We philosophers at Tyndale University College try to regularly point out to students that taking basic courses in critical reasoning and logic can be immensely valuable—even for non-philosophers. In particular, students that plan to enter some type of vocational ministry or plan to pursue an academic career in biblical studies or theology really should become well versed in basic elements of reasoning. We stress this point because, unfortunately, we too often come across eminent scholars that have committed rudimentary errors in reasoning. Take, for example, Paul Enns. In his book The Moody Handbook of Theology, Paul Enns writes the following about covenant theology.

Even though my last post was also a critique of Peter Enns, I promise that this blog will be more than just an avenue through which I can critique Enns. However, I would like to say a few words about a post he wrote earlier this month, "Why I Don't Believe in God Anymore." I should start by saying that we shouldn't be worried about the title of that post. Even though Enns says he doesn't believe in God anymore, it's clear that he does. He just doesn't recognize that his trust in God requires believing in God. But we're getting slightly ahead of ourselves. Before we get to what's wrong with the ideas he expresses, let's take a look at them first.

Last week I had the opportunity to read a paper at the Northeast Region meeting of the Evangelical Theological/Philosophical Society. I got a lot of helpful comments on my paper and that alone would've made the trip worthwhile. However, the conference also featured two plenary sessions with very prominent scholars on a controversial topic and these sessions were very interesting. For now, I want to reflect a bit on the first session by Peter Enns in which he outlined why he no longer believes in a literal Adam.

According to Enns, discussions of whether there was a literal Adam must account for both the reality of evolution and the whole of biblical scholarship. Now in many respects one shouldn't be surprised at Enns's conclusion There was no literal Adam given his stated starting point for the discussion Evolution is true. Throughout his talk Enns regularly referred to the need for dialogue between biblical scholarship and various other disciplines. In this context, of course, that discipline is science, but one could pretty easily see how the point could be extended to psychology, sociology, history, etc. For what it's worth, I think Enns is right about this. In formulating one's worldview one ought to take into account all truths about this world, no matter the discipline from which they are acquired. However, what we'll see is that Enns appears to be committed to a problematic way in which that dialogue is supposed to proceed. Before we get to that, it may be helpful to consider a major concern that was raised at the conference.