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The introduction to A Childs Bible. Lessons from the Torah explains "All the stories from the Torah are true. Yet this doesn't mean that the stories happened just as the Torah tells.. As you read the stories you should ask "what truth is the story teaching me?""What does this story say i should do?""How does this story say I should behave?"
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I don't have a definitive answer to this dilemma, though i'd love to flesh out the definitions a little more.
I think the key to getting this one sorted is going to be in understanding what the Ultimate truths are - the untouchables - and what separates them from the bulk of the questions we ask of the Bible. Can you come up with an example of a question which has a definite, unchangable and complete answer?
To my mind, there are certain fairly self-evident "truths" that are pretty untouchable. "Is God more powerful than I am?" has a fairly straightforward answer. On that one I think any conclusion other than "he's the freakin creator - of course he is!!!" is going to counter an ultimate truth.
I think most of the controversial questions the church deals with, though, don't fit into the same kind of framework. A question about which of the levitical laws apply to modern day non-jewish believers is not going to have a clear cut answer. Nor will the sentence in the bible that demonstrates clearly a position about it, necessarily apply to new covenant and non-jew participants (take NT passages about head coverings for worship, for example). A lot of these questions are answered with logic and conventional wisdom - you cant get there just by looking at what the Bible says about it.
You differentiate in your final sentence our "earthly" conclusions and Gods revelation of himself in the Bible. I don't thing these are separat-able. God revealed himself in the Bible in a way that he was happy with, but our only way of understanding that is through the lenses of our earthly minds and hearts (The Spirit may be a helper, but buggered if i know what to say when you think the spirit's telling you one thing and i think he's telling me the opposite!). Because of this, there are always going to be streams of thought. As zcatcurious pointed out in his comment, the western approach to textual criticism isn't the sole, nor is it necessarily the best, way to approach the text.
To my mind, other than a select bunch of givens (most of which are contained in John 3:16), a majority of Biblical interpretation is up for grabs. There's nothing better than getting to sit in on passionate Calvinists and Armenians debating the merits of their various viewpoints. That an obvious 'winner' hasnt emerged after all these centuries testifies to the fact that biblical truth is subjective to the reader in many of the large and small philosophical arenas. However, said discussions become poisonous and infuriating the moment one party suggests the other view is invalid, wrong, untenable in light of "what the Bible says" (and in previous centuries, sometimes end with someone getting burned at the stake).
I don't think you need to take a soft stance on truth to be a self-evaluating (i'm trying not to use label terms like liberal and progressive, but you know what i mean) Christian. I don't think acceptance of the subjectivity of Biblical revelation means you throw truth out the window - thats why we have creeds and the 39 articles etc (though there's a fair bit of subjective stuff even in these things when compared to the words of the Gospels.. but that's another discussion). Nor do i think we should boil everything down to bare fundamentals and discard the rest (a charge the Uniting church cops a fair bit) - is there really anything wrong with a "you say potato i say potaato approach to walking with Jesus, provided Jesus stays at the centre of it all?"
Having said all this, i struggle with my own statement there.. I find it very hard to respect streams of Christianity when issues that i perceive to be about fairness and justice become involved. Eg i'm really struggling being associated with some of the (in my view) unjust stances my diocese takes towards women and gay people.
This last week I've been leaning more and more towards the Franciscan ideal of critiquing authority by lived example first, words last. Any wisdom you can give me on this, or anything else?
Can't wait to hear your thoughts!
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peace!
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