In their studies, students at conservative colleges and seminaries are introduced to the methods and conclusions of critical biblical scholarship. These conclusions often produce a disconcerting challenge to the faith students came to explore. A few embrace the skeptical stance, resulting in a “secular” response. Many display a “traditional” response, rejecting biblical criticism as a threat to biblical authority and a faulty result of Enlightenment thinking. Between these two poles, is there a third way? Can evangelical students and scholars incorporate the insights of biblical criticism and at the same time maintain a high view of Scripture and a vital faith?
Kenton Sparks has wrestled with these questions as a student, pastor, and scholar. In God’s Word in Human Words, he argues that the insights from historical and biblical criticism can indeed be valuable to evangelicals and may even yield a new set of solutions to seemingly intractable problems in biblical studies while avoiding pat answers. This constructive response to biblical criticism takes seriously both the divine and the human aspects of the Bible and acknowledges the diversity that exists in the biblical texts. The discussion is substantive, thorough, and even controversial, as the author offers challenges to the evangelical status quo.