Enns on Fire!
Posted by Reformed Reader on September 17, 2007
You gotta love this stuff by Enns on the Exodus: “The very thing that is a sign of God’s creation-blessing (filling the earth) is what Pharaoh wants to reverse. Such a maneuver pits Pharaoh not so much against Israel but squarely against Israel’s God, its Creator and, as the story unfolds, its Redeemer.”
Enns continues: “Yahweh enacts redemption of Israel through a series of creation reversals. Each plague is, for example, an undoing of the created order. Frogs and insects, rather than maintaining their ordained place in the ecosystem, invade Egypt–chaos results where once there was order.”
Further: “Long ago God had separated the water from the dry land. For the Israelites, he does so again…In Gen. 1 and Edoxus, God employs creation to bring life. But in Exodus, he reintroduces chaos to punish the enemies of Israel.” See Peter Enns, “Exodus/New Exodus” in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 216.
Has anyone read his Exodus commentary in the NIVAC or his Exodus Retold?
In addition, just to answer some questions before they are asked, it would be helpful to reference Vos and Kline on the above.
shane lems
sunnyside wa
efwakemazzizle said
I’ll check it out, but did you see the article on Enns’ recently released book on infallibility that was published in the NTJ? I think I sent you a copy in that care package… it was entitled, “Westminster Enns”.
Andrew Compton said
Yes – Westminster Enns was the title of the review in the Nicotine Theological Journal. I think that the dialogue between GK Beale on both the pages of Themelios and JETS has been a really helpful thing. DA Carson also reviewed Enns book.
That book (Inspiration and Incarnation) was tough because while there were some REALLY good elements to the book (i.e., a necessary correction to the far too flat reading of fundamentalism), Enns didn’t seem to interact with some of the answers that had been given in the past to the critical questions being asked. He also had a pretty strong slam of Drs. Kline and VanTil (first full paragraph on pg. 52), even though he doesn’t mention them by name. So while the book was really strong on a number of fronts, it was also really weak on a number of other fronts.
His Exodus stuff is supposed to be quite strong though. I’ve heard good things about his Exodus commentary in the NIVAC series.
Nice quote, Shane, from the Dictionary article. That Exodus motif is quite a powerful one! That combination of creation, flood, exodus, and ANE mythic type stuff in Psalm 74:13-17 is quite an amazing example of how strong of a polemic the Biblical writers waged against their pagan ANE neighbors!
Mike G. said
This is only a very little bit related, but in the spring, when, as a result of procrastination, I had to read the whole Pentateuch in 2 days, I was struck by the often heard refrain: “Your eye shall not pity…”
I was sitting in on a discussion of the WCF, chapt 6, and someone asked if actually eating the fruit was Adam’s first sin, or if there weren’t a number of sins described before that led up to the eating of the fruit. A slippery slope if you will. Shouldn’t he have put the serpent to death? And if not, and Eve ate, shouldn’t he have put Eve to death?
Again I hear the refrain: “Your eye shall not pity…”
I can imagine Adam pitying his wife and not wanting to kill her. Slippery slope indeed. Compromise killed him – and through him us. “Your eye shall not pity…”
Usually that phrase is followed by “…you shall stone him to death.”
And God himself set the example by drowning them all in the Red Sea, after 10 plagues, culminating in the death of the first born. There was no pity to be found for them. And when the Israelites entered Canaan, pity was utterly banished. Put them all to death.
Re-creation and undoing of creation indeed. But there is also pitiless judgment, like an undercurrent.
And out of the midst of it all come a people, a holy people, not sinless, but belonging to God, and redeemed by him, belonging to him.
How apt, then, is God’s declaration of his name in Ex 34:6f. His name is Justice and Mercy. Blind, perfect, unbending Justice, and generous, abounding, unending Mercy.
Your eye shall not pity…
Andrew Compton said
MG, like always – you’re the man!
Mike G. said
No, no, you da man!
efwakemazzizle said
Preach it brother Mike…