Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 11:1 (Spring 2007)
Article: A Surrejoinder To Peter Enns’s Response To G. K. Beale’s JETS Review Article Of His Book, Inspiration And Incarnation
Author: Gregory K. Beale

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SBJT 11:1 (Spring 2007) p. 16

A Surrejoinder To Peter Enns’s Response To G. K. Beale’s JETS Review Article Of His Book, Inspiration And Incarnation

G. K. Beale

G. K. Beale is Kenneth T. Wessner Chair of Biblical Studies and Professor of New Testament at Wheaton College Graduate School in Wheaton, Illinois. Prior to this he served as Professor of New Testament at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. He has written numerous books and articles and is the author of The Book of Revelation in the New International Greek Testament Commentary Series (Eerdmans, 1999)and The Temple and the Church’s Mission: A Biblical Theology of the Dwelling Place of God (InterVarsity, 2004).

I thank Peter Enns for responding to my review article1 of his book, Inspiration and Incarnation.2 It has been the policy of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (JETS) not to allow surrejoinders, so I was not able to write one in that journal. I am thankful to the editor of SBJT for accepting this surrejoinder to be published.3 SBJT readers ideally should consult my original review of Enns’s book in JETS and Enns’s response to me there. But, for those unable to consult JETS, the substance of my original review and of Enns’s response will be summarized in this review.

For those readers who go back and read my review and Enns’s reply to my review, I think most will see that he has not advanced the argument much beyond what I said in my review nor has he responded to some of the specific evidence that I adduced. I have in mind, for example, the evidence that he holds various significant narratives in Genesis to be “myth” according to its classic definition, and that he acknowledges that the biblical writers mistakenly thought such “myths” corresponded to real past reality.

I will respond to what I consider to be some of Enns’s major critiques of my review of his book.4

(1) Enns contends that I misread the genre of his book and that I reviewed it as a scholarly book instead of a popular book. He says that, as a result, though I cite his statements “at length,” “citations, no matter how lengthy, will not contribute to bringing clarity to an author’s intention” and might cause “obscurity” of it, if such citations are “founded on a faulty reading strategy.”5 He says I reviewed the book as if it were “an academic treatise” or “a systematic theology” or “an introduction to Scripture,” whereas “its [re...

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