God's Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship

by Kenton L. Sparks

The conclusions of critical biblical scholarship often pose a disconcerting challenge to traditional Christian faith. Between the two poles of uncritical embrace and outright rejection of these conclusions, is there a third way? Can evangelical believers incorporate the insights of biblical criticism while at the same time maintaining a high view of Scripture and a vital faith? In this provocative book, Kenton Sparks argues that the insights from historical and biblical criticism can indeed be valuable to evangelicals and may even yield solutions to difficult issues in biblical studies while avoiding pat answers. This constructive response to biblical criticism includes taking seriously both the divine and the human aspects of the Bible and acknowledging the diversity that exists in the biblical texts.

Genres: Biblical Studies, Theology, Religion, Christianity, Old Testament, New Testament, Christian

416 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2008

Reviews

[Zach Waldis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of Sparks' conclusions I disagree with, but on the whole he is exactly right that evangelical scholarship needs to get its head out of the sand and come to terms with crticial study of the Bible. For example, I agree with Sparks that there is no intelligent way of maintaining Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. As an evangelical this book shook me a bit, but it was a good thing.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was excellent. I have been reading books like these lately with the mind to glean from them things that I do not know, and to skip parts that are uninteresting, or not pertinent to what I am doing at the time. That being said, I skipped the first chapter of this book and read it last, and I am so glad that I did, or I would not have read this book. The first chapter was all about philosophy, epistemology, Descartes, Hume, Spinoza, and the Enlightenment. While I understand why Sparks put this in his book, this isn't on my radar right now. I didn't study this in college, and haven't read too much on philosophy in a while and in my view, Sparks didn't really make the first chapter of his book relevant to the rest of the book, at least very well. But wow, after the first chapter, this book was super!

Chapter 2, entitled "Historical Criticism and Assyriology" was wonderful. His work on "royal apologies" went well with my understanding of the court history of David. I knew where he was going with this as he put together what he termed the "Esarhaddon Apology" - the idea that ancient kings put together histories that illustrated them in the best possible light for their subjects. We see (and have always seen this through history) this behavior today with our current U.S. President- he wants to paint himself in the best possible light that he can. Esarhaddon did this, and so did David. We usually do not uncover the atrocities of rulers until they are removed from power. Would Americans ever know about the Holocaust had Hitler won? The court histories of David are certainly not histories in the modern sense, but they are in the ancient one. And 1-2 Samuel are ancient texts. They behave the way we would expect if we understood ancient court histories.

Sparks' work on the Sumerian kings list and the Uruk prophecy, to me, were worth the price of this book. If you haven't read about this stuff and you are "into" the Bible, this is something worth reading. The Sumerian Kings List really got me thinking about the old lives of those that ruled/lived before the Flood narrative in Genesis. I always struggled with these texts because they fly in the face of logic and everything else I know to be true. Who lives to 900? How can a rational person ever take this stuff literally? I certainly don't. But there it is, the first pages of the Bible. The Sumerian Kings List material in this book was very helpful here.

Sparks touches on the history of the problems regarding the priesthood claims of the Old Testament in just a couple of pages, but shows that he understands these issues. Page 96 is great in this regard. There are so many convoluted issues whether it is just the Levites allowed to exercise authority, or the Aaronids, or the descendants of Zadok. This is complicated stuff, but Sparks gives the reader a short taste. I have written some stuff on this that I may link to this review. Stephen DiMattai has also spilled quite a bit of ink on this subject.

The Manasseh problems in Kings and Chronicles were interesting to me as well. On page 103, Sparks gets into these difficult issues, showing us how Kings and Chronicles were contradictory, and why this matters. If you are a student of the Bible, and if you believe in Biblical inerrancy, this book is a must read. I would also suggest "The Bible Tells Me So" by Peter Enns. Enns' book is simpler and easier to read, but Sparks takes things up a notch here. Both are excellent. If you haven't read this book, and are intimidated by some of Sparks' content, I would suggest that you start with "The Bible Tells Me So."

There is so much in this book that is good - but I must say the conclusion was wonderful. What is a student of the Bible supposed to do with this information? Once a student of the Bible has "swallowed the red pill" in the Matrix analogy, can he ever go back? No, not in my experience. But who would want to? Once you have the red pill in you, the Bible makes more sense, and some of its awkwardness fits into a new framework, and you can really begin to "do theology"... that being said, ministers and teachers of religion cannot just go around handing out red pills in the pews at church. This would be destructive, and Sparks knows this. So what do we do?

Sparks conclusion is that we be humble. We tackle these issues head on, but probably not always in church. We must do these things one on one, ministering to the flock, feeding them what they can handle, and slowly. We must lead them along. We must not assume that they know what we know, but rather, should answer questions as they come, and be gentle and kind. We must be wise. I love what Sparks says when he says, "We will be wise to reserve our most confident preaching rhetoric for those moments when we have the strongest sense of urgency and certainty." (page 361)

If you love the Bible, this is a book worth your time. If you have never tackled Biblical Criticism, Sparks may be a bit much. But he is worth it.

[Cameron Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredible piece of work, one that provides the accumulated knowledge of a lifetime of an evangelical scholar honestly grappling with the Bible and how we know what we know about it, and what to do as a Christian in light of that. The central approach of Sparks is what he calls "believing criticism", by which he allows of our human existence, experience, and knowledge to inform how we think about the Bible and faith. He starts with an overview of epistemology, looking at premodern ways of trusting in tradition, modern Cartesian certainty-seeking, and postmodern practical realism and relativistic antirealism. He makes a very convincing case for postmodern practical realism, by which human knowledge is genuinely adequate but never perfect, and how this provides the starting point for our approach to the Bible. His line here accurately describes my old approach to epistemology (one I'm still trying to remove from myself!): "Fundamentalism’s response to modernism is a kind of ideological paranoia. Every fundamentalism secures the uniqueness of its worldview by claiming access to an inerrant text or authority that provides perfect knowledge. This assertion not only secures the validity of the community’s beliefs but also ensures that the beliefs of outsiders are in error. Nothing is more important to a fundamentalist than being right and being sure of it."

He then provides an overview of the field of criticism when applied to ancient texts, showing that this field is not uniquely set out to attack the Bible, and is practiced by many scholars across many fields and ancient texts. Even conservative scholars agree with and practice the conclusions of this field when applied to texts outside the Bible. He surveys the responses of evangelical scholars: fideism (Scripture must be inerrant regardless of content), philosophical dismissal of the Enlightenment approach (problematic since premodern readers already saw these problems pre-Enlightenment), and "critical anti-criticism", where strained harmonizations are proposed and evidence is battled systematically. It was fascinating to look at how this works, as I've seen the pattern before in science denial, by which multiple converging lines of evidence are systematically attacked separately, with the cumulative case never addressed. He also looks at the pattern of evangelical scholarship, where scholars will specialise in fields which are much less challenging to evangelical faith (textual criticism, Greek classics, Near Eastern studies) so that the veneer of intellectual parity is maintained by evangelical scholarship. However this is sadly undermined when evangelical scholars are routinely fired when they agree with even moderate critical conclusions, which puts a significant chilling effect on the scholarship as a whole. I think his analogy is apt in comparing evangelicalism as Ptolemaic (those who believed the Earth was at the centre of the universe and kept adding extra circles to the planets' paths whenever new observations no longer matched): both are sophisticated, sincere, and ultimately unsustainable.

I appreciate how much time he spends on a constructive view of Scripture, honestly grappling with the problems and errors, and demonstrating that throughout church history, the accommodation of God to speak through errant human speech has long been recognised as part of how his word works. When we understand the genre of ancient discourse, many problems to modern readers are resolved. Genesis reworks known legends and myths to proclaim the glory of God, Chronicles reworks Samuel and Kings to make significant theological points rather than accurate historical reportage, John shifts the crucifixion's timing to make the theological point that Jesus is the Passover lamb, Daniel's precise "prophecies" are a well known and common ex eventu convention. This being said, I appreciate how Sparks clearly makes the point that genre isn't a get out of jail free card, since we still clearly see real finitude and real moral fallenness (e.g. Daniel's author genuinely expected imminent arrival of the kingdom). Sparks point is clear, we should understand this as providing us with insight as to how inspiration has worked- God speaks by appropriating the human author's whole viewpoint, mistakes included. He did not zap them out of their humanity or time and place or dictate every word to them. He then models how we can read Scripture through a trajectory hermeneutic, observing how God is drawing his people forward, reforming and restoring us as we become more like Christ. I do wish he had gotten more existential and asked the harder questions of why God has inspired the Bible like this rather than how evangelicals would prefer, though I do understand that the scope of that question is outside the scope of this book, and is addressed by a number of other books. The obvious challenge here is that we can no longer have Cartesian certainty about things we want (such as the existence of God, how he's worked in history, how to use the Bible to arrive at truth on every topic), but he argues this is a feature of everyone, not just this view (as evidenced by the extremely wide variety of evangelical stances on many important issues). Instead we should fix our eyes on Christ and use what God has given us to trust and follow him as best we can. My favourite line from the book is: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding. It took me a long time to work through this book as there was much to contemplate and study. But these efforts were incredibly rewarding.

Take note that this book is at the threshold between the academic and the lay person, so be prepared for diving deeply into concepts and issues!

[Daniel Crouch · Rating 4 out of 5]

With the exception of Mere Christianity, no religious book has so pierced me and enlightened me. Sparks's work on hermeneutics and inspiration, though certainly flawed, attempts to bring the evangelical community into the world of modern biblical interpretation.

[John Martindale · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is excellent. One thing I appreciate was how Sparks first demonstrated historical Critical scholarship of ancient Assyrian literature. He explained why and how scholars find some books to work as history and mark others as legend, myth, fiction, or propaganda. Their reasoning seems sound, and evangelical inerrantists would agree with these scholars' conclusions, having nothing to fear. At the same time, an illusion is being dispelled--for a lot of evangelical Christians (I was once one of them) assume that historical critics are only skeptical of the bible. It seems outrageous that Biblical scholars could doubt the existence of Moses, or at least the reliability of the Biblical account of him, and we think historians (due to an anti-scripture bias) only treat our sacred texts in such a manner. Oh, but to be shown that there are extremely reasonable criteria that historians use to determine whether something is reliable or not, could help evangelicals see that scholars have very good reasons for many of the conclusions that are drawn--it is not that they just have an anti-supernatural bias or anti-God agenda.

Anyhow, Sparks then touched on several conclusions scholars have formed on the authorship, formation, dating, and motivation behind certain books and provided a brief glimpse of the data on which the conclusions are built, and shared some examples of the rank special pleading that several evangelical theologians and apologists engage in as they frantically attempt to deny the obvious.

As far as his approach to appropriating Critical Scholarship, he seemed drawn to a rule of Faith (like what is used in Catholicism) that says you must affirm a few dogmas, but the rest is fair game (follow the evidence where it leads). So questioning the resurrection of Jesus would be a no-no, but doubting whether the miracles that occurred in the book of Jonah or the Exodus would be fine. If I recall right, he suggested that while God cannot err, he has chosen to work and speak through humans. God can also communicate truth through various genres. Jesus' favorite form of discourse was fiction in the synoptic and metaphor in the gospel of John. Sparks also makes much of the accommodation model and believes that we can go beyond the bible by recognizing trajectories.

For me, the weakest part of his positive approach is accommodation. Yes, the approach is ancient, and it really seems to be the ONLY conclusion that we can draw, if we want to believe that God had a more hands-on approach and was intrinsically part of inspiring authors to put pen to paper. How else are we to make sense of the many errors, contradictions, falsehoods, moral evils, and all too human portraits of God in the bible? But the deal is this: if a perfectly good deity communicated and revealed laws and his ways to the ancients, we'd hope for a little more evidence of this (while culturally packaged). Critical scholarship and a careful reading shows the Bible is so remarkably human--so human, so much a product of the time, that saying it is "accommodation" seems desperate. While I have no issue with God communicating to the ancients that the sky is a solid dome that holds up water, I do find it problematic that gross evil is presented as good, and God is depicted as commanding and engaging in horrendous evil. Much of the biblical narrative is God supposedly giving commands and then killing people for failing to obey. So, why not actually give truly ideal laws worded for that time? Instead, what we find is exactly what we'd expect of a people compiling laws without any inspiration from Perfect Goodness and Love. If this God had actually communicated, I'd expect a little more of this goodness to intermingle into the thought of the time. If we take the issue of slavery, for example, the evidence suggests that there is no revelation from a perfectly good supreme being. It does not take much imagination to think about how a loving God who hates slavery could have communicated at that time. Why couldn't God be like, "since you were slaves in Egypt, you are not to buy for yourself slaves, nor are you to sell people into slavery, I am the Lord. You shalt not purchase foreigners as slaves and make them your property, since you were foreigners in Egypt." Or if that's too much, maybe it could be like, "If you purchase a foreigner to be your slave, you cannot treat them harshly, you should not beat or kill them. I am the Lord. Moreover, you are to release them after three years of bondage..." Instead, the Hebrews were more backwards than their neighbors on this matter. We thus have hard evidence of God's absence, NOT of his accommodation. There is no inspiration here.

[Derek DeMars · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sparks succeeds with aplomb at demonstrating how fundamentalist interpreters of the Bible fail in their attempts to dismiss the insights of historical-critical biblical research. Chapter 3 was worth the price of the book for how well it lays out the biggest problem areas for traditional views of biblical inerrancy. Even if one or two of Sparks’ examples are worth quibbling with, he manages to build an effective and persuasive cumulative case to argue that Christians absolutely must make room in their theology for the ancient, diverse, and sometimes mistaken human viewpoints in Scripture.

What’s more, Sparks’ overview and application of epistemology to the matter of biblical hermeneutics was likewise very insightful. If all human discourse is imperfect but nonetheless adequate for communication, then so must be the fully-human discourse of the Bible. Responsible interpretation has to study and incorporate the human genres and worldviews of Scripture’s ancient writers with great care and humility. This is the kind of book anyone going through seminary absolutely must read.

That said, a few flaws hold it back from being a five-star treatment of Bible interpretation. While Sparks proves the problems of inerrancy, he never really offers an extensive positive case for why one should still hold to the Bible as a divinely-inspired work rather than merely human literature, apart from a few incidental remarks here and there. Granted, he is writing primarily to evangelicals, and he therefore assumes as a given that his readers will already have a shared commitment to biblical inspiration/authority. But it would have benefited the book (even despite how long it is) and his argument if he had devoted more attention to this problem. His treatment of divine accommodation to human perspectives—while astute and historically well-informed—only goes so far in offering a potential solution and depends on a prior acceptance of biblical inspiration on other grounds.

Also, the book’s length and academic tone keep it from being accessible to most laypeople, who will probably find the similar treatment of this subject in Pete Enns’ Inspiration and Incarnation more accessible, even if Sparks does cover a lot more helpful ground that would reward patient readers. Having read both, this book feels like Enns’ on steroids.

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A wonderfully written book that stumbles in the last few chapters. Kenton seems afraid of his own conclusions and advocates hiding much of it from the average church-goer. As a midway between critical scholarship and evangelicalism it mostly works, though his insistence on a theological inerrancy is difficult to understand in light of his work. A worthwhile read but one that seems to abort itself right at the end.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5
An excellent and helpful book discussing biblical criticism and authority of scripture. If you enjoyed Pete Enns books and are ready for something more academic this is a great read. It felt like a bridge between books for lay congregates and academic textbooks for biblical scholars. For me, it was a slow read so that it could be digested and discussed with my MDiv husband.

The first chapter is needed for the rest of the book, but is extremely dense. You have been warned.

[Jon · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Conservative evangelicals are unlikely to get past the first chapter (although I hope they will). Non-evangelicals are likely to notice that Sparks drops the implications of his own methodology at the end when he (too briefly) takes up issues of "real importance at the theological center." Uneven, but still often insightful.

[Tristan Sherwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent book on biblical criticism. Informative, thorough and enlightening. Highly recommended.

[Matthew Rawlings · Rating 2 out of 5]

He keeps calling himself an evangelical...to quote the poet Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

[David Price · Rating 3 out of 5]

The First chapter is actually amazing. 10/10. But Im sorry, I do not like this book. ITs not bad, and it has its merits, but I dont recommend anything, other than the first chapter

[Geoff Glenister · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book needs to be better known - it seems highly underrated to me. Sparks is very thorough, and seems to pay special attention to covering multiple angles as well as presenting good depth and breadth of evidence. The main topic at hand is the Evangelical tendency to either outright ignore or to go to extreme lengths to explain away any and all evidence that calls into question a strict inerrantist attitude towards the Bible. The longest of the chapters - the 3rd chapter - explores many points that would show this attitude to be mistaken. But Sparks spends a good deal of time exploring how church fathers, and more recent theologians, have dealt with these issues using the idea of accommodation and allegorical readings. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has struggled with their faith because of challenges to inerrancy, or to those who feel it is their job to play threshold guardian against those who question it.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Controversial, especially for a work with "evangelical" in the title. The author does better championing the validity of critical methods than he does explaining how to integrate them with evangelical theology.

[Aimee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a requirement for school and I really learned a lot about my religious beliefs