Thursday, June 21, 2012

Would Paul Have Made A Good Evangelical? On the New Testament’s Use of the Old Testament (Part 4)

Would Paul Have Made A Good Evangelical? On the New Testament’s Use of the Old Testament (Part 4) (First posted here)

This blog entry is a continuation of yesterday’s “Would Paul Have Made A Good Evangelical? On the New Testament’s Use of the Old Testament (Part 3). The previous entry resumes here with repetition of the last two paragraphs.

Numerous points could be raised in response to Peter Enns’s two blog entries including the nature of progressive revelation, Scripture’s clarity (perspicuity), large biblical theological themes, the place and function of Israel in the land in relation to Christ and new creation, the relationship between the Mosaic law and Christ, the place of Gentiles within the promise covenant given to Abraham, and several other issues that Enns either ignores or runs over quite roughly. Others cited above have touched upon these in their lengthy and many responses to Enns’ earlier publications. Responses offered here to the two blog entries endeavor to keep the focus upon the theme of this series, the NT use of the OT.

Since Enns’s two blog entries tightly and rightly associate the apostle Paul’s use of the OT with what Enns calls a “high view” of Scripture, it is fitting that we ponder how Enns’s view concerning Paul’s use of the OT coheres with three passages that concern Paul’s appeal to Scripture to validate the gospel he preaches. Enns’s view does not and cannot account for these passages. Two are from Paul’s letters (1 Cor. 15:1-5; Rom. 16:25-27); the other is from the Book of Acts (Acts 17:1-12). Enns addresses none of these passages in his published materials concerning the NT use of the OT. Yet, it is quite reasonable to observe that these three passages serve as guardrails to constrain and to preserve us from positing the ideas Enns now advances concerning the NT use of the OT.

First, within the first installment in this series I touched upon Acts 17, particularly concerning the Berean Jews who distinguished themselves from those in Thessalonica because “they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true” (17:11). The Berean Jews, like those in Thessalonica, first heard Paul’s message in their synagogue for Luke explains, “As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and . . . he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead” (17:2-3).

Concerning Paul’s reasoning from Scripture to ground his gospel proclamation Luke sketches a scene quite different from the one Enns would have us accept. While Enns portrays Paul’s use of the OT Scriptures as “very creative,” even “manipulating scripture,” because Jesus’ coming “transformed” the OT so that the OT is “reshaped in order to conform to Jesus,” Luke describes Paul as reasoning with the Jews from Scripture (διελέξατο αὐτοῖς ἀπὸ τῶν γραφῶν), with “from Scripture” (apo graphōn) emphasizing the source of his reasoning, as though it is actually discernible from the Scriptures “that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead” and that this is not a construct superimposed upon the OT Scriptures by an adroit apostle.

Again, Luke describes the response Paul receives among Jews in Berea, “they examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” Luke hardly portrays these ordinary Berean Jews as though they had the ingenious skills of Jewish scholars during the Second Temple period, scholars who were adept at “manipulating scripture in the interest of supporting theological arguments.” Instead, Luke’s commendation of these quite ordinary Berean Jews underscores the plainness, clarity, and accessibility with which Paul’s message could have been proved false if he had engaged in any manipulation of Scripture in his proclamation of the gospel.

The significance of what Luke portrays must not be passed over as irrelevant to Paul’s use of the OT. What does Luke say Paul was proving from the Scriptures and which the Bereans were examining in their endeavor to be assured that what Paul was preaching was the truth? It is nothing less than this, “that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead.” If Paul creatively manipulated the OT (cf. “private interpretation,” 2 Peter 1:20), which now has to be read as “reshaped” so as “to conform to Jesus,” as he made his case from Scripture that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, how could the Bereans, regardless how diligent and inquisitive they may have been, trace the apostle’s argument and be convinced that what he proclaimed is the truth? The Bereans would have charged Paul with legerdemain, sleight of hand trickery, and would not have received his message as true.[1] If Paul’s proclamation that Messiah had to suffer death and rise again from the dead as foretold in the OT but his hearers could not trace his reasoning from Scripture or reproduce his exegesis of the biblical texts to which he appealed, then how could Jews or Gentiles be convinced that Scripture, not nimble manipulation of Scripture, leads to and warrants the apostle’s message as true?[2]

Paul’s message, as recorded in Acts 17:2-3, agrees with the message Jesus imparted to his disciples when he was with them, as when he explained to two of his disciples “what was said in all the Scriptures concerning him” (Luke 24:27) and later reminded the others, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms” (24:44; NIV). When Jesus says, “everything must be fulfilled that is written about me,” this means that what Jesus and his apostles expound from the OT Scriptures concerning the Messiah was actually written into the biblical text; it was always there in the scriptural text. It was not brought to the text of Scripture by hermeneutical cleverness, ingenuity, genius, and manipulation by the NT writers.

Second, what Luke records in Acts 17 concerning Paul’s preaching, the apostle himself affirms in his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 15:1-5). Though he is not setting out to prove the resurrection of Jesus, he is reasserting the belief the Corinthians hold in common with him as the ground from which he will bring a withering response to the foolish assertion “that there is no resurrection of the dead” (15:12). As he begins his argument to rebut the claim of some “that there is no resurrection of the dead” (15:12), he is burdened to remind the Corinthians concerning “the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you were saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain” (15:1-2).

So Paul reminds the Corinthians concerning the gospel which they have believed: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve” (15:3-5). Even though Paul’s dual “according to the Scriptures” likely refers not to a single passage or to a collection of specific passages but to the whole of the OT as a unified witness, it is no insignificant assertion. That Paul does not identify individual passages but refers to the unified whole OT hardly validates the notion that he would resort to creative manipulation of the text in order to argue his case that the Scriptures are replete with testimony that the Coming One would “die for our sins” and be “buried” and be “raised on the third day.”

That we may find it difficult to marshal specific Scripture passages to verify Paul’s claim hardly leaves us to choose between two options: (1) that Paul’s claim is falsified by our paucity of undisputed Scriptural evidence; or (2) that Paul’s claim depends upon creatively manipulating Scripture in order to support his theological arguments. That we find the unified claims of Paul and Jesus that the Messiah had to die “according to the Scriptures” and had to rise from the dead “according to the Scriptures” difficult to replicate either for ourselves or for others ought to rebuke our dullness of heart (Luke 24:25) and our need to have our eyes and minds opened by Christ that we might understand (24:31, 45). For to posit that the NT writers use the OT Scriptures with inventive adroitness that entails wrenching passages out of contexts and labyrinthine arguments that only a few highly skilled initiates in Second Temple literary exegesis can trace and perhaps reproduce does not suffice when that which is at stake is nothing less than the good news as it is in Jesus.

Finally, Romans 16:25-27 is a third passage that Peter Enns nowhere accounts for in his published considerations of the NT use of the OT. This passage is highly significant because it speaks concerning mystery. Mystery as a word and concept entails the complex correlation of divine concealing and revealing, each of which entangle two dimensions, both the divine act of hiding truths in plain sight and the divine act of closing and opening human minds to the truth.


Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made know through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience that comes from faith—to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen.
Whether the phrase, “in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past,” modifies “the proclamation of Jesus Christ” or is dependent upon “to establish you,” which would make it parallel to “in accordance with my gospel,” the phrase explains the gospel Paul proclaims.

Paul’s reference to mystery here is consistent with uses of the concept in other places (e.g. Rom. 11:25-27; 1 Cor. 2:7; 15:50-55), in order for humans to know a mystery some form of divine revelation is required at two dimensions. Here, Paul distinguishes these two revelatory dimensions by time span and by locality (i.e., where the revelation is lodged). As to time span of the mystery’s revelation, he depicts two temporal phases: (1) the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past but (2) now revealed. Given what Paul states next, this revelation entails a second dimension, the element of locality or the place where the mystery resides. Likewise, as to where the mystery is revealed, Paul depicts two situational phases: (1) God hid this mystery for long ages past in the prophetic writings, and (2) now according to the command of the eternal God this mystery is at last revealed and made known through the same prophetic writings. The obvious implication is that God first revealed the mystery by hiding it in plain sight within the OT Scriptures—the prophetic writings—but God now commands that this same mystery be revealed and made known in the preaching of the gospel, the proclamation of Jesus Christ.

Paul’s expression, “through the prophetic writings” (διά τε γραφῶν προφητικῶν), likely bears the sense “by means of the prophetic writings,” given his use of “through his prophets in the holy Scriptures” (διὰ τῶν προφητῶν αὐτοῦ ἐν γραφαῖς ἁγίαις) in Romans 1:2. Paul’s message seems unambiguous. God hid the mystery in the OT Scriptures and now, in keeping with God’s command, the same OT Scriptures give up the mystery made plain by the preaching of Jesus Christ, for “the Law and the Prophets bear witness to” the revelation of God’s righteousness in Christ Jesus.

Thus, to preach the gospel, which is to proclaim Jesus Christ, is to bring to light the mystery God hid within the OT Scriptures. God’s recent revelation of Jesus Christ now preached brings clarity to former revelation written down by the prophets of old. Former revelation concealed the mystery in plain sight within Scripture which now reaches fulfillment as the storyline of redemption comes to its climactic finale. So, now that Christ has come and God has commanded that the gospel be proclaimed to all the nations, the gospel reveals through the prophetic writings the same mystery God concealed in the prophets’ writings when he gave it by revelation.

Mystery novelists imitate God, the mystery storyteller par excellence. Thus, even though anachronistic, it is instructive to recognize that the biblical concept of mystery concealed in the OT and brought to light with the coming of Christ bears resemblance to how a well crafted mystery novel is written in order to unfold as it is read.[3] As one progressively reads the mystery’s storyline with its characters, settings, and plotted conflict, the story escalates incrementally toward its dramatic climax at which point the mystery, with its numerous and diverse hints scattered throughout the earlier chapters, is finally revealed. Embedded within characters, events, settings, and plotted conflict throughout the story line from beginning to end are hints, foreshadows, prefigurements, and harbingers that presage the unveiling of the mystery concealed within its pages. Yet, the hints strategically and masterfully placed by the mystery novelist pose as puzzling enigmas, as riddles, as conundrums that tantalize and increase anticipation that builds toward the climax. Yet, once the mystery formerly hidden throughout earlier chapters is at last revealed in the climax, the reader begins to recall hints the author had dropped along the way, and these hints of mystery begin to coalesce toward the full disclosure of the mystery.

So it is with Scripture. As characters within the Bible’s storyline receive promises their hope stirs, for renewed covenant promises embed fresh hints concerning that which is promised. Yet, arrival of a promised child, taking possession of the promised land, blessing of conquest, or realization of a promised house of worship come as tokens of reassurance not as the promise itself (cf. Heb. 11:39-40). God’s promises call for trust in him who keeps covenant, for he will not disappoint. Thus, the OT Scriptures are written with hints hidden throughout to incite anticipation of full and final resolution of the mystery eventually to be revealed with surprises that invite deep reflection.

Is this not how we are to read the Bible’s storyline as it incrementally builds toward its dramatic climax with the arrival of the Coming One who reveals himself and his kingdom mission in keeping with the mystery concealed within the OT? Does not Jesus perform his miracles, engage his parabolic teaching, and design his dramatic signs to reveal but simultaneously to conceal his identity and his mission until the fullness of time arrives for him to lay down his life as a ransom for sinners? In each of the Synoptic Gospels Jesus specifically tells the Twelve, “To you have been given the mystery of the kingdom of God, but to those outside everything is in parables” (Mark 4:11; cf. Matt. 13:11; Luke 8:10). Though these are the only uses of the term “mystery” (μυστήριον) in the Four Gospels, mystery permeates each Gospel, but is especially featured in Mark.[4]

Thus, the experience of the Jesus’ two disciples with whom he walked on the road to Emmaus is illustrative of the mystery’s concealment and dawning revelation in two dimensions. According to the account in Luke 24:13-25 Jesus’ act in which he revealed the Scriptures concerning the Christ accompanied an divine act that concealed his identity within plain sight by preventing their eyes from recognizing him, an act that did not exonerate their culpability for their blindness. For Jesus rebukes them for failing to believe all that the prophets have spoken concerning the Christ, that he should suffer and then enter into his glory (24:25-26). Jesus’ blessing and breaking of bread is the act that reveals his identity concealed from them until that moment. What had been hidden in plain view objectively within Scripture (24:25-27) and subjectively within their own line of vision (24:16) suddenly became revealed plainly to them (24:31), and they exclaimed to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was speaking to us on the road, as he explained the Scriptures to us?” (24:32).[5]

As indicated, Luke’s account illustrates divine concealing and revealing in two discernible dimensions: (1) the objective—divine concealing of recognition of Jesus while simultaneously revealing knowledge of the Christ made known in the Scriptures, and (2) the subjective–divine concealing of recognition of Jesus with full personal culpability for failure to recognize Jesus followed by divine revealing of Jesus’ identity as the promised Messiah. The objective constitutes the gospel mystery concealed in the OT and now revealed in Christ. The subjective constitutes the gospel mystery in Jesus veiled in plain sight in the presence of unbelief which necessitates divine revelation to impart sight that recognizes that the promised Messiah in Jesus of Nazareth.

What is now made plain is only what God hid in plain sight by way of revelation. What is now revealed in the gospel is what was always there hidden in plain sight to be seen by everyone who has eyes to see. This is the mystery of which Paul speaks in Romans 16:25-27. Mystery characterizes how the OT Scriptures testify that the Messiah is Jesus. Mystery also characterizes how Jesus reveals himself—by parables, by miracles, by dramatic signs, or by sacrificial death—as the Coming One who is bringing God’s dominion (Mark 4:10-13).

Peter Enns contends that NT writers manipulate the OT to serve their belief that the crucified and resurrected Jesus is the Christ. He believes and advocates the notion that Christ’s coming reshapes the OT Scriptures to conform to Jesus. He insists that the gospel transforms the Scriptures of the OT. None of what Enns argues concerning the NT use of the OT addresses or accounts for the prominent concept NT writers identify as mystery (μυστήριον), a concept that is functioning even where they do not use the term. That NT writers speak of the revelation of the gospel as hidden within the OT Scriptures from ages past but now revealed and made known in the gospel seems neither to give Enns pause or to prompt him to ponder that the resolution to his difficulties in tracing Paul’s uses of the OT in passages such as Romans 9 and 10 may be found in the fact that the apostle’s uses of Hosea 2:23 and Isaiah 1:9 in 9:25-27 and of Leviticus 18:5 and Deuteronomy 30:13-14 in 10:5-8 are in keeping with God’s revelatory concealing of things pertaining the gospel within the OT Scriptures, puzzling things that would for long ages await the climax of the redemptive story to be realized in the Coming One. Indeed, the apostle Paul states things that are difficult to understand (2 Pet. 3:15-16), but to attribute to him creative skills that manipulate the OT Scriptures to constrain others to embrace his belief that Jesus is the Christ, at minimum, exposes hubris that resists Scripture’s constraints and that is impatient with Evangelicals who still believe that they should embrace and uphold Paul’s “high view of Scripture.”





1 Before he departed Westminster Theological Seminary, when he was still presenting his posture toward Scripture as evangelical, Peter Enns argued for a position similar to the one taken by Richard Longenecker in Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period (214-220) as to whether we can reproduce the NT writers’ exegesis of the OT. At that time Enns adopted a much less strident position than he now holds, though it telegraphed where the trajectory of his position would likely lead him. He proposed an approach “not so much as the final word, but as a plausible, initial, attempt to remain faithful to the NT model: where we follow the NT writers is more in terms of their hermeneutical goal than in terms of their exegetical methods and interpretive traditions. The latter are a function of their cultural moment. . . . But whereas we do not share the cultural moment of the NT writers, we do share their eschatological moment, and it is here that the question of following or not following the NT writers should have its initial focus” (“Fuller Meaning, Single Goal,” 216). Enns further explains, “This means that they model for us a hermeneutical ‘attitude,’ so to speak, that is authoritative for us, even if that authority does not function as a five-step hermeneutical guide. It represents, rather, a frame of mind in which mature believers expect their reading of the OT to be ever more conformed to what the NT writers do. This is to say, we, in our interpretation of the OT, are on a pilgrimage of sorts, where our aim is to become as captured by the risen Christ as the NT authors were in their grappling with Israel’s story” (217).
2 Cf. my “Covenant Lineage Allegorically Prefigured: ‘Which Things Are Written Allegorically’ (Galatians 4:21-31),” SBJT 14.3 (2010): 54.
[3] Peter Enns independently compares reading the OT to reading a novel. In the first quotation he draws the analogy similarly to my own analogy, but my analogy focuses upon explaining the biblical use of mystery. Enns states, “As an analogy, it is helpful to think of the process of reading a good novel the first time and the second time. The two readings are not the same experience. Who of us has not said during that second reading, ‘I didn’t see that the first time,’ or ‘So that’s how the pieces fit together.’ The fact that the OT is not a novel should not diminish the value of the analogy: the first reading of the OT leaves you with hints, suggestions, trajectories, and so on, of how things will play out in the end, but it is not until you get to the end that you begin to see how the pieces fit together. And, in the second reading you also begin to see how parts of the story that seemed wholly unrelated at first now take on a much richer, deeper significance” (“Fuller Meaning, Single Goal,” (201).
In the second quotation Enns draws the analogy between reading Scripture and reading a novel to distinguish his “Christotelic” hermeneutic from a “Christocentric” approach, thus emphasizing the controlling force the climax of the biblical story (Christ’s advent) has over the OT story. Enns observes, “Revisiting our analogy of reading a novel, it is like reading a story and finally grasping the significance of the climax, and then going back and reading the story in light of the end. It is to ask, ‘How do earlier elements of the dramatic movement of this book relate to where the book as a whole is going?’” (214).
It is doubtful that Enns has jettisoned all of what he wrote concerning the NT use of the OT while he was still wanting to identify himself with “conservative Evangelicals” who hold a “high view” of Scripture, namely, Scripture’s inerrancy and authority. Nevertheless, given his recent two blog entries concerning Paul’s use of the OT, it seems reasonable to infer that reading the OT is like reading a novel is no longer a suitable analogy. For, if a novel’s conclusion “transformed” and “reshaped” the elements and features of earlier chapters in order to bring those portions into conformity with the climax, who would not criticize the novelist harshly, judge the novel as disconnected or disjointed, and discourage others from reading it?
[4] See my, “He Wrote in Parables and Riddles: Mark’s Gospel as a Literary Reproduction of Jesus’ Teaching Method,” Didaskalia 10.1 (Spring 1999): 35-67.
[5 See my “Covenant Lineage Allegorically Prefigured,” 52.

Would Paul Have Made A Good Evangelical? On the New Testament’s Use of the Old Testament (Part 3)

Would Paul Have Made A Good Evangelical? On the New Testament’s Use of the Old Testament (Part 3) (First posted here).

It is fitting to delay posting the planned next installment for this series (read Part 1 and Part 2) in order to respond to a couple of recent blog entries published by Peter Enns. In two recent blog posts Enns poses two integrated questions. First he asks, Would Paul Have Made a Good Evangelical? Noteworthy is the fact that his negative response to this query leads him to a second question: Did Paul Have a High View of Scripture?”, which is the conclusion anticipated not only by his former blog entry but by his publication of Inspiration and Incarnation. Enns’s first blog entry contains the bulk of his argument that I will engage here while not ignoring the conclusion to which Enns presses his arguments.

So, why would Paul not have made a good Evangelical? Enns answers. Paul did not “treat the Bible” as Evangelicals do. He suggests that Evangelicals, some of whom he identifies—John Piper, John MacArthur, and R. C. Sproul—would not allow the apostle Paul to “lead a home Bible study” without supervision. What grounds this malapert assertion? Enns explains:
For Evangelicals, the Old Testament leads to the Gospel story. For Paul, the Old Testament is transformed by the Gospel.
For Evangelicals, the Old Testament, read pretty much at face value, anticipates Jesus. For Paul, the Old Testament is reshaped in order to conform to Jesus.
For Evangelicals, the Bible is God’s final authority. For Paul, Jesus is the final authority to which the Bible must bend.
Yet, for anyone who knows the beliefs and messages of the three named Evangelicals and also the letters of the apostle Paul, a moment’s reflection suggests that Enns has committed a couple of logical fallacies. His first and second dichotomies beg the question because with these two disjunctions he simply assumes his conclusion to be true, namely, that for Paul the gospel “transforms” the OT and the OT is “reshaped in order to conform to Jesus.” Though he asserts these claims, nowhere does he actually demonstrate the veracity of his claims. With the third dichotomy he affirms a false disjunction that Evangelicals reject. Surely, Peter Enns realizes that his disjunction does not accurately represent any of the Evangelicals he identifies or their equals, for they do not affirm Scripture’s authority as final over and against Jesus’ authority. Which of the identified Evangelicals or any of their equals, whether in the church or the academy, would not affirm that Scripture’s authority is subordinate to the Son of God since Scripture’s chief role is to testify concerning the Christ (cf. John 5:39-40)?

Thanks are due to Peter Enns for his companion blog posts, however, because here he offers greater clarity concerning his “Christotelic approach” to the NT’s use of the OT.[1] Enns distinguishes his “christotelic eschatological hermeneutic” from confusion with “christological” and “christocentric,” for the latter two describe approaches that “are susceptible to a point of view” he does not advocate. He explains, “To read the Old Testament ‘christotelically’ is to read it already knowing that Christ is somehow the end to which the Old Testament story is heading.”[2] Despite their brevity in comparison to his two published works on the NT use of the OT, his recent two blog entries bring much greater clarity to the view he advocates concerning how the NT writers use the OT. What he formerly kept somewhat ambiguous he now plainly affirms. Now he unequivocally sets his own beliefs concerning the NT’s use of the OT over against the beliefs that characterize Evangelical scholars.

Among the many issues and questions that Enns’s book raised, one is the interest of this blog entry. His “christotelic” view of the NT’s use of the OT, which prompted some to raise significant observation and concerns, becomes explicit now that Enns is neither at Westminster Theological Seminary nor has a need to present himself as a scholar who shares the high view of Scripture Evangelicals affirm. Though not alone with this observation, D. A. Carson published his concern that the view advocated by Peter Enns makes his “sound disturbingly like” the view Barnabas Lindars promotes in New Testament Apologetic: The Doctrinal Significance of the Old Testament Quotations.[3] Lindars argues that because the NT writers came to believe that the crucified and resurrected Jesus was the Messiah, they ransacked the OT for proof texts which they often lifted out of context in their zeal to validate their message. They engaged in eisegesis as they twisted passages to serve their apologetic agenda. Evidently the gospel they needed to validate was more important than the methods they employed to advance their message. Concerning the NT use of the OT, Carson acknowledges that Enns affirms and develops how recognition and belief in Jesus as Israel’s Messiah and Son of God preceded the NT writers’ understanding concerning how the OT bears witness to his identity. Nevertheless, Carson links Enns with Lindars because like Lindars, Enns fails “to see how Christian belief is genuinely warranted by Scripture.”[4] Enns’s recent blog entries confirm Carson’s concern. Hints that Enns shared in common with Lindars a diminished view of the OT Scriptures are no longer subtle but clear and obvious.

According to Peter Enns the apostle Paul did hold “a high view of scripture” [sic], but his view does not correspond to “what conservative Evangelicals insist on when they talk about a high view of scripture” [sic]. To be sure, Enns allows that Paul and conservative Evangelicals agree that Israel’s story reaches its conclusion “in the death and resurrection of Jesus and the creation of a new people of God” consisting of Jews and Gentiles without discrimination. Enns insists, however, that for the apostle Paul, this conclusion could be seen only retrospectively. Hence, Enns contends that the end of the story “transforms” and “reshapes” the Old Testament “to conform to Jesus.” The obvious implication is that the Old and New Testaments do not hold together the way Evangelicals believe and teach, with the OT discernibly leading to and anticipating fulfillment in Jesus. Instead, the two testaments correlate because the coming of Jesus, a revelatory act so compelling and independent of the OT Scriptures, that it constrains Christians to become “very creative” with how they read the OT.
According to Enns, Paul had a “monumental theological and hermeneutical” problem in his mission to bring the gospel to the Gentiles and to proclaim that they are united with believing Jews as God’s one people, Abraham’s descendants. The OT centers upon Israel’s need to obey the Mosaic law to keep covenant with God and to retain the Promised Land. Yet, the gospel Paul is called upon to preach (1) renders the Mosaic law a parenthesis, (2) treats retention of the Promised Land as irrelevant, and (3) avails Gentiles the right to claim Israel’s God as their own without submitting to circumcision. Enns claims, “Clearly something has to give. For Paul, it was the Old Testament.” The Old Testament had to adapt to the message of the gospel in Christ and become malleable in the hands of skilled exegetes trained in the hermeneutical tradition of Second Temple Jewish Bible scholars.

So, “Paul claims that Gentile inclusion without circumcision was God’s plan all along.” As Enns would have us believe, given the apostle’s conviction concerning the veracity of this proclamation, Paul had to scrounge through the OT to identify passages to which he could creatively appeal to persuade Jews and Gentiles alike. So, when Paul appeals to the OT in a “string of quotations in Romans 9,” he “cites two passages from Hosea and two from Isaiah to support his claim that Gentile inclusion is part of God’s plan.” Yet, according to Enns, it should not be surprising that there is a problem, for “all four of these passages have nothing to do with Gentile inclusion. They are all aimed at God’s mercy at restoring Israel.”

Enns leaves readers without doubt concerning the extent to which he believes Paul’s reading of the OT is inventive. “This is not a minor point” of innovation that the apostle engages. “Paul is not getting a little creative with some passages, tweaking them a bit, teasing some fresh angle out of them. He is saying that these passages support his Gentile agenda, even though a plain reading shows unequivocally that they are about Israel.” Likewise, Enns directs readers to consider Paul’s uses of the OT in Romans 10, where he cites Leviticus 18:5 and Deuteronomy 30:13-14. Admittedly, every Christian scholar acknowledges the difficulties of tracing Paul’s use of these passages in his reasoning within Romans 10, but most restrain themselves from summarily asserting, “Either Paul can’t read or something else is up.” The “something else,” according to Enns, is that Paul uses the OT as he does because (1) he follows Judaism’s “long history of manipulating scripture in the interest of supporting theological arguments,” and (2) his overriding objective is “to make the case that Jews and Gentiles are on equal footing before God. Thus, in his effort to show that the Mosaic law had this in view all along obligates Paul to “get very creative with the Old Testament.”

Enns, now assured that his belief concerning the NT writers’ use of the OT is indisputably settled, mocks Evangelical scholars who remain benighted because they have not yet come to share the view he has adopted since he has shaken himself free from the shackles of Evangelicalism. So, he sardonically wonders. How do Evangelical Bible scholars allow Paul and other NT writers to get away with this inventive hermeneutic? Enns derisively answers, “If anyone else were doing this—me, you, the Pope, Jehovah’s Witnesses, an emergent pastor, a liberal theologian, a first year seminary student—Evangelicals would call it ‘distorting the inerrant Word of God.’” Enns can think of only two possible explanations why Evangelicals permit the apostle Paul’s alleged “distorting the inerrant Word of God.” Either (1) Paul gets a free pass because he is an apostle, “and apparently it’s OK for apostles to do this”,[5] or (2) “Paul’s reading of the Old Testament is defended as being consistent with the Old Testament meaning (which leads to overly subtle and backbreaking arguments).”

In keeping with his question begging throughout his entire blog entry, Enns once more assumes the very point he set out to prove as he deals his coup de grâce upon pitiable and unenlightened Evangelicals. “Here is the great irony. Without question, as a first century Jew, Paul believed his scripture was God’s Word. He had what Evangelicals like to call a ‘high view’ of scripture.” But, convinced that he understands how Paul used the OT, Enns asserts with confidence, “It’s just that Paul’s high view and an Evangelical high view are clearly not the same. I’m just glad Evangelicals weren’t around at the time to try to stifle Paul, to keep him from landing his gig as apostle to the Gentiles. We would have missed out on a lot.”

“For Evangelicals, the Bible is God’s final authority.” Not so for the apostle Paul, Enns confidently assures. Indeed, “Paul had a high view of scripture. It just wasn’t the final word. Jesus was.” The fact that we would not know Jesus apart from the authoritative testimony of Scripture does not seem to embarrass Enns as he asserts his false disjunction to insist that, “For Paul, Jesus is the final authority to which the Bible must bend.” On this basis, then, Enns asserts that Paul’s inventive interpretation of the OT sets the “trajectory the church” is meant to follow: “the Old Testament is God’s Word that has to be re-understood, re-thought, re-read in light of Jesus.” By saying this Enns does not mean that the apostles and first followers of Jesus Christ discovered that they needed to correct their own misunderstanding, misreading, and misappropriation of the OT because of their unbelief which led to their failure to see Christ as the one to whom the whole OT was leading. To reiterate, Enns is not saying that the coming of Christ corrects our faulty interpretation or our misreading and misunderstanding of the OT Scriptures. Rather, by “re-understood, re-thought, re-read in light of Jesus,” Enns means that the gospel “transformed” the storyline of the OT Scriptures to such an extent that “the Old Testament is reshaped in order to conform to Jesus.” The gospel story, which is rather disconnected with the OT storyline recasts and alters the OT story so that to read the OT Scriptures other than the way Enns does is to misread and to mishandle the Scriptures.

Numerous points could be raised in response to Peter Enns’s two blog entries including the nature of progressive revelation, Scripture’s clarity (perspicuity), large biblical theological themes, the place and function of Israel in the land in relation to Christ and new creation, the relationship between the Mosaic law and Christ, the place of Gentiles within the promise covenant given to Abraham, and several other issues that Enns either ignores or runs over quite roughly. Others cited above have touched upon these in their lengthy and many responses to Enns’ earlier publications. Responses offered here to the two blog entries endeavor to keep the focus upon the theme of this series, the NT use of the OT.

Since Enns’s two blog entries tightly and rightly associate the apostle Paul’s use of the OT with what Enns calls a “high view” of Scripture it is fitting that we ponder how Enns’s view concerning Paul’s use of the OT coheres with three passages that concern Paul’s appeal to Scripture to validate the gospel he preaches. Two are from Paul’s letters (1 Cor. 15:1-5; Rom. 16:25-27); the other is from the Book of Acts (Acts 17:1-12). Enns addresses none of these passages in his published materials concerning the NT use of the OT. Yet, it isreasonable to observe that these three passages serve as guardrails to constrain and to preserve us from positing the ideas Enns now advances concerning the NT use of the OT.

To be continued. Tomorrow watch for: “Would Paul Have Made A Good Evangelical? On the New Testament’s Use of the Old Testament (Part 4).”

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[1] See Peter Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 113-165; and “Fuller Meaning, Single Goal: A Christotelic Approach to the New Testament Use of the Old Testament in Its First-Century Interpretive Environment,” in Three Views of the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, edited by Kenneth Berding & Jonathan Lunde (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), 167-217. Enns wrote these when he was still Professor of Old Testament & Biblical Hermeneutics at Westminster Theological Seminary. Now he affirms beliefs that he strongly denied holding prior to his departure from WTS. Now that he is less restrained he makes his views concerning Scripture, including Scripture’s use of Scripture, much clearer. While at WTS Enns presented himself as evangelical in his initial response and follow-up to Greg Beale’s critique and in his response to Beale’s critique in Themelios. See also Beale’s surrejoinder and subsequent publications, such as, The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism: Responding to New Challenges to Biblical Authority (Wheaton: Crossway, 2008). See Peter Enns, review of The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism: Responding to New Challenges to Biblical Authority. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008, in Bulletin for Biblical Research 19.4 (2009): 628-631.
[2] Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation, 154. In “Fuller Meaning, Single Goal,” Three Views of the NT Use of the OT, Enns explains, “A Christotelic approach is an attempt to look at the centrality of Christ for hermeneutics in a slightly different way. It asks not so much, ‘How does this OT passage, episode, figure, etc., lead to Christ?’ To read the OT ‘Christotelicly’ is to read it already knowing that Christ is somehow the end (telos) to which the OT story is heading; in other words, to read the OT in light of the exclamation point of the history of revelation, the death and resurrection of Christ” (214).
[3] Barnabas Lindars, New Testament Apologetic: The Doctrinal Significance of the Old Testament Quotations (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961). See Andrew Naselli’s instructive review of Lindars’s book.
[4] See the review of Inspiration and Incarnation by D. A. Carson, “Three Books on the Bible: A Critical Review,” available at Reformation 21 and in idem, Collected Writings on Scripture, compiled by Andrew David Naselli (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), 197-235. Concerning the NT use of the OT, Carson acknowledges that Enns affirms and develops how for the NT writers their own recognition and belief in Jesus as Israel’s Messiah and Son of God came before their understanding concerning how the OT bears witness to his identity. Nevertheless, Carson criticizes Enns for failing “to see how Christian belief is genuinely warranted by Scripture” (Collected Writings on Scripture, 283).
[5] It is true that, for a time, some, perhaps many, Evangelicals followed the lead of Richard Longenecker, Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975). His argument that apostolic exegesis is not normative has largely disappeared from evangelical scholarly discussions of the NT’s use of the OT.