Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

peter enns

C.S. Lewis on Scripture. God’s Word in Human Words. Part 2 of 2

C.S. Lewis' desk and chair
“C.S. Lewis’ desk and chair.” Taken by Thomas B. Grosh IV at the Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, IL.

In my last post I highlighted C.S. Lewis’s take on what it means to approach the Bible humbly: namely, we should first ask honestly and with an open mind, What sort of book has God actually given us and how has He given it? When we do that, we find that God has given us a Book not at all like what we might have expected if we had formulated a doctrine of Scripture a priori. Instead He has given us something else entirely, something far more extraordinary:

The same divine humility which decreed that God should become a baby at a peasant-woman’s breast, and later an arrested field-preacher in the hands of the Roman police, decreed also that He should be preached in a vulgar, prosaic and unliterary language. If you can stomach the one, you can stomach the other. The Incarnation is in that sense an irreverent doctrine: Christianity, in that sense, an incurably irreverent religion. When we expect that it should have come before the World in all the beauty that we now feel in the Authorised Version we are as wide of the mark as the Jews were in expecting that the Messiah would come as a great earthly King. The real sanctity, the real beauty and sublimity of the New Testament (as of Christ’s life) are of a different sort: miles deeper or further in.

[Read more…] about C.S. Lewis on Scripture. God’s Word in Human Words. Part 2 of 2

Book Review: The Bible Made Impossible (Christian Smith)

Bob Trube, Senior Area Director for InterVarsity’s Graduate & Faculty Ministry in the Ohio Valley, speaking at a conference.

Once again “Thank-you!” to Bob Trube, Senior Area Director for InterVarsity’s Graduate & Faculty Ministry in the Ohio Valley, for his contribution to the Emerging Scholars Network (ESN) Blog! Consider these thoughts on Christian Smith’s The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture to some degree an extension of ESN’s interaction with work of Peter Enns, including an earlier review of two of Enns’ books by Bob.

Before getting to Bob’s review, let me point out that I was excited to find his insights on How to Write a Book Review [of this style] when I visited his blog. In response to an ESN Facebook Wall request for a book review, one Emerging Scholar volunteered to do one based upon Bob’s style/recommendations. Stay tuned 🙂

Note to all our readers: As I have done such previously, I encourage you to read a book before you comment upon it 🙂 It’s my intention that reviews such as those offered by Bob will not only provide opportunity for dialogue by those who have read the material, but also serve as teasers — helping our readers discern what books to place in their personal and book discussion group queue. If you have books you desire to review and/or have reviewed, please email me. ~ Thomas B. Grosh IV, Associate Director of ESN, editor of ESN’s blog and Facebook Wall. [Read more…] about Book Review: The Bible Made Impossible (Christian Smith)

Book Review: Peter Enns Double Header

Bob Trube, Senior Area Director for InterVarsity’s Graduate & Faculty Ministry in the Ohio Valley, speaking at a conference.

Bob Trube, Senior Area Director for InterVarsity’s Graduate & Faculty Ministry in the Ohio Valley, is in the top 1% of contributors to Goodreads. Even before this announcement, I had been following Bob’s excellent Goodreads reviews, Furthermore, inspired by The Best Christian Book of All Time, I had already asked Bob if he’d be willing to contribute reviews to the ESN Blog. AND Bob said, “Yes” 🙂

In light of the recent conversation regarding the writing of Peter Enns, I asked Bob’s permission to start with his material on Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament (Baker, 2005) and The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible does and doesn’t say about human origins. (Brazos Press. 2012). AND Bob said, “Yes” 🙂 It’s great to have Bob join the team of contributors to the Emerging Scholars Network (ESN)’s blog as we enter the fall term. Lord.

Note to all our readers: Please feel free to share your responses to one or both of the books by Enns. As I have done such previously, I encourage you to read a book before you comment upon it 🙂 It’s my intention that reviews such as those offered by Bob will not only provide opportunity for dialogue by those who have read the material, but also serve as teasers — helping our readers discern what books to place in their personal and book discussion group queue. If you have books you desire to review and/or have reviewed, please email me.. ~ Thomas B. Grosh IV, Associate Director of ESN, editor of ESN’s blog and Facebook Wall. [Read more…] about Book Review: Peter Enns Double Header

Why You Must Be Dying to be a Christian Scholar: David Williams Intro (1/2)

“I am doing what I can to help Christian scholars to integrate their faith with their scholarship.” — David Williams

What am I, a nice campus minister, doing on a blog like this? I am neither a scholar nor the son of a scholar. I occupy no endowed chairs. I will be presented with no festschriften upon my retirement.

Why, then, have I been asked to be a regular contributor here on the Emerging Scholars Network Blog? The short answer is that I am doing what I can to help Christian scholars to integrate their faith with their scholarship. I am an InterVarsity Graduate & Faculty Ministries staff person serving the students and faculty of New York University. So while I may not be a scholar per se, I am a pastor for scholars — for graduate students, faculty, and others engaged in post-graduate education. My calling is to help scholars and aspiring scholars to live out their callings by inviting and encouraging them to allow their faith to enrich their scholarship and to allow their scholarship to inform their faith.

The full story of how I got into the Christian scholarship business is a long one, stretching back through my graduate schooling at Duke and Westminster, my time as a philosophy major at a secular state college, and into my years as a bookish Christian teenager. But in many ways, my sojourn in Christian learning really began when I went to Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. I had long had aspirations of becoming a Christian scholar and I even had some fairly fleshed-out ideas about what that was supposed to mean — ideas largely influenced by George Marsden’s The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) and Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Reason Within the Bounds of Religion (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988). However, I really had not even begun to understand the challenges involved in actually doing Christian scholarship — actually giving oneself to the serious study of a particular field, following the evidence wherever it leads, and thinking things through from a self-consciously Christian vantage — until I was put through the wringer in seminary. [Read more…] about Why You Must Be Dying to be a Christian Scholar: David Williams Intro (1/2)

Scholarship of the Bible and the Church

The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible does and doesn’t say about human origins. Peter Enns. Brazos Press. 2012.

Recently, I read Peter Enns’ book The Evolution of Adam. I found it to be a rather interesting read, and a helpful addition to the field. One idea that Enns uses in understanding the Bible is the calibration of various parts of the Bible so that we can know what to expect from that particular text. For example, Enns calibrates Genesis 1-11 with Ancient Near Eastern mythologies. He shows similarities and differences and uses these other texts to help us understand what we can rightfully expect from Genesis 1-11. I think that from the perspective he starts with his work in this area is pretty solid. However, I found I didn’t know how to calibrate what Enns is doing in this book.

Growing up in a relatively conservative church and school, I didn’t end up hearing very much about any of the various forms of critical or historical scholarship about the Bible. If I did it was probably to say that it was just a liberal view of the Bible (liberal generally meaning anything less conservative than the beliefs of that particular denomination). In college I encountered some of this type of scholarship about the Bible but I just wrote it off as heresy and didn’t give it a second look. Now I’m in graduate school at Biblical Theological Seminary and I am paying more attention.

One particularly helpful lesson I learned is that there is a separation of scholarship about the Bible and theology. [Read more…] about Scholarship of the Bible and the Church