2010 Reviews

Review of Kenton L. Sparks, God's Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship

Vaughan, Matthew

This is a book review of Kenton L. Sparks, "God's Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship."
Critical biblical scholarship has long seemed only to undermine the authority of the Bible in the minds of both critical and evangelical scholars. This is particularly difficult for evangelicals because it often calls into question such sacred ideas as inerrancy. Many evangelicals simply ignore critical scholarship or deny its conclusions as incorrect. Evangelicalism is ready for another option. Kenton Sparks's new book, God's Word in Human Words, calls for a fresh look at critical scholarship by the evangelical community. Sparks's thesis is that critical scholarship can inform evangelical faith and, in fact, must if the church is to take Scripture seriously on its own terms—acknowledging inaccuracies, tensions, and diversity in the text. He argues that evangelicals must accept three fundamental presuppositions in order to articulate a believing criticism: epistemological humility, a theology of accommodation, and sensitivity to the Bible's theological trajectories.