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Facebook is freaking out and isn't working like it should, so I'll try to repost what I tried to post there, if I can remember it.
Last night I was reading a local 'zine, while I was at a show. I know I know. Reading a 'zine while a show is going on. It's tacky. But the 'zine had me intrigued and this band called The Graduate (who was really good) ( Read more... )
Last night I was reading a local 'zine, while I was at a show. I know I know. Reading a 'zine while a show is going on. It's tacky. But the 'zine had me intrigued and this band called The Graduate (who was really good) ( Read more... )
Discuss...
Depends on what you mean. The "literal" sense of Scripture can simply mean the sense that the author meant to convey (which may or may not be meant to be taken literalistically). Under this definition, the "literal" sense of the description of God having a "strong arm" is simply the author wishing to convey God's power, not to imply that he really has an arm.
Under that definition, it is foolish to say that we should not take the Bible "literally", since by "literally", we mean the sense the author wished to convey, which we should always try to understand.
Of course, I think what the author is meaning is we shouldn't take it literalistically. And, of course, everyone already agrees to that. No one takes the Bible completely literalistically. I know very few people who believe God has wings, for instance, even though Scripture describes God in that way. Or believes that Jesus has a sword coming out of his mouth, even though Revelation describes him in that manner.
In short, to truly take Scripture seriously, we should always strive for the "literal sense" of a passage (which may or may not be a literalistic reading of the passage). We should avoid the error of the fundamentalist (who often, though not always, interprets the passage in a literalistic sense when it is not called for) and the error of the modernist (who often, though not always, tries to interpret a passage in a way the author never meant to convey, thus committing the same error as the fundamentalist, only from the opposite direction).
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~JOSh-X
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