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Sin of Certainty Sutton Book Review

THE SIN OF CERTAINTY          

Why God Desires
 “Our” Trust More Than
 “Our” Correct Beliefs 

By   
   
     Peter Enns

Reviewed by

     Geoffrey W. Sutton






Chances are you’ve met a few people who insist their beliefs are right. They don’t hesitate to denounce others as not just wrong but as evil people--people out to ruin the country, destroy lives, and on the brink of eternal damnation.

If you followed the 2016 or 2020 campaigns for president of the United States, you know what I’m talking about—many people were sure their candidate was right and the other one was an evil menace. And some of those people attacked “friends” and family on social media and elsewhere.

I read Enn’s book, The Sin of Certainty in 2017. My review hasn’t been published yet but I will post some text here and give you a link to the full, unpublished version. It’s certainly a book worth reading.

The “Sin” in Peter Enns’ book is a devotion to correct beliefs rather than a devotion to God characterized by trust. Trust in a person—God—is the only way for Christians to maintain faith qua faithfulness when simple biblical quotes don’t seem to square with challenges from scientists or life events.

You will find four challenges to certainty in the last few hundred years. These “oh-oh” moments challenged thinking Christians—and still do.

1. The scientific evidence for evolution caused many to doubt the literal words in Genesis.

2. Archaeologists found old texts from other cultures indicating the words attributed to Moses were not unique to him.

3. Biblical research challenged the views of religious scholars about the way the Bible was written.

4. The theological battle over American slavery raised questions about using the Bible for moral guidance when clergy preached contradictory messages.

Of course, these four issues continue into the present in one form or another. As I’ve written elsewhere, Christians are A House Divided.

Here’s a few quotes you might find interesting.

“Let me say again that beliefs themselves are not the problem. Working out what we believe is worthy of serious time and effort in our lives of faith. But our pursuit of having the right beliefs and locking them up in a vault are not the center of faith. Trust in God is. When holding to correct thinking becomes the center, we have shrunk faith in God to an intellectual exercise” Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty, (p. 22).

The problem for biblically centered Christians is that the Bible, right in the very beginning, tells us clearly that God created all life-forms with a simple “Let there be . . .” No common descent, natural selection, or billions of years required. So if Darwin was right, the Bible was wrong—and most of the scientific and academic world thought Darwin, scientifically speaking, nailed it. Darwin’s theory was bound to get some push back, and the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 was the public cage match between modernity (science) and fundamentalism (the Bible is right no matter what science says).  Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty, (p. 35).

Science in general and evolution in particular made knowledge-based Christians in the nineteenth century with Bibles in hand very nervous, and for good reason. And things haven’t gotten much better. (p. 36). 


It turns out that other ancient nations had their own stories of beginnings, and they were similar to the stories in Genesis—creation, the first humans, and a great flood that drowned everyone. 


“The long Protestant quest to get the Bible right has not led to greater and greater certainty about what the Bible means. Quite the contrary. It has led to a staggering number of different denominations and sub denominations that disagree sharply about how significant portions of the Bible should be understood. I mean, if the Bible is our source of sure knowledge about God, how do we explain all this diversity? Isn’t the Bible supposed to unify us rather than divide us?” Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty, (p. 52)

Enns reports the results of a survey he administered in 2013. From pages 119-120.

What are your one or two biggest obstacles to staying Christian? What are those roadblocks you keep running into? What are those issues that won’t go away and make you wonder why you keep on believing at all? 

I didn’t do a statistical analysis (who has the time, plus I don’t know how), but the responses fell into five categories. 
1.​The Bible portrays God as violent, reactive, vengeful, bloodthirsty, immoral, mean, and petty. 
2.​The Bible and science collide on too many things to think that the Bible has anything to say to us today about the big questions of life. 
3.​In the face of injustice and heinous suffering in the world, God seems disinterested or perhaps unable to do anything about it. 
4.​In our ever-shrinking world, it is very difficult to hold on to any notion that Christianity is the only path to God. 
5.​Christians treat each other so badly and in such harmful ways that it calls into question the validity of Christianity—or even whether God exists. 

These five categories struck me as exactly right—at least, they match up with my experience. And I’d bet good money they resonate with a lot of us. All five categories have one big thing in common: “Faith in God no longer makes sense to me.” Understanding, correct thinking, knowing what you believe—these were once true of their faith, but no longer are.


“When we are in despair or fear and God is as far away from us as the most distant star in the universe, we are at that moment ‘with’ Christ more than we know—and perhaps more than we ever have been—because when we suffer, we share in and complete Christ’s sufferings” Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty, (p. 200).



Revised 
29 November 2020
13 March 2024

References

Enns, P. (2017).  The Sin of Certainty:  Why God Desires “Our” Trust More Than “Our” Correct Beliefs. New York: HarperOne.

Sutton, G. W. (2016). [Review of the book The sin of certainty: Why God desires “our” trust more than “our” correct beliefs by Peter Enns]. Encounter, 13.

https://legacy.agts.edu/encounter/current.html 

 Academia Link  

 ResearchGate Link  


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Link to my different review on Academia 







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