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As my theology and understanding of what it means to be a Christian continues to evolve, the number one rebuttal I get from other Christians I make feel uncomfortable is, "I just believe what the Bible says." Candidly, this is a lazy response meant to shut down conversation.
By saying something akin to "I just believe what the Bible says" two points are being implicitly communicated:
- I don't need to consider your perspective because I already know what I need to know about the Bible. The person who commented often shows confidence in their belief in the Bible by spouting random verses. Mind you, a parrot can be taught to quote Bible verses without understanding the history or context behind what they're saying, but alas, that's a different topic for a different day.
- The phrase "I just believe the Bible" is coded language, meaning "I take the Bible literally." The question I want to wrestle with today is, 'What does it mean to take the Bible literally?' Along with providing a response, I'm going to show why you shouldn't. Ironically, the Bible doesn't take itself literally. Does it take itself seriously? Absolutely! But literally, no.
Infallibility and Inerrancy: The Other Side of the Biblical Literalism Coin
At the start, it'll be helpful to put a few terms on the table that are directly tied to taking the Bible literally. The words are infallible and inerrant. There are two forms of what is meant by infallible and inerrant. In the hard form, what is meant is:
"When it comes to matters of faith and salvation, scientific, geographic, and historical details the scriptures are true and without error in their original manuscripts."
In the soft form, infallibility is applied only to what the Bible says about faith and salvation. Within both forms, there are two points worth addressing. First, the hard form always specifies that the Bible is fully true and without error in the original manuscripts.
Fun Fact: As of 2024, we have zero original manuscripts of any book of the Bible. By the hard form definitions' own standards, we have to recognize the Bible we have is... not infallible.
Second, the soft form may seem more palatable, but it still advocates for a specific view of faith and salvation: Christian exclusivism.
One of the most famous Evangelical statements on biblical infallibility and inerrancy is the definition provided by The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy:
"Infallibility and inerrancy may be distinguished but not separated. We deny that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or Redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science. We further deny that scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on Creation and the Flood." (Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, Article XII)
Some Christians see infallibility and inerrancy as two ideas while others see them as interchangeable terms. For the Christians who see these words as separate, they usually distinguish them as:
- Infallible = The Bible is incapable of having any errors because it is written directly by God.
- Inerrant: The Bible is completely true and without error.
Understanding you cannot claim to believe the Bible literally without either the hard or soft form of these two terms, let's now dive into unpacking what taking the Bible literally means.
What Does it Mean to Take the Bible Literally?
As a quick aside, Biblical literalism is only about 200 years old. You see, prior to the Enlightenment (1685 - 1815), the Bible's authority didn't come from it being literally God's words. The Bible's authority came from the assumption that it was a sacred book. The Bible was sacred because it explained the way things were. The Bible had a sacred authority, and the Church was the interpreter of that authority.
Starting from the time of the Enlightenment the definition of truth changed from something assumed to have sacred authority to what could be investigated. When the definition of truth changed, where the Bible gets its authority changed with it. As a result, these four claims shaped what it means to take the Bible literally:
The Bible is a Divine Product
By divine product, the Bible is not merely the 'word of God' but the 'words of God.' In this view, what separates the Bible from every other book is that it is a divine product, not a human product.
The Bible is True and Authoritative
We won't beat a dead horse, but tying the Bible as a divine product to its being infallible and inerrant gives the Bible unique power and authority over those who view it this way. Where the majority of Christian history placed authority in the Bible and the Church as its interpreter, there was a shift after the Enlightenment.
Now, the Bible is the sole authority, and its interpretation ebbs and flows at the whims of every individual. This is why you can have a spectrum of people, from David Koresh to Jerry Falwell to Steven Furtick, who all claim their authority comes from the Bible.
The Bible is Literally True
This may be assumed, but when the Bible is said to be true, it means literally true. The Red Sea parting literally happened. The sun stopped; it literally happened. My personal favorite, Jonah, was swallowed by a big fish (we read whale into the narrative); it 100% actually happened.
Along with the Bible being literally true, evangelicals, in particular, also like to teach that the best way to understand the Bible is by focusing on the "plain reading of the text." The idea is that God is the divine author, the Holy Spirit is divinely guiding the reader, and the Bible is literally true, so just take what it says at face value, and you've rightly understood the Bible.
Not only is telling millions of people to take a book thousands of years old at face value lazy, but as the last two centuries have shown, it is downright dangerous!
The Bible and By Association Christianity is Exclusively True
Finally, to take the Bible literally means that it is the only book that God gave to humanity directly. Because Christians are the only ones who hold this view, they see themselves as the ones possessing the truth exclusively.
Bishop John Shelby Spong warns, "There is always a danger in believing that you and your people are somehow God's specially chosen. The obvious corollary is that your enemies are God's specifically 'unchosen,' and very soon they are thought of as God's rejected." (Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, p. 19-20)
3 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Take the Bible Literally
As genuine as I know folks who say, "I just believe what the Bible says" are, there are major reasons why they shouldn't take the Bible literally. Here are three primary reasons why I cannot take seriously the notion that the Bible should be taken literally.
- The Reality of Time
- The Reality of Translation
- The Reality of the Truth
The Reality of Time
According to the latest anthropological scholarship, Homo Sapiens emerged approximately 500,000 years ago. Most historians believe Abraham existed in the nineteenth century BCE. If Abraham is the start of the 'Abrahamic' faith story, our story didn't start until over 495,000 years after Homo Sapiens existed.
Here's another point: biblical scholarship seems confident that the earliest written material from the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament) is no earlier than the tenth century BCE. Furthermore, most biblical scholars place Moses somewhere between 1400 and 1250 BCE.
This means that conservatively, there's a 400 to 500-year gap between Abraham and Moses. This means that for the Bible to be taken literally from the nineteenth century BCE to 1400-ish, the life of Abraham would have to have been transmitted orally without any mistakes or errors. To up the ante, from Moses to the tenth century, when writing came into the picture, the stories of Abraham and Moses (read the origin story of Israel) would have to have been preserved perfectly through oral tradition alone.
The Reality of Translation
Last week, a gentleman in the comments of one of my posts made the statement,
You cannot with integrity call yourself believing in Jesus, yet deny His own words. It takes more effort to rationalize dis-belief than it does to have faith.
Earlier in the thread, the commenter quoted several verses from the gospels (remember, literalists love quoting Scripture). Let's address the issue with this man's statement by asking: "How many direct quotes from Jesus do we have in the gospels?" Here's a clue: It's not as many as all the red letters may lead you to believe.
You see, Jesus spoke Aramaic. So*, at best, in all four of the gospels, we may* have three phrases that are direct quotes from Jesus. They are:
- Talitha cumi (Mark 5:41)
- Ephphatha (Mark 7:34)
- Eloi Eloi lama sabathani (Matthew 27:46)
Everything else written about Jesus is already translated from Aramaic to Greek. Over the centuries, we've seen the Greek manuscripts translated into Latin, Old English, Middle English, Hungarian and Bohemian, German, and, for the first time, English in 1530. What's the point? My point is that there is no way the literal words of Jesus were translated through so many languages over centuries, and not one mistake or error was ever made.
Most literalists would rebut that only the original manuscripts of the gospels are Jesus's literal words. Again, I say, then we don't have the literal words. Therefore, this means that either the sacred value of the Bible is something other than it possessing the literal words of God, or a God who meant the Bible to be their literal words isn't much of a God. In either situation, a literal understanding of the Bible has no legs to stand on.
The Reality of the Truth
The unpopular truth is that what makes the Bible a sacred book is not that it contains God's literal words. The Bible is not a divine product but a very human product. It is the product of two ancient communities: Ancient Israel and the Early Christian Movement.
The Bible, as a human product, expresses how these two communities experienced God from their perspective. As God's word, the Bible is how God becomes known to us through studying what those ancient people said about God and listening to God in the present.
The Bible doesn't need to be a divine product, taken literally, or be seen as inerrant and infallible to be taken seriously. As a matter of experience, when I viewed the Bible this way, it was a wooden, out-of-date book that needed me to defend it more than it could help me better know God. I now agree with Bishop John Shelby Spong, who understands the Bible as the word of God this way;
The Bible is the Word of God in that it touches universal, timeless themes. The sense of being created for union with God, the sense of being alienated from that union, and the yearning to be restored to that union are in the depths of every human psyche. Yet here they are external and objectified in the narratives of Scripture. The Bible is the Word of God when it captures in its remembered history archetypal and eternal truths that we can experience, enter, and live, even today.(Spong, John Shelby. Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks this Meaning of Script (p. 75). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.)
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Thanks for stopping by and reading this article! If my work has served you or you want to contribute to creating authentic faith connections, consider becoming an Authentic Faith Advocate.