For example, the "Clobber Passages" such as 1 Corinthians are often cited as proof of the Bible's absolute and enduring intolerance of homosexuality. In most English translations, these passages leave no room for flexibility or metaphorical interpretation, hence their use by Biblical literalists to "clobber" openly queer people who dare believe they were created in God's image as per Genesis However, the modern concept of sexual orientation did not exist in Biblical times, [40] and a literal reading of the Clobber Passages in the Old Testament shows them to condemn homosexual acts as ritually unclean behavior using the same Hebrew word, to'ebah , that disparages mixed cloth and menstruating women.
Instead of using the common Greek word for men who have sex with males paiderasste he uses the neologism arsenokoitai , which has been interpreted over centuries as anything from a sex offender to male prostitute to masturbator. Biblical literalists who extend these passages to condemn modern queer identities and relationships which are not described in the Bible are in actuality opting for a non-literal interpretation of the texts.
The Bible itself disagrees with any rigid approach to interpreting it according to some "self-evident" literal meaning.
Genesis relates the story of a love triangle between Abraham , his wife Sarah, and her handmaiden Hagar. Sarah appears to be sterile, and tells Abraham to have a child with Hagar, which he does. Some years later, God makes a covenant with Abraham in exchange for, among other things, a child with Sarah. In Galatians 4, St.
Paul assigns an entirely new allegorical or figurative interpretation to this story to go along with the literal one: Hagar's son Ishmael represents non-Christians in bondage to the Mosaic Law, while Sarah's son Isaac represents Christians freed from the law by the new covenant. So according to the Bible itself, at least some parts of it can be interpreted in non-self-evident ways unintended by their original authors. John Whiteford, an evangelical who converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, had this to say about the idea that "Scripture is to interpret Scripture":.
Protestants who are willing to honestly assess the current state of the Protestant world, must ask themselves why, if Protestantism and its foundational teaching of Sola Scriptura are of God, has it resulted in over twenty-thousand differing groups that can't agree on basic aspects of what the Bible says, or what it even means to be a Christian? Why if the Bible is sufficient apart from Holy Tradition can a Baptist , a Jehovah's Witness , a Charismatic , and a Methodist all claim to believe what the Bible says and yet no two of them agree what it is that the Bible says?
The Bible has a great many rules, many contradictory. The only way to know which ones to follow not eating pork, killing homosexuals is to interpret the Bible. This means that people extend beyond mere literalism and enter into the field of Biblical criticism.
In the best of traditions of internecine inter-Christian strife , Episcopal Bishop Emeritus John Shelby Spong makes the case for dismissing Biblical literalists as heretics. Numerous Christian organizations claim to take the Bible literally, although Answers in Genesis rewords "literally" as in a plain or straightforward manner. Who could even imagine them actually taking Jeremiah , Psalm , and Romans literally? All three verses, read plainly, imply that God has to search out men's hearts in order to know them.
Basically, the Biblical God is not omniscient , though any conservative Christian mother would love for her son to think this to keep him from masturbating.
They interpret Jacob 's fight with Yahweh as some type of allegorical bullshit meant to remind Christians that though we may fight God and His will for us, in truth, God is so very good. As believers in Christ, we may well struggle with Him through the loneliness of night, but by daybreak His blessing will come.
While this doesn't disprove biblical literalism , it does make it very bad public policy. Many children have died because their faith community believed prayer rather than medicine is what the Bible literally teaches. For example, the Church of the First Born cites James : [49]. If any be sick, call for the elders of the church, let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.
People who adhere to literalism do not question their religion, tending towards a simplistic acceptance of what they are told. Though frequently literalists claim to have read the Bible, upon questioning it is clear they have rarely thought through the various positions proffered in it, including myriad inconsistencies or evidence that their God is capricious and violent.
One reason for biblical literalism is the need for consistency to protect ideas that are central to a religious ideology. For example, if one were to take the story of Genesis as being allegorical, then what is to stop that person from taking the words of Jesus and the Ten Commandments as being allegorical, and not the direct word of God?
People thinking this way also tend to be the ones who try to find one single flaw in scientific theories such as evolution and declare that the single fault invalidates the entire system which is a pure Achilles Heel fallacy. The Chicago Statement admits that belief in Biblical inerrancy should not be elevated to the level of a creed: "WE DENY that such confession [of Biblical inerrancy] is necessary for salvation.
However, the statement also apparently contradicts itself by strongly implying that those who do not confess it are not saved: "The following Statement affirms this inerrancy of Scripture afresh, making clear our understanding of it and warning against its denial. We are persuaded that to deny it is to set aside the witness of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit and to refuse that submission to the claims of God's own Word which marks true Christian faith.
Biblical literalists have made clear, both in words and actions, that they have no problem with the idea that those who reject literalism are going to hell , and that any admission they make otherwise is lip-service to orthodoxy that they do not actually accept.
Nominations and campaigning for the RationalWiki Moderator Election is underway and will end on November Jump to: navigation , search. You're off the hook And thank Christ you only have to read one book. Sometimes it's the word of man. And sometimes, it's the word of two or more men. Sometimes the Bible's literal, and sometimes it's simply symbolic.
These are not factual stories to be taken as historical events, they're really stories about how we should live our lives. They're moral homilies. What can I personally get out of the Bible for me , today. That's what those stories are about. And to take them literally is; you're missing the point of the Bible! The more we learn about archeology and history in biblical times, the more we realize that most of the stuff in the bible is fiction.
See the main articles on this topic: Evidence against a recent creation , Branches of science you have to ignore to believe in young Earth creationism , and Biblical scientific errors.
See the main article on this topic: Cryptid. Behmoth left , leviaithan right , and ziz top : from a CE Bible. Dragon from the CE Luther Bible. Goat with Greek satyr c. Greek satyrs were typically depicted with erections. And if God is said to walk in the paradise in the evening, and Adam to hide himself under a tree, I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance, and not literally.
It does not happen that some method of religious inquiry is undertaken that resolves the problem; instead, there is a process of reinterpretation. Whereas the early Catholic Church believed that geocentrism was essential to Christian doctrine, now the [C]hurch has found a way to interpret its scriptures less literally. It is to be hoped that the idea of a literal six-day creation is similarly on its way out as most branches of Christianity have already decided. See the main article on this topic: Biblical contradictions.
WE DENY that inerrancy is a doctrine invented by scholastic Protestantism, or is a reactionary position postulated in response to negative higher criticism. Knowledge of "biblical" teachings, in short, is characterized by pervasive interpretive pluralism. It is about people hiding behind a claim of reading the Bible literally, which nobody does anyway. A great example can be found among those who claim to follow every word of the Bible and use that claim to explain their rejection of homosexuality and witchcraft , but have no problem violating equally biblical bans on pork or cooking on the Sabbath.
Of course, they will point to a new scripture which extends the prohibition on the first two, and frees them from the second set of proscriptions. But that is an interpretive move and that means that they are no longer literalists[. See the main article on this topic: Faith healing.
ISBN New York University Press. Retrieved 4 June Oxford English Dictionary. Eerdmans Publishing Company. But if the Bible itself is the heart, then to read it is to enter the Holy of Holies, making it that much harder to accept any normal human ambiguity or inaccuracy in its words. This effect is magnified by a more recent historical development: the charismatic movement. Even among evangelicals who don't speak in tongues or put their hands in the air when the sing Shine Jesus Shine, the movement has had profound effects, one of which is that they don't read the Bible just to be reminded and shaped by its teaching, but to hear what God has to say to them today.
Would Paul have phrased it differently to a church he was less pissed off with? Would other witnesses have recalled the events he describes differently?
But if you read the Bible asking: "What is God saying to me today? One last factor in biblical all-or-nothingism is the part that biblical criticism plays in evangelical conversion, which is none at all. People who convert to evangelical Christianity , including those who grow up with it, are persuaded by the experience of a religious community, and by finding that evangelical theology seems to hold water. All this is totally underpinned by the Bible — it's the foundation and guarantee.
But the only test of its reliability that inquirers are invited to make is to read it and ask "Is this something that I can accept wholesale and entrust my life to? It's generally much later that a convert will have to consider concrete evidence that biblical writers were human beings, capable of being one-sided, of writing myth, of exaggerating, of guessing, of having opinions it's impossible to agree with.
Some of us, faced with this evidence, shape our faith in the light of it, making the Bible a far more fascinating, revealing and diverse record of human religious experience. What we bring to the text shapes what we see, for good and ill. Join Opinion on Facebook and follow updates on twitter.
Topics: Religion , Science. Why are some people drawn to origin narratives like in Genesis, and others to the scientific story? Douglas O. Linder, professor of law.
Trevin Wax, The Gospel Project. Wil Gafney, professor of Old Testament. Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale University. David P. Redlawsk, political scientist. Please upgrade your browser. See next articles.
0コメント