Peter Enns

Peter Eric Enns (born January 2, 1961) is an American Biblical scholar and theologian.

He has written widely on hermeneutics, Christianity and science, historicity of the Bible, and Old Testament interpretation.

Outside of his academic work Enns is a contributor to HuffPost and Patheos.

He has also worked with Francis Collins' The BioLogos Foundation.

His book Inspiration and Incarnation challenged conservative/mainstream Evangelical methods of biblical interpretation.

His book The Evolution of Adam questions the belief that Adam was a historical figure.

He also wrote The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It and The Sin of Certainty: Why God Desires Our Trust More than Our 'Correct' Beliefs.

Peter Enns was born in Passaic, New Jersey, (January 2, 1961) to German-American immigrant parents.

He grew up in River Vale, New Jersey and graduated from Pascack Valley High School (Hillsdale, New Jersey) in 1978.

He graduated from Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania (1982), obtained an M.Div.

Enns is married to Susan (1984) and has three children, Erich (1987), Elizabeth (1990), and Sophia (1993).

Enns's academic interests include Old Testament theology, Biblical Theology, Wisdom Literature (especially Ecclesiastes), the New Testament use of the Old Testament, Second Temple literature, and the general issue of how the historical context of the Bible affects how the nature of Scripture is understood within Reformed tradition and Evangelical commitments.

He has written many articles, essays, dictionary and encyclopedia entries, and book reviews on varied topics surrounding the Old Testament and its interpretation (see "Books" and "Articles and Essays" below).

from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (1989), and an M.A. (1993) and Ph.D. (1994) from Harvard University (Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations).

Enns returned to Westminster Theological Seminary in 1994 to begin his teaching career.

Among other duties, he served as Associate Academic Dean from 1998 to 2001, chair of the Hermeneutics (Ph.D.) Field Committee (1997-2000), and edited the Westminster Theological Journal (2000-2005).

He was tenured in 2000 and promoted to full professor in 2005 as a professor of Old Testament and Biblical hermeneutics.

He is also a member of the Institute for Biblical Research, where he served on the board of directors from 2004 to 2007 and the editorial board for the Bulletin for Biblical Research from 2002 to 2004.

Enns is currently the Abram S. Clemens professor of biblical studies at Eastern University (St. Davids, Pennsylvania).

Enns garnered significant attention for his 2005 book Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament.

His stated purpose for writing the book is “to bring an evangelical doctrine of Scripture into conversation with the implications generated by some important themes in modern biblical scholarship—particularly the Old Testament—over the past 150 years”.

Enns's primary audience is those readers who find it difficult to maintain their faith in God because “familiar and conventional” evangelical approaches often mishandle the challenges raised by modern biblical scholarship.

Enns writes that evangelicals commonly take a defensive posture to new ideas, and that such defenses are “exercises in special pleading, attempts to hold on to comfortable idea despite evidence that makes such ideas problematic.

It is precisely the ineffectiveness of certain ways of thinking about the Bible that can sometimes cause significant cognitive dissonance for Christians who love and want to hold on to their Bible, but who also feel the weight of certain kinds of evidence”.

Enns looks at three issues raised in modern biblical scholarship that he feels are mishandled by Evangelicals: (1) the strong similarities between the Old Testament and the literature of other ancient societies; (2), theological diversity among the Old Testament authors; (3) how New Testament writers interpreted the Old Testament in inventive ways that reflect Jewish practices of the time.

In all three cases, the Bible behaves in ways that don't seem very “inspired,” but rather very “human.” Enns argues for an “incarnational” understanding of the Bible as a way to take seriously these types of challenges.

This model draws an analogy between Jesus and the Bible: “In the same way that Jesus is—must be—both God and human, the Bible is also a divine and human book”.

The Bible is not “an abstract, otherworldly book, dropped out of heaven.

It was connected to and therefore spoke to those ancient cultures….precisely because Christianity is a historical religion, God’s word reflects the various historical moments in which Scripture was written”.

Enns feels that the problems raised by the “human dimension” of the Bible for many evangelicals “has less to do with the Bible itself and more to do with our own preconceptions” of how the Bible “ought” to be.

Enns advocates an incarnational model to help evangelicals reorient their expectations of Scripture and so come to peace with new developments in their understanding of the Bible.

Enns is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature and has served on the Wisdom in Israel and Cognate Literature Session steering committee since 2006.

His 2008 edited volume (with Tremper Longman III), Dictionary of the Old Testament: Wisdom, Poetry, and Writings (IVP), won the Christianity Today “Award of Merit” for 2009 and the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association’s “2009 Christian Book of the Year” award in the Bible Reference and Study category.

His publication of the book Inspiration and Incarnation led to institutional strife and the eventual loss of Enns's teaching position at Westminster Theological Seminary by 2009.

Enns was a senior fellow of Biblical studies with the BioLogos Foundation, a Christian organization that "explores, promotes, and celebrates the integration of science and Christian faith".

He wrote nearly 100 blog posts at the BioLogos Forum, "Science and the Sacred."

He also has written several pieces for The Huffington Post's religion section.

His 2012 publication, The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human origins, won the gold award in the Religion category of the 2012 ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Awards.

Enns has also contributed to a Bible curriculum for grades 1-12 Telling God's Story, and a book on the hermeneutical implications of the discussion between Christianity and science.

He has also taught courses at Princeton Theological Seminary, Harvard University, Fuller Theological Seminary, Eastern University, and Biblical Theological Seminary.