Ariana deVries
Well, welcome to the podcast everybody. I am your host Ariana, and I am very excited to chat with Pete Enns today. Welcome, Pete!

Pete Enns
Thank you so much.

Ariana deVries
Yeah. So you are a Bible scholar and theologian, and a professor and prolific author. I've read a several of your books, and they have been very inspirational, but also key in my faith journey. So thank you very much for that.

Pete Enns
Yeah, you're welcome. Definitely.

Ariana deVries
Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about yourself. You currently live in Pennsylvania with your wife and I believe that you are a grandfather as well.

Pete Enns
I am. Two times over now. So yeah, we live outside of Philadelphia, which is close to where Eastern University is in suburban Philadelphia. I'm a little bit further north. But yeah, and we've been living here for 20 some odd years and before Eastern, I did some work for Biologos, which some of you may have heard of, sort of science faith kind of thing. And I also taught seminary for a bunch of years, about 14 years. So yeah, I've been doing this Bible stuff for a while. Kind of still trying to figure it out. And that's fine.

Ariana deVries
Isn't that part of the joy of it? The continual learning and discovering about what it all means?

Pete Enns
Oh, yeah, definitely. And teaching undergrads there, too, just in the act of trying to internalize and teach these things. You just keep seeing angles that you haven't seen before, but others have seen. I think it's pretty cool. So it's a gift that keeps on giving. It doesn't get old. That's really it for me. It's not the same old thing every semester, even teaching the same book. Like every spring, I teach Genesis to the seniors who are in a Bible and theology major and you always see something different. They see different things, you read different things, different books or articles and things. The people have seen so much in these stories that, like I said, it doesn't get old, there's always something to learn if you're keeping your eyes and ears open.

Ariana deVries
Yeah, right. And having different students all the time would also bring different perspectives, right?

Pete Enns
Absolutely. Yeah. And they do they, they definitely have different perspectives. So how dare they, but they do they do so, um, and that's great. You know, cuz I don't think I have all the answers to life's questions. And sometimes the questions that people ask actually take you to a different place than you're used to being, you know, because I have my own sets of questions, but they may have others that I hadn't thought about, and that sort of takes you down this road, this journey to looking at things from a different angle, and I think that's great.

Ariana deVries
Yeah. So then what first got you interested in theology and hermeneutics? Also, can you explain to me what hermeneutics means?

Pete Enns
Sure, hermeneutics is just a million dollar word for Biblical interpretation of any kind. And so, biblical hermeneutics has to do with how you interpret. It's a little bit different than another word - exegesis - which has to do with reading the text and here's what it means. Hermeneutics is different. It's like one step behind that; like your approach to how you interpret the Bible. An example of a hermeneutic might be a literalist hermeneutic; a literal way of reading the text. That's an approach to the text, that's a hermeneutic. And others may be more, let's say, have symbolic ways of reading it, or metaphorical ways of reading it. And that's also a hermeneutic. That's sort of a posture or an attitude toward the text and that's where all the arguments happen. Really. It's not how you interpret it. It's what's behind how you interpret. Oh, yeah, that's an important thing, you know, to be become self aware of what it is you're doing and why you're doing it.

Ariana deVries
Hmm. Yeah.

Pete Enns
That's sort of going down the rabbit hole at that point, but I think it's necessary.

Ariana deVries
Yeah. And why did you get into that?

Pete Enns
Why did I get into this? I've been asking myself that question for a long time. I think...I was raised in a Christian home, loosely considered. My parents were immigrants from Germany. We didn't like go to church all the time. I wasn't raised in evangelical or fundamentalist or anything, but we were confirmed, my sister and I, were confirmed Lutheran in like junior high school, and then in high school I had a conversion experience in a Nazarene church, where I used to live in New Jersey, outside of New York City. And one thing led to another and I started getting curious intellectually about my faith, especially after college. I just realized that I just don't really understand this thing that I say I believe in. And then that made me want to read. And I just kept reading anything that had to do with the Bible or the Christian faith; like church history or biblical interpretation, theology, philosophy, anything that had to do with that. And I was never a big reader in college. This was sort of like an intellectual awakening for me, because I really wanted to understand.

That eventually led me to seminary and I was in seminary for four years. And during that time I didn't go with a clear idea of here's what I want to do. I was just really curious and I wanted to engage questions and think about them. And about halfway through my four years I landed on the the desire to do a PhD in Old Testament studies in some form. And you know what happened two years later, than I went to graduate school and learned a real different way of thinking about some things that made just instinctive sense to me. Compared to, let's say, the more conservative traditional approach that the seminary took where I was a student, and all that just it was just like, discovery after discovery or awakening after awakening, not exaggerate, but I felt that way like, “Oh my goodness, gracious. That's why they say this. I was always told they were the bad guys. This makes perfect sense. I get it.” And it was like alll these doors are opening and it was thrilling. It wasn't really frightening. It was a little unsettling at times. But all in all, it was a very positive thing to just have a sense of like, I think I know what's going on in this book better now than I did a few years ago.

Ariana deVries
Yeah, I guess that would make you want to share that with other people too, right?

Pete Enns
Yeah. And not everybody wants to hear it. But that happens, too. But yeah, definitely. And then by that time I knew that I'd want to teach when I was in graduate school. But yeah, it's fun teaching things to students who want to learn too, and you sort of walk them through the paces. You can't reproduce your own life in students. Because I've been at this a lot longer. I mean, I started doing this 10 years before they were born, so I can't expect them to catch up. And that's not the point. The point is more to expose them to things that are how a lot of learned people think about some of these issues in the Bible. So that, you know, they don't in their 40s, email me or whatever, we're going to be doing 20 years and say, Why didn't you tell me any of this stuff? Why did you leave me In the dark, you know, they'll watch a special on cable TV about the Bible, like Christmas time or Easter time, they always come out like on the History Channel and things like that.

Ariana deVries
Yeah.

Pete Enns
And they look at things from the point of view that's not trying to defend the Bible or not trying to be traditional, but just talking about scholarly approaches. And that can be really challenging for people who have never heard of it before. And I don't think I'm doing my job as a professor if I leave students in their comfort zone, but I have to try to draw them out of it without making them feel as if they have to reject their whole lives up to this point, because they don't have to do that either.

Ariana deVries
Yeah. So then you said that you were raised in a Christian family. And you have, sounds like, varying experiences with church. So how did that affect your belief system and like what you decided to...when you decided to pursue theology and things like that...umm. Yeah. Can you tell me more about that?

Pete Enns
Definitely. I think this is more of an issue when you know, people come from somewhat traditional backgrounds. I was never a fundamentalist. And you know, I don't mean fundamentalism in a negative way. I just mean it more in a descriptive way. I was never really a biblical literalist, or anything. I wasn't raised that way. But I, I did a lot of my education did come within the world of evangelicalism or traditional forms of Christianity. Yeah, Calvinism, for example. And, you know, that was sort of where I cut my teeth, but then you sort of leave that nest and you go fly someplace else. And then you find new ways of thinking and like you said before, you sort of want to share that and you're sort of excited to talk about it and think about it. But you know, not everyone else is and that's that's sort of the the challenge that people liked. Me. And there are many, many, many, many people like me who went to, let's say, traditional seminaries and then went off to a research university to do studies in the ancient Near Eastern world or Mesopotamia that involves the Bible. And it's hard to sometimes come back to where you were. And if you do, there's sometimes a lot of tension because you're seeing things that maybe the president or dean don't see. And they couldn't be expected to see because their field is business or chemistry.

Ariana deVries
Right.

Pete Enns
Right. So then it becomes a really difficult navigation sometimes to how can you be a part of that community without really thinking the same way they do? And sometimes from like, from my point of view, that's easier, I think, than it is from their point of view because they're trying to protect the community. Yeah, and that that can be really difficult and it's it's not easy and you know, I've had my own moments. My life where I've, you know, had to navigate that and make some difficult decisions.

Ariana deVries
Right. I feel like that as well in my church experience, too, because I grew up in an Evangelical Church. But then I started wondering and asking questions, and then it's like, okay...

Pete Enns
Yeah.

Ariana deVries
How do we reconcile this? And so yeah. You've said before that "Church is too often the most risky place to be spiritually honest". How do you think that Western evangelicalism has affected our views and understanding of the Bible? And how do our churches hinder us from being spiritually honest?

Pete Enns
Yeah, I mean, that's a huge question. But I think, you know, it's, this is this is very much a cultural thing. And that's the thing we have to remember it's not about being biblical or not. It's about how people are biblical within certain cultural influences and frameworks and you know, people have written a lot about this and they know much more than I do. But, you know, you can trace things back to, you know, America is different than England in this respect. And I don't know. I mean, the Canadian scene I'm not as familiar with, but I imagine there are analogous things that happened in America where, you know, people came over and they settled here, and there's no state church. So that's basically the Bible and the further west, you move. You take the Bible with you, you don't take a like a ecclesiastical hierarchy. In other words, there's no there's no church telling you what to do. So the authority is the Bible. Right? And Mark Knoll, for example, as a church historian, he's written about this. I'm just riffing off of what he said.

But, the thing is that the Bible has been set up in American culture to sort of be, to put it in delicately, sort of like a paper Pope that is right here in writing. And it's clear because God said it. Okay. But then enter the 19th century and you have things like, Darwin, and the rise of biblical archaeology that found and continues to find all sorts of interesting things that help us understand the Bible better, but also show how much the Bible and the stories in the Bible are part of the ancient world, and how the stories of the Bible mirror are parallel or echo older stories from a Syria or Babylon or Egypt or some other places.

And I think... see, that to me is the beginning of the serious tension between what came to be called the Modernists and the Fundamentalists. The Modernists are saying, "We have to engage this stuff". The Fundamentalists are saying, "No, we don't because it's just hurting the faith". And that battle has been around since, you know, at least the mid late 19th century, if not before in America, and we're still into the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925, in Dayton, Tennessee, that was, that was sort of the crowning moment for the American religious consciousness that it's come to this, you know, are we going to teach the truth of the Bible in schools? Or are we going to listen to this newfangled theory called evolution? And I think a lot of our country is still sort of responding to that. And it's been almost 100 years now. And you can see the effects of it just out there. When you have denominations called Bible something or other right Bible Church and it's holding on to the Bible. You have Bible colleges and you have seminaries that are very conservative and many of them were born out of that conflict, and sort of that helps set the DNA. So you have conservative Christian colleges, conservative seminaries that were responding to this threat of the modern world. And it's part of our DNA. And it's very polarized. It has been and continues to be, and it's a shame. But I think it's a phenomenon. It's not that we know the, again, not to be crass about it, but it's not that the conservatives are sort of the "normal" Christians. And this is what people have always believed back to Moses. That is also a cultural phenomenon, conservative American Christianity fundamentalism. And, you know, the more liberal side too, that's part of cultural movements and things being shaken up. It's just that different groups have responded to these things differently. And, like I said, that hasn't stopped, I think, that's still going. Hopefully things are moving in a less tense direction. And maybe people can talk more about these things. But I think it comes from that. I think really you can point to the last 150 years or so in American history and see how things just started happening like this. And they're still happening.

Ariana deVries
Right. Yeah. And like I said before, I did grow up in an evangelical church. We call ourselves nondenominational, but it's very much evangelical. And I have been a part of that experience of not really knowing how to be spiritually honest about the questions that I have, and the thoughts that I'm having about pretty much everything in regards to church and the Bible and big life questions. So...what...Like, do you have encouragement or like tips or pointers for people who desire to push back against this a little bit? Like, to start questioning, but they don't know how to start?

Pete Enns
Yeah, I think a lot depends on the context that people are in. Because, I mean, I won't lie, it's really hard to maintain a community - to be a part of a community that you're used to being a part of.

Ariana deVries
Yeah.

Pete Enns
When, like you said, the questions are not...questioning is not a normal part of the faith.

Ariana deVries
Right.

Pete Enns
It's what people who don't have faith do. So when you start asking questions, there's something wrong with you.

Ariana deVries
Yes, exactly.

Pete Enns
If that's the context that you're in, it's hard to start asking questions. And you know, what I found true is that people in churches like that they want to stay because there's a beautiful community there. And know the kids are happy and all those are good reasons to stay in a church, I think, but they sort of bond with others in the church who feel the same way and have the same experiences and also want to talk about it or maybe are a bit dissatisfied because they can't ask questions that they want to ask; and not just ask the questions, but maybe even give tentative answers to those questions that will run afoul of what the Church teaches.

Ariana deVries
Right.

Pete Enns
And that's a really difficult place to be. And that's something that's been happening a lot the past 100 years or so. And we're in this, I think we're in a part of a shift culturally, and cultural shifts take a long time to shift, but we're living at the wrong time, Ariana. Like, you know, we should be living 100 years ago or 100 years from now things might be a little bit more different, but we're still living in those tension points where conservative churches and again, I mean this descriptively, not negatively, not as a poke, but a lot of what they do a lot of the reason for existing is to defend their tradition, not to engage it, not to dialogue over, it's to protect it because they know they're right. And for people who, for whatever reason, sort of wake up to the fact that there are so many other kinds of Christians in the world. And they think different things than we do. And I'm not really always convinced by some of the answers that we get to difficult questions in sermons or in Sunday school classes. You know, that's a difficult place to be. And sometimes the only way to navigate that is to leave.

Ariana deVries
Huh, yeah. Then I guess that would kind of tie into what I was going to ask. You wrote a book back in 2005 that didn't receive positive criticism. What was the result of that? Because you were just talking about how sometimes you may have to leave your community based on like the questions and things that you're asking. So what was the result of that? And did it affect your faith journey?

Pete Enns
Well, yeah, I guess. Yeah, I wrote this book called Inspiration and Incarnation, which was my attempt to sort of crystallize things that I was teaching at the seminary where I was at the time over several years, and to try to like move forward with things like taking the historical context seriously affects how we think about the Bible, but we need to do that. And it wasn't well received by everyone in our community, mainly from the people that matter, the people that sign paychecks and things like that. But it was, I mean, it was very positively accepted elsewhere. You know, it's still selling, it's still, I think, helping people but that's not the point. The point is that within that community, it was seen to be disruptive by some and it was a very difficult time for me because my job was on the line for several years after the book came out, and I wound up finally leaving about three years later. And it was, you know, just prompted by people who had different visions for what the school was supposed to be, which is really what it comes down t; it’s the same thing with churches, you know, when churches disagree. People in churches disagree about matters of theology or church teaching. The battle really is who gets to tell the narrative of the church, who gets to tell the narrative of your family? Who gets to tell the narrative of this institution? And all these things are connected, you know. Things that happened in institutions are analogous to things that happened at the home or happen in churches. That's really what it was.

So I left and, to be honest, when I left I was so happy. It didn't affect negatively anything in my life. It was actually beautiful in that way. Free and I didn't really have a job, but I didn't need one right away, you know what I mean? So there’s always severance packages, things like that. So it was a time to just sort of finally have people not tell me what to think. And it was a very freeing time. But what I found was that about maybe six or eight months later, everything came crashing down on me because with no one giving me the parameters, this is what you must believe, you sort of go along with things without always being conscious that you're just going along with it. I became very conscious of the fact that without anyone telling me what to believe I heard this little voice inside of me saying, “Okay, Pete, so what do you believe?”And my answer was, “I don't have the foggiest idea what I believe.” Everything from like, not just fine points of theology, but does life have any meaning? And does God even exist? And what does it even mean to say God exists? And so it was a time thatI look back on and say, “This was really formative for me”. But it was difficult to have your entire life narrative almost erased, which a lot of people have felt, right?

That was hard for me. I call it my atheist phase, but I don't say that to be sort of snarky about it. It was a period of time where I did not know where this was going to end. And I remember just lying on my sofa - this all this started like maybe February, March, April of, I can even tell you the date it was 2009 through the summer and into the fall - and I remember lying on my couch, just saying, “I'll never sing a Christmas hymn again. Because I don't think I believe any of it.” It was really unsettling for me. Later I learned language like the dark night of the soul where everything seems distant and God is nowhere to be found. And I found that to be good language for me. I also learned that those are the times when God might be closer than you think. Because what you need is a reset. This is all in hindsight, you know, but I came to sort of understand that time period as - not God was distant, but the God that I had in my imagination was no longer working.

Ariana deVries
Right.

Pete Enns
And it was time to take a further step forward. And the only way that happens is with some pain, I think. The pain of losing everything and things being very, very dark, and coming into contact with people who had suffered in other ways and had entered a different kind of way of thinking about the nature of Christian faith a little bit more contemplative, a little more intuitive. I'm an intellectual person. I have a PhD, I teach this stuff, right. So that's my sweet spot is the whole left brain thing. But the right brain intuition, and the silence, and the need to not know, you don't have to know, but the realization that you can't actually exhaust God in your mind. And I probably had been thinking for much of my life that I'm sort of doing that. I would never say that. But deep down, I think that's what was happening. So for me, all that negative stuff was a necessary, almost purging experience to go through that has made me a little less fretful about whether I'm right or not, and not needing to correct other people; not looking as much at least for theological debate. That kind of thing. So, it definitely affected me. But I think at the end of the day, for the better, I can't imagine now, had I continued on that old path, I can't imagine what I'd be like, probably even harder to live with than I am now. You know.

Ariana deVries
And knowing your personality a little bit - you are an Enneagram type six, correct?

Pete Enns
Yeah, yeah.

Ariana deVries
Yeah. So I feel like...[Laughter]

Pete Enns
Is it that obvious? Sorry. [Laughter]

Ariana deVries
Well, I've been a part of Evolving Faith. So I've heard you talk about it.

Pete Enns
Okay. [Laughter]

Ariana deVries
But also, I do understand the Enneagram. So yeah, a little bit obvious.

Pete Enns
Yeah. [Laughter]

Ariana deVries
But, I feel like that would have also been a huge factor into that whole process, in that whole journey with all of a sudden your safety and security is gone, right?

Pete Enns
Yes, absolutely. And the thing is, you know, I wonder how I would have processed all this had I been more self aware of just who I am.

Ariana deVries
Yeah.

Pete Enns
That's self knowledge. And, you know, it's since then that I've gained some of that knowledge and, obviously, acting out of fear; a fear of losing things. And I stayed there longer than I should have. And deep down, I was pushing down impulses to just leave, because of being afraid of not knowing what was ahead of losing security. I'm not ashamed of that. That's just me, and that's what was at work in me. And I think part of this has helped me to become more self aware, which is a nice thing. Well, sometimes it's a nice thing, but you know, it's good to know yourself.

Ariana deVries
Yeah. Right.

Pete Enns
And how people don't know themselves very well, typically, and we react out of things and we get angry quickly. And we have we get into these debates over dumb things. And that tells us more about our own selves than it does about anything else. To be aware of that as a gift.

Ariana deVries
Yeah. Well, I'm an Enneagram type nine. And so...

Pete Enns
So what's that? Explain. What's the nine? Is that the bad one?

Ariana deVries
The what one?

Pete Enns
Is that the bad one? That number?

Ariana deVries
No, no.

Pete Enns
Okay.

Ariana deVries
Well, that's like the peacemaker, the peacekeeper type.

Pete Enns
Okay. Okay.

Ariana deVries
Sarah Bessey, she's also a type nine.

Pete Enns
Okay, that's cool.

Ariana deVries
So, for me, I can tend to be scared of the conflict that might come with asking these questions. So I've been learning to just ask them anyways, and even if I feel angry about things, because that's also part of who I am; to just be okay with letting it out and to be okay with not being sure about these stories in the Bible that don't make sense to me, but to talk through it, and to share that with people instead of not talking because I'm scared of what they're gonna think about it.

Pete Enns
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I definitely understand that indirectly, yeah. But because I know many people in my life are like that. And, you know, my way of processing it... See, this is so helpful to know how people process things, right. But my way of processing is so different that people say to me, “You're so brave to stand up for what you think is right”. I'm like, brave. That had nothing to do with it. I'm not brave. I just don't know what else to do. I can't wake up in the morning, I didn't wake up in the morning and say, “I will be courageous today and stand up for what I believe”. I just write. I just see something, and I can't help but articulate it. And I don't even think of the consequences. I just say, “This is great. Come on, follow me”. A therapist I had years ago, he said, “That's sort of a prophetic archetype, that you sort of see something and you want to move toward that. You want to wave people along with you to see that.” As opposed to like a pastoral or a shepherding archetype that might be more concerned about doing that more gently in a more measured way or something like that. So, we all process differently and I think if the church, whatever church you go to, was also more aware of different ways of processing the world, we might have fewer problems. People wouldn't have to feel like “I have to leave”. But then we just use the Enneagram numbers against you. “Oh, that's just a nine.” “Yeah, they’re just a seven.” “There goes Pete again, he's a six. Don't listen to him”.

Ariana deVries
Instead of actually understanding what people are trying to say.

Pete Enns
[Laughter] Right.

Ariana deVries
Yeah. So you had mentioned that you went through that period of time where you were like, really questioning and basically didn’t know if God was real.

Pete Enns
Yeah.

Ariana deVries
You asked this question in your book The Sin of Certainty. "When the dust clears and in the quiet of your own heart, what kind of God do you believe in? Really? And why?" So, you currently call yourself an agnostic, Christian? Correct?

Pete Enns
I think everybody's an agnostic Christian, frankly, at the end of the day, but yeah.

Ariana deVries
So then how would you answer your own question? And what does that actually mean to be an agnostic Christian?

Pete Enns
Well, for me, it's just another way of saying what so many people have recognized throughout history that when you talk about God, the word mystery has to be right up there in front of you. But that we actually don't know. In the same way we know other things about God, right? We don't. I mean, I know that I'm speaking to a microphone right now.

Ariana deVries
Yep.

Pete Enns
I'm staring at my laptop. I know those things. I also know that my wife Sue is in the other room right now. I know that. Now do I 100% know? No. She could have evaporated. She could have been, you know, beamed up by aliens, but I'm pretty darn certain she's in the next room reading or something or playing with the dog. So I know those things, but we cannot know God in the same way. Knowing is not a primarily intellectual exercise, but it's a full body experience; it's intuitional, it's emotional. And that, to me, is a way of answering that question. What is God to me? God is mystery. And I absorb, and I intuit, and I experience God. And my intellect sort of comes along for the ride.

So for me, I mean, the way I've put it in other contexts is that I've learned to honor my head without living in it. And I am who I am. You know, I like asking questions. I like reading articles with big words in it and trying to understand what the Bible is doing and that's that's my profession. But that can be exaggerated to the point where you think that is to solve the mysteries of life, and that is the fallacy I think, of sort of a hyper rationalistic modernist way of thinking that we can control the universe; we can figure everything out. Well, what if you know what a lot of theologians or Greek Orthodox theologians are right that God is the very ground of being, God is being that changes the game a lot for it's not like God is an object out there that I can sort of analyze, but God is beyond all that. And we cannot analyze God as we would a distant planet or something like that. And for me, that just, that's a relaxing thing. And I'm very happy to sort of leave it at that at this stage in my life, who knows what will happen in a few years, but that's where I am now and I have been for a while. I'm just very Very happy to just to just let it all be, and not try to figure it out. What I try to figure out as the Bible, which is a very different thing. Yes, the Bible is not God.

Ariana deVries
Right.

Pete Enns
And that's confused a lot, I think. And, you know, sometimes when I say, when I'm speaking places, and I'll say something about biblical interpretation, like I don't think Moses wrote the Pentateuch or something like that, and they'll say, “You're attacking the faith”. And I said, “No, I'm just attacking you”. You have to understand that when you say you're attacking the Bible, I'm not attacking the Bible. I might be attacking what you think of the Bible, but those aren't the same thing. And that's certainly not what God is like. So I'm sort of like two or three layers removed from the analysis of God, which is very different than the analysis of text.

Ariana deVries
Right, and I feel like we can often put the Bible as like the fourth member of the Trinity.

Pete Enns
Yeah. [Laugher]

Ariana deVries
We hold it like in such a holy place that we actually miss so much of what it's actually trying to tell us.

Pete Enns
Right. Right.

Ariana deVries
And like life is full of paradoxes. So why can't our faith and the Bible and God also be part of that too? Right?

Pete Enns
Well, it would have to be if, if we take mystery seriously then the paradox is a natural kind of place to be, which is really not what modern people like.

Ariana deVries
Right. They like certainty.

Pete Enns
They like certainty. And that's the problem again, with the cultural thing we were talking about earlier with, again, not to pick on evangelicalism, but I think it's largely true that evangelicalism in its history has been essentially modernist, looking for that kind of certainty and not really living in the reality of mystery of the faith. We don't know we live in paradoxes all the time. And those are bad things for this intellectually driven kind of faith. And the irony is that, you know, evangelicalism, I think is is fundamentally an intellectual exercise in terms of its system of thinking its doctrine, but yet it pushes away or explains away large intellectual strains of thought in order to do that. So it's sort of like quasi intellectual. It's very protectionist. And it brings in what it wants to bring in. But it doesn't always address evidence to the contrary very well. And it's easier for me to do that now. Because I say, “I don't know. And this is paradoxical. And I have reasons for believing in God that go beyond how this argument is settled right now. And maybe God's bigger than I understand. And that's fine.” You know.

Ariana deVries
Yeah. Life isn't as black and white as we think. Going back to the Bible, specifically, and the paradox of that. Some people believe that the Bible is like an unnecessary - not the Bible, the Old Testament - is an unnecessary part of the Bible, because of Jesus and the New Testament. So what are your thoughts about that? And how do you believe the life of Jesus affects the whole Bible?

Pete Enns
Yeah, I understand the point. There are places of tension between things we read in the old and things we read in the new.

Ariana deVries
Totally.

Pete Enns
But I think it's attention that has to be respected, and embraced and fundamentally, because Jesus was Jewish. That's a rather obvious point. But I mean, you might be surprised at how people react to that; well, not really just on the outside, but Jesus knew better. And Paul was thoroughly Jewish and neither Jesus nor Paul, were interested in eradicating the tradition of old. Paul especially may have pushed some things beyond where the tradition was. I think that's true. But both Jesus and Paul and the New Testament as a whole, recognize that there are what theologians call areas of continuity and discontinuity between the testaments. There are places where it's like, well, obviously what Jesus says makes no sense unless you understand that he's getting this right out of Jeremiah, or Isaiah or Deuteronomy or something like that.

Ariana deVries
Yeah.

Pete Enns
Likewise, Paul is so Jewish when he is interpreting the Old Testament, in sometimes very creative ways, to draw Jesus into it. That creative way of interpreting, that's a hermeneutic that we've talked about before. That's a very Jewish way of handling text. So, Paul would have been appalled at the thought that he would be considered someone to found a new religion.

Ariana deVries
Right.

Pete Enns
For Paul, it was a continuation of the Abrahamic faith. Now, at the end of the day, a lot of Jews probably most Jews disagreed with him because by the time you get to the second century, you don't have Christianity that's largely a Jewish movement with some Gentiles. Now, it's fundamentally Gentile. So historically speaking, Paul's argument was not convincing for many Jews, but irrespective of that fact, he was Jewish. And he was talking about how Jesus brings into focus and its true purpose, the story of Israel in the Old Testament, so just to read them to take these guys seriously, the gospel writers and Paul, you can't say, ”We're done with the Old Testament”, because they would have been horrified at the thought.

Ariana deVries
Yeah. Right. Because that's like the foundation of what they built their life on and their faith.

Pete Enns
Yeah, I mean, I would I think that's a fair way to put it. I might put it a little bit differently. I think foundation...it depends on what we mean by the metaphor, but I think the foundation was Jesus.

Ariana deVries
Right.

Pete Enns
But they were Jews who were believing in Jesus. And so...

Ariana deVries
...but it's still like that belief system, right?

Pete Enns
Yes, that's what I mean, it was the language that they had of their tradition.They never for one minute thought following Jesus meant giving up on Abraham.

Ariana deVries
Right.

Pete Enns
But what does it do with the law? Right? What does it do with eating kosher? And that's where it gets a little bit tricky because, you know, Paul rather famously said, “Circumcision - no. Dietary laws - no.” But the question is, who is he saying it to? And a lot of scholars think, and this makes sense to me, that he's really speaking to Gentiles at that point, and to Jews who want Gentiles to adopt Jewish ways. And so I think Paul is saying, and again not alone here, Paul is not saying none of this stuff matters anymore. Throw it away. It's wrong. He's saying Gentiles don't have to partake in that to be full members of the faith of Abraham.

Ariana deVries
Yep.

Pete Enns
As Gentiles, they can enter now. Jews, by all means, if you want to keep maintaining dietary laws and observing circumcision, that's not at all wrong. But what makes you a full child of Abraham now is faith in Christ.

Ariana deVries
Right. So do those things or don't do those things, but it doesn't actually make a difference.

Pete Enns
It doesn't make a difference, some of those things, but then again, Paul will quote the law in places, too. So in other words, Paul's not saying law is bad. I think what he's doing is actually moving Torah, the law, from the center of Jewish experience and trying to put a little bit more off center like in the periphery of it, and replacing Torah with Jesus.

Ariana deVries
Right.

Pete Enns
And that's what makes it eventually Christianity. Right? So because I think so much is gained for people, just normal people reading the Bible and thinking about this stuff, so much is gained by allowing the tensions to stay and not feel like you have to agree or disagree with the Old Testament on every point to be a Christian or not. There's some things that like I really resonate with and other things I don't. Like, God drowning everyone in chapter six of the Bible or God eradicating a population so his people could move into their land.

I have problems with that. I don't even try to reconcile that with a New Testament. It's just a different perspective. But there's so many things in the old that are just like lament Psalms, just the honesty of faith. That comes from the fact that this faith is the Jewish Israelites story. Hundreds and hundreds of years and a lot went wrong and still They have this whole tradition of an honest lament and complaint towards God, which the New Testament doesn't have, because these writers were well within probably, let's say, roughly a 40 year timespan, maybe 50 or 60 years, not enough time for things to go wrong. Plus you think Jesus is going to come back soon. There's no need for all this stuff. It's gonna come to an end very, very soon. And in that sense, I think the Old Testament...Christians today have more in common with the Old Testament, in that respect, than they do with the new, because we're living in a prolonged period of waiting [Laughter] for the cataclysmic some sort of apocalyptic end, whatever we want to call it. A lot goes wrong, and we have a lot of reason to lament and to question God and to feel abandoned by God.

Ariana deVries
Yeah.

Pete Enns
And that's important. That’s an important thing for the church to feel comfortable with.

Ariana deVries
Yeah. And do you think that the Bible then is more of a story and an expression of thoughts and feelings based on what they understood at the time, and less of a literal recounting of what happened?

Pete Enns
Yeah, I mean, that's pretty much where I am and have been for a while. I think the Bible is a collection of writings of people of faith. That is an expression of their faith as it's moving along history. But I don't think...people may disagree with this is; fine. But I don't think it's sort of God whispering into people's ears saying, “Now write this and write it exactly as I tell you.”

Ariana deVries
Yeah.

Pete Enns
Cuz we have to get this right. And you know what I tell people when this comes up is that if that's the intention of the Bible, and if that's the intention of God in inspiring the writers, then the Bible does a great job of covering that up, because you begin the Bible with the creation story in Genesis one than another one in Genesis two, and they can't be reconciled. You just lay them side by side, they're telling different perspectives or, you know, two different histories of Israel that are not really compatible. Whether it's Samuel kings on the one hand, or the books of Chronicles, on the other hand, and you have four gospels that tell a very similar story, but clearly, you have writers writing from a different perspective, and it seems baked into the text. Yeah, not to treat it as sort of like this easy to read rulebook where everyone agrees on everything. It's, it's very diverse. And that's the thing that the church gets to struggle with. It's a privilege to work through this stuff and read it and try to understand it and come to some understanding of what we're supposed to do. And that's not always obvious.

Ariana deVries
Yeah. So then the big question is...Do you believe the Bible is inerrant?

Pete Enns
Well, depends on what you think inerrant means. Typically, in our culture, it means that it's historically accurate, or it's always morally or theologically precise and accurate and has to be followed. And in that sense, no, I don't think the Bible is inerrant and the reason I don't think it's inerrant is because I read it a lot. And I just don't see that jumping off the pages when I read it. And so for me to like deny inerrancy is actually being for me being faithful to what I'm reading, rather than making something up. And that's important, I think. Okay, so for example. “Hey, Enns doesn't believe in inerrancy. So Enns. Does that make you an errantist rather than an inerrantist?” And now my response is like, “That's the wrong question to ask. You're already judging the whole matter by giving it those labels.”

I think the Bible is very diverse. And I think there are things that are challenged or things that biblical writers themselves challenge about other biblical writers. There are things that have changed in Christian theology and throw in Jewish theology while we're at it over the millennia, because people have said, “No, we don't think that this really reflects God”. I don't think the assumption throughout the entire Bible, frankly, that slavery is just something the way it is, and God makes laws about how to handle slaves. I don't think that reflects the mind of God that I see in the Gospel ultimately, and where the story is going.

And I'm not disrespecting the Bible when I say that. I'm just engaging it in my own world and with my own experiences and the experiences of many, many other people. You I think slavery is wrong. I think earthcare is good. You don't find that in the Bible. Right? So what do you do? So, we're always thinking about things for ourselves. We're always taking on the responsibility to work through what it means to believe in God here now. And the Bible actually shows us not the answers to those questions that we ask. But it shows us how earnestly people evolved. We're asking their own questions, and we're watching them come up with their answers to those questions. And that's a model for us.

Ariana deVries
Yeah. So and then if you view the Bible that way, but makes it valuable to you?

Pete Enns
Well, I think just that process, that the permission to be okay with not fully understanding God in your life. Yeah. And that's enough. I also think that it's not...Okay, I don't want to split hairs here. It's not whether the Bible is valuable, it's whether Jesus is valuable. And then the question becomes how does the Bible bear witness to this Jesus? Yeah, well, that's where the fun begins. Because people have different answers to that. But that's why I said before, you know, fundamental, the fundamental thing that drove the New Testament writers is really the experience of a crucified and risen Messiah. It's not the Bible. The Bible, of course, is a non negotiable partner for talking about it. But everything they said, was driven by their experience of faith, not by pure exegesis of the text. It's no different for us. And so the question is, how does the Bible function in forming faith? How does it bear witness to Christ? And the kick in the pants here is that it bears witness to Christ, but it bears witness to Christ in ancient idioms and ancient ways of thinking. That's why paying attention to the Bible, I think, is a very rewarding experience for this journey of faith that we're all on. But it doesn't function as a rulebook. And in other words, the value of the Bible, there's a value that remains, in fact may even be a greater value, when we'd not think of it as sort of like a very long, rather confusing at times, tedious, but nevertheless, fundamentally true rulebook that we have to decipher what is the complete blueprint for our lives? That to me is not a high view of the Bible. I think that's a low view of the Bible. That's not reading it for what it's worth. That's reading it for what we want out of it.

Ariana deVries
Yeah, exactly. Have you ever thought in all of your studying, probably learning that you might be wrong?

Pete Enns
Oh, gosh, yes. Yeah, that's sort of like the way that I say, “Oh, well. What do I know, at the end of the day.” But all I can do is as the person I am with my experiences and my thinking and my reason, the way the Wesleyan quadrilateral has, you know, my reason, my tradition, my experience, this is how I see things. And at the end of the day, if that doesn't translate into some type of better life, meaning, I'm more content, I'm more less prone to be angry with people or I'm really looking out for their welfare more than my own. All this stuff. The Bible sort of talks about humility, not pride. That's the end proof of all this for me, and that's why I try to keep those two things together very much. You know, what I think and what I do with what I think.

Ariana deVries
Yeah. And I think that's why some people may see you as being brave, because you're still going with what you feel is in your heart is right and not being afraid of asking those questions and digging into the hard stuff. And a lot of people don't want to go there.

Pete Enns
Yeah, and that's true. And that's why there are some people that go there.

Ariana deVries
Yeah.

Pete Enns
Right. And I could say the same thing about a whole lot of things where other people go that I don't go myself.

Ariana deVries
Right.

Pete Enns
So we sort of need each other a little bit. Yeah.

Ariana deVries
We need each other. Yep. Exactly. So ever gonna bring this to a close very soon, but I have a couple more questions. So for people who may be burnt out from the striving to do regular devotions and keep up with consistent Bible reading for the sake of their faith. What would you say to those who are struggling to love the Bible?

Pete Enns
Honestly, I would say, don't worry about it. And I don't mean that in a cavalier way. But I think sometimes people have to walk away from the Bible for a while because it's a source of trauma. And it's the Bible; it’s not God, and God understands. And sometimes we just have to sort of clean our palette. I feel the same way about church. I can't go to church right now. Then don't go. But what? God will be mad at me. How do you know God's going to be mad at you? Why are you not going? I just...I just can't. Okay. That's all right. Maybe find some other way to commune with God; get an app. [Laughter] I have this app that I listen to every morning. Pray As You Go. It’s Catholic. Hope that doesn't freak people out. But, you know, you can hardly tell; they're really nice people. But they’re like 10 to 12 minute little lessons that involve a little bit of musical interlude and time for prayer but listening to a Bible story from different angles a couple different times. It's sort of nice. I mean, I enjoy that. I feel very centered and connected when I do that. I miss it when I don't do it. But, you know, sometimes people have to find different ways of maintaining their own spiritual journeys that doesn't involve the things that they've heard their whole lives they absolutely have to do or God's going to be mad at them. Is God really going to be looking down on you because you missed church? Is that really what this is about? I hope not. I think if people make decisions like that with integrity, and with honesty and with some humility, I think it's all good. I think it's fine. And I think people should not feel guilty for where they are, because not being all that excited about reading the Bible or going to church or praying, that’s not necessarily going backwards. That could be, in fact I think it is going forwards as well. Well, where is it going to end up? I don't have the foggiest idea where it's gonna end up and neither do you. But one thing I do know is you can't play a game.

Ariana deVries
Yeah.

Pete Enns
You can't make believe you're not like that to look good for who? Yourself? God? Are you kidding me? oOr is it other people? It's rough. And see, that to me takes a lot of courage. That's a very courageous thing to do to say, “I'm gonna make a decision. I'm not going to go to church for four weeks.” And that four weeks may turn into four months. I know for some people, it's turned into years. But they're spiritually alive, too.

Ariana deVries
Yeah. I know I’ve experienced that.

Pete Enns
Because churches... Yeah! Yeah. A lot of people have. Church can hurt. And the thing is that, at some point, there are other churches out there, too, that are not the churches that we've experienced. And that's something worth finding. Because I do think it's really...this isn't intended for us to do all alone all the time.

Ariana deVries
Yeah.

Pete Enns
There may be a time where we need that. But I think at the end of the day, there are people around you. That is, you know, how you see God, more than just in yourself and in your mind.

Ariana deVries
Right. Community is so important, especially in that in between; that journey, that wilderness, whatever you want to call it. Yeah, to keep us grounded, I guess.

Pete Enns
Well, not just...I definitely agree with you. But others have said, too, that they can help you believe when you can't.

Ariana deVries
Right. That's a good way of putting it. Yeah.

Pete Enns
But that means you have to be in a community that's honest about the lament of the journey of faith. And that's the thing. The trick is finding that.

Ariana deVries
Yeah, those people you can be safe with.

Pete Enns
Right. Yeah.

Ariana deVries
I have a quote from you and then we will close. It says, “Reading the Bible responsibly and respectively today means learning what it meant for ancient Israelites to talk about God the way they did, and not pushing alien expectations onto text written long ago and far away.” I think that's a really good reminder for when we do pick up the Bible to read.

Pete Enns
Well, that was really good. Did I actually write that?

Ariana deVries
You did.

Pete Enns
Okay. Where was it?

Ariana deVries
The Bible Tells Me So book.

Pete Enns
Okay, good. [Laughter] No, I do remember where. I get mixed up sometimes.

Ariana deVries
Yeah, you've written a couple things.

Pete Enns
[Laughter]

Ariana deVries
Yeah. So, thank you so much for sharing some insight on your journey, what the Bible means, and how we can understand that better; bringing some clarity to places where people may need some understanding. So thank you very much.

Pete Enns
Well, thank you and I appreciate being on your podcast. It's been fun.

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