RESPONSE TO G. K. BEALE'S REVIEW ARTICLE OF INSPIRATION AND INCARNATION

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Jun 2006 by Enns, Peter

Second, because of the nature of the book there are things I leave unstated. Perhaps most importantly, in view of the necessary corrective focus on the human element of Scripture, I have chosen not to set out a fuller exposition of its divine element. Of course, this is not where the target audience has a problem. My readers are evangelicals, and so I assume they already believe that the Bible is God's Word, a belief I also affirm at the outset of the book.8 By accenting the human element the way I do, I am in no way signaling a denial of the foundational, primary role of the divine element,9 but encouraging readers to see-precisely because the Bible is from God-that every bit of it, no matter how challenging or troublesome, is precisely what God wanted us to have and perfectly formed to do what God has designed it to do. Rather than calling this basic conviction into question, it is this very conviction that forms the book's foundational theological presupposition. Because the pressure point for some readers is in how the human element of Scripture can co-exist with their own commitment to the Bible's ultimate and primary divine point of origin, I want them to be able to make the same confession. In retrospect, in view of reactions such as Beale's, I would make a greater effort to make this point clear so as to obviate misunderstandings, but the reiteration of this fundamental posture at every potentially troublesome portion of the book would have worn thin rather quickly.

There are also a number of areas of disagreement between us that are of a more theological, methodological, and epistemological nature. Although at times heavy rhetoric makes it more difficult to discern the actual substance of these disagreements,10 the differences are real nonetheless. I will briefly deal with the following three issues: (1) the myth/history problem; (2) inerrancy; and (3) the Incarnational Analogy. These issues are interrelated and deserving, I think, of much further discussion among evangelicals.

First is the issue of myth and history in Genesis. In retrospect, I would have liked to have been clearer in this section in my affirmation of the basic historical referential nature of the opening chapters of Genesis. After reading Beale's review I can see how some, reading the book from a particular angle, could arrive at conclusions similar to his, despite the declaration of my evangelical convictions at the outset of the book. In any case, Beale's own handling of the myth/history problem will hardly shed more light on a topic that desperately needs it.

For one thing, Beale's assessment of my discussion leaves readers of his review with potentially misleading impressions. For example, he claims that my concern is that "conservatives have not sufficiently recognized ANE parallels with the Bible," when in fact the entire chapter is based on the opposite assumption, that these things have been duly recognized by evangelicals. But recognition is not enough. My concern is to bring what is widely recognized to bear on how my target audience thinks about Scripture, that is, to bring to the forefront the implications of these parallels for how evangelicals can think of Genesis as historical, authoritative, and inspired. To move in this direction is not to attack or undermine evangelicalism but to support it.