From the viewpoint of Christianity, I am uncertain what the book intends to accomplish, especially as Sparks admits that Christianity is very diverse. It seems that the book will simply attract those who already share his theological presuppositions. The book does not present anything that will compel those self-described Christians who do not share his theological presuppositions to change their minds.

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From a secular academic viewpoint, this sort of theological approach to biblical studies is futile and frankly incomprehensible in the twenty-first century. It is futile because there are no objective means to adjudicate which theological interpretation is correct or valid. Sparks is most perceptive when he remarks that “there is an unavoidable circularity in parsing out where God speaks explicitly in Scripture and where he speaks implicitly”

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Sparks’s book does show that the ethical problems in scripture are increasingly bothering the conscience of biblical scholars who are still affiliated with religious traditions. Whereas the first couple of centuries of modern biblical scholarship focused on issues of historicity and literary analysis, this century of biblical studies may be marked by its ability or inability to address Sparks’s own realization that the ethical problems in Scripture are real.