Peter Enns

Controversial evangelical Bible scholar, popular blogger and podcast host of The Bible for Normal People, and author of The Bible Tells Me So and The Sin of Certainty explains that the Bible is not an instruction manual or rule book but a powerful learning tool that nurtures our spiritual growth by refusing to provide us with easy answers but instead forces us to acquire wisdom. For many Christians, the Bible is a how-to manual filled with literal truths about belief that must be strictly followed. But the Bible is not static, Peter Enns argues. It does not hold easy answers to the perplexing questions and issues that confront us in our daily lives. Rather, the Bible is a dynamic instrument for study that not only offers an abundance of insights but provokes us to find our own answers to spiritual questions, cultivating God’s wisdom within us. “The Bible becomes a confusing mess when we expect it to function as a rulebook for faith. But when we allow the Bible to determine our expectations, we see that Wisdom, not answers, is the Bible’s true subject matter,” writes Enns. This distinction, he points out, is important because when we come to the Bible expecting it to be a textbook intended by God to give us unwavering certainty about our faith, we are actually creating problems for ourselves. The Bible, in other words, really isn’t the problem; having the wrong expectation is what interferes with our reading. Rather than considering the Bible as an ancient book weighed down with problems, flaws, and contradictions that must be defended by modern readers, Enns offers a vision of the holy scriptures as an inspired and empowering resource to help us better understand how to live as a person of faith today. How the Bible Actually Works makes clear that there is no one right way to read the Bible. Moving us beyond the damaging idea that “being right” is the most important measure of faith, Enns’s freeing approach to Bible study helps us to instead focus on pursuing enlightenment and building our relationship with God—which is exactly what the Bible was designed to do.

In Which I Explain How An Ancient, Ambiguous, and Diverse Book Leads Us to Wisdom Rather Than Answers—and Why That’s Great News

How the Bible Actually Works

Christians have been defending scripture from attack for two centuries. In fact, argues Bible scholar Peter Enns, we have become so busy protecting the Bible that we are now unable to read it. In The Bible Tells Me So, he provides a revolutionary new perspective: "What if God is actually fine with the Bible just as it is? Not the well-behaved version we create, but the messy, troubling, weird, and ancient Bible has something to show us about our own sacred journey of faith. Sweating bullets to line up the Bible with our exhausting expectations, to make the Bible something it's not meant to be, isn't a pious act of faith, even if it looks that way on the surface. It's actually a thinly masked fear of losing control and certainty, a mirror of our inner disquiet, a warning signal of a deep distrust in God. A Bible like that isn't a sure foundation of faith; it's a barrier to true faith. Creating a Bible that behaves itself doesn't support the spiritual journey; it cripples it. The Bible's raw messiness isn't a problem to be solved. It's an invitation to a deeper faith." Christians have had it drilled into them that their job is to defend the Bible against any challenge. But is this really God's plan? What if God wants us to debate and wrestle with what we read in scripture? In The Bible Tells Me So, Enns wants to do for the Bible what Rob Bell did for hell in Love Wins: expose Christians' fear-based contradictory beliefs and show a new way forward. Here you will find a revolutionary guide that will liberate Christians so they can truly engage with God's Word.

Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It

The Bible Tells Me So

The controversial evangelical Bible scholar and author of The Bible Tells Me So explains how Christians mistake “certainty” and “correct belief” for faith when what God really desires is trust and intimacy. With compelling and often humorous stories from his own life, Bible scholar Peter Enns offers a fresh look at how Christian life truly works, answering questions that cannot be addressed by the idealized traditional doctrine of “once for all delivered to the saints.” Enns offers a model of vibrant faith that views skepticism not as a loss of belief, but as an opportunity to deepen religious conviction with courage and confidence. This is not just an intellectual conviction, he contends, but a more profound kind of knowing that only true faith can provide. Combining Enns’ reflections of his own spiritual journey with an examination of Scripture, The Sin of Certainty models an acceptance of mystery and paradox that all believers can follow and why God prefers this path because it is only this way by which we can become mature disciples who truly trust God. It gives Christians who have known only the demand for certainty permission to view faith on their own flawed, uncertain, yet heartfelt, terms.

Why God Desires Our Trust More Than Our "Correct" Beliefs

The Sin of Certainty

Highlights several Old Testament phenomena that challenge traditional evangelical perspectives on Scripture and suggests a way forward.

Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament

Inspiration and Incarnation

The widely-held evolutionary view of beginnings doesn't allow for a historical Adam. This book helps Christians reconcile the teachings of the Bible and evolution.

What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins

The Evolution of Adam

“Peter Enns is brilliant at taking the big topics, those Christian ideas that usually scare us or intimidate us or worry us, and then make those very places a meeting place with a God who is bigger and wilder and more wonderful and trustworthy than we ever could have guessed.”—Sarah Bessey, author of Out of Sorts and Jesus Feminist The author of How the Bible Actually Works and The Bible Tells Me So explains how our model of God and faith must evolve as our understanding of the world deepens—just as the Bible describes it should. Life throws us “curve balls”—from devastating personal losses to world tragedies. These events often leave us doubting God, the Bible, and our faith. But instead of pushing away our reservations, we should embrace them, Peter Enns argues. A leading biblical scholar and Christian mentor, Enns has never been afraid to question the Bible or Christian beliefs. Such thoughtful inquisitiveness, he argues, is part of God’s plan. He wants us to question, because doing so actually leads to a stronger, lasting faith. By reframing how we see these events, we allow ourselves to see how the Bible itself showcases this very process and that “treating curve balls as the enemy” is not only counterproductive but thwarts God’s goal of helping us become mature and wise. Enns shares a number of curve balls he’s encountered in his own life and the questions he has pondered. Does God care about the millions of people who never heard the gospel? Could I relate to a God who has created a universe this big? If God is so relatable, constant, and caring, how do we explain quantum physics? He reveals how particular biblical passages have helped him find wisdom, and how they can do the same for us. As Curveball persuasively shows, God is bigger and more mysterious than anyone’s expectations. We need a faith that can grow just as deeply.

When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming (or How I Stumbled and Tripped My Way to Finding a Bigger God)

Curveball

Behind the scenes of movies like The Ten Commandments, The Prince of Egypt, or Exodus: Gods and Kings is a complicated, and at times, messy biblical story. In this short guide to the book of Exodus, Biblical scholar Peter Enns doesn’t just break down the story for the average person to understand but takes us behind the story—to the history and traditions that led us to the story as we have it today. By asking the important questions like, “What kind of book are we reading?” and taking us along Moses’s and the Israelite journey, Enns brings the best in biblical scholarship to us everyday people. And, as we have come to expect from Pete Enns, he does it with his usual humor and wit.

A Guide to the Story—and History—of the Second Book of the Bible

Exodus for Normal People

Jared Byas

Given the fever-pitched controversies about evolution, Adam and Eve, and scientific evidence for the Flood, the average person might feel intimidated by the book of Genesis. But behind the heady debates is a terrific story-one that anyone can understand, and one that has gripped people for ages. If you are not a Bible scholar but want to be able to read Genesis and understand its big picture, this brief, witty book is the guide you've been waiting for. Clear summaries and thought-provoking questions provide direction for personal reflection and group discussion. Peter Enns, a Biblical Studies professor, and Jared Byas, an Old Testament professor, summarize the book's key themes and help us see Genesis as an ancient story, one with continued relevance for human experience today. Genesis for Normal People illuminates the characters that fill the book of Genesis, causing us to resonate with their choices and struggles even as we marvel at their distant world. And that's what you'll find here-not scientific proof texts or simple moral tales, but a distant world made available, and a story that is often strange, sometimes dangerous, and always filled with rich possibilities.

A Guide to the Most Controversial, Misunderstood, and Abused Book of the Bible

Genesis for Normal People

R. Albert Mohler, Jr.

Michael F. Bird

Kevin J. Vanhoozer

John R. Franke

Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy, new in Zondervan s popular Counterpoints series, features the spectrum of evangelical positions on inerrancy---a timely and often contentious topic. Facilitating understanding of these perspectives, particularly where and why they diverge, the contributors to Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy encourage sensitivity as the basis for future evangelical considerations on this topic."

Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy

In Which I Explain How an Ancient, Ambiguous, and Diverse Book Leads Us to Wisdom Rather Than Answers--And Why That's Great News

Peter Enns recounts his transformative spiritual journey in which he discovered a new, more honest way to love and appreciate God's Word. Trained as an evangelical Bible scholar, Peter Enns loved the Scriptures and shared his devotion, teaching at Westminster Theological Seminary. But the further he studied the Bible, the more he found himself confronted by questions that could neither be answered within the rigid framework of his religious instruction or accepted among the conservative evangelical community. Rejecting the increasingly complicated intellectual games used by conservative Christians to 'protect' the Bible, Enns was conflicted. Is this what God really requires? How could God's plan for divine inspiration mean ignoring what is really written in the Bible? These questions eventually cost Enns his job - but they also opened a new spiritual path for him to follow. The Bible Tells Me So chronicles Enns' spiritual odyssey, how he came to see beyond restrictive doctrine and learned to embrace God's Word as it is actually written. As he explores questions progressive evangelical readers of Scripture commonly face yet fear voicing, Enns reveals that they are the very questions that God wants us to consider - the essence of our spiritual study.

Why defending Scripture has made us unable to read it

The Bible Tells Me So...

A new religion curriculum from the team that brought you The Story of the World.

A Parent's Guide to Teaching the Bible

Telling God's Story

A new religion curriculum from the team that brought you The Story of the World. These lesson plans, designed to accompany the weekly lessons laid out in Telling God’s Story, Year One (available separately), provide coloring pages, craft projects, and group activities to fill out an entire week of home school or private school study; a core set of activities is also provided for the use of Sunday school teachers. Coloring pages accompany each lesson and accurately reflect the historical setting of the original stories, while a full range of crafts and activities help young students understand and remember.

Telling God's Story, Year One: Meeting Jesus: Student Guide & Activity Pages (Telling God's Story)

Glen Forsberg

Stories That Live

This study takes groups into the rich tapestry of Genesis exploring the interaction between God and very human people - pride, family relationships, conflict and journey all showcase the best known stories of Creation, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Rebekah and Joseph. The video reflects the drama of the Genesis stories, first with selected text dramatized by an actor, and then study writer, Peter Enns interviews a scholar to help unpack the meaning and the mystery in the stories. This is an excellent choice for adults with strong biblical background from Sunday school or personal study. Disciple Bible Study participants who want more focused time with 10 full weeks on Genesis will be a good candidates for this study. Sessions: 1. The Beginning...and What Went Wrong 2. Another Beginning: The Flood...and What Went Wrong 3. Another Beginning: Abraham and the Patriarchs 4. Abraham and a Glimpse to the Future 5. The Promise Fulfilled: Isaac 6. Another Beginning: Jacob and the Uneasy Birth of a People 7. Jacob: The Struggle Continues 8. Another New Beginning: Joseph and the Family of Israel 9. The Trek Into Egypt 10. An End and Another Beginning: Israel's Story Genesis 10 sessions, 60-90 minutes Experience required: Moderate Click here to read session one

A Short-Term DISCIPLE Bible Study

Invitation to Genesis Leader Guide

Skeptics Bible

Weekly religion lessons for second-graders, scripted for parents and teachers to make preparation and instruction straightforward and simple. The second in a twelve-year series designed to take young students from elementary through high school, Telling God’s Story, Year Two provides scripted weekly lessons for second graders and the adults who teach them. Each weekly lesson provides pithy, content-filled background information for the teacher, a biblical passage from one of the four Gospels to read aloud, and a scripted explanation of the passage designed especially for children to grasp with ease.

Telling God's Story, Year Two: The Kingdom of Heaven: Instructor Text & Teaching Guide (Telling God's Story)

A new religion curriculum from the team that brought you The Story of the World. The first level in a twelve-level series designed to take young students from elementary through high school, Telling God’s Story: Year One provides weekly lessons for elementary-grade students, based on the parables and the Gospels. The Instructor Text and Teaching Guide contains pithy, content-filled background information for the teacher, a biblical passage to read aloud, and a scripted explanation of the passage designed especially for young children to grasp with ease. This Year One curriculum provides a full year of religious instruction.

Peter Enns

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