The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals When It Gets God Wrong (And Why Inerrancy Tries To Hide It) [Paperback]

Thom Stark (Author), John J. Collins (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2011

Does accepting the doctrine of biblical inspiration necessitate belief in biblical inerrancy? The Bible has always functioned authoritatively in the life of the church, but what exactly should that mean? Must it mean the Bible is without error in all historical details and ethical teachings? What should thoughtful Christians do with texts that propose God is pleased by human sacrifice or that God commanded Israel to commit acts of genocide? What about texts that contain historical errors or predictions that have gone unfulfilled long beyond their expiration dates?
In The Human Faces of God, Thom Stark moves beyond notions of inerrancy in order to confront such problematic texts and open up a conversation about new ways they can be used in service of the church and its moral witness today. Readers looking for an academically informed yet accessible discussion of the Bible's thorniest texts will find a thought-provoking and indispensable resource in The Human Faces of God.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Christians can ignore the facts that Stark brings into the light of day only if they want to be wrong.
--Dale C. Allison, Jr.
author of Constructing Jesus

The Human Faces of God is one of the most challenging and well-argued cases against the doctrine of biblical inerrancy I have ever read.
--Greg A. Boyd
author of The Myth of a Christian Nation

I learned so much from this book that I can strongly encourage anyone who is seeking to move from simplistic proof-texting to a comprehensive understanding of the Bible to read this book carefully.
--Tony Campolo
author of Red Letter Christians

This is must reading for Christians who have agonized over their own private doubts about Scripture and for others who have given up hope that evangelical Christians can practice intelligent, moral interpretation of the Bible.
--Neil Elliott
author of Liberating Paul

[W]ith the help of this book, we may discover that the Bible when we read it in all its diversity and vulnerability does bring healing words to those who keep listening.
--Ted Grimsrud
author of Embodying the Way of Jesus

Stark's book effectively demonstrates how the Bible, in practice, is the most dangerous enemy of fundamentalists.
--James F. McGrath
author of The Only True God

Stark provides a model for theology that is committed to hearing the voice of the victims of history, especially the victims of our own religious traditions.
--Michael J. Iafrate
PhD Candidate, Toronto School of Theology

This book is the most powerful antidote to fundamentalism that I've ever read.
--Frank Schaeffer
author of Crazy for God --Wipf and Stock Publishers

About the Author

Thom Stark was a Fig Tree and Ledbetter scholar at Emmanuel School of Religion. His academic interests include second temple apocalyptic Judaism and Christian origins, as well as modern Christian and Islamic theologies of liberation.

Product Details

• Paperback: 268 pages
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock Pub; 1st edition (January 1, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 160899323X
• ISBN-13: 978-1608993239
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #608,995 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Thom Stark is the author of The Human Faces of God: What Scripture Reveals When It Gets God Wrong (and Why Inerrancy Tries To Hide It) (Wipf & Stock, 2010), and a forthcoming monograph on New Testament christology, tentatively titled Behold the Man. Thom was a Fig Tree and Ledbetter scholar at Emmanuel School of Religion: A Graduate Seminary. He is a member of several professional societies, including the American Academy of Religion, the American Historical Association, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and the Society of Biblical Literature. Thom's academic interests include Second Temple Jewish History and Religion, Christian Origins, Second Testament Christologies, Ancient and Modern Apocalyptic Sects, Global Theologies of Liberation (Christian and Islamic), Interreligious Dialogue, Anthropology of Religion, Postcolonial Studies (African, Latin American, and Middle-Eastern), and Religion and Globalization. Thom has lectured on Second Temple Jewish apocalypticism, Christian origins, the Parables of Jesus, and early Christological controversies. Thom also maintains a blog where he sporadically engages issues in religion, politics, and culture.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 54 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars 5 Star book that left me dissatisfied April 16, 2011

By T. Lethbridge

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Mr. Stark's book is aimed at fundamentalist and conservative evangelical Christians, and in many ways I am exactly his target audience. However, several years ago I finally stopped putting my questions on a back burner and began studying my faith and the presuppositions that went with it. My studies took me through theology, textual criticism, early church history, the canon, and archeology and I purposely tried hard to draw from authors both conservative and liberal. I mention this because a book review is as much about what the reader brought to the reading as what the author put into the writing. I came to this book as conservative evangelical turned deist scrabbling for purchase at the precipice of agnosticism and looking for a handhold. In that regard, I may not have been Mr. Stark's ideal audience and it is in that regard The Human Faces of God left me dissatisfied.

However, there is ample reason for the five star rating. Of all my reading, this book is the clearest and most concise dead fish slap against the face of Biblical inerrancy I have yet read. The author's writing is excellent, the tone is scholarly, it is amply footnoted, and it brought new material to my attention. Mr. Stark uses the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy as his foil throughout the book as well as numerous quotes from defenders of Biblical inerrancy. Having spent nearly my entire life in this perspective, I never felt Mr. Stark was creating straw men or misconstruing evangelical/fundamentalist thinking on this issue. Mind you, he does not pull any punches, but the opposing viewpoint was presented honestly. At several points in the book he also presents alternative perspectives to both inerrancy and his own beliefs. In this regard, I feel Mr. Stark did a real service to the reader.... His summaries of these positions were, of necessity, brief, however, the footnotes and citations have given me further direction to take my own studies. I don't imagine it is easy to write a scholarly theology book that is also accessible to the layman who can't read Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic but Mr. Stark more than succeeded here. If I had come to this book still believing in the concept of Biblical inerrancy, The Human Faces of God would certainly have destroyed that belief.

And this leads to my disappointment: Mr. Stark spends much more time on destroying rather than building. In the beginning of the book he advances the idea that the Bible can be authoritative while still containing error. It is not until the last chapter that he even begins to develop this idea and even in that chapter, it is only the last ten pages that deal with the value and place of the Bible as a whole, even if it is not inerrant. While the rest of the book demonstrates Mr. Stark's ability to think deeply and write well, this section just seemed muddled and poorly developed. For example, Mr. Stark argues it is up to the believing community, not each individual, guided by the Holy Spirit, to determine how scripture should be used in a certain context or situation. As a reader, though, I was left confused. Is this the universal catholic believing community or smaller community of believers such as a church or denomination? If it is a smaller community, and I pick and choose which smaller community I join, am I not still operating individually to determine which scriptures I will use in what way? Does the author feel the Bible is inspired in some way different than, say Aesop's Fables, the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, or The Lord of the Rings, which can also be used for moral instruction? And what support do I have to even believe in the Holy Spirit, anyhow? Near the end of the book, Mr. Stark uses the analogy of a courtroom to demonstrate how we might go about determining the value of different portions of the Bible. In a real courtroom, though, once a witness has perjured himself, all of that witness's testimony is, at best, suspect and it would be a foolish lawyer who would put a witness with a history of inaccurate testimony on the stand.

Despite this disappointment, I would recommend this book to anyone critically examining the idea of Biblical inerrancy. It is an excellent and accessible book that makes a great introduction to the topic and still offers value to reader already familiar with other similar work. If you are currently secure in your belief in Biblical inerrancy, though, think hard before you open Mr. Stark's book; the genie won't go back into the bottle easily. I would encourage Mr. Stark to follow up on his final chapter in a new book and more completely articulate his thinking. I may not end up agreeing but I would certainly read it and I hope to someday get through not believing what I used to believe and find there is something I can believe on the other side.

Recommendations for other books after you have read this one:
Timothy Beal: The Rise and Fall of the Bible: The Unexpected History of an Accidental Book (Another perspective on the value of the Bible without inerrancy)
Richard Friedman: The Bible with Sources Revealed (Mr. Stark touches briefly on the idea certain books of the Old Testament are blended from different account and different time periods. This book is an excellent resource for more on the Documentary Hypothesis).
Metzger and Ehrman: The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (4th Edition)
F.F. Bruce: The Canon of Scripture
Finkelstein and Silberman: The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts (More on the archaeological evidence briefly mentioned in Mr. Stark's book)
The Oxford History of the Biblical World Read more ›

27 of 34 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars New Tools for Looking at Old Texts November 9, 2010

By Valerie Tarico

Format:Paperback

Thom Stark shows his readers the pages of the Bible through a scholar's eyes. Armed with a deep knowledge of ancient Near Eastern cultures and religions, Christian history, and linguistics, Stark unveils theological arguments that have been a part of the Judeo Christian tradition from the beginning. In doing so, he provides a devastating critique of inerrancy, which seeks to defend the Bible by manufacturing consensus. In its place, he offers readers a high integrity alternative, a means of drawing moral and spiritual insight from the Bible without making an idol out of either the book or our own dogmas.

Most Christians think that they must either accept the Bible as divinely inspired in its entirety or reject it as a moral and spiritual guide. But among theologians, this has never been a consensus position. Like Bart Ehrman, Thom Stark offers the lay reader a window into the world where theologians and antiquities scholars wrestle with the ancient texts that comprise the Bible. He provides an accessible introduction to the methods that scholars use to evaluate the history and intent of a biblical text.

Stark confronts so called inerrantists head on, exposing what he calls a "hermeneutics of convenience" as they pick among a potpourri of interpretive methods, depending on whichever one best protects their dogmatic insistence that the Bible is God's perfect and complete revelation to humankind. One chapter title sums it up: "Inerrantists Do Not Exist."

I recently reread The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love, by John Shelby Spong. I am forever indebted to Spong's patient, tireless engagement in the process of reformation. But I will confess that of the two books I learned more from The Human Faces of God.... Stark doesn't simply expose the Bible's endorsements of sexism, racism and genocidal violence, he helps us to understand where they came from, how they borrowed from or built other texts and traditions from the Ancient Near East, and how they inadvertently reveal the ongoing clash of ideas as the early Hebrew religion emerged and evolved into Judaism and then Christianity.

To read The Human Faces of God is not simply to partake of one side in a theological argument. It is to acquire tools of an archeologist--a set of scrapers and magnifying glasses for revealing the historical, cultural and political processes that sculpted the modern Bible. It is to acquire a body of knowledge from which there is no going back. Read more ›

28 of 36 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This Book Reignited My Faith November 29, 2010

By Holly Henson

Format:Paperback

This is the book I have been waiting for my whole adult life. Like Stark, I was raised to understand the Bible as the inerrant word of God, "dropped from heaven" (to borrow one of his praises). I have been a Christian my whole life, yet I have increasing become uncomfortable with some of the difficult texts in the Bible and their implications on my faith and personal understanding of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. This has been compounded by the fact that I now have young children and am reading the Bible with them, struggling with how to present stories such as the Passover, wishing I could somehow skip over them. Stark addresses the difficult issues with precision, intellect, and devotion, never turning his back on Christianity. For me, the chains are off. Ironically, I can now read the Bible with more commitment. I don't wish to skip over the difficult texts, I can address them again. My faith has been rekindled. Thank you, Thom Stark.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Antidote to Inerrancy April 9, 2012

By Stevie Jake

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is by far one of the most intense books I have ever read. Im not a Biblical inerrantist and this book still made me struggle. Stark has the ability to truly make the reader think hard about their convictions while not coming across as hostile. Although the book is aimed at negating inerrancy, it accomplishes much more.

Chapters 1-3 are aimed at the articulation of the doctrine of inerrancy itself. Stark uses the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy as his focal point to debunk. He does an excellent job of illuminating the contradictions, intellectual dishonesty and mental gymnastics of Biblical inerrantists. I have not seen such a strong argument against the doctrine of inerrancy as the one that was put forth in these three chapters alone.

In chapters 4-8 Stark pushes his argument further (much further) by turning his eye towards the Bible itself to root out the discrepancies. He demonstrates that early Israel possessed a polytheistic worldview similar to its surrounding neighbors. Then, he shows the reader that there are hints of child sacrifice as an acceptable (but not often occurring) practice in early Israel. Stark then sheds light on the acts of genocide in the OT. He not only critiques the immorality of such passages, but he also assesses their historicity. By the time he's finished with this chapter there isnt much to salvage for an inerrantist. Chapter 8 is the most controversial of all. Stark attempts to demonstrate that Jesus was wrong in His apocalyptic prediction of the end of the world. While I so badly did not want to agree with him, I could not find a hole in his logic.

The last two chapters deal with which scriptural readings will not work and which ones will.... I had heard so much praise for Stark's last chapter that I felt a little disappointed at the end. Dont get me wrong, he has some brilliant insights. But, I was expecting more and at times he seems to be rambling on about his own views. This could not take away from his much deserved five-star rating because he accomplishes what he set out to do. Inerrancy (at least in my mind) is no more.

I'll admit that this book invoked many different emotions from me. Many times I disagreed with Stark (mostly in the last chapter) but many more times I found myself uncapping my highlighter. I agree with Stark that inerrancy is simply a shortcut and a way for believers to feel secure in their convictions. This negates the whole point of faith. Our foundation should be God Himself and not a book written by human authors. I don't pray to the Bible to save me, I pray to God. Read more ›