God’s Words in Human Words
Sparks, Kenton L. God’s Words in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academy, 2008.
There are some books that have the ability to drastically shape your worldview. This is one of them, at least for me. I found the book to be quite a challenging read and made me think about things I had never thought of before.
This book sort of reminded me of my experience reading Peter Enns’ book “Inspiration and Incarnation.” Whereas Enns focused primarily on the Old Testament, the scope of this book is a lot broader, and I felt that the author wrote as much as he wanted to get his points across without worrying about making it easier for a general audience. To me, that’s one of the strengths of the book. I liked Enns’ book quite a bit and, after all the controversy surrounding it, I have come to the conclusion that one of Enns’ book’s primary weaknesses is that it should have probably been double its size. Although Enns wrote the book for lay people at a popular level, it is quite apparent that many evangelicals are not ready for this type of book (given all the objections against it). You not only have to be nuanced when writing about the nature of Scripture, you also need to spend the time building your case from the ground up. You need to interact with other people and attempt to answer more questions than you ask even if they are tentative or preliminary. And I think Sparks’ book does a better job in that sense.
But Sparks comes from a very different perspective. At the end of his book, he says, “the importance of my project rests in its attempt to assimilate the useful methods and reasonably assured results of biblical criticism to a healthy Christian faith” (356). Perhaps it is this attempt at assimilation that is the book’s greatest strength and weakness. On the one hand, he grapples with the implications of biblical criticism and what it would mean for a Christian to engage in what he likes to call believing criticism. On the other hand, many will be put off by the fact that he believes that biblical criticism has yielded “reasonably assured results.” Many will not agree with that and may dismiss the premise of the book as fanciful. This would be a mistake. I think that the reader who may be bothered by the author’s apparent approval of the results of biblical criticism will still benefit from his discussion of what it would mean for Christians to take some of the results seriously and still believe in the inspiration and authority of the bible. Although I don’t know enough to pass judgment on most of the critical readings of the bible, I know that some of my readings are not traditional and some are. This book has made me think about how I can hold both readings and still be faithful to the word of God. This book has certainly encouraged me to dig deeper and read more broadly.
He started (against the advise of some people) where he should have started, epistemology and hermeneutics. He favors practical realism which sounded very similar to N. T. Wright’s critical realism (I wonder if there is some fundamental difference). Then he talks about historical criticism and Assyriology, gives examples of some of the results of biblical criticism, discusses the responses, both negative and positive, to the critical results and spends the rest of the book trying to make sense of how Scripture can both divine and yet written by inspired finite humans by looking at genres and context. I will not attempt to review his arguments. I found myself agreeing with most of what he said but there were “many” things that I just don’t know enough to even have an opinion on. What this book did was make me think about issues of interpretation that I had never considered before and pointed me to lots of books and articles in his footnotes and bibliography that will keep me busy for a while.
I am sure a lot of people, especially evangelicals, will not like this book for some of the same reasons that some didn’t like Enns’ book. But since this book goes even further than Enns did, it will probably get even more flak. I don’t think it will be as controversial as I&I because I believe a smaller percentage of people will actually read it. Plus Sparks doesn’t seem to be restricted by his institution or adherence to a confession.
At the end of the book, Sparks puts some of his conclusions to the test by giving us a few examples. Before he does that, he says,
“I have only the slightest interest in convincing readers to accept my critical reading of the text and the resulting theological judgments that I offer. More important in my opinion is that readers will see that the approach to Scripture that I have advocated takes biblical authority very seriously, and that it need not lead to open-ended, cut-to-fit theology. That sort of theology is precisely what I wish to avoid” (329).
I think this summarizes well the spirit of the book.
I benefited from reading it and will certainly read it again after I have spent some time thinking about its content. Maybe then I will be able to write a thorough review.
