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Saturday, November 17, 2012

A new faith paradigm -- Part III



Third in a series inspired by Kenton L. Sparks’ Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority & the Dark Side of Scripture
First post here.
*****


One of the recipients of my last post commented on Sparks' use of the word brokenness with respect to Scripture. To talk of problems? Okay. Difficulties? We can talk about that. Sparks uses the word diversity with respect to the way different human authors of Scripture speak concerning the same subject; their testimonies are diverse, they diverge, they do not all accord one with another very well—or very easily, anyway. Okay. We can handle those kinds of statements, too. But when Sparks begins to speak of brokenness, he is treading in some very deep waters and his terminology is quite troubling. On what grounds can a human being question God's word and claim that it is somehow “broken”?
Is Sparks simply trying to be provocative? Or wanting to point us to some kind of "failure" on God's part to preserve His word from minor (or—all right, in some cases—semi-kinda “major” (depending on how you want to characterize it)) verbal corruption over the centuries?
Chapter 5 makes it clear: No. Sparks is not simply trying to be provocative. And he is not speaking about corruption of the text. He is pursuing something deeper. Far deeper.
Chapter 5 is titled "The Brokenness of Scripture." And Sparks begins in this way:
When someone in Western culture wishes to emphasize how bad things have been or are in our world, one turns almost invariably to the era of the Second World War and the Shoah (or “Holocaust”) as an example. . . . The Shoah has become the quintessential symbol of our fallen world and of fallen, sinful humanity.
But is it not a very deep paradox that the Shoah, in which Nazis systematically exterminated the Jews because of their religion and ethnicity, is mirrored so vividly by the Deuteronomist ban in Jewish Scripture, according to which Israel exterminated the Canaanites because of their religion? . . .
I am reminded, here, of the famous study by the Israeli scholar Georges Tamarin. Tamarin surveyed two groups of Israeli children about the morality of genocidal conquest. To one group he told the story of Joshua's conquest of Jericho, and to the other he told the same story but substituted a Chinese general in Joshua's place. About 60% of the Israeli children approved of Joshua's conquest, but only 7% approved of the Chinese assault. One can read Tamarin’s discussion for the details. His main point is also mine: the Canaanite conquest would strike us as flagrant evil were it not a story from the Bible.
What we face, I think, is the ethical difficulty I mentioned earlier in passing: the problem of Scripture is the problem of evil. (pp. 45-46)
And now Sparks lays his cards—or, should I say, the “game plan” of his “argument”—on the table. He states where he plans to go before presenting his “argument” for it. And, once more, I will confess personal astonishment—shock, dismay—at reading what he writes. “No! No! You can't say that!” And yet he does:
Just as God's good and beautiful creation stands in need of redemption, so Scripture—as God's word written within and in relation to that creation, by finite and fallen humans—stands in need of redemption. (p. 46)
Are you kidding me!?! Can you believe he said that? Scripture needs redemption?!?
He goes on:
Scripture does more than witness explicitly to the fallenness of the created order and humanity. Scripture is implicitly, in itself, a product of and evidence for the fallen world that it describes. . . .
I would join other scholars in suggesting that a robust doctrine of Scripture should not presume that "the text is immune from criticism." Scripture was written by godly but fallen human authors who sometimes thought and wrote ungodly things. If this is right, then the church should not defend Scripture's uniqueness as the divine word by appealing to its perfection. Rather, a proper account of Scripture's goodness and divine origins will closely follow the traditional Christian response to the problem of evil . . . :
God's creation, which is good, nevertheless includes evil. But these flaws in creation should not be blamed on God but rather on humanity and its sinful, fallen state.
God's written Word, which is good, nevertheless includes evil. But these flaws in Scripture should not be blamed on God but rather on humanity and its sinful, fallen state. (pp. 46-47)
Sparks discusses the problem of evil from a relatively conventional, orthodox perspective. He refers, for example, to Genesis 50:20, where Joseph tells his brothers that though they intended evil by sending him off as a slave to Egypt, "God intended it for good to bring about this current result: to preserve many people alive." Similarly, he references Philippians 1:15-18, where the apostle Paul speaks of those who preach Christ—some from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. “But what does it matter? . . . Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true; and in that I rejoice.”
I'm sure you can think of similar Scriptures. Sparks summarizes:
Acts of human sin, intended by ill will, are understood as standing within God's providential, redemptive activity. And in spite of this . . . we cannot trace the human evil back to God. Humanity is ultimately responsible for what ails the world.
And then:
I believe that the same conception of human and divine agency holds for Scripture.
Or, quoting Bonhoeffer:
We must read this book of books with all human methods. But through the fragile and broken Bible, God meets us in the voice of the Risen One. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Reflections on the Bible: Human Word and Word of God, tr. M. E. Boring (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004), 15.) (pp. 48-49)
No! No! No! Sparks! You are destroying the Bible as I have been taught to know it!
But he rolls on:
[W]e have the paradoxical circumstance in which God's creation and written word, though truly his, include horrible things that he neither created nor said. These terrors, whether of life experience or biblical "texts of terror," cannot be fully resolved by really smart human beings with well-honed hermeneutical tools. They will only be resolved by the eschaton—God’s redemptive activity to set his world aright through Christ. (p. 49)
Yipes!
At this point, in my heart of hearts, I was not ready to embrace Sparks' proposal(s), but I will admit that, despite all the problems such a view might create for the theological systems I have been taught, I felt incapable of dismissing his proposal out of hand. It seemed to me a potentially viable hypothesis. I needed to permit him to present whatever evidence he might be able to show me for why such a view might actually be workable.
I will stop here with this post. As a matter of fact, this was about where Sparks ended his Chapter 5.

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