His main point is this: Jesus was really a human being, who \u201clived out his life within a finite human horizon\u201d (p. 24). This has implications for how we look at the Bible. Drawing a connection between how we understand Christ and the Bible \u00a0is sometimes referred to as the Christological analogy of Scripture, which, as many of you know, is the Citing some early Church Fathers, Sparks asserts that Jesus did not fake being fully human. He really was, and that necessarily<\/em> means he was limited in his humanity. Part of that limitation, Spraks argues, is that Jesus necessarily participated\u00a0\u00a0in our\u00a0fallen nature, <\/em>though without sinning. (See\u00a0Romans 8:3-4, where Paul says that God sent Jesus \u201cin the likeness of sinful flesh.\u201d Also, Jesus was made like us in every way<\/em>, as in Hebrews 2:17 and 4:15.)<\/p>\n It was necessary<\/em> for Christ to take on the fallen human condition in order to redeem it. \u201cFallen creation is redeemed only when God\u00a0participates\u00a0in fallen creation\u201d (p. 27).<\/p>\n The upshot of all this is summarized in Sparks\u2019s\u00a0citation\u00a0of I. Howard Marshall and Colin Gunton<\/strong>. Marshall, speaking of Jesus\u2019\u00a0references\u00a0to hell in his parables, says that Jesus employs imagery \u201cbelonging to the time in society that was\u00a0accustomed\u00a0to such things\u201d (see Marshall Beyond the Bible: Moving from Scripture to Theology <\/a> Translation: you are barking up the wrong theological tree if you try to distance Jesus in any way<\/em> from his full participation in his first century Jewish, Greco-Roman context, even while confessing Jesus was without sin.<\/p>\n OK, who cares about all this? You do and here\u2019s why. If we are going to draw an analogy between Jesus and the Bible, we can\u2019t have a Bible that keeps a safe distance from its culture but one that, like Jesus, is fully a part of fallen humanity.<\/p>\n The biggest problem with this analogy for Sparks is when it is used to promote an\u00a0evangelical\u00a0notion of inerrancy: the Bible has to be \u201csinless\u201d like Jesus was, in other words without error. The equation is made between error in Scripture and sin in Christ.<\/p>\n But this\u00a0completely\u00a0misses the point of the analogy. The analogy requires that neither Jesus nor Scripture are \u201cwholly insulated from the human condition\u201d (p. 28). Sparks continues that, \u201cJesus expressed his theology using imagery (sometimes violent imagery) that was shaped and bounded by\u00a0perspectives\u00a0prevalent\u00a0in his own day.\u201d<\/p>\n Let me summarize this in my own way. The question, it seems to me, is how comfortable are we with the incarnation and its implications? How truly human a Jesus do we want? Can our theology really handle a Jesus and a Bible that so thoroughly reflect back to us the cultural\u00a0perspectives\u00a0of the time? Or, would we rather have a Jesus and a Bible that keeps their distance from the human condition?<\/p>\n Maybe the bigger question at the end of the day is what kind of God do we want<\/a>?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thebiblefornormalpeople.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/sacred-2-1.jpeg?ssl=1\" "\\"sacred")
<\/a>This is the third post (see first<\/a> and second<\/a>) on Sparks\u2019s most recent book Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority and the Dark Side of Scripture<\/a>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=inspirandinca-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0802867189\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thebiblefornormalpeople.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/II-1.jpeg?resize=183%2C275&ssl=1\" "\\"I&I\\"")
<\/a> central focus of my own book\u00a0Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament<\/a>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=inspirandinca-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0801027306\")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=inspirandinca-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0801027756\")
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=inspirandinca-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1842273051\")