Incarnational Model with Pete Enns

In this video, Pete Enns discusses the Incarnational Model of Scripture, the understanding that the Bible reflects both the divine nature of God and the human influence of the prevalent culture that existed during its writing.

Video Transcription

To understand how—let’s put it this way—encultured the Bible is, it’s really an expression of the lengths to which God goes to speak to people where they are. Some people refer to this as an incarnational understanding of what the Bible is. The same way Jesus is completely a human being, but yet the son of God, the Bible, too, reflects the time periods in which God revealed himself to those people.

That can get difficult because in the ancient world they thought about things differently than we do. They thought of a flat earth. They thought of a solid dome over us that keeps the waters back. That’s how they thought about the nature of reality. I think we sometimes make the mistake of assuming that God, who is a truth-telling God, would never do that. He’s a truth-telling God, but He’s also a loving God who talks to people in categories that they’re capable of understanding. Not to overstate, but I think you actually see the glory of God through how much He’s willing to, let’s say, humiliate himself by speaking the language of the time, the language of the people, just like Jesus.