HuffPost's Cringeworthy Article Regarding Biblical Interpretation

 

Those who know me well, know that I utterly despise Huffington Post (especially the "Queer Voices" section; there is no place like that place for bias and just plain-old leftist propaganda). So when I saw that Peter Enns (who, as far as I know, denies the historicity of Adam; which is complete compromise), had written an article for them on the Bible, I thought I would give it a read, and the sort of "arguments" that are used in this article were truly horrific. It is titled "3 Ways Jesus Read the Bible That Evangelicals Are Told Not to Do". I will quote Enns' words in blue and then provide my responses in black.

For Evangelicals—and I’m among them—Jesus and the Bible are high on the priority list. Not just evangelicals but all Christians believe Jesus is the Savior, and that the Bible tells us about him. 

But watching how these two priorities come together—watching how Jesus read his Bible (the Christian Old Testament)—can create some awkward moments, because Jesus read his Bible in ways evangelicals are taught over and over again not to read it.

I am not familiar with everything that Peter Enns has claimed, written, or said. But I am not a big fan of what I do know about him (his denial of a real, literal Adam and Eve for example I am not fond of [as I mentioned above]). Jesus and the Bible is not "awkward" at all. Jesus clearly viewed the Old Testament as being inerrant and divinely inspired (Matthew 5:18; 15:3; 22:31; Mark 7:13; John 10:35). So Enns' idea is simply without warrant here. Now, what are the ways in which Jesus read the Bible that we are told "not to"?

1. Jesus didn’t stick to what “the Bible says,” but read it with a creative flare that had little if any connection to what the biblical writer actually meant to say. 

Evangelicals are told to respect the Bible by “sticking to the text” and not go beyond it. Jesus did the opposite.

For example, in the book of Exodus (chapter 3), God speaks to Moses from a burning bush. This being the first encounter, God introduces himself (verse 6): “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” In other words, “The one speaking to you, Moses, is none other than the God of your ancestors, and I’ve got a very big job for you: go down to Egypt and bring my people out of slavery.”

Enter Jesus. We find him in Luke’s Gospel (chapter 20) debating a religious party known as the Sadducees. One of their beliefs is that after you die, you’re worm food. Other Jews, including Jesus, were of the Pharisee party. They believed that God will one day raise the dead.

So to prove his point—that the Sadducees were wrong and God does indeed raise the dead—Jesus recites the verse from Exodus above, where God introduces himself to Moses.


There isn’t a “deeper meaning” to Exodus 3:6. God is just introducing himself to Moses. It’s not code for “I will raise the dead.”

What Jesus is doing here wouldn’t sit well with most Christians if, say, their pastor got up and preached like this. They’d ask him or her to try and stick to the text better and if not to start looking for another line of work.

But what Jesus does here in Luke’s Gospel, however strange it seems to us, was par for the course in early Judaism. Luke tells us some of the scribes were very impressed with Jesus’s ability to handle the Bible so well!

For Jesus, as for his fellow Jews, the Bible was ready and willing to be handled in creative ways to yield new and unexpected meanings that go far beyond what those words mean when they were first written.

Enns fails to quote the entirety of what the Lord Jesus actually said in Luke 20 regarding the resurrection of the dead as well as his citation of Exodus 3:6. I think Theophylact's commentary is helpful here:

"By using Moses (v. 23-28) they were intent on overturning the doctrine of the resurrection, but He, also by using Moses, convinces them quoting, "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." What Christ means is this: God is not the God of that which is not, but of that which exists and is. For God did not say, "I was," but "I am." Even though they had died, they live in hope of resurrection." (Explanation of the Gospel According to Matthew (tr. Chrysostom Press, 1992), p. 192)

As Theophylact notes, God says "I am" rather than "I was". Enns fails to see this and thus this where the error arises. Jesus' use of Ex. 3:6 does help His case that God "is not God of the dead, but of the living" (Luke 20:37), and the similar principle taught by Christ in John 11:25. 

2. Jesus felt he could “pick and choose” what parts of the Old Testament were valid and which weren’t.

Evangelicals are taught in no uncertain terms that the Bible is a package deal. Believing what the Bible says isn’t like being on a buffet line where you “pick and choose” what you like. Yet, that’s what Jesus did.

For example, we have the famous Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus on a mountain speaking to those gathered around him. Several times he quotes something from the Law of Moses and then contrasts what the Law says (“you have heard it said) with a teaching of his own (“but I say to you”).

We shouldn’t lose sight of the larger idea here: Jesus is acting like Moses. He is on a mountain declaring to the people what God commands of them. The “Sermon on the Mount” isn’t really a sermon at all. For one thing no one was bored listening to it. Jesus’s words were a public declaration that, now that he was here, there were going to be a few changes made.

At some points in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus simply expands what his Bible said—like murder being more than not just physical but also emotional (anger) and verbal (insults). But Jesus also claims that some parts of the Bible over and done and it’s time to head in a new direction.

Moses may have allowed for divorce for all sorts of reasons, but Jesus said divorce was only allowed in the case of unfaithfulness.

God told Moses that Israelites were to make solemn oaths to one another (sort of a binding contract), but Jesus said the true people of God shouldn’t make any oaths. “Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes or ‘No, no’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.”

God told Moses that crimes were punished an “eye for an eye” (to insure the punishment fit the crime) but Jesus said to turn the other cheek rather than seek restitution. In doing so, they would be truly following the will of God.

Jesus taught that some of what God said in the Old Testament was inadequate, and real obedience to God mean it was time to move on. If evangelical pastors or professors pulled moves like this, they’d be working second shift at Target before the week was out.



Regarding the Sermon on the Mount, Enns fails to provide a meaningful context of all of Jesus' words in that passage. Jesus says, right after the Beatitudes, that he was not "throwing out" the Law but rather fulfilling it (Matthew 5:17-20). Plus, Jesus wasn't saying "the OT said this, it is wrong, here is what I am saying to you now". That is a blatant misreading of the text. Again, the Sermon on the Mount must be read in light of everything Jesus said, not just mere snippets.

Enns essentially is implying that Jesus considered "certain parts" of the Old Testament to be invalid. It would be a sufficient rebuttal to quote, well, Jesus' words:

"If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35)

 "And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God:" (Matthew 22:31)

The Apostle Paul, also considered the OT to be inspired by God in its entirety:

"Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God." (Romans 3:2)

The verses above blow Enns' last statement in the above quoted section out of the water completely as well.

Regarding Jesus' views on divorce, I assume Enns probably has Matthew 19:8 in mind. Jesus is not saying that Moses was wrong or anything of the kind. R.T. France's comments are helpful here:

"8 Jesus accepts that Deut 24:1-4 does in effect permit divorce, even though it does not actually say so in so many words. How then is this permission to be squared with his absolute statement that divorce should not take place? The naming of “Moses” as the one who gave permission might suggest that a contrast is being drawn with the original principle of unbroken marriage which was explicitly attributed to the Creator himself in vv. 4-5; on that understanding what Moses permitted is downgraded to a merely human deviation from the divine purpose. But that would be a very modern inference. In first-century Judaism the laws given by Moses were understood to be the laws of God; “Moses” means the Pentateuch, the God-given body of law which is Israel’s highest authority. The name “Moses” is used in v. 8 not to contrast Moses with God, but because Jesus is responding to the question of v. 7 in which Moses has already been named as the source of the Deuteronomic provision. The contrast Jesus draws is not with regard to the authorship or authority of the two Pentateuchal texts, or even simply to the order in which they were given, 2167 but with regard to their purpose. The Deuteronomic legislation is a response to human failure, an attempt to bring order to an already unideal situation caused by human “hardness of heart.” This familiar biblical term refers not so much to people’s attitude to one another (cruelty, neglect, or the like) as to their attitude to God, whose purpose and instructions they have set aside. Its classical use is with regard to Pharaoh, whose “heart was hardened” to refuse God’s call for the liberation of Israel (Exod 7:13 and a further dozen times in the Exodus narrative); it is a term for rebellion against the God to whom obedience is due. It was the fact that divorce was taking place in defiance of God’s stated intention for marriage that made it necessary for Moses to make appropriate provision. But it should never have been so. The existence of divorce legislation is a pointer not to divine approval of divorce but to human sinfulness. Was the provision of Deut 24:1-4 then a mistake? That does not follow from Jesus’ argument. It was rather a mark of divine condescension. Even after his people had rejected his design for marriage, God gave them laws to enable them to make the best of a bad job. But the Mosaic “permission” was not a statement of the way God intended things to be. For that one needs to look in Genesis at the way God had set up his pattern for human sexuality “from the beginning,” before the Fall. So the mistake in relation to Deut 24:1-4 is not that of Moses in making legislative provision for the problems which arise in a fallen world after divorce has taken place, but that of his interpreters who have taken this regrettable but necessary provision as the starting point for their ethical discussion in preference to the original purpose of God as expressed in Genesis. But if the latter is allowed its proper status, Jesus’ pronouncement of v. 6 still stands: what God has united must not be divided." (R.T. France, The New International Commentary on the New Testament: The Gospel of Matthew)

3. Jesus read his Bible as a Jew, not an evangelical (or even a Christian). 

As much as this might not need to be said, it does. When we watch Jesus read his Bible, we are watching a Jewish man reading his Bible. His creative flare and even his “debating” with his own Bible and going in a different direction were part of what it meant to read the Bible in Jesus’s Jewish world.

That doesn’t mean Jesus didn’t revere the Bible. He did. But he revered it in Jewish ways, not evangelical ways.

And that may be the hardest lesson for evangelicals to learn, that Jesus did not agree with things about the Bible that evangelicals take for granted and consider non-negotiable—like “stick to the text” and, “God’s word is eternal and never changes.”

If evangelicals (and I am among them) pay attention to Jesus, they will learn a vital lesson: Our own Bible shows us that getting the Bible right isn’t the center of the Christian faith. Getting Jesus right is.

In the first couple or so paragraphs of this section, Peter Enns mostly just repeats the stuff he has already said in the earlier parts of his article, which I have already provided a refutation to. However, the last paragraph is interesting. I would agree that getting Jesus is right is central to Christianity, but in order to know who Jesus truly was and what he believed, we have to go to the New Testament Scriptures (in particular, the four canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). Getting the Bible right is extremely important to the Christian faith, and is indeed central if we want to get "Jesus right". Jesus clearly viewed the OT as the inspired Word of God. And anyone who actually does a meaningful investigation into Jesus' views of the Old Testament sees this quite clearly.

The Bible is the "more sure word of prophecy" (2 Peter 1:19) that God has given us, in order that we can get Him right, despite what Enns and other people who deny inerrancy may say.