God's Words in Human WordsI’m in the home stretch of my reading of Kenton Sparks’s new book from Baker Academic, God’s Words in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Biblical Scholarship. In chapter 7 Sparks explores the various ways Christians have conceived and explained the divine aspect of Scripture. He spends a good deal of time on Calvin’s idea of accommodation. Like many scholars since ancient times, Calvin thought that Scripture as the product of an inerrant God must be in some way inerrant, yet he (like other ancients) observed that Scripture obviously and undeniably contains errant human views of science, history, and other areas, as well as diverse theologies. Calvin was content to affirm both some kind of inerrancy (though he never that word) and at the same time that the Holy Spirit sometimes adopted the human finitude of the human authors of Scripture. Calvin compared this to the way human parents simplify facts the know to be quite complex when trying to explain something to a small child.
Yet, Sparks notes, many conservative evangelicals today, because of their commitment to a modern, Enlightenment-defined kind of absolute inerrancy, are uncomfortable with any such suggestion of accommodation. He zeroes in on one particular objection:
If we admit  that current human perspectives sometimes appear in the pages of Scripture, does this not imply that our biblical interpretations lack something solid upon which  to find theological traction? What prevents Scripture from becoming a wax nose that one shapes and molds as one wishes? Could one not eliminate the testimony of an biblical text that one shooses simply by labeling ti “accommodation”? …[A]t this point let me offer a brief and straightforward response to the question. Every serious reader of the Bible manages to pursue theological coherence by  strategically picking and choosing the texts  that speak with greatest clarity and authority. We set aside on text that allows us to beat slaves (Exod. 21:20) out of deference for another that enjoins us to love others as we love ourselves (Lev. 19:18; cf. Luke 6:27). [Sparks gives several other similar examples.] In doing so we are navigating in an implict and sometimes unconscious way through the very real diversity of Scripture.
It follows that Scripture’s theological diversity is already implicit in all theological approaches to the biblical text, even in very conservative evangelical approaches. Accomodation is simply an explicit theological rationale for what we already do. It explains why the biblical texts that we subordinate as less complete or less accurate–such as those that permit slavery and those in which God changes his mind–ended up in God’s Word. These texts are, as tradition has suggested, God’s rhetorical accommodations to our human context and viewpoint. For the serious student of God’s Word, this reality does not make the Scriptures a wax nose, because the ultimate goal of interpretation is to hear God’s voice, not to make God say what we wish he would say. Nevertheless, it is undoubtledly true that some readers of Scripture will employ accommodation as yet another ploy for evading the authoritative reach of God into human affairs. This reality is unfortunate and even tragic, but there are no hermeneutical formulas that can prevent it. Admitting the humanity of Scripture’s authors does not negate the objective and authoritative voice of Scripture, but it does mean that Scripture’s authoritative words are best understood when we fully account for the humanity of its authors. Our readings of Scripture therefore find their theological traction in a God who never errs rather than in human authors who do. (pp. 256-7)
A recognition that something like the above is the way we must approach Scripture, even if we want to strongly affirm inerrancy, appears (it seems to me) at points in Richard B. Gaffin, Jr.’s recent small book God’s Word in Servant Form: Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck and the Doctrine of Scripture (a reprint with minor updates of a WTJ article from the early 1980s). The stated purpose of the book is to refute the assertion of some critics that Kuyper and Bavinck were not inerrantists. In his conclusion Gaffin states:
The Bible is without error. Since all error, unintentional mistakes, as well as deception, results from sin, it would be misleading at best to speak of errors in Scripture, either in form or content, in any sense. To find error in Scripture would be to fault its primary author an undermine his authority. The truth of Scripture is not notarially precise or scientifically exact. Ultimately, this nontechnical, impressionistic quality is appropriate to and explained by its unique divine authorship and specific, incarnate character, not the involvement and limitations of human authors. Unlike Kuyper, Bavinck does not speak of the errorlessness of Scripture. In the material we have examined he does not even use the word infallibility. But every consideration leads us to supposed that he would not object nor find it inappropriate to speak of the inerrancy of Scripture, provided that, like Kuyper, we understand that in an impressionistic, nontechnical sense. (p. 102, emphasis added)
Nowhere in the book (that I can find) does Gaffin explain or try to deal with the two major qualifications in bold above. To be fair, that would take him away from his main thesis. However, as they stand, they seem to me to allow for (perhaps even demand) the kind of honest accommodationism called for in various ways by Calvin, Kenton Sparks, and Peter Enns. I admit though, to being somewhat befuddled by Gaffin’s insistence that an acknowledgment that Scripture is “not notarially precise or scientifically exact,” while explained in part by its “specific, incarnate character,” this “incarnate character” has nothing to do with the “involvement and limitations of human authors.” I admit it may be my own human limitation, but I can’t make any sense of how those two statements work together. How does Scripture have an “incarnate character” yet without “human involvement”? What exactly, then, is its “incarnate character”?
 

15 Responses to “Sparks on Evangelical Objections to Accomodation in Scripture”

  1. garver Says:
    March 21, 2008 at 11:08 am

    With regard to your question, I suspect it’s a “from above” vs “from below” sort of distinction, intersecting with an ordo essendi vs ordo cognoscendi distinction.
    For Gaffin, the incarnate character of Scripture is a matter of the God’s manifesting himself in and through the human, not God’s raising up the already human into the divine. The direction is first God’s moving towards us, not God’s drawing us towards him, except as something that occurs within God’s prior move towards us.
    That’s to say, first of all, when we’re talking about the essential character of Scripture, we’re talking about the ordo essendi of Scripture. While we cognitively encounter Scripture as a contingent, culturally-embedded human artifact (in terms of the ordo cognoscendi), once we recognize it to be God’s own self-manifestation to us, we then know it as a divine word to us - God’s own word in human words.
    But when some views of Scripture speak in terms of “accommodation,” they seem to primarily think in terms of God’s taking up flawed and limited human strivings towards God, with all their errors and misconceptions, as a vehicle of divine disclosure. Not only the ordo cognoscendi, but also the ordo essendi, with regard to Scripture, is seen as essentially “from below.” The fact that God remains partly hidden within such self-disclosure by its sheer humanness can even be given value as a disclosure of transcendence. But that leans in a neo-orthodox direction.
    An incarnational model, on the other hand, suggests that the humanness of Scripture remains essentially posterior to and in service to the divine. Scripture is about God’s moving towards us, coming into a humanity that he prepared suitably for himself as the vehicle and medium of his self-manifestation. The ordo essendi then is “from above,” even if our apprehension of it comes “from below.”
    Perhaps there’s a better way of expressing all of this, but I think this must be the sort of distinction that Gaffin has in mind.
    For what it’s worth, I think Enns is actually on the same page as Gaffin here, even if occasionally his language might suggest otherwise.
    I’d be interested in knowing whether Gaffin explains or defends his premise that “all error, unintentional mistakes, as well as deception, results from sin.” I find that to be an interesting contention.
    Is it really the case that, say, unfallen humanity would be free from all error and mistake? That the progress of knowledge would not proceed by trial and error (or is that using “error” in a different sense)? What sort of epistemology does that presuppose? Does that apply to “practical know how” as well as “propositional knowledge”?
    There’s a whole host of questions and assumptions packed into Gaffin’s sentence that could be teased out and explained. I think Gaffin’s premise is defensible (and I happen to agree with it, rightly qualified), but it’s a much trickier matter than one might think.
  2. Foolish Sage Says:
    March 21, 2008 at 11:30 am

    Garver wrote:
    “Is it really the case that, say, unfallen humanity would be free from all error and mistake? That the progress of knowledge would not proceed by trial and error (or is that using “error” in a different sense)? What sort of epistemology does that presuppose? Does that apply to “practical know how” as well as “propositional knowledge”?”
    I think that this question of what we mean by “error” is the all-too-easily-overlooked fundamental question in what we mean by “inerrancy.” If, for example, we acknowledge that the cosmology presented in chapter one of Genesis is not scientifically valid (from our modern perspective), does that necessarily mean that it is in error? Or is it simply the view of the universe that “worked” at the time the Old Testament was being formed?
    We can fret all day about essendi vs. cognoscendi, but at the end of that day, it is still undeniably the case that the Scripture that God actually gave us contains many such affirmations that because of modern science and historiography we can no longer affirm as correct. So I don’t see any way out of some kind of accommodationism. Things such as the Gen. 1 cosmology are very human, time-contextualized points of view, and the Holy Spirit chose to include them in inscripturation.
  3. D G Hart Says:
    March 21, 2008 at 11:57 am

    Mark, I’ve still not figured out why Enns would appeal to the incarnation as a model of some kind for accommodation. He concludes that theology must be provisional and limited — never final — on the basis of its scriptural basis. In other words, because Scripture is diverse, our theologies need to be conversations; traditions interacting with other traditions openly and humbly.
    My question is, and maybe you can answer, that the doctrine of the incarnation stands as one of the least provisional and most definite articles of the Christian religion. Lives were lost over Chalcedon, churches excommunicated, conversations stopped. Why would appealing to the incarnation be a model for the kind of theological enterprise Pete wants? Even if you can’t answer for Pete, what about for yourself. The title of Pete’s book stands in direct contrast to his conclusion of provisionality. I wonder if you see that tension because you seem to be in sympathy with Pete’s call for openness and against narrowness.
  4. garver Says:
    March 21, 2008 at 4:13 pm

    Isn’t incarnation as a model and analogy of accommodation pretty standard, going back to the Fathers (Maximus and John of Damascus come to mind)? Certainly most of the secondary literature on Calvin’s doctrine of accommodation see it as tied to the incarnational analogy.
    So, it would seem the more pertinent question here isn’t so much one of, “Why the incarnation as an analogy for accommodation?” as it is, “How does the incarnational analogy entail the provisionality and limitedness of theological discourse, especially given the sharp contours of the orthodox doctrine of incarnation itself?”
    I’m not sure how Enns would answer that (and I don’t have his book in front of me to check), but it seems to me that one line of response would be to point out how the orthodox christology of Chalcedon, while clarifying some basic boundaries, also threw the sheer mystery and incomprehensibility of the incarnation into sharp relief.
    Since Chalcedon theologians have continued to wrestle with the character of the incarnation, what precisely Chalcedon means, and how the trajectories of Chalcedon might help us further fill out our theologies (e.g., the debate over monotheletism and it’s implications for synergism/monergism debates, how the incarnation functions as a eucharistic analogy, the implications of Chalcedon for how we conceive of the immanent Trinity).
    It is a fairly common notion in Christian theology that the greater the light of revelation, the more we recognize our own limitations and the more we are driven to humility about our own theologies constructed within the clarity of that light.
    So, it would seem that, on such a perspective, it is precisely the bright light provided by the least provisional and most definite articles of faith concerning the incarnation, that entails the all the greater provisionality and openness of everything that goes beyond that point.
    That, at least, might be one way of approaching the question.
  5. garver Says:
    March 21, 2008 at 4:32 pm

    Mark, hmmm, perhaps my point got lost amidst the verbiage. Here’s the brief version:
    You can have a “from above” sort of accommodationism or a “from below” sort of accommodationism, speaking in terms of ontology. Gaffin argues for the former, whilst some theologians prefer the latter.
    If one’s going to press the incarnational analogy, the former (”from above”) represents a Chalcedonian model of accommodation, whilst the latter (”from below”) is something more like an adoptionist model of accommodation.
    I’m not sure how to put it more clearly.
    At any rate, it doesn’t seem to me that settling the right way to conceive the analogy resolves the actual issues entirely, though it may draw the boundaries around possible acceptable resolutions in different ways.
  6. Craig V. Says:
    March 21, 2008 at 6:59 pm

    garver
    I thought I understood you until the reference to adoptionism. That seems to me to be taking the analogy too far. What I thought you were after was more something like this: Scripture is not the result of a process where God’s pure and perfect communication is combined with the limitations of human authors to produce something less pure and perfect. Scripture is, however, the result of God using human tools in order to say exactly what He wants. I suppose the difference would be something like the difference between making a black and white film because color hasn’t been invented or because black and white as a medium is a better tool for the film. Put another way, the Genesis creation account would not be improved if we re-wrote it to make it more compatible with modern science. The result of such a re-writing would be less than what God gave us.
  7. c bovell Says:
    March 22, 2008 at 9:51 am

    I am not sure I understand how readers can be so quick to ask of Sparks’ text, “Ok, so what precisely does this mean for my doctrine of scripture?” That may indicate that scripture has become too much of a pillar for the faith. I for one do not think we are in a position to begin formulating an answer to that question that can be offered to the next generation of believers.
    Sparks explains, “I have allowed Scripture itself to set the agenda for my theology of Scripture…
    If evangelicals are to join other Christians in representing Christ in the broader academy, then it will be absoulutely necessary for them to be honest–sometimes painfully honest–about the biblical and historical evidence, and about the direcetion in which this evidence points.” (355, 356)
    I hear Sparks and Enns (and even my book for that matter) saying, “Have you seen this evidence? Teachers and institutions have been programmatically turning blind eyes to it. Have you seen the kind of evidence the Bible itself is giving us?”
  8. D G Hart Says:
    March 23, 2008 at 7:35 am

    The project of reconciling church and academy is old and its teeth are getting even longer. For those who still think such reconciliation is possible and desirable I recommend the op-ed piece by R. R. Reno in the current issue of First Things. It is about James Kugel at Harvard, the man with whom Enns studied (I presume).
    Reno writes: “Kugel has spent his adult life trying to live as an Orthodox Jew and read as a modern scholar. It has not been easy. He sees that the modern tradition of scholarship does little to help him make sense out of the Bible that he chants as Scripture at synagogue. And yet he finds many results of historical study compelling.” Kugel believes that confronting biblical scholarship and retaining sacred Scripture can be done as long as you “keep you eye on the ancient intepreters.”
    And yet, Kugel finally concludes that “Modern biblical scholarship and traditional Judaism are and must remain completely irreconcilable.” Reno explains with the help of Kugel, “There is a spiritual parting of the ways . . . that separates ancient from modern traditions of interpretation. The old ways of reading involve ‘learning from the Bible,’ while modern critical approaches end up ‘learning about it.’ Ancient interpretation teaches us to live inside Scripture; modern reading keeps its distance.”
    Reno concludes this way: “These days it is plain to see that a modern tradition of interpretation does not train readers to hear the Word of God in the Bible, even in its darkest corners. One reads purely and proudly as an outsider. This sensibility, this interpretive stance, is irreconcilable with the path charted by ancient readers.”
    If modern scholars like Kugel can see this, and if modern believers sense this when reading books like Enns’, why do folks who advocate Enns continue to think that harmonizing modern scholarship and conservative Protestantism is possible and that no one should be upset with efforts at such harmonization?
  9. c bovell Says:
    March 23, 2008 at 8:08 am

    I don’t think it’s a matter of harmonization, or at least I’m not after harmonization. I can only speak for myself, but I just want people (my teachers) to admit to me candidly that historical scholarship has produced some results that can’t be explained away. In fact, the results seem to be true and are in incredible tension with our tradition.
    That’s it. Where one goes from there is up to them. But don’t consistently turn a blind eye or tell me outright that historical scholarship is unbelieving and not true in order that the WCF tradition or whatever tradition can be perpetuated. I’d rather someone tell me the two truths belong to different spheres or should be invoked at different times in different places. I can’t seem to existentially bear the silence or on the other extreme the overly optimistic hope that all truth is God’s truth and there’s a place for all of this in one unifying schema. At the moment, I am finding that hope to be beyond my limit of credulity.
  10. Theological Mom Says:
    March 23, 2008 at 9:16 pm

    This is probably too long for a comment, but here goes . . .
    In invoking Kugel, it’s helpful to have some background on Orthodox Judaism. (My comments below draw heavily from the prolific writings of Jacob Neusner.)
    Historically, Orthodox Judaism has its roots in first century Rabbinic Judaism. The destruction of the Herodian Temple in AD70, and with it, the cult and sacrificial system, was catalytic and crystallizing in the development of what became Rabbinic Judaism. The Pharisees, who were more elastic in their handling of Scripture than either the Sadducees or Essenes, were instrumental in pushing forward with what they had left: the Torah. With memories of the Exile in the background, they derived an array of observances, rules, and behaviors from it using Levitical categories. These began to take on formalization at a pivotal gathering of rabbinic sages in AD90 at Jamnia, in Judea. There, they set the future course for Judaism as a religion of the synagogue with a prayer liturgy and a Torah focus.
    The definition of Torah is highly significant. Although specifically, Torah referred to the five Mosaic books, during this period where so much had been lost, Torah became the broadly comprehensive name for something much larger – an entire way of life. The Torah scrolls, which had pride of place in the synagogues, over time became themselves sacred symbolic objects. As the rabbis developed their system of religion, while Torah as Scripture remained nominally at the center, it was quickly joined by a rapidly stabilized inherited tradition with inherited hermeneutic principles which developed especially during the Second Temple period. These were deemed necessary to answer the questions that the Torah left unaddressed, an impetus which only grew in the absence of the sacrificial system. By the end of the first century, in this broad definition, Torah was well on its way to becoming a model for pleasing God as understood and mediated by an already significant historic chain of rabbis.
    Scripture for Orthodox Jews is a much broader concept than the Tanakh – the Jewish ordering of the law, the prophets, and the writings which comprise the Hebrew Bible. The Jewish Bible, and particularly the Torah (the five Mosaic books are in view here), form a cornerstone of Jewish belief, but ultimately more important than the Scriptures is the Talmud, that combination of the Mishnah, or Halakah, referred to as the “Oral Torah,” and the Gemarah, the commentary on the Mishnah. Although these were only committed to writing over a several hundred year period beginning in the late second century, they are based on an intricate history of oral tradition which purportedly extends back to Moses on Mt. Sinai. The Mishnaic traditions, though not yet committed to writing, had long had authoritative standing by the first century.
    Although their authority was based on their antiquity alone, a story of origins was developed over time that claimed God had given Moses the Oral Torah along with the written Torah. It’s been credibly suggested (by William Scott Green in a chapter of Jacob Neusner’s Rabbinic Judaism), however, that these traditions are best understood in light of the demise of the Temple, and were the actually the product of a politically ambitious and homogenous group of pseudo priests who were eager to develop something to replace the cult. By claiming divine origin for the Oral Torah handed down through the rabbinic establishment, this group suggested persuasively that holiness without a temple could be achieved for Israel by following them.
    Consistent with Green’s theory, the Oral Torah makes no internal statement of divine origin, prophetic significance, or validation as a text on par with Scripture, nor does the written Torah allude to its existence in any way. But, a restatement of the divine origin tradition of the “Dual Torah” based on Gemarah references to it in both Talmuds – Jerusalem and Babylonian – was elaborated fully in the ninth century letter of Sherira, which solidified the divinely authoritative stature accorded to the Oral Torah alongside the written.
    The content of the Oral Torah (the Mishnah) is a codification of details not contained in the Hebrew Bible. At its most basic level, this was transmission of the meaning of words – for example, the identification of plants named in Scripture with specific botanical species. This quickly grew, however to the association of Scriptural laws with certain customs and to include extensive interpretive information for application of the law in specific situations. As the number of rabbinic schools increased after the destruction of the Temple, a vast amount of new material was created as each sage introduced idiosyncratic understandings and formulations. Not surprisingly, new subjects were introduced that had little or nothing to do with Scripture. By the time of its codification, the Mishnah was so large that it required its own interpretation, and hence, the Gemarah.
    Recognizing that Kugel is dealing with the dual Torah as an Orthodox Jew puts a different spin on the comments made by Reno. Modern scholarship can’t help but challenge the notions included in the Oral Torah, which even occur in my summary above. That’s certainly one reason why Kugel favors the ancient interpreters. But understanding that Oral Torah is very much in his picture, the issues he’s struggling with are not the same as those discussed by Sparks, Enns, and other academicians who are trying to make sense of traditions about the written Scriptures themselves. They are reading the Old and New Testaments Christotelically, and testing the traditions about them against them. Modern scholarship is one of their tools.
  11. D G Hart Says:
    March 24, 2008 at 5:57 am

    C Bovell: I wonder if you are really content with no harmonization. Surely modern scholarship raises a host of concerns that challenge a Christian’s faith. Modern scholarship says that virgins don’t give birth, that men don’t rise from the dead, and that men who think they are god should at least be homeless. Surely you try to harmonize the Bible with these assured critical results. (I know I do.) If you think these too NT, how about the no-no of jihad and conquest in the OT. Modern scholarship sure has opinions about that.
    Theological mom: exactly, Kugel did not have to reconcile his scholarship with the first chapter of the Westminster Confession or recent evangelical writing on inerrancy. But you’re not really saying that reconciling scholarship and tradition is any less consequential for conservative Protestants, are you? If so, could it be a failure of imagination to see the dilemmas that modernity poses for all believers?
  12. c bovell Says:
    March 24, 2008 at 7:45 am

    Perhaps I should say harmonization is not a priority for me. I am content with as little harmonization as possible. Mr Hart, I detect in your remark an implicit dichotomy between accepting all of modern scholarship or none. Or perhaps your remark is a nudge, encouraging me to realize just how “unbelieving” critical scholarship can be. I admit that I am probably willing to concede much more to critical scholarship than most evangelicals but I am not sure what is gained by pointing out to me that I would not accept every postulation that modern scholars put forth; I don’t even think secular Bible critics would accept all that their colleagues are saying.
    Moreover, I protest conducting our conversation under the pretenses that this is purely a matter of “the Bible” vs “modern scholarship.” Implicit in this dichotomy is that “we” are on the side of the Bible. I believed this for many years but am now less inclined to interpret scholarly debates in this way, having found a number of evangelical scholars affirming various contentions that the unbelieving modernists have been making all along (e.g., Moses didn’t write the Pentateuch, there was no worldwide flood, the earth is billions of years old, there is little to no evidence for an exodus [NOT to say that the exodus didn’t happen, simply that we can’t say where or when]).
    Yes, critical scholarship presents challenges, but I am no longer going to insulate myself from interaction with it, much less declare a wholesale denial of its results, simply because I may have to rethink the faith. I can no longer go through the motions of pretending that all is well on the evangelical front while critical scholarship showing us true things about scripture that are in contradistinction with common evangelical beliefs.
    [Mr Hart, could you provide me with your email by sending me an email at j1234@closecall.com? I have something I would like to ask you.]
  13. Craig V. Says:
    March 24, 2008 at 5:35 pm

    c bovell,
    I’m not sure what you’re asking us to do beyond wringing our hands (forgive me for being a bit slow). For myself I think I can say that I’ve seen enough of the evidence to know that the problems are not trivial. You say you want people (your teachers) to admit candidly that historical scholarship has produced results that can’t be explained away. That’s an odd thing to ask of a blog. I can’t speak for your teachers (I’m quite sure they wouldn’t want me to) but I’m willing (as candidly as I know how) to admit that there are legitimate questions for which I lack good answers. What’s not clear is where this mea culpa is supposed to take me (or us).
    It seems to me that what’s needed is a structure that at least gives us a starting point for relating Biblical research to theology. Such a starting point will more than likely prove to be inadequate (the cost of attempting a constructive work), but we need to start somewhere. On another thread I suggested a built in tension (constructive tension?) between Systematic Theology and Biblical research. Ignoring either side of the tension leads to a collapse. If we ignore Biblical research we lose our connection to the Scriptures. If we ignore Systematic Theology we lose all Biblical content.
  14. c bovell Says:
    March 24, 2008 at 8:10 pm

    Craig V
    I didn’t have the blog in mind when I wrote what I wrote. I had more in mind what Mr. Hart was talking about: academic freedom. I don’t understand the problem as you do in terms of theology and biblical studies interacting more fruitfully. My grievance is with what material the evangelical academy (by which I mean evangelical and Reformed seminaries and universities) decides to present to its students and what it decides to keep from its students.
    See, I’ve always intuited from my teachers that historical scholarship–the “higher criticism”–is unbelieving and in its unbelievingness it did not want to handle the evidence correctly. Gradually I discovered–on my own, that is–that enough of the critical scholarship was in fact right all along–and good evangelical researchers are even admitting this–it just turned out that some academicians did not(and still do not) think people are ready to hear this. They do not know how to tell the church what scholarship has found. They are unsure how to begin preparing the church for the revelation that the unbelieving critical scholarship that we’ve been arming ourselves against all these years actually got not a few things right. The fear is that the faith will lose credibility. Well, by not telling the faith has lost a good deal of credibility.
    Personally, I have a real problem with the way this whole set up plays itself out(re: academic freedom).
  15. aboulet Says:
    March 24, 2008 at 8:37 pm

    The fear is that the faith will lose credibility. Well, by not telling the faith has lost a good deal of credibility.
    Very well stated. I believe the very same thing.
    Dr. Hart:
    why do folks who advocate Enns continue to think that harmonizing modern scholarship and conservative Protestantism is possible and that no one should be upset with efforts at such harmonization?
    I can only speak for myself (I have not read everyone who ‘advocates Enns’), but I do not see Enns seeking a harmony between critical scholarship and confessional orthodoxy.
    Instead, I see Enns dealing or confronting critical scholarship from a confessional standpoint. There are places, like c bovell has said, where critical scholarship has got things correct and need to be taken account of from a confessional standpoint. There are also things where critical scholarship has erred greatly. These errors are also taken into account by Enns and pointed out by him from a confessional standpoint.
    I know you probably don’t see Enns as confessional, but that is a conversation for a different context.
    The point is that Enns is not simply opening his arms to critical scholarship and accepting it while still attempting to hold onto the Confession.
    Rather he is working from a Confessional viewpoint and seeing how critical scholarship informs our understanding of Scripture. It is not a harmonization in that he is attempting to take all of critical scholarship and make it conform to the Confession. I don’t think it can, and I think Enns knows that. He is simply taking seriously the data we all have before us and seeking how to correctly and discerning understand that data from a confessional viewpoint.