Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 71:1 (Spring 2009)
Article: Revisiting Inspiration And Incarnation
Author: Bruce K. Waltke

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Revisiting Inspiration And Incarnation

Bruce K. Waltke

Bruce K. Waltke is Professor of Old Testament at Reformed Seminary, Orlando, Fla., and Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies, Regent College, British Columbia. He reviews Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament by Peter Enns (Baker Academic, 2005). A response from Peter Enns, and a reply from Bruce Waltke to this response, also appear in this issue.

I. Introduction

Professor Enns invites evangelicals to interact with his provocative ideas for sharpening theological discussion about the nature of Scripture. Upon my first reading I was struck with his commendable, unflinching honesty. Not allowing dogma to overwhelm data, he attempts pastorally to assist students who think the Reformed doctrine of Scripture is not viable. Enns holds with conviction the concept that both the Word of God as Scripture, and the Word of God as Jesus Christ, become incarnate: fully divine and fully human, as Warfield propounded in his concursive theory of inspiration.

Upon my second reading and more reflection, however, I questioned whether Enns’s answer helped doubters to keep the faith. This forced me to reflect more deeply upon the theologically disturbing cache of texts that Enns so helpfully collected, categorized, and then sought to resolve by his “incarnation” model of thinking about Scripture. A model, however, that represents the Mosaic Law as flexible, the inspired religion of Israel in its early stage as somewhat doctrinally misleading, the Chronicler’s harmonization as incredible, NT teachings as based on questionable historical data, and an apologetic for Jesus of Nazareth’s Messianic claim as arbitrary, would not be helpful to me in my theological education. Nevertheless, I owe Enns a tremendous amount of gratitude for challenging me to think honestly and soberly about these texts that are troubling to all who hold Reformed convictions about the inspiration of holy Scripture.

And so in this essay I hope to collaborate with Enns in our common endeavor to assist students by offering alternative interpretations that to me are more exegetically and theologically satisfying. By the latter I mean interpretations that do not call into question the infallibility of Scripture. My concerns as laid out in this review are strictly exegetical, though of course exegesis is foundational to doctrine. Furthermore, my apologetic is based exclusively on exegetical data

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and a posteriori reasoning, not on doctrine and a priori reasoning, though the latter is certainly appropriate in an apologetic.

My method will be to follow the book’s logic ...