Frame on Enns; and the "Data" of Scripture

Here is a good article by John Frame on Pete Enns’ Inspiration and Incarnation (HT: Conn-versation). Frame, who was at WTS for many years and is now at RTS, is critical of Enns’ project, but not harshly so. For example, Frame states that

“[o]n the question of bias in historical writing, I largely agree with Enns. I agree that“there really is no such thing as objective historiography. It is certainly true that often Scripture doesn’t present narratives in chronological order. The standards of “historical” writing in the ancient world were different from our own. Evangelicals have generally recognized this.”

In his conclusion, he writes

I commend Enns for writing a very stimulating book, packed with useful, digestible information about Scripture and the literature of the Ancient Near East. His motive is to help the church to move away from a sort of over-defensive treatment of Scripture rigidly defined by a grammatical-historical method that Scripture itself doesn’t endorse. I applaud that as well. I do nevertheless disagree with the book more than I agree with it.

So Enns is not here the Devil incarnate. Too bad the discussion hasn’t had this kind of tone all along.

On the disagreements, Frame reveals a key issue — I think, the key issue — dividing the factions: he says Enns

shows an unwillingness, curious for an evangelical, to say anything about the relation of inspiration to historical factuality. When he speaks about “evidence” for this or that event, the evidence is always inductive, never an appeal to divine inspiration as evidence. Perhaps Enns thinks that inspiration is such an event that we may never appeal to it as evidence. I think that position is inconsistent with Scripture’s own view of itself.

The really divisive issue is about the historicity of some of the events narrated in scripture, particularly in the Old Testament, whether the Bible itself counts as a historical datum, and if so, the extent to which this is the case. Frame is a presuppositionalist, and so for him, taking the Bible as God’s inspired word means that Biblical narratives that present themselves as factual must be taken as factual and that other evidences must be interpreted in light of those narratives. If there appears to be a conflict between the Biblical data and data from other sources, we might find that we’ve misunderstood the text, but outside data can never falsify the text.

The accomodationist position, in contrast, says data outside the text can help us understand the meaning of the text even to the point of showing that God may have used a human writer to convey theological truth in making reference to narratives that are historically inaccurate.

The presuppositional inerrantist says, “the Bible says there was a worldwide flood, therefore there was in fact a worldwide flood. If data from the natural sciences show that there was no worldwide flood, perhaps we’ve misunderstood what the ancient writers meant by ‘worldwide,’ or perhaps the scientific data starts from incorrect presuppositions.” The accomodationist says, “the Bible says there was a worldwide flood but this is clearly contradicted by data from the natural sciences. Perhaps we’ve misunderstood what the ancient writers meant by ‘worldwide,’ or perhaps the ancient writers are referring to a tradition that is more fictive than real, which God employs for a theological point in scripture. It’s possible the natural sciences are mistaken on this, but the data are so strong that this seems almost impossible.” (I should be clear that Enns doesn’t say exactly this in his book; other accomodationists, such a Kent Sparks, say this sort of thing explicitly). This question of what sort of “data” scripture comprises, I think, is the hinge not only of the Westminster faculty debate, but of all contemporary evangelical debates about the precise contours of inspiration, inerrancy, and/or infallibility.

Personally, I find this a very difficult question. On the one hand, I lean towards Frame’s view. If scripture is God’s word, and scripture tells us some event happened, it seems to me that we are bound to confess that it happened. It is helpful that Frame and others in his “camp” acknowledge that the human side of scripture means our interpretations of the events scripture portrays must be provisional, and that extra-Biblical data can indeed help us see more clearly the kind of history scripture gives us, without giving up all historical referents. And it is important to remember that our ultimate posture towards God’s word is reverence and faith.

At the same time, I find Enns and other accomodationists helpful in pointing out in detail some of the ways in which scripture really is quite obviously human. It’s immensely refreshing to be able to “relax” a bit in the effort to figure out and defend how every Biblical story that seems strange to modern ears fits together with our much more detail-oriented scientific worldview. What a blessing not to have to invent a new pseudo-science and not to have to engage textual criticism and archeology in the fear that the Bible and the Christian faith might be proven untrue by the fruits of “secular” scholarship! What grace not to have to compartmentalize the way one thinks about truth and knowledge!

I guess I’d like to chart a middle course here. The Bible narrates key events in redemption history that, it seems to me, need to have an historical referent for the narrative to hold together: the fall of man, the flood, the exodus, the conquest. From the text alone, however, it is clear that these events are often presented in a highly contextualized way, appropriate to the unique literary conventions and genres used by the human writers of scripture. Moreover, modern approaches to scientific and historical knowledge, which have their own integrity, also shed light on the situatedness of the Biblical text. So, we shouldn’t press for an unworkable synthesis between the Biblical narratives and modern scientific / historical scholarship, nor should we reject scientific or historical-critical conclusions out of hand; but at the same time we should affirm a historical referent for Biblical narratives that purport to be offering real event in redemption history. This is my best effort right now to be faithful and truthful as an informed layperson. Thoughts?