A New Faith Paradigm -- Part VI

After a five-month break, finally, I'm back . . .

Sixth in a series inspired by Kenton L. Sparks’ Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority & the Dark Side of Scripture.

First post here.

*****

Sparks' Chapter 8, "Christian Epistemology: Broken Readers of Sacred Scripture," was, perhaps, for me, the most important and gratifying in the entire book.

Funny: I wrote a couple of papers about epistemology back when I was in high school. This stuff mattered to me. And it still matters. What do we know and how do we know it? Do we really know what we say we know?

At the time--and, honestly, since then--I never acquired the kind of vocabulary (much less gained familiarity with the concepts) that Sparks discusses. But as I read his chapter, I sensed he offered the most honest and humble--not to mention realistic--account of epistemology I have ever heard of. I found myself nodding in agreement throughout Chapter 8. But it wasn't merely that I found something to agree with. It was my sense that Sparks was expressing, in a very brief, tightly-reasoned space, what I have been groping towards for years.

If someone can help me improve upon what Sparks has offered, I will be delighted. But at this point, I find deep satisfaction in his advocacy--and, now, my concurrent advocacy, following Sparks--of the view he espouses.

Sparks opens his chapter with the following question [emphases mine]:

If . . . Scripture . . . is an adequate and useful book written from fallible human perspectives and includes diverse and sometimes conflicting viewpoints on the same subjects--and if we ourselves, as readers of Scripture, are in turn fallible readers, how can we know when our interpretations of Scripture are correct? And how can we be certain that we have arrived at the proper theological conclusions?

Answer, according to Sparks: We can't.

BUT . . .

And that "but" is huge.

Sparks explains five different approaches to epistemology, five different perspectives on knowledge. And when you get to the end of his explanations, I believe he offers us reason to believe that, even if we can't be--as he puts it--infallibly, incorrigibly, indubitably certain of the things we claim to know or believe, we can still be confident enough in what we know or believe to move forward--in life and in faith.

Five Different Perspectives on Knowledge

Tacit or “Simple” Realism

Basic perspective: Unstated, unexamined epistemology. As Sparks expresses it: this is where we start when we are infants. "All of us tacitly and unreflectively assume we have the capacity to know the world around us as it really is." (p. 74)

Reflective Realism

Basic perspective: "[H]uman perception and tradition provide a generally trustworthy understanding of reality. . . . [W]e should think critically about our grasp of reality." (p. 74; italics added)

Modern Realism

Basic perspective:

• "[W]e can only know ‘the truth’ when we overcome human tradition by ‘rising above it,’ so to speak, in order to see the world ‘as it actually is.’" (p. 75)
   
• "[B]y carefully interrogating and setting aside tradition, we can achieve an infallible, incorrigible, and indubitable grasp of the truth. . . . [O]n those points where we are very careful, we simply cannot be wrong." (pp. 75-76)

Sparks notes that "Modern Realism is still alive and well on the contemporary epistemic scene. It is especially prominent in everyday life and in some quarters of Christian Fundamentalism. . . . Paradoxically, the necessity for this theological move was engendered by Modernism itself, whose quest for indubitable, incorrigible certainty was adopted by Fundamentalists as the only appropriate basis" for confidence in the Gospel and/or assurance of salvation. (p. 76)

Postmodern Anti-Realism

Basic perspective:

• “[K]nowledge only counts if you can demonstrate that it is incorrigibly certain.” (p. 78)
   
• “[T]radition inevitably shapes us and . . . also blinds us to the truth. [Therefore,] it follows that human beings simply do not know the truth: we do not know reality as it is. What we mistakenly embrace as ‘reality’ is nothing other than invention." (p. 77)
   
• "[W]e cannot overcome tradition and hence we cannot see 'reality.'" (p. 78)

Postmodern Practical Realism

Basic perspective:

• "[W]e need not prove that we are right in order to have genuine knowledge. This is why young children . . . can have knowledge without proving it to themselves or others." (p. 79)
   
• Cultural traditions do not necessarily--nor most of the time or primarily--blind us to the truth; rather, traditions are "right about the world (generally speaking) because, by [their] nature, tradition[s are] the product of humanity's successful engagement with a real world and real people." (p. 79; italics in the original)
   
• Despite its generally positive outlook on tradition, Practical Realism believes that we ought to be "suspicious of tradition, since tradition is always warped and always wrong in some ways or others. . . . [T]his goes double for something like theology, where our goal is to describe God and his dealings with humanity." (p. 79)
   
• "[T]radition can provide a useful and adequate grasp on . . . reality. The grasp is not on a toggle switch that is either right or wrong. Rather, it lies on a continuum between better and poor: it can be very good or very bad, . . . some cultural traditions [can] be 'better' or 'healthier' than others, . . . but [none will be] perfect." (p. 79)
   
• Despite its imperfections, "[i]n the best cases, human knowledge is wholly adequate for the needs of our situation." (p. 79; italics in the original)

How is this possible?

• "Practical Realism accounts for interpretive success in terms of analogy and metaphor." (p. 79) Thus, "in a satisfying conversation with a friend about my feelings and thoughts, the result will not be that my friend has at any point actually understood my thoughts and feelings as I understand them. Rather, my friend's understanding will be similar or analogous to what I have tried to express, so that I feel understood in some way or other. . . . [M]y friend undoubtedly errs in some ways as he tries to understand me, and, make the issues clear, I will undoubtedly err in understanding myself." (pp. 79-80; italics in the original)

I don't know if this is why I was particularly drawn to Sparks' perspective, but knowing my own manner of thinking, in which I consistently look for analogies to explain what I am thinking, and having long believed that analogies are the best way to explain a subject, I imagine it is understandable why I so strongly embraced Sparks' comments about conversing with his friend.

And as for his last point, about erring even in understanding himself, I cannot help but give a hearty Amen: “Yes! That’s correct. I often don’t understand myself. I try to understand myself. I often interrogate myself. But, at root, I know I fail. I cannot fully, completely, ‘incorrigibly and indubitably’ determine my own motives. Or, to quote Jeremiah, ‘The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked; who can understand it?’ (Jeremiah 17:9) But that doesn’t mean I need to despair of ever understanding myself to a significant degree. . . .”

"In the final analysis," Sparks concludes, "the fundamental differences among Modernism, Anti-realism, and Practical Realism can be expressed with the commonly used metaphor of ‘capital T' versus 'small t' truth. Modernists believed that human beings can attain the 'Truth,' Antirealists maintain that 'Truth' does not exist, and Practical Realists believe that 'the Truth,' though it exists, is accessible to human beings only by analogies that yield partial, useful, 'small t' truths." (p. 81)

Sparks has several other insights that I found useful in this chapter.

• "Practical Realism does believe that there are such things as 'right' and 'wrong,' 'correct' and 'incorrect,' 'certainty' and 'uncertainty,' 'knowledge' and 'ignorance.' But these words have different nuances for Practical Realists them for Modern Realists. 'Knowledge' means that we have an understanding of the world that is analogous to, but not identical with, the realities that we seek to understand. 'Correct' means that our judgment yields practical success rather than precise and perfect understanding. As for 'certainty,' Practical Realists regard this as the perception that 'We must be right.' The trick is that, while this perception is absolutely essential for our everyday hermeneutical engagements and generally serves us well in the practical sense, in the final analysis it does not yield capital T 'Truth' or guarantee that we are right. We can be both quite certain and quite wrong. . . ." (p. 82)
   
• "Shared beliefs and opinions are actually adjacent overlapping concepts and perceptions." They are not identical. They cannot be identical.
  
  Sparks avoids going into great detail about the idea, but I think most of us can understand that no two human beings think exactly the same way. We have different experiences, different emotional predilections, different personalities; a taste or smell or color that excites one of us will create a negative response in another. (These observations are mine. However, I have no doubt Sparks would agree with my observations.)
  
  As a result of these differences in perspective and the way we think:
  

  Real differences are . . . inevitable and lead inexorably to the internal conflicts and disagreements that arise in human institutions and traditions. . . . [T]hese cultural limits are true, not only of me and you, but also of those who wrote the Bible. A case in point appears in 1 Cor 11:14-15, where the Apostle Paul incorrectly assumes that 'nature itself' proves that men should have short hair and women long hair. He did not realize that this inference was drawn through a cultural lens rather than directly from the natural order. Errors of this sort are endemic to human judgment. Try as we may, we simply cannot avoid them. (pp. 84-85)

• "If Practical Realism is a good description of how human beings actually conduct our lives, then we can anticipate that its basic contours are implied in many sources and places, including in biblical thought. And this is indeed the case. The Bible is introduced by an epistemic commentary. I refer to the Fall of humanity in Genesis. . . . Whatever insight the first couple gained from [their] pursuit [of knowledge] ( . . . 'knowing good and evil'), the result was not suited to them, nor did it entail all divine knowledge. So as we begin to read Scripture, it immediately steers us away from the idea that human beings can or should see the world as God sees it.
  
  "The author of the book of Job provides a fuller explication of this principle by deftly sketching out the profound contrast between divine and human knowledge. . . . As the story unfolds we learn that Job's theology is 'right' and that his friends were 'wrong.' . . . But the author's epistemic point runs much deeper, I think. For it is quite clear that Job was right only in comparison with his friends. . . .
  
  "We would more precisely say that Job and his friends were partly right and partly wrong, but in a way that made Job’s partial understanding of human suffering more complete and healthy and that of his friends. But in the end even Job repented, for in this biblical story about epistemology, only God gets everything right. . . ."
  
  THEREFORE,
  
  "At best we find ourselves in Job's epistemic position. That is, perhaps we have a better understanding of things than someone else, but we never have it spot-on and, if pressed, must repent in dust and ashes. This is Christian Practical Realism in a nut shell: God has it perfectly right, while human beings are partially right and partially wrong, but in a way that admits some human perspectives are better or more adequate than others. . . . " (pp. 86-87)
   
• "Scripture is beautiful and broken, and it is being read and studied in the church, and sometimes outside of the church, by beautiful and broken human beings. Nevertheless, Christians have theological and philosophical reasons to suppose that, when we read Scripture well, we are able to understand it. And as we understand it, we shall find that God's truth and beauty run deeper, and are more potent, than the brokenness that God is healing." (p. 88)

I would like to bring my commentary and observations about Sparks' book to a close at this point. However, before I sign off, I want to make two observations.

• First, I sense I have hardly done Sparks justice by stopping at this point. It is in the chapters that follow this one that he explains the practical implications of the foundational work he has done in the first eight chapters.
  
  In Chapter 9, for example, he addresses the issue of the perspicuity of Scripture. (Is the Bible really understandable to anyone but a scholar?) –If you have paid attention to this post so far, I expect you ought to be able to make a reasonable and fair guess at Sparks' answer. Extremely oversimplified: Yes, it is understandable. But the less educated and less thoughtful one's reading, the more likely one is going to understand it less well. Similarly, of course, the scholar who approaches the Word with "all brains" and "no heart" is going to do a far less creditable job of interpreting the Bible than will he or she who reads it with both heart and mind (not to mention training and experience!)!
  
  Chapters 10 to 12 address the difficult fundamental questions that any honest evangelical or fundamentalist Christian must ask if we grant Sparks his thesis. In other words, if his thesis is correct and "Scripture speaks the truth through perceptive yet warped human horizons," and if the Bible is, as Sparks claims, "a diverse and broken book," then "how can we use it to weave a useful and coherent understanding of God and of his relationship with us? How can the Bible . . . serve as a primary source of our theological insight?”
  
  Then there is Chapter 13: "Validity and Biblical Interpretation" . . . in which Sparks demonstrates how we can use the insights of a Practical Realist epistemology in order to properly interpret Scripture in all its multi-voiced wisdom and beauty.
  
  And then, finally, a brief, not-quite-two-page afterword, "Final Thoughts."
  
  Sorry! I'm saying no more about the book's content. Read the book.
   
• Before I completely leave this book, however, I wanted to comment a little about a matter--perhaps the matter--that has held me back from posting until this time.
  
  As I think about this new perspective on the Bible, and, especially, as I think about the way in which Sparks speaks of Practical Realism as the most--what I am calling--honest epistemology, I am bothered by the following thought. I am disturbed by the thought that, if we "buy" these views, we will not--I will not--follow in the footsteps of our "elder brothers and sisters" in the faith. Specifically, if this is how I believe (or, perhaps, rather, how I disbelieve), doesn't that mean I will not be willing to give my life for the Lord? Won't I be unwilling to become a martyr, if called upon to do so? Or, even--far short of giving up my life--doesn't it mean I will make few if any sacrifices for the faith--my faith? Doesn't it mean I will not (as I have found, already, I do not) boldly, "in season and out," seek opportunities to "share my faith" as I once did? (I am making a confession, here! --My faith and practice has changed!)
  
  And these thoughts bother me for numerous reasons.
  
  1) Because Jesus said, "He who is not willing to give up his life for my sake, will lose it" (Mt. 16:25). "For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels" (Mark 8:38).
  
  2) Because I used to be willing to knock on people's doors (when I was a minister of evangelism). I used to be quite "bold." But now--for the last many years--I have found myself quite reticent to initiate conversations with non-believers about Jesus. (I am happy to discuss just about anything at any time if the subject is out on the floor for discussion. But I can't remember the last time I actually initiated a conversation with a non-believer about sin or salvation or new life in Jesus.)
  
  3) Because I find myself, more and more, "simply" less sure of myself, of my interpretations (and/or of my opinions) than I used to be. --And isn't my attitude, my reticence, my lack of conviction, obviously different from people like St. Paul and St. John who could (and did) say things like, "we know that God, in his justice, will punish anyone who does such things" (Rom. 2:2); "we know how dearly God loves us" (Rom. 5:5); "we know we will . . . live with [Christ]" (Rom. 6:8); "we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose" (Rom. 8:28); "we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body" (2 Cor. 5:1); "we know he hears us when we make our requests, we also know that he will give us what we ask for" (1 John 5:15); etc.?
  
  The question that has been haunting me: Aren't all of these things partially a result of my faith having been shaken, my loss of stalwart assurance that I can understand the Bible and be absolutely sure of the capital-T TRUTH?
  
  . . . I have been meditating on this question--these questions--for weeks . . . maybe even months.
  
  So, I ask myself--and I place it before you now, publicly: Am I risking a greater loss of faith, a further erosion of confidence, by adopting a Practical Realist epistemology?
  
  My conclusion: No. Because the Practical Realist epistemology is, ultimately, the epistemology I have held as my own for as long back as I can remember. I couldn't have named my epistemology. I couldn't have summarized it as Sparks has. But, even during all those years I was--have been, diligently--pursuing the Modern Realist epistemology that I believe my spiritual forebears held, the fact was, it was a pursuit. A Modern Realist epistemology was a hope, a dream. It was a desired conviction, a "faith statement" I (have believed I) was taught I had to hold if I was to hold onto my faith.
  
  But the truth is, during all that time, I kept finding myself wondering in the back of my mind: "How does this work? Is this true? Has ________ [whoever the latest-and-greatest teacher was] really mastered [this particular text . . . let alone the whole counsel of God]?"
  
  And I realize that, although I am not likely to be the very first man to run out and get himself killed for the cause of Christ, if and when push comes to shove, by God's grace, I intend to stand for my convictions. And even though I am not likely to do any more knocking on neighbors' doors the way I once did, I do seek to speak carefully and thoughtfully and with consistent integrity of conviction if and when the opportunity arises (according to my best understanding of what an opportunity looks like). My "preaching," as it were, has changed, but it isn't as if I no longer (or will no longer) "preach."
  
  Finally, while I find myself far less sure of myself--or of my companions (or, should I say, of my companions' statements of faith and/or conviction)--than I once was (or, at least, than I once was willing to permit myself to believe or pretend to believe): I am not convinced it is a bad thing to admit, forthrightly: "I see your point. I understand the evidence you have garnered for your view. But I see there is evidence that points in a different direction as well."
  
  And so--as I was meditating just yesterday--I am thrown back on a statement of conviction first expressed by St. Paul and subsequently made into the centerpiece of one of the hymns of my youth: "I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him against [i.e., until] that day."
  
  Ultimately, I say to myself, that is the bedrock of my faith.
  
  I find myself shaking and questioning. "Is that really You, God? Did You really say that? I mean, did you say what I think You said? Have I understood? Or . . . ????"
  
  And I believe that is an okay place to be. Indeed, it is probably a better place, a more open and honest and useful place, than if I were to speak with undoubted conviction: "Yep! I heard Him! I know what He said! I've got that one covered. . . ."

Answering a concern about claims of Scripture being broken: A New Faith Paradigm -- Part V

Fifth in a series inspired by Kenton L. Sparks’ Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority & the Dark Side of Scripture.

First post here.

*****

I wanted to reply to something my brother Pete wrote in response to my last post. I could "hide" my reply in the give-and-take of the Comments section. But I thought his comments--and my (though I perceive it to be Sparks') reply--were worthy of greater visibility.

Pete wrote,

Ummm... Sparks seems to be starting from a very arrogant position, that I find increasingly common: the arrogance of assuming he is more moral than God. Or that he would do it differently than God.

Specifically, when I read

Thus, says Sparks, when we read passages like Deuteronomy 20:16-18 where the Israelites are commanded by God to annihilate the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites without mercy, in fact what we ought to understand is that God--the God we read about in Matthew 5:43-45, the God who commands us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us....

Who says that annihilating these ancient peoples was somehow in opposition to the command to love your enemies?

I relate what God asked them to do... to the single-person act of executing a murderer. Killing the murderer is not murder; the death is "on the head" of the criminal. So too, these ancient (very evil) peoples were -- by God's reckoning -- worthy of death. That He chose people to dispense justice is God's choice. Sometimes He used the Israelites, sometimes He used others like the Babylonians etc.

I suspect that we today don't have a problem with the Bible as much as we have a problem with God's purity and holiness. We water down God to make Him "nice." And by doing so we also water down the value of His loving act of sending His son to earth to die in our place.

And my reply:

Interesting hypothesis. And particularly interesting because Sparks himself attempts to address the charge.

Your concerns arise because of things he says most pointedly in Chapter 5.

Chapter 6 consists of Sparks' discussion of six questions. The last question is this: “If we admit that Scripture is as I have described ["broken"], does this not open up the door to an 'anything goes' theology that interprets Scripture so that it says nice things that we like? Will we simply pick and choose as 'final' those texts that suit our fancies?” (p. 64).

Short answer: Yes. Absolutely. Such a view does open up the door to an "anything goes" theology. And to abuse by arrogant human beings.

But.

Sparks writes:

all Christians succumb in some way or other to this threat. To see how true this is, one only needs to notice that, even among Fundamentalists who deny the human error in Scripture, one finds a wide variety of conflicting "inerrantist" readings. Some inerrantists claim that the Bible clearly teaches "predestination," others that it clearly teaches "free will." Some inerrantists argue that Scripture strongly supports "infant baptism," while others believe that it obviously teaches "believer's baptism." Some inerrantists are "pacifists," while others advocate "just war" theory.

No approach to Scripture, whether hermeneutical or theological, will prevent us from badly misreading it at points. But this much is certain: in the end, the success of biblical interpretation depends a great deal on whether we want to listen to God or merely tell him what he ought to say (pp. 64-65; emphasis mine).

This last comment reminds me of a question that meant much to me back when I was in college and during my years as a minister of evangelism. I asked skeptics who appeared, to me, to be using questions as a kind of diversionary tactic (and I often asked myself--because I, myself, am often so skeptical): "So. Suppose I answered all of your questions: Would you be willing to follow Jesus and do what He says?"

Sadly, the honest answer, too often, was (or is), "No. No way!"

So this honest answer points to the real problem. Ultimately, the real problem isn't honest doubts; the real problem is a matter of the will: "I am not willing to follow Jesus. I am not willing to obey God."

(By the way, this question of mine really came from Jesus in John 7:17: "Anyone who is willing to do the will of God will know whether my teaching is from God or is merely my own.")

But Sparks says more than this on the subject. And I think I would be unfair to you, my reader, as well as to Sparks, if I were not to point out at least some of the general hermeneutical principles he discusses in Chapter 10, "Listening to the Diversity and Unity of Scripture," where he responds a bit more directly to Pete's question.

Sparks calls the hermeneutical principles he discusses in Chapter 10 factors in theological interpretation of Scripture.

The fifth factor, he says, is that

we must distinguish those points where God uses [the human writers'] discourse to direct us explicitly in appropriate and redemptive directions ("love your neighbor as yourself"; "do not kill") from those points where the text, more warped by human sinfulness, implicitly witnesses to a broken human situation ("kill the Canaanites"; "buy foreign slaves"). (p. 110)

Isn't that beautiful? (Tongue in cheek. Sarcastic.)

So. How do we know that "love your neighbor" is sound and healthy and "kill the Canaanites" is warped and broken? (Sparks asks the question. Just like that (p. 111): "How do we know that 'love your neighbor' is sound and healthy and 'kill the Canaanites' is warped and broken?") How do we know whether or not our resistance to the extermination of Canaanites in Joshua arises from spiritual arrogance and sinful flesh? (He asks that question, too. Like that (also p. 111): "Does our theological resistance to the extermination of Canaanites in Joshua arise from spiritual arrogance and sinful flesh--from an unwillingness to let God be God and to accept his wisdom in ordering their destruction?")

Sparks' answer: We know it does not arise from such motives because we have all these "other texts in the Old and New Testaments that teach us to take a strong stand with God against things like violence and genocide" (also quoted from Sacred Word, Broken Word, p. 111).

Our judgment concerning the command to kill the Canaanites arises because of Scriptures such as those I (quoting Sparks) have alluded to before in earlier posts: Matthew 5:43-45; Ezekiel 18:14 and 20; and so forth; and other Scriptures that, as Sparks describes them, offer "explicit biblical evidence that Scripture is in need of redemption and that God is working to redeem it" (p. 66)--Scriptures like Matthew 5:31-32, 38-39, 43-44; 19:7-8.

Or, to sum up (p. 68):

[The most] striking example of the redemption of Scripture is provided by the Gospel of Matthew as a whole. Like other early Christians, Matthew viewed Jesus as the "new Moses" prophesied in Deut[eronomy] 18:15.

Strange, I know. But take a moment to see where Sparks goes with this.

He summarizes the themes in Matthew's Gospel that seek, obviously, to show how Jesus was (or is) “like Moses.”

Ultimately, he ends his parallels in the way that Matthew ends his:

Readers will probably recall that, because of his sin, Moses was not able to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land. At the end of his life, he stood on a mountain overlooking the land and sent to the Israelites, "I cannot go with you, but God will be with you. . . . Go, and kill all the nations." [Footnote: "See LXX Deut[eronomy] 11:23; Josh[ua] 23:4; 24:18." --My take: I don't see the meaning Sparks wants to apply. Though I see a close enough meaning: "Go, and displace all the nations." Or, "Go, and take everything away from all the nations." --JAH] This parallels very closely what we find at the end of Matthew's Gospel. Jesus takes his disciples "to the mountain" and there speaks his own final words: "Go, make disciples of all the nations . . . and I will be with you."

It is quite clear that Matthew wished to portray Jesus as a better Moses, who, because he was sinless, could address his followers from within the land and could extend the promise to be with them in their mission. (p. 69)

Okay. So?

"So," Sparks concludes, "the Gospel of Matthew is a deliberate and sustained attempt to redeem the Old Testament law and make it serve the purposes of the Gospel of Jesus Christ" (p. 69).

Similarly, then, we ought not to be afraid to recognize those "laws that are not good" (Ezekiel 20:25) and that reflect our own human "hardness of heart" (Matthew 19:8). And as we recognize them, we ought, then, also, seek to redeem them and make them serve the purposes of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

We ought not to think that there is "such [a] thing as Martin Luther's 'severe mercy,' which combined the violence of Deuteronomy and love of Jesus to justify the persecution of Jews 'for their own good'" (p. 55). Rather, through "Christ's message and work and the ministry of his Spirit[, we ought] redemptively [to be] putting this [kind of] brokenness behind us" (p. 64).

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.

A new faith paradigm -- Part I

I want to quote, with very slight emendation, an email I sent to my family yesterday. I may regret being quite so open about this, but I figure I should plunge ahead anyway. I am hoping my "testimony" will be helpful to someone who might not otherwise find any way to hold onto the faith they once received and laid hold of with joy. . . .

I am praising God right now. I have just finished reading one of the most liberating (for me) books I have ever read. Twelve or thirteen years of miserable “wandering in the darkness” with respect to Scripture (especially), but with respect to an awful large portion of the rest of my faith as well: I sense it may be coming to an end.

About a month and a half ago [no; I just looked it up: I bought the book on July 23!]—I don't know how I found it, but, somehow, I came across Kenton L. Sparks’ Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority & the Dark Side of Scripture. I read it after having read (not necessarily in this order; I do not remember in what order I read these books, but I read them all in the last year to year and a half): Inspiration and Incarnation by Peter Enns, God's Word in Human Words by Kenton L. Sparks, and The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture by Christian Smith. These books, themselves, came on the tail end of two or three others that I read several years ago: Origins: A Reformed Look at Creation, Design, & Evolution by Deborah B. Haarsma and Loren D. Haarsma (read back in late 2008 . . . which actually gave me hope), Evolutionary Creation by Denis Lamoureux (finished in mid-2009), and, finally, Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism by George M. Marsden (finished reading in May of 2011).

All of the other books certainly contributed, in some fashion, to my willingness or ability to read Sparks’ latest book (Sacred Word, Broken Word), but it is this book, in particular, that, in my opinion, completely shattered an intellectual logjam or ice wall that has held a huge reservoir of deep anxiety for me.

Before I get into the details of the book itself, let me note that the logjam or ice wall was my growing conviction (that I absolutely did not want to embrace) that the doctrine of Scripture with which I was raised and that I was taught at seminary was untenable. Put most starkly: I was losing hope—even as I attempted manfully to hang onto hope—that the kinds of doctrines of Scripture promoted by the churches in which I grew up—the doctrine of Scriptural inerrancy and the doctrine of Sola scriptura, the doctrines taught in the Westminster Confession of Faith, promoted by Harold Lindsell in his 1976 bombshell The Battle for the Bible, and carried forward by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy and its 1978 document called The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy . . . –I was losing hope that these doctrines were really tenable. (If you want to see the details of the doctrines I am talking about, I urge you to read my lengthy post titled Why Are Certain Questions Forbidden? –Part 1 and Part 2.) Basic ideas:

• The Bible “in its entirety is inerrant, being free from falsehood, fraud, or deceit.”
   
• Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are not limited to “spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes.” Rather, they also apply to “assertions in the fields of history and science.” Therefore, for example and preeminently, scientific hypotheses about earth history may not “properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood.”
   
• The Bible “speaks truth when it touches on matters pertaining to nature, history, or anything else.”
   
• While “in some cases extrabiblical data have value for clarifying what Scripture teaches, and for prompting correction of faulty interpretations,” such data can never “disprove the teaching of Scripture or hold priority over it.”

If you spend a few minutes thinking about some of these statements, you might understand some of my angst. The problem comes down to defining “what the Scripture teaches” and/or, actually, what the Bible even “touches on.”

In my “Why Are Certain Questions Forbidden” posts, mentioned above, I go into detail on the kinds of conservative statements of faith I believe I was raised on . . . and the problems they engender. But here are just three minor illustrations of how these statements of faith can cause problems (taken directly from the second “Why Are Certain Questions Forbidden” post):

• When the Bible speaks of us being "knit together" by God in our mother's wombs (Psalm 139:13), is it not touching on a matter pertaining to nature? Is it, then, not speaking truth? So, then, on what grounds--what biblical grounds--can we be sure that it is acceptable for medical personnel to teach us of sperm and eggs, mitosis and meiosis, and all the other details of what they call the "birthing process"? If we listen to them, how can we be sure we are not permitting their scientism or their extrabiblical views to "disprove the teaching of Scripture or hold priority over it"?
   
• Or in the case of meteorology: When the Bible speaks of the storehouses for rain and snow and wind and the windows of heaven and so forth (Genesis 7:11; 8:2; Job 38:22; etc.) . . . and when it tells us how God controls these storehouses and windows (Job 38:22; Jeremiah 10:13; and so forth), is it not touching on matters pertaining to nature (as well as, on occasion, history)? And assuming this is the case, then when meteorologists speak of high- and low-pressure systems and evaporation and transpiration and sublimation and precipitation, are they not attempting to "disprove the teaching of Scripture or or (to have their extrabiblical views) hold priority over" Scripture? If someone wants to say that this is surely not the case, then I would like that person to explain, on Scriptural grounds alone, how and why he or she is right and I am wrong!

Finally (for the sake of this post),

• When the Bible speaks of a tree reaching up into heaven so it can be seen "to the end of the whole earth" (Daniel 4:10-11), and when it tells us that Satan took Jesus to a high mountain so that he could show Him "all the kingdoms of the world and their glory" (Matthew 4:8), is it not "touching on" something ("matters pertaining to nature, history, or anything else")? And, to use the language of the Westminster Confession, must we not, "by good and necessary consequence," conclude that it is teaching that the earth is flat? For how else might a tall tree be seen reaching into heaven? It matters not how tall a tree might be on one side of a globe: people on the other side will never be able to see it; its height makes no difference. And, similarly, it matters not how high the mountain might be: if the earth is globular, no one could possibly see "all the kingdoms of the world." So, therefore, must we not oppose those who, on extrabiblical grounds, insist that the earth is anything but flat? If not, why not? On what grounds can we be sure we are not permitting extrabiblical views to hold priority over Scripture?

By raising questions such as these, am I making mountains out of molehills?

I think not. Not when I have—personally—been caught in the ripsaw of Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis (who is convinced—and seems to have convinced the majority of Christian homeschoolers—that any interpretation of Genesis 1-11 that doesn't accord with his own view is the result of an unbiblical practice of permitting man’s wisdom to hold priority over Scripture). Nor when I and the company of which I am a part owner have been thrown out of the Christian Home Educators of Colorado convention because that organization’s faith statement about the Bible (“The Bible, in its original autograph, is without error in whole or in part; including theological concepts as well as geographical, historical and scientific details.”) leads it to reject any company from its convention hall that includes any materials in its curriculum that fails to deride evolution as a foolish, ungodly, man-inspired idea. If you don't teach with conviction that the earth is no more than 10,000 years old at the most, then you're letting man’s ideas hold sway over the Bible.

[Of course, as I have argued elsewhere, to use their logic, they haven't gone far enough. But for some reason, as far as I have been able to discern, they permit “man’s wisdom” to overcome the “obvious” biblical teaching against Copernicus. (Do a search on the word Copernicus when you visit my Young- and Old-Earth Creationists: Can We Even Talk Together? Article to see what I am talking about.)]

But all of what I have said so far is mere background to what I wanted to say about Sparks’ Sacred Word, Broken Word. Sparks has shattered the logjam in my mind about how to honor the Bible as being truly God’s Word and authoritative in life and faith and practice (“Sacred”) even while it is full of contradictions, errors, foolishness and worse (“Broken”).

Let me stop here for a moment so you can catch your breath.

In some ways, I "can't believe" I just said what I did! How dare I? Coming from where I am coming, what I've just said is tantamount to blasphemy. You can't have a truth-speaking God inspiring a Bible that has one contradiction, error, or foolish teaching (let alone "worse" teaching!) in it. Can't be done. If God is God, then his word must be perfect, without error, without contradiction. . . .

But.

Anyone who has read the Scriptures seriously for any length of time is familiar with the “problems” of the Bible. There are books that seek to explain these difficulties away so that conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists can hold onto the kinds of doctrinal statements I have mentioned above. But, frankly, there comes a point where one has to exert some serious effort to “suspend one’s disbelief” in order to continue holding. And though I have exerted those efforts for all of these years, I must say that I found the efforts rather exhausting and enervating and joyless–not exactly the kind of words one would want to use to describe one’s Christian life!

But I have “held on,” nonetheless. What other option do I have if I am to remain a Christian? It’s the only way, isn't it? If you want to be a true Christian, you have to “stand alone on the Word of God,” the “inerrant, infallible, perspicuous, perfect-in-every-regard-down-to-the-very-jot-and-tittle” Bible. Yes?

I hated the intellectual position. But I wanted my God. And so I have been holding on. Waiting. Wondering. Hoping. And, every now and then, looking to see if I might find some way out of my quandary.

Was there—is there—no way out?

It was one chapter in Sparks’ book that shattered the logjam or ice wall—the blockage—for me: Chapter 3: “The Contribution of Christology.” There was a lot of cleanup that had to take place after the initial breakage, but just to see the glimmer of a way out gave me unbelievable hope.

So what did this amazing chapter do? It teased out, in the space of 6 1/2 pages, the key contours of the primary issue that faces us, I believe, in the doctrine of Scripture: What is the relationship between the human and the divine in the Bible?

Sparks begins the chapter by talking about the doctrine of Christ.

He notes that early on in the church's history, the church rejected two—what it viewed as—extreme and too-narrow positions and adopted a third view that embraced both of the extremes at one and the same time. The two extreme doctrines are known as Docetism and Adoptionism.

• Docetism, in essence (“close enough for government work”): Jesus was God and not human; he was God pretending to be human.
   
• Adoptionism, in essence: Jesus was human and not God; God adopted him as his [God’s] only begotten son.
   
• And the orthodox teaching? Jesus is fully God and fully human. There is a “hypostatic union”—a joining together—of the divine and human natures, and Jesus is “the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, . . . incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and . . . made man.”

So what does this have to do with Scripture? Sparks makes two points.

1. We should probably recognize that Jesus himself lived and taught in some limited manner as a human being.

Sparks comments:

Jesus was a finite person who grew up in Palestine, learned Hebrew and Aramaic, and was not only born Jewish but, culturally speaking, became Jewish. . . . [B]eing a man, [Jesus] lived out his life within a finite human horizon. . . .

Okay. That seems unremarkable. What about this:

Though Jesus was undoubtedly sinless (see Heb 4:15), did he nonetheless embrace not only our finiteness but also our fallen condition? Did Jesus Christ have a fallen human nature? . . .

As a rule, the [church] fathers were not very comfortable with the idea that Jesus had a fallen nature, but I find it more reasonable—and more scriptural—to affirm that Jesus was both finite and fallen, in all respects like us, "sin excepted" (Heb 4:15). This is possible because the sinful nature and sinful deeds are two different things (infants may have a sinful nature, for instance, but they are not yet "sinners"). . . . In fact, many theologians would describe [the belief that Jesus had a fallen nature] as “good news.” After all, what victory did Christ win for us if fallen flesh itself were not redeemed and resurrected? [pp. 24-26]

In sum, then, Sparks says:

Jesus lived within the limits of his humanity and, it would seem, shared in our fallen nature. To what extent did this human horizon influence his teachings? . . . [I]t seems to me that [to borrow a phrase from Colin Gunton (Christ and Creation [Grand Rapids: Eerdman's, 1992]), p. 41] “no Christology is adequate which tries either to evade the material determinateness of Jesus or his Jewish particularity.” In principle, the theology of Jesus was largely the theology of a first-century Jew. And where that first-century theology was limited in its vision, so too was the theological vision of Jesus. Orthodoxy only demands that Jesus was sinless, not that his teachings were wholly insulated from the human condition.

Oh, boy!

If there are difficulties in [this] thesis, these involve the long-standing Christian debate about the communicatio idiomatum (“sharing of attributes”) between Jesus' divine and human natures. To what extent were divine qualities of Jesus Christ "communicated" to his humanity? Did the insights of divine omniscience in some way inform his human perspective? And if so, did this insight prevent Jesus from using theological images from his own day that are now, by our standards, problematic? . . . [I]f we attend to the general theological, biblical, and anthropological evidence available to us, my sense is that the evidence sides strongly with [the idea that] Jesus did not depend on unusual divine resources to live a holy life. Rather, he lived in holiness by the same resource that animates every Christian: by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. . . .

God did not redeem us in Christ by coming "alongside" the fallen cosmos as a human-looking phantom. His redemptive work came in and through that fallen order itself, by full human participation in a world that needed healing. Docetists judged that this gospel would be too "messy," entailing as it does God's close contact with a soiled world. But orthodoxy holds that, in God's wisdom, this is precisely the point: fallen creation is redeemed only when God participates in the fallen creation. So far as we know, there was no other way to save us or our world.

You just “know” where this is going, don't you? Sparks is angling to insert error into Jesus' teaching. “He was sinless, but he didn't teach without error.” –Or something like that.

But/and/so—assuming that this is where Sparks is going—why don't we think about that for a moment?

Is it a sin to teach something that “isn't true”? I mean, for example, should we charge Jesus with sin for claiming that the mustard seed is the smallest of all seeds? Just for example.

• Suppose, somehow, he had supernatural knowledge—beyond his historical and cultural context. And, therefore, suppose he knew there were smaller seeds than the mustard seed. Would it matter that he claimed it was the smallest seed? Supposing it did, then to whom would it matter? To his hearers—who, apparently, didn't know? . . .
   
• Suppose he didn't know there were (or are) smaller seeds? Would that matter? Why?

Back to Sparks. The second point Sparks makes with respect to Christology and the Bible is this:

2. While Christians understand Jesus is a hypostatic union,

whatever Scripture is, it is not a hypostatic union in which divinity and humanity are mysteriously joined in one person. . . . Neither Paul, nor Luke, nor any of the other biblical authors were both divine and human. They were human beings only—good men, perhaps, but also fallible sinners in need of redemption, who wrote texts that the church has nevertheless embraced as God's word.

A direct analogy that moves from Christology to bibliology does not work. Rather, if we wish to draw a theological analogy from the old Christological debates that explains Scripture's character, I would suggest that the adoptionist metaphor is closer to the mark. Understood in this way, Scripture is God's word because God providentially adopted ancient human beings, like Paul, as his spokespersons. In doing so God "set apart" or "sanctified" their words for use in his redemptive activity.

Hence, we can affirm with a straight face that Scripture, all written by sinful human beings, is rightly referred to as Sacred or Holy Scripture. . . .

But . . . To repeat the main and important point, the Christological analogy does not really apply directly to a doctrine of Scripture and, even if it did, it would not support but would more likely weaken arguments in support of [the inerrantists’] view of Scripture. . . . We may assume, for theological and practical reasons, that the human beings who wrote Scripture erred [even in their writing of Scripture—JAH] as all humans do. [pp. 28-29; bolding mine--JAH]

Now. Where Sparks goes with this, how he is going to handle the doctrine of inspiration (“all Scripture is inspired by God [‘God-breathed’]”—2 Timothy 3:16), and how he can possibly help anyone avoid falling over the precipice into complete skepticism that the Bible has any divine import at all: well . . . that will have to wait for another time. I'm sure this post has taxed your patience as it is. And I need to get on to other matters. But I wanted to at least "announce" what I have been thinking about and where I sense my mind and heart are at the moment . . . and where I am sensing I am heading.