On a somewhat related note, the whole Left Behind/Premillennialism (not to be confused with Amillennialism or Postmillenialism) viewpoint is also a fairly recent entrant to the theological scene, and is subscribed to by many people claiming to be “literalists.” But, as Fred Clark routinely points out, Premillenials routinely cherry-pick the Bible and come up with all sorts of bizarre cross-references in order to justify their theology. And for a bunch of supposed literalists, they spend a lot of time arguing in great detail as to the exact order the events are supposed to occur.
Here, Clark is covering a chapter in Left Behind, where the pastor (Bruce) and one of his congregants (Chloe) are using their “secret decoder rings” to figure out exactly what will happen:
I don’t know about that… there are a lot of knuckleheads out there whose common sense circuits short out when it comes to religion and the Bible in particular.
I firmly believe these folks would argue that if the Bible says that something happened in the X year of someone’s reign, after some other event, and modern history and archaeology find it to have been in the Yth year of someone’s reign, and before the other event, they’ll say that obviously the archaeologists got it wrong because it contradicts the Bible.
There’s very little independent thought in this type of Christianity- the whole basis for their theology is that the Bible is THE sole root of Christianity and the literal Word of God, and therefore by definition, entirely inerrant.
Contrast this with say… Catholicism, who believe that the Bible is divinely inspired, but that there are also 2000 years of Church teaching, tradition and scholarship which play into the way that things are interpreted as well, and that the Bible is a very large and important part of the greater whole, but not necessarily inerrant in any way except in terms of the essential Christian truths. This is similar to the way that the Pope is only infallible when he’s speaking ex cathedra as the Pope, not when he’s just talking as himself, the man.
Bad example. Jefferson was not a Christian, in that part of the stuff that didn’t make sense to him was references to the divinity of Jesus.
Tom Paine in “The Age of Reason” noted many of the problems and contradictions in the Bible that we’re still noting today. The great hatred for this work shows that while Christians might not have been fundamentalists in the modern sense, they sure didn’t see the Bible as a parable.
The goal of the many minister scientists of the early 19th century was to use science to prove the truth of the Bible - perhaps not exact truth, but certainly things like the truth of the Flood and of special creation. The crisis came when they demonstrated anything but this truth. The fundamentalist reaction was to reject science.
I’m not sure that even talking about the concept of inerrancy makes sense when applied to beliefs from 1,000 years ago. Peer reviewed scientific papers, not to mention biography or natural history without fable sprinkled in to make it more interesting, did not exist.
I’m sure that when pressed the average literate Christian might agree that some things were not true but metaphor. However he would surely not agree that Adam and Eve, the Garden, and the lineage of the Kings of Israel and Judea were fiction.
And Darwin’s demonstration that special creation was not necessary touched off the storm. Don’t tell me that was universally seen as a metaphor back then.
I have yet to run across a self-proclaimed “literalist” who actually took the Bible literally. The ones I’ve encountered do exactly what everyone else does. They interpret some passages figuratively, they take some at face value, they ignore some, and then they bring in a bunch of extra-Biblical philosophy in order to interpret the Bible. Ain’t nothing new about that. People have been doing that for 2,000 years.
Biblical “literalism” is just a massive con-game. Nothing new about that either. The Bible itself warns about deceivers in Christ.
So, maybe the idea that the Bible should be read literally is only a hundred years old or so, but since nobody actually does read the Bible literally, it’s only a theoretical idea backed up by a long con.
The true church consists of every individual in every age who (a) believes that the Bible is literally true, (b) has repented of his sins, and (c) does his best to obey every command of God. This is sometimes called the “catholic” (the small c is intentional) church.
I don’t have time right now to count up the number of times that Satan appears in the Bible, but it is certainly in the dozens. Admittedly, the popular conceptions of some things owes more to artists and poets than to the Bible.
On the other hand, some critics of the Bible are intellectually dishonest and disingenuous in the extreme. I have read claims that the concept of the Rapture is extra-Biblical–and this remarkably dishonest claim is based on the fact that the word “Rapture” never appears in the Bible!
As far as literalness itself goes, the basic rule is very simple–if a passage is not clearly an allegory or parable, and if it is not clearly describing something in symbolic terms, then it is almost certainly meant to be taken literally.
That is precisely the only proper way to view discrepancies between the Bible and another source. Humans make mistakes; God does not. Therefore, if something seems to contradict the Bible, no matter how well “proved” the contradiction seems to be, it is manifestly the result of some human error somewhere.
Don’t be silly. If there’s an apparent contradiction, you just bring in extra-Biblical info to resolve the contradiction and presto – no contradiction. Then you pretend that this is reading the Bible literally.
Two quotes from wikipedia: [INDENT]1. … in private letters Jefferson variously refers to himself as “Christian” (1803),[6] “a sect by myself” (1819),[7] an “Epicurean” (1819),[8] a “materialist” (1820),[9] and a “Unitarian by myself” (1825). [/INDENT] and 2. unsurprisingly he attended various churches with some regularity. I can’t exactly deny your statement, but I will emphasize that Jefferson was a Christian in certain meaningful senses, but not in others. And it’s not like anybody tried to excommunicate him or anything.
The Bible is full of contradictions - heck the gospels give 4 different accounts of the resurrection, which forms the core of each them. Frankly I think the church fathers noticed this and it didn’t bother them, for reasons outlined by Saint Augustine and conveyed articulately by Catholic apologist Peter Kreeft upthread.
It’s not just Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox though. Mainline Protestants also celebrate the allegorical, moral and symbolic aspects of the Bible. Jesus spoke in parables after all. I know people like to point to the 19th century, but so-called Biblical inerrancy has pronounced 20th century influences. I say so-called because adherents regularly thumb their noses at Matthew 18:20 and other core Christian beliefs. I think it boils down to pride: some like to look down on others. At any rate as I noted in another thread, 1970s mega-church ministers discovered that a hard line on outsiders packs the pews: [INDENT]“And if you don’t believe it,” Rogers said, “you go out and look at these guys who pussyfoot about the Bible and check [their] baptismal records.” He was delivering a practical pointer, one pastor to another: pussyfooters don’t build megachurches. [/INDENT] It’s just business. Cite.
[INDENT]Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him. Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him. The next day he handed the innkeeper two silver coins, telling him, ‘Take care of this man. If his bill runs higher than this, I’ll pay you the next time I’m here.’
“Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?” Jesus asked.
The man replied, “The one who showed him mercy.”
Then Jesus said, “Yes, now go and do the same.” [/INDENT]
So, based on this, you would think that the value of pi is 3, and that human error is what has led us to think that the value of pi is approx. 3.14. Is that correct?
Because that’s not what a lot of so-called “literalists” think. Let’s look at the verse in question, and the common apologetics:
[QUOTE=Kings 7:23]
And he [Hiram on behalf of King Solomon] made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.’
[/QUOTE]
Now, that implies a value for pi of 3. And we all know that in geometry, pi is not 3. So, let’s look at some common arguments to explain this. From here:
So, that’s argument #1: it’s a rounding issue. A very logical way to resolve the discrepancy. Except, the Bible doesn’t say anything about rounding. That’s extra-Biblical info that’s been imported in to resolve the apparent contradiction. Instead of claiming that humans are in error here, this argument takes a non-literal interpretation of the Bible to resolve the conflict.
Here’s another common argument:
So, that’s the argument #2: the circumference was not uniform, and the measurements in question were taken at different points. Again, a very logical argument. Except the Bible doesn’t say anything about where the measurements were taken. That’s extra-Biblical info as well.
So, instead of claiming humans are in error, the common “literalist” argument is to instead inject extra-Biblical info into the Bible. Because both of these arguments start with the implicit assumption that pi is approximately 3.14, which is nowhere to be found in the Bible. Instead of claiming that humans are in error, these arguments start with the assumption that humans are correct.
Dude, **Flyer’s **just going to say that the human error lies in interpreting the magic book incorrectly (over-literally or something). The simple fact is that reading any text involves humans and anything that is obviously wrong Flyer is going to say is a human problem, not a magic sky fairy problem. **Flyer **will always have an out and you won’t get anywhere. You may as well talk to a wall.
If Flyer comes back and says that pi is actually 3 and humans are in error, I’ll be more inclined to take his claim of literalism seriously. But if he comes back and says that pi is actually 3.14, then he’s contradicted his own statement about how to interpret the Bible.
I suspect a key contrast is between children and educated adults. Children will be very likely to take stories literally and poorly-educated adults often never pass beyond child-like understanding.
It is said that the Lord Buddha could walk as soon as he was born, and in every footprint of that baby a lotus flower bloomed. I assume that educated Buddhists understand this as poetic myth, but the under-educated adults where I live take it as truth.
Pfft. Think harder about what **MfM **said. The bible does not say that pi is 3. It’s telling a story about something some people built and roughly measured.
Further, your statement that “the Bible doesn’t say anything about where the measurements were taken” is just plain wrong. Your own quote says one measurement was “from brim to brim” and the other was “round about”. It’s just plain correct that many containers have a brim that protrudes wider than their body.
Outside of mathematical proofs and the very best legal documents, everything written needs some human context to understand. **Flyer **will always wriggle out in this way.
The correct approach when someone is proclaiming themselves champion based on a game they have rigged in their favour is to point out that the game is rigged and walk away. Not try futilely to win. Doing so only validates them (at least in their own mind).
I am not the first to come up with this, but it seems to me that biblical literalism is a fundamentally scientific point of view.
Science rests on the idea that there is a literal truth that can be deduced through systematic inquiry. Before that concept, why would “the literal truth” be a major concern? We didn’t have a literal truth for anything else, so why would we somehow need on for just the Bible? It’s just not the way we thought about the world.
It’s when we started learning the “literal truth” about other things that we started worrying that the Bible didn’t seem to fit that way of understanding the world, and had to start thinking of wacky justifications.
