At least until recently, I think Peter Enns has tried to strike the pose that you can maintain the essentials of the Christian faith without being a "fundamentalist" or inerrantist. There's a middle ground.
Now, I don't read his blog on a regular basis, but to my knowledge, this is the first time he's publicly expressed misgivings about the Resurrection:
Despite Keller’s protests, the virgin birth and resurrection of Jesus invite genuine intellectual skepticism, not simply because of the nature of these events, but precisely because of the Bible’s varied and even confusing reports of them. The resurrection accounts differ considerably from one another and cannot be merged—they were not meant to be. The virgin birth is known only to Luke and Matthew—Mark and John don’t mention it and Paul, though given ample opportunity, never even alludes to it. Simply reading the Bible raises the concerns and, intellectually speaking, they are not easily solved.
http://www.peteenns.com/tim-kellers-pastorally-inadequate-responses-to-a-skeptics-questions/
Moreover, he frames his current position as an odyssey to an unknown destination. No star chart. Wherever the wind blows.
Enns reveals his major stumbling block with the repeated use of "intellectually".
ReplyDeleteThis is not to promote disharmony as a theological virtue but it is to say that it is almost absolute on the sliding slope that appeals to and reliance upon - concluding intellectually - on many matters but especially in matters of Biblical texts, is the prominent denomination.
And this is not to speak ill of high IQ's (Apostle Paul, anyone?) and clearly not scholarship which is not the same, though I suspect Enns is mistakenly using it as a synonym, because the framing of his objection is neither rather, in basic terms it is, "I don't understand so the problem must lie elsewhere because it can't be with me". That is a classic intellectual.
The Bible, first, has never intended to give a complete picture of any event. There are always missing pieces. Even a single datum can obliterate the full comprehension of a landscape yet, the landscape is there.
Please, intellectually explain that Trinity thing nevermind the conception of the God/man Christ, because intectually that is all so sensible, right?
In the end, often for the intellectual, the Bible becomes an intellectual exercise, often toy, as do many objects be it politics, sociology or theology, as in this case. Everything ultimately begins and ends with human mental candlepower, in particular their own.