I am continuing my short series on some thoughts generated by Kent Sparks’s recent book Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority and the Dark Side of Scripture. (You can see the first three posts here, here, and here.) In this book, Sparks lays out what the Bible is doing and how to read it well. He writes in a compelling and readable style and the book is suitable for church groups, college students, and anyone else interested in why the Bible acts the... Read more
Don’t you hate blog posts that start like this, with such an exaggerated claim? So do I. Oh well. I could have said this post will make you rich and famous, but I’m holding back. Still, there is one chapter, in the New Testament, that I think is majorly huge–without it Christianity as we know does not exist. And here’s the chapter. Ready? Acts 10. Bet you didn’t see that coming. Bet you thought I was going to pick something... Read more
Rachel recently posted the second part of her five-part review of my 2005 book Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. The first part can be found here. What I appreciate about Rachel’s review is that she gets it–she understands what I am saying and why I am saying it. She is not alone in that regard, but I am still miffed at how many people have read in the book things I never said or... Read more
This is the third post (see first and second) on Sparks’s most recent book Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority and the Dark Side of Scripture. In chapter 3, he looks briefly with how a proper, biblical view of Christ (Christology) can help us look at Scripture more realistically. His main point is this: Jesus was really a human being, who “lived out his life within a finite human horizon” (p. 24). This has implications for how we look at the... Read more
In my last post, I introduced Kent Sparks’s excellent book Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority and the Dark Side of Scripture with a quote from Bonhoeffer that is found at the end of the preface. Today, I want to continue with another quote from the book that sheds light on Sparks’s approach to the Bible. After laying out in chapter 1 his reasons for approaching Scripture with a “hermeneutic of respect” rather than of suspicion, Sparks takes at nod at the... Read more
Three months ago, Eerdmans released Kent Sparks’s latest book, Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority and the Dark Side of Scripture. Many will remember the controversy generated by his 2008 publication, God’s Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship. In the latter, Sparks took to task many of his fellow Evangelical biblical scholars for failing to follow through with the implications of their academic training, preferring, rather, to defend Evangelical doctrinal boarders. Not everyone was thrilled to be... Read more
Dr. Christian Smith (William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology; Director, Center for the Study of Religion & Society at Notre Dame University; author of The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture) recently contacted me to ask if I was interested in posting some thoughts he had on “the narcissism of small differences,” which Smith thinks is one of the psychological underpinnings of the perpetual theological conflicts that beset conservative Presbyterianism. I was hesitant at... Read more
While I was in Chicago earlier this month speaking at the Pastorum conference, I was interviewed by The Christian Post on my take on young Evangelicals and how they are processing their faith. (“Young Evangelicals” is simply commonly used short hand for recurring generational restlessness within Evangelicalism. It is not to imply that one need be “young” to feel this way.) The interviewer did a good job of capturing some of the tenor of what I was trying to convey, although I... Read more
Rachel Held Evans has begun a five-week series discussing my book Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. Some of you may remember that I&I got a bit of attention after it came out in 2005 and eventually led to some, let us say, “employment challenges.” I am very happy to see Rachel blogging about the book, because it was written with a simliar audience in mind as her Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl... Read more
Some of my recent posts have been a bit of a downer for those of you who want to get a PhD in Biblical Studies (or Theology, Church History, etc.). I’ve given you some tough love, born out of my own experience and hard economic realities (here and here). The market is dismal, the odds are against you, and, frankly, you have to be crazy to invest so much time and energy getting a degree that, statistics say, you likely... Read more
Peter Enns
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