I'm not dead yet!

Sorry for the long blogging hiatus. Everything is ok. Things have been busy these last 4 months.

I shall return.....in a blaze of Proverbial glory!

Romans 7 Redux

One text that you're not likely to encounter on the 'Romans Road' presentation of the Gospel is Romans 7. That's because (for those who aren't aware) Romans 7 is one of those 'difficult' Pauline texts that scholars are divided on.

Consequently, it's difficult to talk about a 'standard' view of Romans 7, but the 'Paul as believer' view of Romans 7 seems to be predominant view in our conservative, Presbyterian (and Reformed) circles.

However, my friend Todd Bordow (OPC pastor in Ft. Worth, TX) summarizes some of the difficulties with that position, and why many scholars today see Romans 7 as not describing the 'normal' Christian life:

1. When did the Law come to Paul as an individual and he died? Paul grew up with the Law.

2. The Paul as a Christian view doesn't really answer the question overriding the chapter - is the (Mosaic) Law sin?

3. Paul already stated in chapter 6 that believers are not under the bondage of sin.

4. The dynamic in 7:17-23 is not a struggle with sin, but one under the bondage of sin; a slave to sin, which is not the case with the believer.

5. The passage's answer to this crying out under bondage is not the return of Christ, as would be the case with the believer view, but the gospel (past tense) 7:25 and 8:1-4.

Comments? Thoughts? Replies?

Brain-Dead Utopian Seekers

David Mamet (screenplay of The Untouchables, director of The Spanish Prisoner and The Heist) has a great piece from a couple months ago about his 'conversion' from leftist-socialism to free-market libertarianism, or (in Mamet's words) why he is "no longer a brain-dead liberal."

While the whole article is reflective of Mamet's writing style, one part of it particularly stood out:

As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.

These cherished precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as increasingly impracticable prejudices. Why do I say impracticable? Because although I still held these beliefs, I no longer applied them in my life....

And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.

In other words, the whole notion that 'capitalistic America' is basically evil while the people who benefit from and take part in 'capitalistic America' remain basically good is glaringly inconsistent. Such views are nothing more than dreams of a utopia that simply does not (and never will!) exist.

Through recent years, it's become increasingly clear that one of the fundamental flaws that both 'Christian America' (to the right) and 'Socialist America' (to the left) ironically share is their search and quest for civil utopia. Their goals, presuppositions, and agendas are massively different....and yet they both need a certain amount of intrusive government to pull off their visions.

This explains (in part) why libertarian political and economic philosophy seems so foreign to the average American today. Why? Because we've become so accustomed to trusting the government to provide and produce utopia for us, whether it be in matters of economics or faith/religion. Just listen to the candidate speeches going on during this current election year -- are not most of them filled with 'promises' about what the government is going to do for you? Candidates that run a platform of 'less government' (e.g. Ron Paul) are deemed 'nutty' and 'radical'.

Mamet continues:

What about the role of government? Well, in the abstract, coming from my time and background, I thought it was a rather good thing, but tallying up the ledger in those things which affect me and in those things I observe, I am hard-pressed to see an instance where the intervention of the government led to much beyond sorrow.

Economist Walter Williams argued a very similar point earlier this month by pointing out that "[m]ost of the great problems we face are caused by politicians creating solutions to problems they created in the first place." Bigger government is not going to solve our problems, whether moral/religious or social/economic!

Mamet's article highlights an interesting irony -- far from allowing individuals, governments, or corporations a blank-check to do whatever they deem right in their own eyes, Libertarian 'freedom' has a remarkably realistic way of approaching the topic of total depravity as a 'given' this side of heavenly perfection. I suspect this is one reason why I find libertarian economic theory to be quite compatible with my Calvinistic-amillennial eschatology, given that neither hold out empty pre-consummational, utopian promises. There is certainly a legitimate place for Christian involvement in civil affairs, but this should not be confused with the only true 'Christian utopia' to be found in the eternal age to come, an age that we partake of even now in an anticipatory form. Failure to make this distinction between the present age (which recognizes the need for the State to bear the sword per Romans 13) and the age to come (which recognizes there will be no need for sword-bearing since the final judgment is now past-tense) continues to be a prime source of error among Christians thinking about politics at present in the US.

Now go watch the Untouchables (again)!

Hot Air anyone?

You know the guys over at Lenovo must have had fun making this one....



The Macbook Air certainly plays well to the "OOOOOh" and "Awwwwwwe" crowd. Even I have to admit being pretty impressed when I saw my first one. But then reality sets in when you see the price listings: "Starting at $1799"!


Sorry, Steve....but I'm not buying the hype.

Admittedly, I find Macbook Pros to be on the pricey side as well (especially for what the average consumer like myself needs), but I can at least understand why those working in graphic/media design or music production would shell out Macbook Pro kind of money. But I really have no idea what kind of person would spend $1800 on a Macbook Air. Well, actually, I do -- the kind of uber-Mac-geek person who only wants to "OOOOOh" and "Awwwwwe" his friends, neighbors, and potential clients!

I'm not a diehard Mac apologist....but I might become more of one after seeing my Dad's HP meltdown (from a botched SP3 update attempt) last Thursday and then my wife's HP laptop meltdown (from a botched attempt to reinstall and update her printer drivers) this past Monday. For those counting, that's one stolen Macbook and two major PC crashes in, oh, about 10 days time!

I'm not one of these Ray Kurzweil-ian 'transhuman' prognosticators, but the past couple of weeks illustrate rather nicely how computers and technology so easily run our lives. You just don't realize it...until it crashes or someone steals it from you!

Time to Moo

I'm glad to see that Doug Moo is online with a number of his articles now available as PDF downloads. If you have not read his exegetical work on topics related to 'Paul and the Law', then you are really missing out. Even some of his older work is still worth a careful read.

Matt's New Mac...and a (nearly) Free Printer offer

After soon realizing that a full recovery of my stolen Macbook was about as likely as the PCA and OPC agreeing on a good definition of 'system subscription', I decided that it was time to pony up another $850 on a MacBook refurb. Ouch! Especially after just coming back from 6 days in Cayman for this year's Morgan family vacation.

So after a bit of an order snafu, the new Macbook arrived on Friday.


Things are almost back to normal around the home now!

They also sent me a Canon IP4500 printer as part of a $100 printer voucher. Of course, we already have two printers at the house -- Vicky's HP all-in-one for her job, and then my trusty Samsung laser printer that I've had for 3 1/2 years. That leaves me now with a nice photo printer...and no need (let alone room!) to keep it.

Please get a hold of me if you know anyone that needs a photo printer. I'm not sure how much UPS Ground would charge to ship it somewhere, but I'm basically only asking you cover the tax I paid on it ($8) and then any shipping costs. I know I can probably unload it on Craigslist, but I'll give someone else a chance to claim it first.

B.B. Warifeld on Confessional Subscription (Part 1)

"Among the causes of the present appearance of restlessness with reference to the Westminster Standards, the first place is undoubtedly due to the overstrictness prevailing in some churches, in the formula of subscription which is required of office-bearers. And it is worthy of notice that where the formula seems overstrict, dissatisfaction seems to be most widespread, most pronounced, and most difficult to satisfy....In a word, a public confession [of faith], by virtue of the very fact that it is public, cannot be, and ought not to be pretended to be, just the expression of his faith which one accepts it as representing his faith would have framed had he only himself to consider. The most we can expect, and the most we have right to ask is, that each one may be able to recognize it as an expression of the system of truth which he believes. To go beyond this and seek to make each of a large body of signers accept the [Westminster] Confession in all its propositions as the profession of his personal belief, cannot fail to result in serious evils -- not least among which are the twin evils that, on the one hand, too strict subscription overreaches itself and becomes little better than no subscription; and, on the other, that it begets a spirit of petty, carping criticism which raises objection to forms of statement that in other circumstances would not appear objectionable.

Where the formulat of acceptance is such that no one signs without some mental reservation, some soon learn to sign without reference to mental reservation; and gross heterodoxy becomes gradually safe, because there is no one so wholly without sin that his conscience permits him to cast the first stone. That such a state of things has not been unknown, the history of Scottish Moderatism may teach us. That in the estimation of some, some of its features are not wholly unknown now, there are not lacking phenomena which may indicate....Now such a state of affairs is a great evil; and the dangers attending it have never been better pointed out than Dr. Charles Hodge, who writes: 'To adopt every proposition contained in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms is more than the vast majority of our ministers either do or can do. To make them profess to do it is a great sin. It hurts their consciences. It fosters a spirit of evasion and subterfuge. It forces them to take creeds in a non-natural sense. It at once vitiates and degrades. There are few greater evils connected with establishments than the overwhelming temptations which they offer to make men profess what they do not believe. Under such strict requirements, men make light of professions, and are ready to adopt any creed which opens the door to wealth of office. The overstrict the world over are the least faithful'

Not less surely, however, does overstrictness of formula wound tender consciences and produce a restlessness as over against the creed itself to all the propositions of which they are obliged to assent as the profession of their faith, even when they would not find these propositions objectionable when considered only as one statement of faith they profess. Tender consciences must revolt from a confession to which they are too closely bound, if they do not find themselves in absolute agreement with every word; and revolt once begun, battens on what it feeds on, until a great war breaks out against the Confession with which, nevertheless, most of the combatants are in substantial agreement. Thus, overstrictness in the formula is the real account often to be given of what emerges as objection against the creed, rather than against the formula. Relief is to be sought in such a relaxation of the formula as will give all the liberty to individuals which is consistent with the Church's witness to the truth. What is needed seems to us admirably expressed by Dr. Marshall Lang in a speech in the Established Presbytery of Glasgow, advocating the change of formula which has since been accomplished in that Church: 'The point they desired to emphasize was this,' he is reported as saying, 'that they did not bind men to the mere letter. They did not insist that a man should accept all the propositions and all the phraseology of the Confession. What they asked was that a man should honestly and truly subscribe to the system of truth that was presented in the Confession of Faith, and not merely to the words of the letter in which it was presented. He thought a substantial relief was given to persons of scrupulous conscience.' So far as the present agitation in the Scotch churches arises from this cause and tends to this result, it is an effort to attain a situation as over against the Standards which the American churches have always enjoyed, and it must have the hearty sympathy of every American Presbyterian.

This advocacy of a liberal formula, however, is not to be understood as if we could at all accord with those who would so relax the formula as to make the Confession of Faith little more than a venerable relic of a past age, still honored as such by the Church. Such a change as that made in 1816 by the Church of Holland by which ministers were not longer pledged to the Standards, because (quia), but only in so far as (quatenus) they accord with the Word, is justly pointed to...as fatal. That there are, nevertheless, some in the Scotch churches who might desire it, seems to be hinted by some words....Unfortunately, there are some even who act as if this were all that the present very strict formula bound them to, as was evinced, for example, by the amazing plea put in by Mr. James Stuart, author of that very remarkable book, The Principles of Christianity, when arraigned before the Presbytery of Edinburgh. Nevertheless, it is surely not so difficult as Principal David Brown expresses himself as thinking, to frame a formula which will 'let in all the right men and keep out all wrong'. The American churches have such a formula. Of course it lies in the courts of the Church to decide what is and what is not of the system, and Church courts are not infallible, nor always faithful. But Church courts can afford, and do venture, to hold men strictly to the terms of a liberal formula, when they could not to an illiberal one. Overstrictness demands and begets laxity in performance; while a truly liberal but conservative formula binds all essentially sound men together against laxity. In pleading for a liberal formula, therefore, we wish it distinctly understood that we do not plead either for a lax formula, or much less for a lax administration of any formula -- within which an essential dishonesty lurks. The American formula appears to us to be the ideal one, and as nothing more lax than it would be acceptable or safe, certainly a lax administration of it would be unendurable, and, as we have said, essentially dishonest."

("The Presbyterian Churches and the Westminster Confession," The Presbyterian Review, Vol. 10, No. 40, 1889, pp. 648ff.)

Reflections:

(1) Warfield's day was not unlike our own -- namely, the Reformed faith is (a) being discounted by those that want to so minimize the Confession to point where it becomes a 'mere Christianity and (b) being defended by those that desire to uphold a 'strict(er) subscription' to the Standards. And yet Warfield refuses to go down either of these roads (in good Old Princeton fashion).

(2) Warfield seems to recognize that these extreme positions [i.e. substance subscription and strict subscription] very much play off one another. I've long suspected this, so it's always nice when someone like Warfield agrees with you! When Confessional subscription is continually shoved down someone's throat in an overstrict way, it has the rather unintended consequence of making men even more apt to revolt against it. And when men start to drift away from the system of doctrine, it seems to make the Strict Confessionalists bang their 'overstrict' drum louder and louder. It's still worthy of note a century later "that where the (confessional) formula seems overstrict, dissatisfaction seems to be most widespread, most pronounced, and most difficult to satisfy." Indeed, things haven't changed all that much at all.

(3) The 'serious evils' that Warfield attributes to strict subscription are not imaginary. If you afford a man no place to issue scruples, it will invariably drive them underground. That's exactly what happened in the Free Church (Scotland) as well as the CRC (US). And if you haven't witnessed "a spirit of petty, carping criticism" over the Confession first hand in your Reformed church, then (a) you are extremely fortunate and (b) you should do your best to never leave!

(4) Warfield & Hodge show exactly how the main of conservative American Presbyterianism has practiced 'subscription'! Some today act as if this is some sort of a 'modern' view...when in fact it has a fairly long and established pedigree in American Presbyterianism.

(5) Warfield very boldly announces that because the Confession is public in nature, it cannot speak perfectly for the individual to his exact personal beliefs. Now there's something you don't hear too often today! I suspect because it sounds far too 'slippery' and leaves too many loose ends untied. But when you finally understand system subscription in its Old School Presbyterian sense, then you understand how Warfield can argue this way.

How does Warfield avoid the 'substance subscription' pitfall? We'll take that up in a subsequent post, based on the same article referenced above. Stay tuned....

Bugger!!!!

Today, I had my first *anger* outburst in quite some time.

I settled into my usual downstairs corner of the GTU library (in Berkeley). I began to read a couple books, until I realized that I didn't have all the ones I needed. So I proceeded to go back to the carrels to get the books I wanted, stopping along the way to use the bathroom.

When I got back to my desk, I reached inside my backpack....only to find no laptop!! Now, I think I know a little how a parent must feel when he suddenly can't find his child in a supermarket or department store.

Amazing how quickly it happened. No one saw a thing. I wasn't gone for more than 5-7 minutes tops. Of course, it doesn't take even 30 seconds to unzip a backpack, grab a laptop, drop it in your bag, and be gone! The didn't even bother taking the power cord.

Fortunately, all of the important data had been backed up via Mozy.

So I learned my lesson....the hard way. Let me be an example that laptop theft happens, even in places that you think are completely safe. I've used the GTU library regularly for over a year now, which contributed to my 'false assurance' that I could leave it alone for a few minutes here and there when I needed to step away.

Now I understand the paranoia people have about their laptops in public places! But like many lessons in life, it's only when it eats into your pocket book that you learn your lesson.

A Little More Odds and Enns....

Vicky and I leave for a week in Cayman tonight -- one of my cousins is getting married. I had planned a more lengthy post to follow up the previous one on Professor Enns. There are some fascinating parallels to the current debate and similar debates in the later half of the 19th century in the Free Church of Scotland with William Robertson Smith and at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary with Crawford H. Toy, both of whom were removed/forced out because they espoused 'new' views of Scripture that were deemed dangerous to the Christian faith. Those will have to wait until I return next week.

I had also planned on writing something on Warfield, who has been referenced numerous time in this debate, particularly on the point of concursus and the 'incarnational analogy' between Christ and Scripture. However, Lee Irons already jumped on this particular point a week ago. There are a number of other juicy Warfield quotes that could be cited in the current context. All that to say -- the comparisons between Warfield and Enns begin to break down upon a closer inspection of the sources. I will say that I've come away mightily impressed again how marvelous Warfield is to avoid overly simplistic (i.e. fundamentalistic/head-in-the-sand, dictation theory, etc.) approaches to the Doctrine of Scripture, while at the same time avoiding the capitulation that came at the hands of Higher Criticism in the late 1800's. This is no small feat, especially when you see how many others (like Smith and Toy above) didn't fair nearly so well.

I did want to post one item of interest -- a 38-page letter that Prof. Enns sent to the Board of Directors in January 2008. I've uploaded the 3mb file here, if any are interested. You'll notice that on the first page, there's a disclaimer that this information is not some 'secret memo' that was never intended to get out in the first place.

For those well-versed in the plethora of reviews and rejoinders since I&I was published, I don't think you will find any earth-shattering revelations...with maybe the exception that Prof. Enns admits that he is going farther than Waltke, Longman, Walton and others on the matter of 'myth' in ANE context (p.27-28). What does come out very clearly in the letter is the ever-widening rift at Westminster East that many of us in the WTS-tradition have known about for the past decade (and probably longer). Read in that light, it seems plausible to read I&I as a sort of personal throwing-down-of-the-gauntlet as to the future direction of Westminster Seminary. You can see why something had to happen. The "Why can't we all get along" shtick is simply not going to work, when the disagreements are this substantial.

Odds and Enns

I've had a number of private correspondences over the last few months asking about Dr. Peter Enns, professor of Old Testament at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. As many of you know already, the Board of Westminster Theological Seminary (PA) voted last week to "suspend" Professor Enns at the end of this current semester and then "consider whether Professor Enns should be terminated from his employment at the Seminary." The blogosphere has seen a blitzkrieg of discussion surrounding the events of these past couple of weeks. [Trevin Wax provides a helpful non-partisan summary of the issues at stake, if you are new to the discussion.]

Here are a few thoughts on the matter....

(1) Numerous complaints have been voiced about 'accountability' to academics teaching in the ivory tower of a seminary, especially one like Westminster that is not under any denominational approval.

I'm not sure anyone has figured out if the *best* way to run a Reformed seminary [or any seminary for that matter] is under explicit denominational oversight (e.g. Covenant, RPTS, Calvin, etc.) OR under a separate board of governors (e.g. just about everyone else!). The fact that our current crop of schools favor the later is more of a byproduct of the last 100 years of Presbyterian/Reformed history, given that the ever-liberalizing mainline denominations left Machen and others no choice but to start their own 'independent' seminaries if theological training was to continue.

What has aided the Westminsters historically is the fact that their 'independence' enabled them (to a certain degree) to draw from the different Reformed streams of American Presbyterianism (Machen), Scottish Presbyterianism (Murray), and the Continental Reformed (Van Til). As one who was trained under that breadth of the Reformed faith, it has certainly proved fruitful and beneficial in all sorts of ways that I didn't even realize while I was going through it. One is able to compare and contrast the various ways each group's theology came to expression, particularly in the heat of doctrinal controversy.

Of course, the fear of some in this approach is that this sort of breadth opens oneself up to many streams of doing theology...and all of the extra doctrinal controversy that entails. Too many streams, I suspect, in the minds of many. It's too difficult to control, they say! It becomes increasingly more complicated to recognize the matters that are absolutely essential to our Reformed system of doctrine, matters where good Reformed people have disagreed, matters where we aren't sure if theological language amounts to serious theological disagreement (i.e. 'faith and assurance" in the Presbytery vs. Continental traditions), or matters that compromise our system of Reformed doctrine but would still be regarded as evangelical or protestant. Reformed denominations in main might well have 'general agreement' as to where these 'matters' divide up. But if it were such an easy thing to 'agree', why do all the NAPARC churches still exist as separate bodies? No, denominations exist because they have distinctives that they believe are essential to their system of doctrine. The more streams you have converging in the middle, the harder it becomes to maintain distinctives.

However, an emphasis on distinctives can easily lead to narrowness, if not altogether blindness on an issue. You insist on a particular doctrinal formulation because that's how it's done in our tradition. Well, traditions can err...and indeed have erred. And it seems to me that the Westminster model of trying to bring together (in some sense) the breadth of the Reformed faith helps honest, Scripture-seeking students think long and hard about particular doctrines and the best way to express them. Maybe there are some things we never come to an agreement on...but knowing the "lay of the land" helps us avoid retreating into ever-narrowing sects.

To sum up from a previous thread, the problems experienced at Westminster that involve Peter Enns is not because of system subscription.

(2) What does 'academic freedom' mean for a seminary? That's a difficult question to ask in the abstract. Westminster has always been a 'confessional' seminary (as seen in its ordination vow)...but what kind of 'confessionalism' are we talking about? That's part of the problem...because we still have different schools of thought on what it even means to 'subscribe' to the Westminster Standards. Some seem to want it tighter; others want it looser; it seems to me classic 'system subscription' gives you exactly what you want in providing avenues of 'academic freedom' without saying 'any and everything goes'! But too often we paint our options as only 'strict' and 'loose'....when there is a via media that rather nicely sums up what Old Princeton/Westminster has practiced all along.

I'm not sure how removing 'academic freedom' will benefit either the seminary or the church. For starters, Westminster Seminary (and even Old Princeton before that) has always sought to keep one foot in the church and one foot in the academy, and to change that (on either side!) would help no one. Geerhardus Vos wrote (best I can tell) the first real critique of Ewald, Graf, Wellhausen and others coming out the German higher-critical school in the late 1880's; Warfield was every bit up-to-date on the complexity of the data feeding Briggs; Machen heard modern theological liberalism first-hand when sitting under the likes of Hermann in Europe, saw what was at stake when he returned home, and thus wrote 'Christianity and Liberalism' as a result; Vos figured out where mainstream, anti-supernatural 'Biblical theology' would go long before it ever went there itself; and on we could go.

The problem is not 'innovation' per se. Without innovation, we're probably still doing apologetics in the 'common sense rationalist' tradition of Warfield. Many (if not most of us now) in the PCA/OPC/URC would identify with some sort of 'presuppositional apologetics'. [NB: I don't think Warfield should be purged from the books, nor do I think this is an issue that we should ultimately divide over in the Reformed church.] And Van Til's legacy is that he challenged many long-standing assumptions made in the Reformed community, a challenge that I think has sharpened all of our minds as we wrestle with matters of theology and epistemology.

Innovation should certainly be encouraged...IF done in compliance with God's Word. In that sense, maybe we shouldn't call it innovation but rather a robust appreciation for sola scriptura. There are plenty of examples, like Van Til, in the last 100 years of Old Princeton/Westminster, where this has helped the church greatly. It's impossible to 'predict' how this will happen, and thus it's equally impossible to 'predict' where and how someone will try to push us beyond the bounds of the system of doctrine.

(3) I read I&I for the first time in early 2006, after hearing about it from Bruce Waltke. Admittedly, it was a quick first read one evening, since I was busy with other readings and had time only to get Enns' basic thesis and method of argumentation. I saw him simply trying to address a number of the 'problem areas' of OT scholarship in the last 50-100 years, as well as the complexities of the NT quotations of the OT. I noted a few points where I found him quite confusing, a few points where I found him illuminating (for example: the term 'Christotelic'), but otherwise I thought it was 'average' book that I didn't ever expect to pick up again.

But then things started to change. Negative reviews from Helm, Carson and Beale started to trickle out through publications. I distinctively remember discovering Helm's article online during a Th.M seminar at Regent, and the first thought that came to my mind was, "It's a strange day when a Regent professor is taking a Westminster professor to task for defective view of a Scripture!"

I'm not sure Helm made his case all that well, but Carson and Beale were more significant reviews. Carson's stood out because his review came along with two other recent books dealing with Scripture (John Webster and N.T. Wright); Carson critiques all three, and yet Enns' book is the only one of the three that he doesn't have really anything positive to commend in it. Beale (who's tone was more irenic on the whole) wrote not one but two article-length reviews in different journals. Critical articles are nothing new, but these seemed to go beyond the norm.

In the middle of all of this came Richard Pratt's 2006 address, "Westminster and Contemporary Hermeneutics". I have been tempted to mention it before but became busy with other matters. I've heard numerous people mention over the years how the best chapter in the Westminster Confession of Faith is its chapter on Scripture, and Pratt commends Chapter 1 of the WCF as still a relevant summary of our doctrine of Scripture, even in light of modern challenges leveled against it in recent decades.

It was Enns' response to Pratt's address that made it painfully clear that this was not going to go away quietly. It's one thing to exegete a text (or a book), come to a conclusion that maybe you disagree from a consensus position, and then submit it to your faculty/presbytery for review and discussion. But Enns seems to be going beyond that, and you can see it in the way he (for example) responds to Pratt's critique of him. I happen to think that some of what Enns has suggested in his book is worthy of additional consideration. But as Carson noted in his review, the whole trajectory of Enns' rhetoric seems to not be one of "converting the alarmed but rather alarming the converted"! In other words, it's not just that he holds to one or more than one minority or controversial views under the Reformed umbrella, but rather that he seems to believe that these things are absolutely essential to a right reading and interpretation of Scripture within the Reformed faith.

I've talked to a number of his former students who span the entire spectrum of glowing approval to glaring disapproval. And the one thing they seem to all agree on is this -- these issues are absolutely fundamental to his methodology in approaching OT theology. So we're not just talking about individual 'hot button' issues like the composition of the Proverbs, the recording of Moses' death in Deuteronomy, how Job is canonical, the King/Chronicles synoptic problem, and other thorny OT questions. It's the method seeking to bring coherence to it all that seems to raise more questions than provide answers.

If it were simply the crusty Reformed curmudgeons ranting against Enns book because it sounds too post-16th and 17th century, that would be one thing. But what in the Carson, Beale, and Pratt corpus of writings would lead you to think they are interested in opposing someone for 'TR' reasons? [Part of me is curious what Carson and Beale think about the board's decision to suspend him!]

(4) Seminary divisions and terminations are always more than simply theological. I suspect that's because we are often good at preaching total depravity....and also equally good at practicing it as well. Even though Enns' book, articles, and teachings are the 'stated' reasons for his projected termination, I think most of us know there is *more* going on than simply this. Of course, none of us are privy to the inner sanctum of these seminary squabbles...so we may never know all of the details. Enns becomes the fall guy because he's at the center of the controversy. I do think he's part of the problem (as stated above)...but I have my doubts as to whether this can all be laid at his doorstep.

(5) If you listen to the chapel recording (April 1st, 2008) now rapidly circulating, it's interesting to hear President Lillback say that he's been dealing with this issue since 'Day One' on the job, when they brought him in 3 years ago. Interesting that he also referenced the Shepherd controversy of 30 years ago, where the faculty may have even been in stronger support of Shepherd than the current faculty is with Enns. And yet, Lillback seems to recognize that when you have this kind of division on all fronts, there are no easy solutions. And if after 3 years years of discussing this, the faculty are still split 12-8 on this (not to mention the board 18-9)....something had to happen. Even if you believe that Enns is the best thing going at Westminster Seminary right now, surely you'd have to agree that this kind of faculty split is not terribly conducive for him personally or the seminary. How would you feel working at an institution in which 66% of the board and 40% of the faculty thought your view was heterodox?

Disunity is never a good thing...but sometimes it's unavoidable (Acts 15:36ff). But to keep things together and act as if there is 'unity' when there is really no unity?? That seems to me to be even worse.

(6) The saga is far from over! It wouldn't shock me if there are a few more 'curve balls' that come out of this, and in fact I would almost expect it. One Christian college professor told me over the weekend that he's already been contacted by one *present* WTS faculty member about possible job openings. So a further shake up doesn't seem all that out of the question!

Things stayed remarkably in tact after the Shepherd controversy in the 80's. It remains to be seen whether that will happen here....or if more heads will roll.

(7) As strange as it sounds, I think the Reformed church will benefit from being made to think through these issues of 'inspiration' and 'incarnation'. If someone had asked me back in 2001, "Does the incarnation of Christ have something to contribute to our doctrine of Inspiration?", I'm not sure how I would have answered that question. As Lillback notes, the Confession doesn't go there when speaking about inspiration. So does that mean it's ok, adiaphora, or dangerous? Some might instantly say, "No, we can't go there because the Confession doesn't." Others seem to be saying, "This is THE way to swim in higher-critical scholarship!" I think the correct approach is neither of these. What is needed is (a) a careful examination what's being said and (b) a careful searching the Scriptures to see if this is being faithful to the Word of God.

That's what Old Princeton and Westminster have tried to do throughout its history. WCF 1.9-10 is not just there for window dressing, but as an encouragement to think through all things in light of the Word of God. Just because an OT professor comes along and seems to exalt historical-critical methodologies above the canon doesn't mean I'm going to abandon studying the canon OR tackling difficult questions that arise out of Biblical history. Abuses of sola scriptura surely cannot mean we abandon it for some 'higher' platform to argue from.

If Enns is wrong, then hopefully some of those opposed to him will eventually issue statements, explaining more than a simplistic "You're not Confessional!!!"...but rather why his approach strikes at fundamental concerns to our doctrine of Scripture.