Since the suspension of Peter Enns from Westminster I’ve been checking out what other bloggers have been saying about it and noticed this quote from Dr. Jim West on Justin Taylor’s blog:

Enns knew what it stood for before he joined the faculty. He knew their viewpoints and he decided to disagree with them. He could, and should, if he felt compelled, speak his mind. But he should not be surprised (and no one should) when WTS asked him to leave.

But Enns didn’t see himself outside the confession or the tradition of Westminster. He wrote about it in a paper that he had his OTI students read along with all the other material we had to read for his class. It helped put into context what he was teaching us by helping us to see that what he was doing wasn’t new but remained in the tradition of the OT department at Westminster. He was standing on the shoulders of those who came before him. You can read it here.
Not only did Enns believe he stood in the tradition of Westminster but so did many of his students and some of the faculty (12 voted in his favor) including Claire Davis,church history professor (who retired in 2004 and was a professor of Enns), who writes:

After careful consideration both of Pete Enns’s thought and of our heritage, I believe that he belongs squarely in the center of everything we have sought to do and that it would be a serious betrayal of our heritage and calling to remove him and his insights from our ministry.

I also noticed this article by Darryl Hart and was particularly ticked off by it:

In sum, the 1940s student of WTS would have known how to join together Machen, Van Til, and Vos for ministry in the church and for maintaining and defending the Reformed faith. He would have recognized that theological breadth and tolerance were threats to the truth. And yet, he still would have seen the value of what Enns’ defender advocates. But recent grads of WTS who defend Enns do not know what to do with Van Til and Machen as contenders for the Reformed faith, as sticklers for Presbyterian polity, or as bystanders to any number of evangelical proposals for all Protestants “to just get along.” These seem like vulgarities from a polemical past that need to be excised for the generic evangelical-Reformed church to advance.
This is arguably the biggest dilemma facing the current faculty and administration at WTS – how to restore the original consensus at the seminary that balanced the fruits of biblical theology with Reformed polemics and strict Presbyterian ecclesiology. The defenders of Enns do not see the need for Reformed polemics and Presbyterian ecclesiology. Machen, in contrast, recognized that biblical theology was a necessary and valuable partner in the cause of defending the Reformed faith and in maintaining a faithful Presbyterian ministry. How to get the proponents of biblical theology to see the need for polemics and ecclesiology is the $64,000 question of the hour.

I don’t know how he can say this given the curriculum at Westminster. Doesn’t he think that Scott Oliphint and the rest of the apologetics department have abandoned Van Til? Does he think that Gaffin and the rest of the system theology depart have abandoned Murray, Machen and Reformed Theology? Or that Jue and Trueman have abandoned church history? I can testify that they have not. If students don’t articulate the issues the way Hart thinks they should, it isn’t because we haven’t been taught Reformed polemics and Presbyterian ecclesiology. It’s that our focus may be somewhere else. I’m thankful that all our professors including our biblical studies professors get to shape our education, not just the systematic theologians. And as Davis notes this is within the tradition at Westminster.
BTW, both Davis and Hart note that there are two Westminsters and Davis believes it may be time for a divorce. Speaking as one of the children, I hope they stay together for our sake. Westminster would lose a very vital part of itself if it lost its biblical studies department. And the biblical studies department would lose something very important if it didn’t have its systematic theology and apologetics departments. Both are needed to balance each other out. I have had a well rounded education because of it.
(via)