Comments on: Literalism Doesn’t Exist

By: Error 404

Error 404 — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 16:52:29 +0000

Well, yeah - the Bible is self-contradictory enough that in a formal sense you can’t beleive it all literaly. Except that people are quite capable of beleiving multiple contradictory things.

WWJD taken literaly, on the other hand, would lead to somebody looking a lot like SF of A. And in pretty much any situation, the answer is “Go outside and talk to the crowd, heal a sick person or two, then have dinner with somebody that everybody hates and skip town.” And, of course, practice his faith as a devout Jew. Practicing any form of Christianity, obviously, is out of the question.

Pretty funny, when you think about it. “Follow me” != “Copy me”.

By: Tim Boucher

Tim Boucher — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 19:00:58 +0000

Error 404 - your point is well taken. Realize though that my intention was to perform a mental exercise around a controversial term, rather than create a 100% theologically accurate portrayal of it

By: jp

jp — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 18:09:21 +0000

well yeah, i meant that biblical literalists would *look* more like saint francis (yeah, of assisi, sheesh, useless nitpicking!), not that they’d *be* like saint francis.

By: Error 404

Error 404 — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 16:07:18 +0000

He wasn’t concerned with whether the number of creatures on the Ark was precisely what it said in Genesis, or how a circular part could be ten cubits across and thirty around. He probably didn’t think that the Good Samaritan episode was something that should have been on a police report, if there had been police. He was deeply attuned to the message of Jesus, not how you get there.

Literalism is the idea that every event in the Bible occured in the historical, scientific sense. It has roots in the nature of Christianity: a key feature is that Jesus did the mythic things, things ascribed to, among others, the Egyptian gods, but Jesus was not in the time of legend or in a mythic place like Mount Olympus. The the killed and resurected god is a fairly common theme - the innovation is that it was at a particular time and place, with non-mystic human witnesses and he was an actual flesh-and-blood human being. Literalism becomes idolatry is when that idea is expanded to the mythic parts of the Old Testament. When you insist the Adam was a particular human being without parents, who had a cloned mate. I doubt that the divinely inspired author thought that Adam existed in the same sense as Uncle Charlie.

There is nothing in the Bible that says you have to be exactly like Jesus. Literalism is not impossible, just very difficult and ultimately unchristian. And you have to be careful not to think about certain combinations of sections at the same time.

Biblical inerrancy and divine authorship are related, but distinct, idolatries.

Francis of Assisi (there are lots of Saint Francis’es, including Francis Borgia, who was about as unlike the one you are thinking of as you can get. Fairly low body count for a Borgia, but rather high for a saint.) wasn’t a literalist. He was a mystic prophet. You can’t be a literalist and a mystic prophet at the same time, because your vision will not match the Bible, and you will inevitably go with your vision. He may have made a serious effort to literaly do everything that the New Testament asks, but he took his instructions directly from God.

By: James Russell

James Russell — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 12:29:31 +0000

A Biblical literalist would also have to be Jewish to start with. If you’re going to be literal, you can’t really ignore the fact that most of the Bible is made up of the holy writings of Judaism and only a relatively small part is “Christian”.