God's Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship

Praise for God’s Word in Human Words

This is a fine survey of the issues that historical criticism raises for an evangelical understanding of Scripture and a useful survey of options in approaching those issues.

—John Goldingay, David Allan Hubbard Professor of Old Testament, Fuller Theological Seminary

Finally, a fresh, creative, carefully nuanced approach to biblical criticism from an evangelical! Sparks skillfully makes his case for a ‘believing criticism’ by carefully assessing the current available alternatives. In the process, he offers a useful survey of, and response to, typical hot-button issues. His thorough, methodical work stakes out for many thoughtful evangelicals a credible, theologically based, devout place to stand in integrating critical work and faith. I highly recommend it.

—Robert L. Hubbard Jr., professor of biblical literature, North Park Theological Seminary

This important volume provides a bridge between critical scholarship and traditional views on Scripture. Sparks’s aim is to present a reasoned and sometimes impassioned insider look at evangelical approaches to biblical scholarship. In the process of surveying the flash points created by modern critical scholarship, he champions ‘practical realism’ as an approach that provides a more productive middle ground between traditionalist views of authorship and dating of the text, which depend on harmonization or forced interpretations, and the antirealists of postmodern scholarship, who disregard historical context or the original audience. Both evangelicals and nonevangelicals will benefit from this very frank discussion of the history and possible future for biblical scholarship.

—Victor H. Matthews, associate dean, College of Humanities and Public Affairs, Missouri State University

Sparks issues an irenic invitation to reconcile academic consensus with evangelical conviction in ways that respect and inform both. His plea for his fellow evangelicals to take historical criticism much more seriously features impressive and honest arguments for mainstream critical stances toward Old and New Testament texts, informative tours of fields from hermeneutics to Assyriology to patristic and Reformation theology, and a bold proposal to affirm biblical inerrancy in terms of perfect divine accommodation to human error. May it encourage and shape the fruitful conversation we evangelicals absolutely need to have.

—Telford Work, assistant professor of theology, Westmont College

Kent Sparks asks hard questions. In this volume he provides answers that he believes satisfy intellectually as well as spiritually. His erudition is evident on every page, whether summarizing the epistemological heritage of the Enlightenment, the historical-critical methods as applied to Assyriology, the constructive features of Barthian hermeneutics, or the ways in which the church has ‘trumped Scripture.’ Of course, not all will agree with his version of ‘practical realism’ and how it relates to biblical hermeneutics, but few can deny that that he has advanced the conversation in a way that is helpful and healthy.

—Bill T. Arnold, professor of Old Testament and Semitic languages, Asbury Theological Seminary

"What do we mean when we say our Bible—written by prophets, chroniclers, sages, evangelists, and apostles—is the word of God? In this book, Kenton Sparks engages that very question, emphatically affirming both the methodology and results of historical and modern biblical criticism and the authority of Scripture. He distinguishes divine inerrancy from the finite and fallible human vessels through whom God chose to reveal God’s Word. The biblical text manifests significant theological diversity that is best addressed by recognizing the distinct genres of human and divine discourse; God accommodates his message to the finite and fallen perspectives of his human audience. While some readers will be uncomfortable with Sparks’s characterization of conservative evangelical scholarship and his conclusions regarding the historicity of biblical narratives, this is a valuable window into the ‘progressive evangelical’ approach to the nature of Scripture."

—Elaine A. Phillips, professor of biblical and theological studies, Gordon College

GOD’S WORD

IN HUMAN

WORDS

GOD’S WORD

IN HUMAN

WORDS

AN EVANGELICAL APPROPRIATION OF

CRITICAL BIBLICAL SCHOLARSHIP

KENTON L. SPARKS

© 2008 by Kenton L. Sparks

Published by Baker Academic

a division of Baker Publishing Group

P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.bakeracademic.com

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sparks, Kenton L.

      God’s word in human words : an evangelical appropriation of critical biblical scholarship / Kenton L. Sparks.

            p. cm.

      Includes bibliographical references.

      ISBN 978-0-8010-2701-7 (pbk.)

      1. Bible—Criticism, interpretation, etc.—History. 2. Evangelicalism. I. Title.

  BS500.S597 2008

  220.601—dc22

2007037586

Scripture quotations labeled RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations labeled NIV are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations labeled NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations labeled KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

To my father,

who taught me that God is big enough for our questions

CONTENTS

Preface

Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Epistemology and Hermeneutics

2. Historical Criticism and Assyriology

3. The Problem of Biblical Criticism

4. Traditional Responses to Biblical Criticism

5. Constructive Responses to Biblical Criticism

6. The Genres of Human Discourse

7. The Genres of Divine Discourse

8. The Context of the Whole and Biblical Interpretation

9. Negotiating the Context of the Whole

10. Biblical Criticism and Christian Theology

Conclusions: Biblical Criticism and Christian Institutions

Bibliography

PREFACE

I RECALL THE MOMENT WELL. I was 14. It was a hot summer evening in the woodlands of Georgia, where I was attending yet another week of Christian service camp. While sitting on a tree stump during the quiet time hour, I read these words from Exodus 6:3: I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord I did not make myself known to them. Instinctively, I flipped back through the book of Genesis, ready to observe the black-and-white evidence for this, yet another mystery from Scripture. But what I found was not mystery but rather mystery upon mystery. While Exodus clearly said that the patriarchs did not know the divine name, numerous texts from Genesis seemed to confirm that they surely did know that God was the Lord. Although I did not realize it at the time, this was my first bout with historical criticism, or at least with the kinds of data that give rise to historical criticism.

It would be some thirteen years before an answer for this conundrum was inadvertently presented to me, in a set of study notes from the hand of the evangelical scholar Kenneth Kitchen. It was Kitchen’s purpose to explain why the prevailing notion in biblical scholarship, that Genesis and Exodus were composed from several different sources, was completely wrong. The theory was not entirely new to me. I had heard this theory before from my graduate professor at the University of North Carolina, John Van Seters. Van Seters explained that there were two major sources in Genesis and Exodus, one in which the divine name was known to humanity more or less from the beginning of history, and another in which the divine name was revealed to humanity only at the time of Moses. When these two narratives were combined, he said, this produced the odd effect that I noticed on that old tree stump as a teenager. Of course, I did not believe Van Seters. He was not any sort of evangelical Christian, and I had been warned about the deceptive and beguiling ways of the biblical critics. Paradoxically, it was Kitchen himself— not Van Seters—who convinced me that the critics were right.

I have read numerous books by Kitchen, and though he is a fine Egyptologist, it is my experience that he generally does a poor job of presenting the views of critical biblical scholarship. But in the study notes to which I refer here, Kitchen’s presentation was adequately clear. Indeed, by the time he had fully explained the critical theory of sources in the Pentateuch, I could hardly believe how reasonable and sensible the theory seemed. So I turned to the next page of Kitchen’s notes with great anticipation, looking forward to a robust and convincing rebuttal of the critical deception. Then came the moment of disappointment. Having already shown me the earth from an orbiting spaceship, Kitchen then proceeded to argue that the earth was flat. For the first time it began to dawn on me that the critical arguments regarding the Pentateuch were far better, and carried much more explanatory power, than the flimsy broom that Kitchen was using to sweep them away. At that moment I began to doubt that evangelical scholars were really giving me the whole story when it came to the Bible and biblical scholarship.

Looking back on these events some years later, I can only say with regret that my early suspicions have often been confirmed. Though I can point to thoughtful evangelicals who have admitted that the critical arguments are often good (a pioneer in this regard was the late Ray Dillard of Westminster Theological Seminary), these scholars have been few and far between. Only now are we witnessing the emergence of a new generation of evangelical scholars who are willing to admit that the standard critical arguments are often much better than the ill-advised apologetic that evangelicals have aimed at them. If one cares at all about the truth, then this is a welcome development.

I count myself a member of this new generation of evangelical scholars, and the present volume is a modest contribution to their work. Its purpose is to provide resources that I have found helpful during my own intellectual pilgrimage, as I have tried to navigate the sometimes precarious path that takes both faith and critical thinking seriously. The path is precarious because, as Scripture has warned us, those who teach in the church will be especially culpable for their errors. So here, as in other ways, I work out my salvation with fear and trembling. But when I fearfully exercise my duty as a teacher, it means that I must make good judgments about the kinds of dangers that can arise when I err in my work. For the old-school evangelicals, the chief danger to be feared has been that our teaching might explicitly or implicitly undermine the authority of Scripture, and this is a concern that I very much share. But there are other threats to the gospel that this generation of scholars has not taken seriously. Chief among them is the possibility that their version of the Christian faith might harbor false ideas and beliefs that, because they are mistaken, serve as barriers to faith for those who see our evangelical errors. As one example, evangelicals often fail to recognize the possibility that, by arguing strenuously for the strict historicity of Genesis 1, they are more or less shutting their church doors to countless scientists and scholars who might otherwise have come to faith. In essence, the old-school evangelicals have been so sure that they are right that they no longer consider seriously the possibility that they are too conservative; conservative, not in the sense of theological orthodoxy, but in the sense that they are unable to really think critically about whether their traditions are intellectually adequate and spiritually healthy.

The new generation of evangelicals is generally more comfortable than the last with raising serious questions about the evangelical tradition, especially when mounting evidence suggests that certain aspects of that tradition are symptomatic of an intellectual scandal (as one prominent evangelical expressed it).1 But let me be clear on this point. By saying this, I am not denying that our faith should involve a kind of scandal. For I would affirm with the apostle Paul that the truest power of God is revealed most vividly in the scandal of the cross. My chief concern is that we should avoid a grave theological error, which uses the legitimate scandal of faith as a basis for our illegitimate intellectual scandals. If the fear of God is to play a role in our Christian thinking and teaching—and I affirm that it should—then let us realize that our intellectual and doctrinal errors can be of many types and head in many directions. Very conservative evangelicals are right to be vigilant in their defense of biblical authority. But, as I hope to show, biblical authority is a complex matter, and it is only one of many theological matters that require our thoughtful vigilance.

As I make my case for this and some of the other positions that I will take in this book, one of my objectives along the way is to demonstrate that my viewpoints are not wholly new but, in important respects, stand in continuity with the long-standing traditions of Christian theology and with important strands of the evangelical tradition. Doing so reflects my firm conviction that whole-cloth theological innovation can never pass the canons of orthodoxy. One way of demonstrating this connection with the past is to cite authors from those traditions (whether ancient fathers like Augustine or evangelicals like James Orr) whose views comport with mine to some extent. Now, my citations are necessarily selective, and one could as easily find quotations from Augustine and Orr that disagree with my conclusions in various ways. But of course the main point is not that my views will or should suit any particular author all of the time; the rather more modest point is that many of the things that I say resonate with things that other Christians, with unquestionable faith pedigrees, have already said. This does not mean that I will ignore contrary voices in my discussion, however. For as a rule much of this book is given to an engagement with those viewpoints that I find wanting in whole or part.

Since I plan to quote, I might as well begin now. Although I often disagree with the viewpoints of Alexander Campbell, namesake of the Campbellites, there is at least one instance where I find that his wisdom is dead on. In his first reply to Robert Owen in the famous Campbell-Owen debate, Campbell declared: I know, indeed, that there is no circumstance in which any person can be placed more unfavorable to his conviction, than that which puts him in a public assembly upon the proof of his principles. The mind is then on the alert to find proofs for the system which has been already adopted, and is not disposed to such an investigation as might issue in conviction. Arguments and proofs are rather parried than weighed; and triumph rather than conviction is anxiously sought for.2 Campbell’s point is clear enough: even in matters of faith, all of us should be prepared to accept the fact that we can be wrong. This is true of you as a reader, but I know that it is also quite true of me as a writer. So, while I do hope to make some points that readers will find helpful, I am painfully aware that my own views are always a work in progress.

Before I begin my discussion in earnest, I have a long list of accrued debts that I can only confess but never repay. First on the list are my valued colleagues at Eastern University: Steve Boyer, Eric Flett, Chris Hall, Betsy Morgan, Dwight Peterson, Margaret Peterson, Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, Randy Colton, and especially Phil Cary, Carl Mosser, and Ray Van Leeuwen. I should mention as well my research assistant, Greg Klimowitz, who gave me a student’s perspective on the manuscript. Others who have read the manuscript, or discussed with me its substance, include John Goldingay (Fuller Theological Seminary), Peter Enns (Westminster Theological Seminary), Leo Sandgren (University of Florida), Jim Kinney (Baker Academic), and an anonymous (but insightful) reader acquired by Baker Academic on my behalf. Whether those listed here actually agree with my conclusions is another matter, but there is no question that I have benefited from their expertise.

As is always the case at the end of a project, I am very thankful for the support, encouragement, and patience of my wife, Cheryl, and of my two daughters, Emily and Cara Ellen. Among other things, Cheryl read and commented on certain parts of the manuscript and made it possible for me to put in some extra time in the office, especially toward the end of the project. As for the girls, the joy that they give us makes every labor of work a little less laborious.

I am very pleased that this book affords an opportunity to modestly express my deep gratitude to my father, Morris Sparks, to whom this book is rightfully dedicated. In many talks over the years, he has always taught me that critical thinking and faith in God go together. I knew long ago that he was right about this, but I had no idea just how right he was.

Soli Deo Gloria!

1. Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994).

2. Alexander Campbell and Robert Owen, Debate on the Evidences of Christianity (London: R. Groom-bridge, 1839), 14.

ABBREVIATIONS

INTRODUCTION

ALL OF US believe that the earth orbits the sun, and in this idea we find nothing deceptive, theologically dangerous, or heretical. Yet it is instructive to recall that this was not always so. When Galileo first joined Copernicus in intimating that the earth was not at the center of the universe, he was soundly rebuked by church authorities—Catholic and Protestant alike—who averred that Scripture, church tradition, and common sense clearly taught that the astronomer was wrong. Some of Galileo’s detractors even refused to consider the evidence by looking through his telescope.1 The astronomer was eventually put on trial in a church proceeding, during which church authorities insisted that he recant his views. Galileo eventually yielded to their demands, but we can surmise that his words of repentance did not convince the gray matter in his head.

The significance of this moment in church history is elucidated by an instructive question. Were Galileo’s views really dangerous? We are tempted perhaps to insist that his ideas were true and hence could not be dangerous, but there is clear evidence that Galileo’s views—and the similar views of Copernicus—indeed spawned grave theological doubts in the minds of some people. This was a natural consequence of the fact that the church could not easily absorb the insights of Galileo and Copernicus when standard Christian doctrine contradicted their new astronomical insights on so many levels. From this we can reasonably conclude that even the truth can be dangerous and harmful to the church if this truth is not properly assimilated to the world of Scripture and faith. That is, in some measure we might say that true facts when wrongly understood turn out to imply all sorts of false facts. Yet it hardly seems possible to conclude that the church’s proper response to new theories and insights, whether of Galileo or of someone else, is to ignore or deny them. Rather, what is sorely needed in every age—for the sake of believers and unbelievers alike—is a church that knows how to thoughtfully consider and assimilate the fruits of academic endeavors to its faith in Christ. In broad strokes, my aim in this volume is to help shape the intellectual contours of the church so that it can perform this scholastic duty better. However, my pursuit of this objective is prompted not by general concerns but rather by a more specific problem faced by the modern church.

The Church’s Problem with Historical Criticism

My chief interest here is not in the astronomical views of Galileo and Copernicus. I am interested instead in considering another kind of scholarship that some corners of the church have found dangerous and unhealthy, namely, that approach to biblical scholarship that goes by names like historical criticism, higher criticism, or biblical criticism. Just as Galileo invited us to turn a critical eye toward the cosmos, so modern biblical scholars bid us to reflect critically upon our assumptions about the nature of Scripture and about how it should be read properly. Such a critical exercise should be a vital element in our study of Scripture because we are so apt, as finite and fallible human beings, to commit interpretive errors when we read the Bible. In many corners of the church, however, historical criticism has not been so helpful. Why not?

In order to answer this question in a preliminary way, let us briefly consider a few instances in which the church’s traditional readings of the Bible have differed from the critical conclusions offered by most modern biblical scholars. We will consider three examples from the Old Testament and three from the New Testament (see table 1).

For instance if we inspect our first example more closely (the Pentateuch), it becomes rather clear that the differences between the traditional and the historical-critical readings are striking. Church tradition has assumed that the Pentateuch is an historically accurate document written by Moses during the second millennium BCE. Modern scholars, on the other hand, are very skeptical about the historical value of the Pentateuch, and they attribute these five biblical books to several authors working well after Moses would have lived. At this juncture we needn’t debate the relative merits of these traditional and critical viewpoints; it is enough to appreciate why biblical criticism appears so different from—and threatening to—the traditional approach.

Over the years there have been three basic responses to the tension between traditional views of Scripture and modern biblical scholarship. First, in some circles, the embracing of biblical criticism has had the effect of desacralizing the Bible. According to this view, the results of biblical scholarship provide sure evidence that Scripture is a thoroughly human product rather than a divinely inspired book. Thus divested of its authority, the Bible becomes just another of many religious texts for scholars to study, dissect, and critique. Although this response might strike us as thoroughly irreligious, there are interpretive communities within Judaism and Christianity that embrace this skeptical posture toward the Bible. Because of its tendency to secularize the Bible, I prefer to call this response to biblical criticism the secular response.

Table 1

Second, at the other end of the spectrum, we find the traditional response. Included in this camp are Jews and Christians—as well as many evangelicals— who have rejected the standard results of biblical scholarship because they believe that these results, if true, would represent a serious threat to biblical authority. Traditionalists normally argue that theories of biblical criticism are wrong because they rest on poor scholarship or, worse, upon the naive, naturalistic assumptions of the Enlightenment. Although the traditional and secular responses are obviously poles apart in their perspectives on biblical authority, it is worth noting that the two views agree on an important point: biblical criticism seems to strike a blow against the Bible’s authority. They disagree only on whether biblical criticism’s judgments about the Bible are correct (the secular view) or incorrect (the traditional view).

Between these two perspectives—but quite different from both—one finds various efforts to forge a tertium quid option, in which traditional faith and critical scholarship are somehow integrated into a healthy whole. This program has yielded mixed results, as we will see in chapter 5. But the underlying impulse of tertium quid scholarship is its dual confidence in the divine origins of Scripture and in the usefulness of modern biblical scholarship. In view of this dual commitment, let us call this third response to biblical criticism the constructive response. So the three responses to modern biblical criticism may be neatly contrasted like this: the secular response (which rejects biblical authority on the basis of biblical criticism), the traditional response (which rejects the results of biblical criticism to protect biblical authority), and the constructive response (which attempts to integrate biblical criticism to the faith). Because of its twofold commitment to faith and scholarship, the constructive response is sometimes referred to as believing criticism, which is a label I like to use.

The theological tradition in which I live and serve is American evangelicalism, a modern sociological and religious movement whose roots lie in the Christian fundamentalism of America’s nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although it is fairly accurate to describe its view of the Bible as traditional, there are strong tendencies within progressive evangelicalism to seek out a third way that integrates faith with modern scholarship. This move is in some respects new to the American scene, but it has been a fixture in British evangelicalism for some time. Consider these words of F. F. Bruce, written in 1947: "In such critical cruces, for example, as the codification of the Pentateuch, the composition of Isaiah, the date of Daniel, the sources of the Gospels, or the authenticity of the Pastoral Epistles, each of us is free to hold and proclaim the conclusions to which all the available evidence points."2

It is fascinating to compare this comment, which reflects no anxiety about critical conclusions concerning the book of Isaiah, with the comments recently offered by Richard Schultz, an American evangelical, on the same issue: The gates have been opened wide, and applications of historical-critical methods and conclusions are flooding evangelical biblical studies. Such irrigation can foster growth initially, but ultimately it may cause destruction.3

The different temperaments toward critical scholarship that we see in Bruce and Schultz epitomize what Schultz correctly sees as a new and serious tension that is emerging within evangelical circles, as traditionalists labor to protect evangelical hermeneutics from historical criticism, while other evangelicals invite modern historical criticism to the table of debate. Let me say quite clearly that the concerns of those who are suspicious of biblical criticism are not unfounded. Historical criticism has been around for only a few centuries, yet it seems clear enough that its work has often undermined the perception of Scripture’s authority, leaving many destructive effects in its wake: believers have lost their faith, churches and seminaries have abandoned creedal orthodoxy, and unbelievers have found reasons to doubt the authenticity of the Christian message.4 One could easily speak of the death of Scripture.5 These negative assessments of historical criticism are not evangelical alone but appear as well in many nonevangelical Christian communities, as we will see. So it seems to me—and to many others—that historical criticism has often been a dangerous and destructive force in the life of the church.

The Paradox of Biblical Criticism

So we face a curious paradox. If biblical criticism leads to false and destructive results, and if it is indeed as intellectually bankrupt as some conservative theologians aver, then why have so many thoughtful believers entered university graduate programs with a vibrant devotion to God only to emerge on the other side of their studies with a dead or failing faith, and with the firm conviction that historical criticism easily bests the traditional viewpoint? Do Christian graduate students succumb to the deceptive power of university professors? Are they easily swayed to sacrifice their faith on the altar of academic respectability? Is hubris so endemic to academic inquiry that most graduate students—even Christian graduate students—arrogantly use critical scholarship to escape God’s claim on their lives? Perhaps. But even if these questions direct our attention to important issues, there are other questions worth asking, questions that traditionalists sometimes overlook. Is it possible that the persuasive power of historical criticism rests especially in its correctness? Could it be that historical criticism—like the astronomy of Galileo—has been destructive not because it is false, but because the church has often misunderstood its implications? If so, then we may eventually have to face a tragic paradox: the church’s wholesale rejection of historical criticism has begotten the irreverent use of Scripture by skeptics, thus destroying the faith of some believers while keeping unbelievers away from the faith. If this is indeed what has happened and is happening, then nothing less is needed than the church’s careful reevaluation of its relationship to historical-critical readings of Scripture. That reevaluation is my agenda here.

Given this agenda, I would like to remind the reader where I am coming from. I am an evangelical, committed fully to the Bible as God’s authoritative Word, to the doctrines of historic creedal orthodoxy, to the unique significance of the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, and to the hope of his return. I would go even further than this by confessing my profound appreciation for the evangelical tradition, for its emphasis on Christian living, its practical commitment to evangelism and missions, and also its doctrinal commitment to the inerrancy of God’s Word. So I would not be writing this book, with evangelical readers in mind, were it not for the profound spiritual vitality that marks the character and mission of evangelicalism. At the same time, as I have just mentioned, few would deny that considerable tensions are now emerging within the evangelical fold. In many respects these tensions can be traced back to the problem that I wish to consider here, the problem of modern biblical criticism.

Historical Criticism: An Example

I have so far assumed that readers have some familiarity with the spirit and practice of historical criticism, but it cannot hurt before moving on to be more specific about it. I would like to do so by providing a very old but straightforward example of historical criticism, which dates from the fifteenth century.

During the latter part of the Middle Ages, papal authority in the Christian West was partially secured by an appeal to the Donation of Constantine. This document purported to be an imperial edict of Constantine (fourth century CE), in which he donated all of the Western Roman Empire to the authority of the pope. At about the same time, however, scholars of the Middle Ages were becoming increasingly interested in the study of technical philology. Scholars studying the languages of ancient texts began to notice that human languages have a history. Latin of the first century was different from Latin of the sixth century, and so forth. As a result, texts could be dated on the basis of their grammar, vocabulary, and dialect; one could even demonstrate that supposedly ancient texts were actually forgeries, falsely written in the name of some famous person. Such was the case when the Renaissance humanist Lorenzo Valla (c. 1406–1457) deduced that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery.6 Valla had a fine enough sense of Latin’s historical development to discern that the text could not have been written during the fourth-century reign of Constantine but was instead a much later forgery.

Valla’s work is often cited as one of the earliest instances of historical criticism.7 As the example shows, historical criticism is really, at its heart, nothing other than an interpretive method that appreciates the historically contingent nature of human discourse. That is, when it comes to interpreting verbal discourse, that discourse is a product of—hence dependent upon—the changing currents and tides of language, religious belief, social structure, cultural values, and political realities. Now in this case it will not surprise us that the Reformers, particularly Martin Luther, loved Valla’s critical impulse. For the work of Valla embodied what would become standard practice for the Reformers: radical historical criticism. Historical research was the primary method used by the Reformers to expose much of the Roman Church’s doctrine and power base as medieval accretions rather than biblical teaching. So far so good for conscientious Protestants—but the other shoe was still to fall. Though these early Protestants were accustomed to thinking that good historical scholarship was on their side, their heirs were not really prepared for the way that historical-critical scholarship would eventually affect the reading of the Bible itself.

Conclusions

We live in the era of historical consciousness, which emerged during the Renaissance and Reformation and then reached full bloom during and after the Enlightenment. As a result, all of us are historical critics of a sort, or at least believers in many ideas that were produced by historical criticism. So while we should for good reason be cautious about embracing everything that passes as historical and critical, perhaps it is reasonable to consider the merits of historical criticism more carefully. But let me be clear from the outset. I have no desire to bring the methods and results of historical criticism directly into our local churches, or to have its critical conclusions carelessly preached from pulpits or taught in Sunday school classes. Nor do I wish to defend historical criticism at all cost, as if modern biblical scholarship is in all respects healthy and helpful. It is clear to me—and to many others—that certain kinds of biblical criticism reflect neither of these qualities. No, my objective in this book is more modest. There are at present two major impulses within the evangelical tradition regarding biblical criticism. One of these accepts the criticism as a legitimate way to study Scripture, and the other more or less rejects the criticism. I write to suggest that one of these paths is healthier than the other, and also to suggest how that path can be fruitfully traveled by Christians. In the end, it is for the reader to judge whether and to what extent my conclusions are sensible and right.

Let me conclude by returning to the example of Galileo. The church eventually realized that his astronomy was correct and integrated his new insights into its worldview. This had the positive effect of rendering Galileo’s ideas theologically safe. My purpose in this volume is similar. I would like us to consider the possibility that historical criticism—in spite of its potential faults and negative import—might offer a relatively accurate portrait of Scripture that will be of theological value once the church correctly understands its insights. Here is how I will proceed. In the chapter that follows I will consider various epistemological and hermeneutical issues that are to my mind prerequisite to our discussion of historical criticism. I do not believe that one can understand or evaluate historical criticism apart from this background. Chapter 2 will discuss historical criticism per se, followed in turn by a discussion of biblical criticism in chapter 3. In chapters 4 and 5 I will outline a variety of Christian responses to historical criticism before I attempt to forge a healthier set of solutions in chapters 6 through 9. In chapter 10 I will test these solutions by applying them to a set of specific problems raised by historical criticism. My deliberations will then end with prospective comments in the concluding chapter. Among other things, in this concluding chapter I will give special attention to how the subject of biblical criticism ought to be managed in the life of the local church and in the curricula of Christian institutions of higher learning. The ultimate goal of this agenda is to fashion a Christian response to modern biblical criticism that is intellectually satisfying as well as theologically and spiritually healthy.

1. For the whole story, see: Giorgio de Santillana, The Crime of Galileo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955); Maurice A. Finocchiaro, Retrying Galileo, 1633–1992 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Jerome J. Langford, Galileo, Science, and the Church, rev. ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1971).

2. F. F. Bruce, The Tyndale Fellowship for Biblical Research, Evangelical Quarterly 19 (1947): 58–59.

3. Richard L. Schultz, How Many Isaiahs Were There and What Does It Matter? in Evangelicals and Scripture: Tradition, Authority, and Hermeneutics, ed. Vincent E. Bacote, Laura C. Miguélez, and Dennis L. Okholm (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004), 150–70.

4. Roy A. Harrisville and Walter Sundberg, The Bible in Modern Culture: Theology and Historical-Critical Method from Spinoza to Käsemann (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995); Walter Sundberg, The Social Effect of Biblical Criticism, in Renewing Biblical Interpretation, ed. Craig G. Bartholomew, Colin Greene, and Karl Möller, SHS 1 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 66–81; James A. Sanders, Canon and Community: A Guide to Canonical Criticism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984).

5. Robert Morgan and John Barton, Biblical Interpretation, Oxford Bible Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 44–61.

6. "Donation of Constantine (Constitutum or Donatio Constantini)," ODCC 499; Valla, Lorenzo, ODCC 1677–78.

7. Carlo Ginzburg, Lorenzo Valla on the ‘Donation of Constantine,’ chap. 2 in History, Rhetoric, and Proof (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1999), 54–70.

1

EPISTEMOLOGY

AND HERMENEUTICS

I PROPOSE TO BEGIN with the problem of interpretation. Not with biblical interpretation only, but with interpretation in the widest possible sense, in terms of its history and philosophy. Some friends and colleagues who have read this manuscript have suggested that this part of my discussion ought to be presented later in the book, or even left out altogether. Their arguments in this direction have been uniform: that evangelical readers might be put off by some of the points that I make here; that they might as a result either put the book down or, barring that, continue reading with suspicion toward all that I say. Indeed, this advice reflects a concern that I have, and because of it I have toyed with all sorts of rhetorical options. But in the end I have decided that what we are about to discuss fits precisely here in our deliberations together. The reason for this is straightforward. I believe that the rise of modern biblical criticism, and the various responses to it that dot the intellectual landscape, cannot be understood very well apart from the history of interpretation sketched in this chapter. If this is so, if what we are about to discuss is truly prerequisite and prolegomenon to all else that will be said, then we have little choice but to tackle the matter right now—even if doing so is less than ideal.

Epistemology and hermeneutics are two closely related fields of academic study. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies human knowledge. It attempts to answer fundamental questions like: What is knowledge? How do we acquire it? How do we know (or can we know) that what we believe is true? As for hermeneutics, this field of study originated with a methodological focus on how to interpret texts, but during the nineteenth century it quickly transitioned from a focus on method to a focus on the event of understanding itself. Hermeneutics in this modern sense has to do with understanding the conditions that make interpretation and knowledge possible. Its interests are not only in interpreting texts, like the Bible, but also in the interpretation of human experiences, from the phenomena that pass before our eyes to the very thoughts that pass through our heads. In other words, very little in life escapes the interest of hermeneutics. To be human is to interpret. Or, to put it in the brash words of Jacques Derrida, In the beginning is hermeneutics.1

Although the history of Western epistemology and hermeneutics is complex, I would like to offer a brief historical overview of developments in these fields over the past few centuries. In doing so, I will refer to the major periods of development in this history as the premodern, modern, and postmodern periods. The differences between these three periods hinge, in many respects, on the concept of tradition. Tradition comes from the Latin term traditio, meaning that which is transmitted or handed on. In scholarly parlance, it is "the recurrence of the same structures of conduct and patterns of belief over several generations."2 In every society, whether ancient or modern, primitive or advanced, most of what passes as knowledge comes from tradition. Individuals tend to receive their view of the world passively, as they grow up in and are acculturated to their native family and society. Knowledge in such cases is not something that one discovers so much as something that happens to us in culture and experience. As Michael Polanyi has expressed it, most of our knowledge is tacit knowledge—knowledge that we have unconsciously inherited from experience and tradition.3 Although tradition is for this reason an essential source of knowledge in every culture, this does not mean that all societies are equally disposed toward tradition. While simple (or primitive) societies tend to accept tradition without much reflection, in some cultures tradition is questioned pretty rigorously. Our quest to appreciate the history of Western epistemology and hermeneutics, and its import for our discussion, will have to attend carefully to how each era responded to tradition.

The Premodern Period

The historical period that interests me presently runs from the early church to the dawn of the Renaissance, that is, from the first to the fourteenth century. Historians of interpretation sometimes refer to this period as the precritical period, but I prefer premodern for reasons that will become clear. How did premodern scholars respond to tradition? It is commonly asserted that the modes of inquiry that prevailed during this period were very traditional, that people tended simply to embrace whatever tradition said. Now to some extent this is how it was, particularly respecting religion. The church’s authority on matters of faith was generally accepted without serious question. Consequently, while scholars from Augustine to Aquinas raised all sorts of critical questions about theological and philosophical issues, these questions tended to assume the church’s Rule of Faith and so moved within its orbit. This traditional posture foreclosed certain questions and options, even for brilliant and critical thinkers like Aquinas.4 Of course, some scholars openly challenged church dogmas, but they usually reaped trouble for their effort. Heretics were generally removed from their posts, exiled, or sometimes executed.

I suspect that premodern scholars sometimes submitted to the authority of church tradition more out of duty than intellectual conviction, but this response to tradition needn’t imply an exercise in duplicity, in which scholars merely pretended to accept church doctrine. Even when their minds suggested alternatives to tradition, premodern scholars tended to follow the church’s judgment because they were profoundly aware of the great gulf that separated divine knowledge from human knowledge. The early fathers believed that God was ultimately mysterious and incomprehensible, so that his revelation in Christ and in the Bible was an accommodation or condescension to our level.5 God spoke to us in baby talk, as it were, because human beings are simply unable to understand anything as God understands it.6 So premodern scholars were theoretically and theologically committed to humility in matters of interpretation and human knowledge. In general, they thought it better to trust the judgments of tradition more than the impulses of their private individual judgments. Whether they always lived out this humility is another matter, but they were certainly aware of the limitations of human knowledge.

Premodern methods of interpreting Scripture reflect this concept of divine mystery. Biblical interpretation in this early period was deeply influenced by Greek philosophy, especially by Platonism and Platonic exegesis. One result is that early Christians found multiple levels of meaning in Scripture, not only its literal sense but also its figurative senses, that is, its allegorical, tropological (moral), and anagogical (eschatological) meanings. These mysterious figurative senses of Scripture were not discernible to everyone, but only to those with the necessary theological and spiritual qualifications.7 Contrary to a common modern misconception, this multilevel hermeneutic did not involve ignoring the intentions of the biblical author. For the ancients, God himself was the author of Scripture, of both its literal and figurative senses. So biblical allegories were no less intended than the literal sense of Scripture.

As I said, allegories reflected the mystery of Scripture and so enhanced the perception that the Bible was a divine book. But the utility of allegory for early Christians went beyond this. One of the chief difficulties faced by early Christians involved the apparent conflicts and contradictions in the Bible, especially the tensions between the Old and New Testaments. How could God command us to love our enemies in the New Testament when, in the Old Testament, he was praised for dashing Babylonian infants against rocks (Ps. 138:8–9)? For Augustine and the other early fathers, Old Testament texts like this did not have literal or plain meanings at all. They were allegories from the ground up. In this particular case Augustine believed that the infants of Babylon were not literal children but rather the vices of the Babylonians.8 Even Jerome, who was much less prone to allegories, resorted to them when necessary. Upon reading the account in 1 Kings 1:1–4, in which the aged and decrepit David was warmed by placing a beautiful young lady in his bed, Jerome concluded that this story could not be historical. After all, David had many wives who could have provided this support. For him to turn aside after this young woman would have been wholly immoral. From this Jerome surmised that in 1 Kings we have instead an allegorical tale, in which David was warmed not by a literal woman named Abishag but by Lady Wisdom (cf. Prov. 4:5–9).9 Patristic exegesis employed this method extensively, for it was the primary means for resolving the ostensible contradictions in Scripture. Gregory the Great expressed it this way: Undoubtedly the words of the literal text, when they do not agree with each other, show that something else is to be sought in them. It is as if they said to us, ‘When you see us apparently embarrassed and contradictory, look within us for that which is coherent and consistent.’10

While just about everyone in the early church allegorized Scripture, tolerance for allegories varied from scholar to scholar and place to place. Allegories were all the rage in North Africa and the Christian West (e.g., Augustine, Gregory the Great), but scholars in the Christian East, such as Theodore of Mopsuestia and Theodoret of Cyrus, were suspicious of these figurative meanings.11 In theory they allowed for allegories, but only when these seemed genuinely compatible with Scripture’s plain meaning, which they preferred. So there were great differences in the hermeneutical temperaments of Christian scholars in the East and West. Nevertheless, they shared at least one important quality: they deeply respected the Christian tradition.

Premodern commitment to the church and its traditions began to unravel during the modern era, but this more skeptical view of traditional authority did not appear out of thin air. Two premodern developments paved the way for this new view of tradition, both of them suitably represented by the work of Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas was an avid student of Greek philosophy and discovered that the works of Aristotle were chock-full of valuable philosophical insights. His great work, Summa Theologica, was an effort to enhance traditional Christian theology by joining it with Aristotle’s insights. Naturally, it was important for Aquinas to explain the philosophical success of this pagan philosopher, to explain how one without Christ could uncover so many truths that were compatible with Scripture. Aquinas’s answer to this question was straightforward: because God created the natural world and also human reason, it followed that all rational pursuits of truth would lead inexorably to conclusions that were compatible with those taught by the church and in the Bible. Scholars in the modern period would eventually understand this to mean that philosophical reflection could be safely and profitably unmoored from traditional theological assumptions. Aquinas is often blamed for this development, but as a philosophical move it was utterly foreign to his thinking.12 Nevertheless, it is true that these developments eventually led to conclusions that flew in the face of traditional Christian dogmas.

The other premodern development that prepared the way for modern thinking was the rise of technical philology. Scholars were able to notice that languages have histories and, hence, that texts could be dated to some extent by their linguistic characteristics. Such was the case when Aquinas realized that De Spiritu et Anima (On the Spirit and Soul) was composed not by Augustine, as the text alleged, but rather in the time of Aquinas himself (12th century).13 Scholars gradually realized that the import of these philological observations went far beyond language. Culture itself was an evolving reality, and many important things— including theological traditions and even the Bible itself—were inextricably tied to the changing tides of culture. So philology was pointing the way to historical consciousness, and because of that, to historical criticism.

One result of this historical impulse was that medieval scholarship became increasingly interested in the Bible’s literal and historical meanings, and increasingly uncomfortable with traditional allegorical interpretations. Aquinas especially worked to resolve the conflict between the new and old methods.14 He reasoned that the divine and human meanings of Scripture did not wholly correspond because of the great difference between God and humans. While the words of the Bible were signs through which both God and the human author could speak, for God the things about which Scripture spoke could also serve as signs. The phenomenon could be illustrated like this: Moses spoke for God when he referred to the literal place called Mount Sinai, yet for God that mountain allegorically signified the law (as we see in Gal. 4:21–31). So the plain sense of Scripture was from both God and the human author, and this plain sense in turn provided the foundation or basis for God’s divine discourse, for his allegorical (as well as tropological and anagogical) messages. One result of Aquinas’s approach was that the literal or plain meaning of the biblical text gained special privilege toward the end of the premodern period. Another result is that the divine and human levels of biblical discourse were theoretically separated, so that the Bible could bear a fuller sense (sensus plenior) than its human author intended. Modern scholars would eventually do away with this fuller sense, leaving as important only the human author’s intention, as understood in its historical context.

To summarize, we may say that premodern scholars generally trusted tradition and worked within the theological boundaries established by church authority. They lived in the Age of Faith. At the same time, particularly toward the end of the period, premodern scholars became increasingly aware that tradition is far more historically contingent than first strikes the eye. The recognition that tradition changes in response to the vagaries of historical and cultural circumstances engendered a profoundly new mode of thinking, which set the stage for the rise of modern interpretation.

The Modern Period

The chief characteristic of the modern age is that it went beyond the premodern critique of tradition to a full-blown suspicion of tradition. As I have noted already, the seeds of suspicion were already being sown during the premodern period, but we shall not go far wrong if we locate the real taproot of suspicion in the Renaissance, a period beginning in the late fourteenth century and ending in the sixteenth century, during which the political, literary, artistic, and philosophical resources from ancient Greece and Rome were recovered and studied by scholars in the West.15 Exposure to these classical texts made Renaissance scholars more aware of the radical changes that transpire in matters of religion and culture during the course of history. This awareness of historical change—commonly referred to as historical consciousness—prompted Renaissance scholars to consider new options, as they questioned the reliability and correctness of the ideas and traditions inherited from the monastic and scholastic traditions of the Middle Ages. As a result, it became increasingly clear that in many cases the scientific and philosophical reflection of the ancient Greeks and Romans surpassed by far the traditions of the Christian Middle Ages. This being the case, it was only a matter of time before intellectuals in the West began to critique not only medieval science and philosophy but also the church itself.

During the Renaissance, critical eyes were increasingly focused on the flaws and corruption present in the church’s leadership and practices. This critical stance eventually culminated in a new religious movement, the Reformation. The Reformers—men like Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli—believed that the flaws and failures in the Roman Church implicitly raised questions about the validity of the church’s claim to be the infallible institution of God. Eventually, these dissenters rejected the authority of the pope and the Roman Church altogether, claiming instead that two theological points were unassailably true: (1) the proper authority for Christian theology and practice was not the word of the church but Scripture alone (sola scriptura), and (2) according to that Scripture, human beings are saved by faith alone (sola fide), apart from the works and rituals prescribed by church tradition. Just as Renaissance scholars hurdled the Middle Ages to retrieve the pristine traditions of Greece and Rome, so the Reformers hurdled centuries of church tradition in order to retrieve what they viewed as the original and uncorrupted apostolic tradition in Scripture. This confident use of Scripture to trump church tradition was grounded in one of the most basic assumptions of the Reformation project, namely, that the expression of truth in Scripture is perspicuous, not only because its words are clearly expressed and easy to understand but also because the Holy Spirit illumines Christian readers of the Bible. It followed that sound biblical interpretation did not require the help of a Catholic bishop or priest. Hence the three foundational beliefs of the Reformation were sola scriptura, sola fide, and a perspicuous Bible. Reformation theology was critical of many things, even recognizing and struggling with the textual problems in Scripture. But in the end, it did not doubt the authority and correctness of Scripture, nor did it doubt our human ability to understand Scripture with God’s help.16 Consequently, the Reformers tended to overlook the fact that their theology was itself an interpretation of Scripture that might be wrong. They believed that they were merely reading precisely and only what Scripture plainly said (which is why they generally rejected allegorical interpretations).17 We might question these confident claims as sleight of hand, but it was the only path to take if one wanted theology without errors. That was precisely what the Reformers needed to trump the authority of the Catholic Church.

The Reformation’s confidence in human interpretation rested in part on its high view of humanity’s rational capacity. As Luther put it, man alone is endowed with the glorious light of reason and intellect. Human beings’ ability to devise so many noble arts and skills, their wisdom, dexterity, and ingenuity, all derived from this light, or from the Word who was the light of men.18 At the same time, in spite of their sometimes overconfident rhetoric, Reformation scholars inherited and even advanced the old Christian belief—inherited especially from Augustine—that human beings are fallen and possess quite limited rational and perceptual capacities. We are unable to understand even our own minds, still less the minds of others and of God. Now if it is true that I cannot fully express the thoughts of my heart, said Luther, "how many thousand times less will it be possible for me to understand or express the Word or conversation in which God engages within His