When to be literal?

Hi LarniI think that to understand the difference between what is literal and what is metaphor we first have to come to an understanding of how we should understand the Bible.When I read the Bible which I do every day I read it essentially as a story of God’s ongoing relationship with mankind. I read it as if it was written by men inspired by God to record their thoughts and experiences. I also accept that the entire Bible is both personally and culturally conditioned which of course means that it is subject to human fallibility.Christianity like all other world religions providse guidelines as to how we should conduct ourselves in this life. The difference with Christianity IMHO is the resurrection of Jesus. I have read many arguments against and arguments for the bodily resurrection of Jesus and I find the historical argument far more compelling than the argument against. However, there is obviously an element of faith in my position.On the assumption that God did resurrect Jesus then it would be a pretty strong vindication of the message of Jesus in the Gospel accounts. Once again the Gospel accounts are not going to be 100% accurate but I believe that there are good grounds to believe that they are very close.In terms of Jesus’ self understanding I think that it is clear that He believed that he was the Jewish Messiah. However there is more to it than that. In ways that even He may not have understood, He saw Himself embodying the return of Yahweh to the Jewish people. (He talks about being the Temple and He forgives sins etc.) That is essentially my understanding of the basis of the Christian faith. With this belief I then see God the Father as speaking clearly through the life, imagination, heart and words of Jesus. Once again, I see this as being confirmed by the resurrection.With this understanding, I then view all of the scriptures through the lens of the ministry of Jesus. Jesus said that we are to love our enemies which would indicate that the early Jews were not meant to go out and slaughter their enemies. Jesus said that we are to love and forgive which would mean that God did not say that prostitutes, difficult children etc should be stoned to death.I do believe that The Bible is a tool used by God to reach out to us. As I said at the beginning it tells the ongoing story, or meta-narrative of God reaching out to His creation by working through the hearts minds and imaginations of humans.There are two basic messages in the Bible. One is a message of guidance and one is news. The guidance can be seen in my signature line. God wants us to be kind, just humble. The news is that this life is not the final chapter. When time as we know it ends this creation as we know it will be renewed and made whole with perfect love, peace and justice.With this in mind we can now look at what is literal and what is metaphor. Firstly it has to be read in the context of what the writer is telling us and then we can in most cases come to a literal conclusion. When one of the scribes tells us about a battle we can be pretty sure that the battle occurred but then we should also be aware that his account of the outcome and the involvement of God is most likely going to be influenced by his own biases and quite likely by the fear of whoever it was that had the power of life and death over him at the time.I think the main point I’d like to make is that it is the message that is important and that the literal accuracy doesn’t really matter much. I forget who I’m quoting when they talked about Genesis, but they said that it doesn’t matter whether or not the snake was real, but what matters is what the snake said.CS Lewis had this to say in his book Miracles

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My present view--which is tentative and liable to any amount of correction--would be that just as, on the factual side, a long preparation culminates in God's becoming incarnate as Man, so, on the documentary side, the truth first appears in mythical form and then by a long process of condensing or focusing finally becomes incarnate as History. This involves the belief that Myth in general is not merely misunderstood history ... nor diabolical illusion ... nor priestly lying ... but, at its best, a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination. The Hebrews, like other people, had mythology: but as they were the chosen people so their mythology was the chosen mythology--the mythology chosen by God to be the vehicle of the earliest sacred truth, the first step in that process which ends in the New Testament where truth has become completely historical. Whether we can say with certainty where, in this process of crystallization, any particular Old Testament story falls, is another matter. I take it that the memoirs of David's court come at one end of the scale and are scarcely less historical than St. Mark or Acts; and that the Book of Jonah is at the opposite end.

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I hope that addresses the question that you asked.

Paul says this in Romans 2:

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11 For God does not show favouritism. 12 All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. 14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, 15 since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.) 16 This will take place on the day when God will judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.

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Paul is saying that the Bible isn’t the only source of knowledge about Yahweh. Essentially we can look into our own hearts with or without the Bible to learn about Yahweh. Essentially the Christian desire and plan for the ultimate future is that all of mankind will have hearts that love unselfishly. Individuals over time may become so hardened, (ignoring mental illness), that their conscience becomes dead and no longer speaks to them but I believe that nobody is immune to feeling twinges of conscience at some point in their lives. Most of us do understand the difference between selfishness and unselfishness. When we know that we have acted selfishly we get that uncomfortable tug on our heart. It is my contention that is God revealing Himself to us.On the other hand we have our human desires for power, wealth, fame etc that flow from our selfish nature. The Bible is the story of the evolution of God working His desire for us into our hearts. The Bible then is a collection of books that chronicle that narrative that details our selfish desires, but intermingled in with that is the story of God continuously and faithfully reaching out to us in love. Just because Yahweh didn’t actually tell a group of Israelites that they should stone to death someone picking up firewood on the Sabbath does not mean that He didn’t tell us that we are to love our neighbour.I am of the belief that our knowledge is best based on the three legged stool of scripture, reason and tradition. (I look at tradition as being the accumulated wisdom over time.) The fundamentalist view of an inerrant Bible does paint a picture of a god that is inconsistent from one book of the Bible to the next so I understand your confusion as an atheist.In the end as Paul points out here it isn’t about what we believe or even what we do that is important, it is all about the condition of our heart. What we believe about God and what we do in our lives is simply a product of where our heart is and no religion has a lock on that.
We can read in the Bible that we are commanded to love but how can anyone be commanded to love. Acting lovingly is not the same as actually loving. You can command someone to go down and feed the homeless but you can’t command someone to have a heart that finds true joy in feeding the homeless.It is the fundamentalist view of the Bible that distorts the truth of it so that it becomes a series of laws such as those in Leviticus in an attempt to come up with black and white answers as to what we have to believe, do or not do to get on God’s good side. The actual message is far more subtle but far more wonderful than that.

I contend that the implication is there . Further on in Romans Paul says this.From Romans 5:

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And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

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It is God's love that is in our hearts and so when we respond to that we are responding to, and knowing God in our hearts. This is from Matthew 7.

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21 "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' 23 Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'

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This is from 1 Cor 4:5

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Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God.

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It is all about our hearts and Christ's message is that our hearts can be changed. Sure but I am not claiming that my views are inerrant. I am only saying that this is how I understand the Bible, and you asked in the OP how we come to our conclusions of how we sort out our understanding of the Bible.In order for us to be able to love we have to be able to choose it freely and without coercion, which means IMHO, that the ambiguity in the meaning and purpose of our lives is necessary in order to give us the ability to freely choose to love unselfishly, and even sacrificially. We don't. In the end it's about faith. I own and have read these two books where Christian scholars argue that position from both sides. N T Wright debates for the Historical reality of the resurrection whereas Crossan and Borg argue for it being a metaphor.
Crossan and Wright
Borg and WrightI find Wright's argument far more compelling if one starts reading with an open mind to the possibility of Jesus' resurrection. Crossan and Borg start off with the idea that there has to be some other explanation and frankly I don't find that any of their theories come close to explaining how the early Christian church could grow and take the form that it did.But as I said we will all come to our own conclusions with none of us having absolute certainty.Edited by GDR, : typos

Hi jarI'm not disagreeing with this but I'm wondering what it is that you use as a source for this statement. When the author said that all scripture is inspired I'm not clear how you could get from there to him saying that only inspired scripture is inspired.I just understand it as saying that the writers were inspired to right down and maintain their various accounts in their own words. This would include of course include their personal and cultural biases.This post isn't meant to argue the point as I am just sincerely curious as to what your basis is for this statement.

We obviously agree that Paul, (whether Paul or somebody putting Paul’s thoughts to papyrus), isn’t saying that we are to read the Scriptures as if they had been dictated by God.From the scholars I’ve read it seems that the term God-breathed is a more accurate translation than inspired. In a sense I think he is saying that the Scriptures that Paul used provided sign posts for the way they as a church and as individuals should live godly lives.I don’t disagree with what you on what would have made up the scriptures that he referred to. It is interesting that he didn’t feel the need to explain more fully and I think that strongly suggests that the way in which the scriptures were to be understood was not controversial even though the conclusions that various factions came to varied considerably. (Of course we don’t have those problems today. .)Thanks for the clarification.

I think it was more the understanding of what they meant that was controversial. There were certainly very different understandings about all of the details of the anticipated messiah. I think that in a metaphorical sense God inhabits the Scriptures in the sense that He breathes life into them as one way of reaching out to His creation. Sure the Bible was created by men but essentially He always seems to use mankind as His agents of change, and as such He uses the book as created by men.

Their Scriptures. Absolutely. I haven't gone through this in any detail at all but this account includes some items from the oral tradition as well. The Legends of the JewsIn the US it seems that people get their nationalism, politics and faith intertwined in a way that doesn't happen in other countries.

Of course but it just seems that in the US conservative Christians seem to believe that God is a Republican and that the non-theists seem to think that the GOP is made up of metaphorical devils. (Generally speaking of course. )

Nothing new under the sun eh?