The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals When It Gets God Wrong (and Why Inerrancy Tries To Hide It) – a book review
Thom Stark takes ordinary people and laity on a journey through the major historical and ethical problems with the Bible, a journey usually reserved for seminarians and scholars. This readable and even sometimes entertaining book not only demonstrates the incoherence of the doctrine of “biblical inerrancy”, but also investigates other ways that people have tried to integrate the inconsistencies, contradictions and ostensible evils contained within the Bible with traditional Christian belief.
A reader, especially one from a very conservative or even fundamentalist branch of Christianity—but also from any form of strident skepticism or atheism—might be tempted to think that such a book aims to destroy Christian belief. The stated goal of Mr. Stark, however, is to argue from within the Christian tradition for that tradition to honestly come to grips with their holy book in a way that bolsters rather than hinders their faith. The book eventually offers a way forward for Christians to engage critically with these ancient texts without discarding, altering, or selectively reading them.
Does his proposal work? From this laymen’s perspective, Stark excels when turning a critical eye on an inerrantist reading, as well as alternatives such as allegorical, canonical and subversive readings. In that sense it truly lives up to its name, showing us how the scriptures often reveal as much or more about the humans who wrote, collected, edited, canonized, and passed on these writings than the God to which they attest. Because his own proposal for a “direct confrontation” with scripture is in its infancy, being made possible only by recent centuries of scholarship, I’m not sure that such a “direct confrontation” can be measurably better than these other attempts, nor that this method of reading scripture isn’t just as susceptible to the presuppositions of the reader. I feel that the book would have benefited greatly from Stark taking his same critical eye (and the same criteria) through an additional chapter or two hinting at what the potential problems are or what new questions are raised by this method of “direct confrontation” with scripture. Why, for example, does the author say that interpretation should be done in community? Why does he consider Aristotelian virtue theory important? What makes him confident that “(w)e have the Holy Spirit” to aid us in our continuing quest? By what criteria does anyone decide when and where the scriptures “get God wrong”, let alone whether or not there even is such a being? Using the same tools that the author has armed us with we can critique his own project: what reason does he have to confidently say that “God speaks to us through these texts, if we are willing to listen critically”? (p. 222) Or that God “calls on us to recognize ourselves in them”? Out of all the human faces of God, which one are we to assume is doing the speaking here?
The Human Faces of God has been one of the best books that I’ve read on the canon precisely because it has illuminated the humanity of the scriptures. Not surprisingly, the book helped me to see my own human faces of God; how my own reading of the scriptures is affected by my own humanity and is therefore (at the very least) fallible or (more likely) susceptible to constant and persistent error. What it doesn’t do is help me to see in what way the Bible is (or is not) divine. I can’t help but nod in agreement when Mr. Stark says that we are “without foundations” or that the Bible is humanly authored…you don’t have to be a critical scholar to see how these ideas line up with various scriptures and traditions within Christianity. But the book’s success doesn’t overcome the major concern that most Christians ostensibly have when looking at the Bible: we’re not really looking there to see ourselves more clearly, but to see God.
When Stark uses the doctrine of the incarnation or Trinitarian ways of understanding Christ in order to show the possibility that “fully human” means that Jesus was, like any human, a product of his time, place and culture, my impression is that this is a way of appealing to his opponents’ own logic rather than any sort of affirmation of his own belief. Which is all right and good, of course. But it’s the same problem over again: why, other than some accident of history, should I look to Jesus or the Bible to see God more clearly? His own explanation of why he remains in the Christian tradition works as description, and his critique of our usual readings of the Bible works as diagnosis, but I’m not as confident about his prescription. There may be a right way and a wrong way to take the medicine, but what if I’m not convinced that this is the right medicine? Or that I even need medicine?
Part of the solution to this riddle—as best as I can see it—is found in Stark’s summation of apocalypticism as a conventional “deus ex machina”. The protagonist (humanity) cannot save themselves so a deity—an omnipotent deity, so “there is nothing at stake” (p.228)—swoops in for an unsatisfying conclusion, rendering the drama of history (and scripture) “a cosmic joke”. A small shift in this scheme changes everything: What if God stops being the “deus ex machina” and instead becomes the protagonist? And what if humanity stops being the protagonist and instead becomes, along with the rest of creation, the something “at stake”? When I think in those terms, Jesus’ apocalypticism, the competing narratives in the scriptures, and the humanity of the Bible—and even God himself—suddenly make more sense.
This shift to having God as protagonist presents other questions that are as interesting as the the humanity of the scriptures or the nature of inspiration. For example, is there any equivalent in other ancient near east tribes of a tribal deity that seeks the good of the alien and the stranger as YHWH does in the Mosaic law? Or a tribal deity that criticizes his own prophet for not seeking the salvation and flourishing of his enemies, as YHWH criticizes Jonah regarding the Ninevites? Why, according to the Christians, did the Israelite God go from requiring human sacrifice to becoming a human sacrifice? I’m so grateful that Thom Stark helped me see the human faces of God, because it only made me more hungry to see God’s face in human history.
You ask the following question, Joey. There may be a right and wrong way to take the medicine, but what if I’m not convinced that this is the right medicine? Or that I even need medicine?
Good questions indeed. As someone that comes at this subject from that very perspective, I wonder if you can provide me with an answer. Any claims that Thom makes regarding this question may differ from yours in certain specific ways, but are essentially the same in kind. They are purely matters of faith.
The Bible isn’t “proof” of anything. It may in some cases have merit as a metaphorical roadmap to a good life. To the extent that it does, I say Amen. Anything beyond this, however, is strictly a matter of accepting ideas about the nature of God and Jesus that are rooted in nothing more than the desire to believe, which itself is rooted in psychological need.
This is true of all such claims, regardless of how differentiated thay may be within the world-wide Christian community.
I think they are excellent questions…and I’m not sure I have any great answers to propose. My review probably works more as self-revelation than as evidence that I can offer a very critical reading of this sort of book, which is why I write a blog instead of an esteemed journal.
So I have to be fair and say that Thom’s book is a very “family disagreement” sort of book. He’s not trying to make a case to unbelievers about what the Bible gets right about God, but trying to argue with the family that they are reading their family history in a way that needs critical re-examination. On its own terms, I think it succeeds brilliantly. The problem is only that I’m not sure how to handle the passages of the book that make positive claims, other than that Thom has (as he admits in his book) made choices about which parts to accepts as divine revelation based on no foundation other than than he’s sorting through the attic of his inheritance and knows he can’t critically accept every object he finds there. I must admit that I am in the same boat! I just haven’t written a good book about it. Thom has at least opened himself up to the scrutiny. I’m not going to be too disappointed that he hasn’t written a very different sort of book where he either addresses unbelievers in an apologetic way or addresses Christians like myself who question their own ability and authority to choose, even while doing it. But while I can’t begrudge him for not writing that book, I can at least ask if Thom wonders about these things as well. Because he sounds unduly confident about his own choices, and if anything marks my own journey, it’s the discovery that my choices are no better for simply being my choice.
In the end, if I were to offer an answer to you, it is that when people told me that Jesus Christ raised from the dead and that the kingdom of heaven was near, I believed it. And I have continued to believe it. When you say that this is purely a matter of faith, I’m not sure how to take it. In my world, faith means fidelity…in which case I hope that most of my life would earn that description. But for most people, faith means believing things that can’t possibly be proved because of reasons that aren’t accessible to others. That definition may or may not apply to me…it depends on what you mean by accessible.
Why have I continued to believe that Jesus rose from the dead and is worthy of my own allegiance? That would require a book of its own. I think the shortest answer would be that I haven’t yet had any good reason to stop believing that, and many years of living with that belief have only reinforced it. Thom says that we have no foundation, and I think what he means is that we have no rock-solid way of arguing for or making choices regarding the claims of the Bible. But if the foundation is Christ himself rather than an explanation, and if the goal is the kingdom of heaven rather than an impermeable intellectual argument…well, that changes something for me. I have no means to argue that Christ deserves to be that foundation. If I did, then I would somehow have access to a more determinative reality than Christ…and then would he really be the foundation, or would some sort of philosophical structure? If there were reasons that led me to believe in Christ, they would be sort of like how Wittgenstein described his own work…as a ladder that would need to be discarded once I had climbed it. Or, as a more Christian way of thinking about it, as a ladder that gets taken up into Christ once I have climbed it, and that was probably standing on Christ to begin with.
I realize how intractably circular all this is. My understanding of all ways of thinking and believing is that they are also without foundation in this Starkian sense :) If a person is going to switch circles, they better have a good ladder.
It’s a good thing we have Mr. Stark since no Christians until the use of the “historical” method ever thought that the Bible has large swaths that are a(i)moral, confusing, connected with time, place, circumstances and open to varying interpretations.
Tony, have you read it? I think you’d be surprised how important that is for Thom. While he obviously comes from a historical-critical methodology, his main contention is that this sort of argument has been going on all throughout the history of the Israelites and Christians, and that the Bible is, at heart, a record of that argument. And that we ought to learn how to participate in that argument. To that extent I think he uses the historical-critical method to very good ends.
His critique of “canonical” and “subversive” readings of the scriptures hit home for me, because I didn’t really have a name for the way that I have been learning to read the scriptures, less a way to critically examine that way. Thom lays out the positive and negative aspects of such readings. What the book needs is for someone to lay out the positive and negative aspects of his own proposal for direct confrontation with problematic texts…which is kind of what I’m hinting at here. I suspect that such a method is untranslatable to people outside of Christianity, but we also need to examine how useful it is within Christianity and what particularly Christian results it yields. The one very positive result that I can see is humility…which is why I think I wanted to hear whether Thom has questions about his own method and where he thinks he needs to do more work, or where other scholars can come alongside him and help with that work. He seems pretty confident.
I realized recently that an interesting paradox has taken place in my own intellectual life. The last decade has made my faith in Christ so much stronger, but my faith in faith so much weaker. I suppose eventually all things, like John the Baptist, must decrease.
Dangit, you mean I have to follow through a discussion on my smartass comment?
Alright.
No, I’ve not read the book. But, I have read some of Thom’s work. I repeatedly find him pitting the “historical” against the “theological” in such a way that I simply don’t find compelling in any sense both from the perspective of critical philosophy (haven’t Foucault, Ricoeur, de Certeau, etc… dismantled appeals to history in the sense he generally uses?) and from the fundamentally theological, that is christological/trinitarian manner in which we are told how to interpret history. For instance, both Jesus and the NT authors use OT scripture “allegorically” – they take passages that originally had their own contextualized frame of reference and utilize them to say new things; in fact, not only to “say new things” but to say that this is actually what these passages are talking about.
So the idea that allegorical and canonical readings can be critiqued isn’t very surprising. The question that comes to my mind is, to what extent does such a critique dabble in theological volunteerism? We are made to accept that such and such a way of reading Scripture is incumbent upon us as Christians if we are to understand it as “it was intended to be understood.” There are a million ways to interpret Scripture, and while new readings are never a priori off the table, Christ, canon and Church ultimately “make those calls.”
Now this claim needs a theological unpacking but that’s sort of the point you yourself were getting at right? Thom makes theological statements with respect to Scripture…so what are we to make of that?
I’m not as well-versed in late modern and postmodern philosophy to answer your question. My continental philosophy is mostly “third-hand” information at this point. I don’t think Thom is the historical positivist you perceive him as, and I actually think there is a significant amount of crossover (I may be wrong, but I detect a MacIntyrean streak). Nonetheless, he has done a significant amount of research in history. As N.T. Wright says, “Christianity appeals to history, so to history we must go!”
Thom also doesn’t fit the mold of an objectivist or the radical individual. He’s explicit about his place within a tradition and honest about how tradition affects our readings. He also isn’t pretending to put forward anything entirely new, with the possible exception of prescribing a way to read scripture that makes sense of where we are now.
But you are right that he makes theological claims towards the end of the book that I’m not sure are warranted by his methodology. I don’t think I could have done much better.
Something Thom and I have in common is that we came to faith within the non-denominational Christian Church/Church of Christ or the Campbell/Stone Restoration Movement…a tribe of Christians that expanded rapidly on the American frontier, sought to get to the very fundamentals of Christianity as an escape from sectarianism, and appealed therefore to the earliest church’s belief and practice (in other words, the book of Acts and the epistles). I believe that Thom grew up in a house of these “Christians only, but not the only Christians”, whereas I was a convert at the age of 12. I see his project as the logical outworking of the “Restoration” part of that movement…seeking to understand the early church in its own context and without a lot of tradition attached. Through various circumstances, I latched on to the “not the only Christians” part of that movement and became more interested in the church catholic, especially after being “disfellowshiped” by the church of my youth. From my perspective, my fascination with the body of Christ at large is a result of spiritual gifts, temperament, and idealism…and I’m not sure any of those things would withstand the sort of scrutiny that Thom would want to apply. But suffice to say that (like you, I think) I trust Tradition more than I trust “history” or “choice”. This is not a way of pretending that Tradition is somehow univocal, or that history and choice are not factors in how I perceive and live within the tradition that I inherited, but it is a way that I express my doubts about how “history” and “choice” have been used in modern and late modern times. Thom sees himself as arguing from within the tradition, and to a large part I agree with him. I think he would think that I trust tradition in a very naive way, and I suppose that I would agree with that, too! If I tend to think that Jesus’ apocalypticism is less a product of his own time and place than Thom’s historical inquiry or my traditional naivete is a product of our own enculturation, it is only because although I’m willing to admit that there’s no pure or unadulterated way for me to access Christ and his teaching, I nonetheless take it as a matter of course that, being a Christian, Christ is both without sin and the image of the invisible God.
In other words, I’d rather be wrong with Christ than right in some other way. I can hear Thom’s critique that this is a very “immature” way of dealing with authority, but I’m not sure that labeling me as immature really solves the problem. It’s not that I can’t admit that there are layers and layers of human interpretation between the life of Christ and me…or that I refuse to take responsibility for my own agency-anyone who knows me knows that isn’t the case—it’s that I stubbornly (foolishly?) believe the basic story much as it came to me. Like Thom says, we all make a choice. Mine is to believe that Jesus is going to be the center of history whether or not I understand him rightly or not. I may be condemned by that choice, being that I’m fully capable of screwing up the answer to the question “which Jesus?”, and dependent on other people (whether Christians or not) that are just as capable of getting it wrong.
And yet, by the grace of God, there he is at the bottom of everything.
Please clarify someting for me, Joey? I’m not necessarily saying that you’re wrong, but what’s so great about being “wrong with Christ,” if your conception is a lie? Are you such a postmodernist that you’ve thrown any conception of objective truth out the window?
I think my own post on inerrancy might answer some of that question. How I feel about the doctrine of inerrancy is how I feel, pretty much, about objective truth. Objectivity is the doctrine of inerrancy without any real referent.
I’m just not sure what’s so great about objectivity, nor what’s so scary about subjectivity. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think there’s a difference between the truth and a lie. But even if we could imagine some sort of “objective” status for a truth or a lie, I wouldn’t be able to experience it as anything except a subject. So I’m not a thoroughgoing philosophical relativist, but it probably looks that way from anybody who has confidence in “objective truth”.
I could have given you the story of how I ended up a Christian. I think it would make much more sense face-to-face. But the point is that I think becoming a Christian is less like discovering objective truth and more like falling in love. When I met my wife, if I was comparing her to other women it wasn’t in any real conscious way. And it wasn’t as if I agreed with everything she says and does. And it’s not like I was able to make a very informed decision. Faith in Christ is much more like that, I think, than a scientific or historic discovery.
That said, “falling in love” is not sustainable over the long haul. I suppose every deep commitment we have is tested at times to the point where we question our logic in ever committing in the first place. I can think of lots of times where I doubted Christ (actually, I can think of very few times where doubt was far from me) and lots of times where I was angry and lashed out at God. That said, I never thought that divorce was the right thing to do…or at least not enough to actually do it. After a while, even if you did find some sort of grounds for divorce from God, you’ve learned to give him the benefit of the doubt. My philosophical categories or my choices, on the other hand, have a somewhat dodgy history in comparison. I trust my wife in many ways more than myself. That’s kind of why I trust church tradition more than myself. I definitely trust God more than myself. That doesn’t mean that I never push back against what my wife, God or the church says…it just means that I see that as part of what it means to discover the truth while being in a significant relationship.
The problem with objective truth is that the moment I think I have it, I’ve trusted my own powers of reason, my own emotional stability, and my own cultural upbringing more than any of those things deserve.
Fair enough. I always appreciate your openness, honesty, and humility, Joey. That said, I don’t think you give your powers of reason nearly enough credit.
I voted for George W. Bush twice…still think I don’t give my powers of reason enough credit? :)
I stand corrected. ;)
He also voted for Barack Obama, Barry–the cherry on top! :P
Alas, there is some truth in that. I still stand by my “How Bummed am I that I voted for Obama?” post, but I’ll admit that logic only plays a part in decisions like that, and not always the most important. I’m not even sure it SHOULD be the most important.
So, did the living God order genocide or what?
I doubt it. I wish I could simply say “no”. I have good reasons to say no, but I also have good reasons to doubt my certainty. I can at least say that Christianity means that I worship the living God through Jesus…so I cannot worship a genocidal god.
nah…too weak. I’ll just go ahead and say that the living God did not order genocide, since we know the living God through Jesus.
Ok, Joey. I’ll just go ahead and point out the obvious fact that there are plenty of Christians who also claim “to know the living God through Jesus,” and yet also hold the literal belief that God did sanction genocide in the Old Testament.
That’s a real problem, isn’t it? We can’t both be right. For myself, I would basically just say that they didn’t get that from Jesus. In Jesus we see a god who would rather suffer than cause violence. They get that belief not from Jesus, but from their approach to the genocide narratives themselves. This is an area where I basically agree with the conclusion (if not all the premises) of Thom’s book.
remember that there are also “small-government conservatives” that have no interest in closing military bases in other nations or scaling back the military to something that could in fact be described as “defense”. Too many examples of incoherence to list them all!
I’m not letting you off the hook on this one, Joey.
As you well know, there are a number of different versions of Jesus in the Bible. Your suffering, non-violent depiction is there, but so is the apocalyptic version who promises to return to finally, and forcefully, set things right. It’s unlikely those bishops at Nicea, or any of the intervening councils, had the faintest notion that scholars like Thom would one day be subjecting the canon to the kind of modern, historical scrutiny that he and others bring to the table.
It’s a “real problem,” all right. The Bible is a disparate collection of ancient writings and narratives that constantly contradict one another. No one really knows who Jesus was. It’s an educated guess at best. It’s time that we finally admit it.
You have no more right to claim authority than Billy Graham, or Pat Robertson, or Tim Laheigh. Appealing to knowledge “of the living God through Jesus” gets you nowhere. So do they, and look where that’s gotten us.
Barry, you’re totally right not to let me off the hook. I’m sorry to leave you hanging for a couple days. Even now I’m not sure I have a decent enough response to your challenge…life has been so harried for me!
Please forgive me if I give you the short version, which is this: The emphasis that I am giving “knowing God through Jesus” is on the last word, Jesus. I think I’ve given a little insight in how I think my “knowing” is qualified and contingent, and as far as “God”, well there are so many gods or none at all to choose from. “God” is pretty abstract, but when I speak of God through Jesus, I mean the God that I encounter in Jesus’ life and teaching. In the internal debate with any one of those Evangelical leaders you mentioned (Graham, Robertson, Laheigh) I think I can offer strong arguments against beliefs about God’s complicity with genocide by sticking with Christian idea that “Jesus is the image of the invisible God”. In other words, a specifically Christian idea is that we don’t think that Jesus is like God, so that we can think about what God is like and then say that Jesus is also that way, but rather we say that God is like Jesus…we know God because he has revealed himself most clearly in the Son. I’m not sure that my arguments would attain to what you meant by a “right to claim authority”, but I think they would be, at the very least, strongly Christocentric.
Your charge regarding Jesus’ apocalypticism is of a different order. The short answer there is that I have a disagreement with Thom that I just can’t shake: I think Jesus is using the language of apocalypticism but giving it a fresh and new meaning (or, in the manner of speaking adopted by the New Testament writers, revealing Jewish apocalypticism’s true meaning). I don’t see Jesus coming to “forecfully” set things right, if by forcefully you mean violence. In many ways, I think the gospel is about that the definitive act has already been done in Jesus’ death and resurrection..God has already judged the world and already set things right. However, it is like a small seed that grows into a great tree, or a little yeast that works it’s way through the whole dough…his ongoing work through the Holy Spirit is bringing his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. I do think that this work will be completed at a future date (as the creed says, when “he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end”), but it doesn’t resemble the version that fundamentalists and their detractors tend to agree on.
HERE’S A LINK to smarter theologians than I arguing the same thing: that Christian apocalyptic still is non-violent. I basically agree with them.
WTF?
Yeah, Barry…it was a spam comment. Somehow it missed the filter, but it’s gone now.