Quotes from Peter Enns

God doesn't change, but God—being God—is never fully captured by our perceptions. As people continue to live and breathe and experience life, how they see God changes too.

All attempts to put the past into words are interpretations of the past, not "straight history." There is no such thing. Anywhere. Including the Bible.

The need to explain Jesus as both surprise ending and deeply connected to Israel's story drove the Gospel writers to do some creative reading. Sticking to what the Bible says wasn't their goal. Talking about Jesus was.

I mean, if we try to explain Jesus's handling of his Bible in terms of how many Christians today feel the Bible "ought" to be read, Jesus will look like one of my college Bible students, playing free association with the Bible. Or worse, we may try to find some way of taking Jesus out of his ancient Jewish world and making him look more like a suburban Protestant, an urban hipster, a tea party spokesman, and so on.

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.

a faith that remains open to the ever-moving Spirit and new possibilities, rather than chaining the Spirit to our past •?a faith that welcomes opportunities to think critically and reflectively on how we think about God, the world, and our place in it, rather than resting at all costs on maintaining familiar certainties

Our experiences of God matter—those sacred moments that defy the very rational capabilities we are so keen to rely on.

I need a place to let go and fall back from my familiar patterns and trust God to catch me.

Reimagining the God of the Bible is what Christians do. More than that, they have to, if they wish to speak of the biblical God at all.

Paul doesn't call followers of Jesus "Christians." He calls them "in Christ." That isn't the easiest thing to understand, let alone explain, but it suggests an intimacy with Jesus that defies words. That intimacy also includes—somehow—suffering.

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

Rather than being quick to settle on final answers to puzzling questions, a trust-centered faith will find time to formulate wise questions that respect the mystery of God and call upon God for the courage to sit in those questions for as long as necessary before seeking a way forward.