90 Quotes by Peter Enns

Christianity is a setup for letting go of certainty. The two pillars of the Christian faith express the mystery of faith: incarnation and resurrection. Of course, there’s more to the Christian faith, but two elements make Christianity what it is, and both dodge our powers of thought and speech.

Jesus was God’s climax to Israel’s story, but he was not bound to that story. He pushed at its boundaries, transformed it, and at times left parts of it behind.

We can well imagine Jews feeling a bit out of their element – maybe intimidated and shamed by their own story, which began in slavery, ended in exile, and with absolutely zero contributions to philosophy or science. “Some ‘chosen people’! What kind of God did you say you follow? Apparently one who lets bad things happen to you.

Walking the path of faith means trusting God enough to let our uh-oh moments expose how we create God to fit in our thinking.

Reading the Bible responsibly and respectfully today means learning what it meant for ancient Israelites to talk about God the way they did, and not pushing alien expectations onto texts written long ago and far away.

God adopted Abraham as the forefather of a new people, and in doing so he also adopted the mythic categories within which Abraham – and everyone else – thought. But God did not simply leave Abraham in his mythic world. Rather, God transformed the ancient myths so that Israel’s story would come to focus on its God, the real one.

Doubt is what being cornered by our thinking looks like. Doubt happens when needing to be certain has run its course.

I didn’t know how to “do” faith without making sure my thoughts about God were lined up, and so, once those thoughts failed to be compelling, my faith sank.

Who we are and when and where we exist affect how we imagine God.