Peter Enns Wants Children to Reject Genesis

I’ve blogged about Peter Enns many times because of his very public compromise on Genesis. (And many of you may recall the debacle between me and Peter Enns at a particular homeschool conference last year.)

Dr. Enns, who used to work with the theologically liberal group BioLogos, has written books and articles denying the historicity of Genesis, and he encourages fellow Christians to do the same. And now he’s resorted to a tactic similar to that of secularists—Enns says that any Christian who takes Genesis as history is reading the Bible in a “childish” way.

Dr. Enns’s recent blog post is titled Reading Genesis: Let’s be Adult about this, Shall We? He centers his argument on a statement made by Hermann Gunkel, a late nineteenth century to early twentieth century German Bible scholar. Gunkel claims that “A child, indeed, unable to distinguish between reality and poetry, loses something when it is told that its dearest stories are ‘not true.’ But the modern theologian should be further developed.” Gunkel goes on to say that Genesis is made up of “legends” and the church should not promote Genesis as historical.

And Dr. Enns has bought this argument hook, line, and sinker! There are many problems with this, but the most glaring one is Dr. Enns’s exaltation of a man’s idea about the Bible over the Word of God itself. What makes Hermann Gunkel more trustworthy than Genesis? What gives him more insight than the authors of Scripture, who were directly inspired by God to write what they did?

The second issue with Dr. Enns’s argument is his assertion that Genesis contains legends and myths. What a low view of Scripture! (See my article A Low View of Scripture.) Enns writes that his view of Scripture again stems from Hermann Gunkel’s beliefs:   Continue at Ken Ham

Peter Enns on Paul, Adam, and Evolution

For Peter Enns, evolution denies the historical Adam and Eve, and that gives rise to the questions he’s trying to answer. The fact that Paul viewed Adam as the first human being has, for Enns, been shown to be wrong scientifically. Enns asserts that Paul is theologically right on the point that Jesus defeated sin and death, but that he “may be wrong” on what caused the problem–Adam’s sin. Though he “may be wrong” on that, Enns asserts, Paul is right about sin and death and the solution. Enns says that even if Adam and Eve didn’t bit an apple, sin and death are real.

Enns seems to want to keep the theology while discarding the history as he explains: “I don’t need a historical Adam to make all that happen… I understand why Paul says what he says, cause he’s an ancient man, cause he’s a Jew.”

For Enns, the theory of evolution carries as much authority as Scripture, and it shows that Paul was wrong about Adam being the first human. Moreover, the interpretations that Paul and the other biblical authors provide of earlier Scripture are just possibilities, not necessarily correct readings that function as controls on how those earlier texts should be read.

Peter Enns is trying to combine two different religions, evolution and Christianity...  Read the rest HERE

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