:

“If we read these sorts of episodes outside of the Bible, from another ancient culture, we wouldn’t blink an eye. We’d know right away we were dealing with the kinds of stories people wrote long ago and far away, not things that happened, and certainly nothing to invest too much of ourselves in.” (4)

Based on that observation, Enns thinks we ought to be consistent and conclude that these biblical stories of deep history are best understood as a type of myth that helped form an ancient culture. Fair enough, but then one might reply that the ancient world also has many miracle claims, healers, teachers and messianic pretenders. So why accept the Jesus claims whilst discounting all the others? 

The third and final concern comes not from the conservatives who fear Enns is on a slippery slope to heresy, but rather from those who might wonder why he hasn’t gone further yet. This brings me back to his claim that the tribal warrior conception of God was an “adequate understanding of God for [the Israelites] in their time, but not for all time”. As I noted above, one might legitimately wonder in what sense it could ever be adequate to understand God as a bloody and capricious “Megatron”. And if it can’t, then why not just toss the texts rather than attempt to retain them with a vague incarnational metaphor? 

http://randalrauser.com/2014/09/the-bible-tells-me-so-a-review/