How the Bible actually works is another challenging book by Peter Enns. While I find myself agreeing with many of Enns’ conclusions, I often struggle with his lack of confidence in the Bible’s historical content.
Enns agrees with much of today’s secular scholarship around the dating of biblical books, authorship and historical accuracy, which I’m less willing to do. However, from a spiritual perspective, this isn’t a major issue. The Bible we have is the book God wanted us to have and, as Enns points out we study it for wisdom, not history and not as a rule book. Enns’ main point is that the Bible is an “ancient, ambiguous and diverse book” that leads us to wisdom rather than answers. He believes this should be an encouragement to us as God wants us to engage in the process of spiritual maturity, rather than just accept traditional responses or shallow engagement with the Bible.
My other concern with Enns, and he freely admits this in the book, he can be very sarcastic. While this is sometimes amusing, at other times, it’s overdone and annoying.
Overall Enns has some excellent insights if you can cope with these other aspects of the book.
More reviews for this book can be found on Goodreads. More reviews of other Christian Non-fiction books that I have read can be found here.
