Peter Enns and Westminster Seminary issued a joint statement that Enns will leave WTS effective August 1. I’m glad the statement acknowledges that Enns’ “teaching and writings fall within the purview of Evangelical thought.” It will be interesting to see where he ends up. The detailed official WTS documents expose a deep rift in the WTS systematic and biblical studies faculty. I suspect that this reflects a set of fault lines in Evangelicalism as a whole:
- between systematic theology, which offers a coherent system of doctrinal statements, and biblical theology, which has to wrestle with the diversity of sources that make up the canonical text;
- between systematic theology and practical theology, which has to relate the theological system to the plurality of circumstances that confront us in the real world; and
- between systematic theology, and pastoral / theological leadership, and the realities of professional life in a globalized, pluralistic world.
This isn’t meant as an indictment of systematic theology as a discipline. It’s important that the Church articulate propositional content about the Christian faith and maintain a sense of the tradition that runs back to the Apostles. But, I think we’re seeing a much better educated, much better traveled, much more socially aware generation of Evangelical Christians asking questions about things like how our understanding of ancient near eastern history, or the natural sciences, or the enormous diversity of cultures in the world, stretches our system in some places. In my view, that’s a good thing, but as the Enns situation illustrates, it can be difficult.