In my last post I outlined how growing up I had come to view the Bible as more or less a divine product that carried divine authority and a divine guarantee to be true (a view that I not only held for many years, but which I later took great effort to learn how to defend with significant intellectual rigor). Yet, although believing that the Bible was a divine product no doubt influenced the way I approached it in a major way, the other component of the way I viewed the Bible that probably had just as much of an impact was the way in which I thought it should be interpreted – namely, that the Bible was to be interpreted literally. Although there were obvious exceptions to the rule (I never believed trees literally clapped their hands, for example – see Isaiah 55:12), in general if a given passage in the Bible could be taken literally, then it probably should be. And this was especially the case anytime the Bible made claims of a factual nature (particularly when it involved a historical narrative or event of some kind). The interesting thing about this facet of how I viewed the Bible was that, although I never saw any intrinsic connection between reading the Bible literally and seeing it as a divine product, for some reason the two were often linked very tightly together in my thinking (biblical literalism and biblical inerrancy going very much hand-in-hand – although the former could be, and often times was, sacrificed to preserve the latter if necessary). 

Although God could no doubt have spoken inerrantly in the language of metaphor, poetry, or myth, etc., for some reason I tended to believe that God was primarily a literalist (most likely because I was literalist, looking back). In any case, this too was never something I really thought about in detail growing up, but rather more than likely simply absorbed uncritically. Of course, I knew that there were other Christians who interpreted the Bible more metaphorically but, as I saw it, those people were “liberal” Christians who really didn’t take the Bible seriously (if they were really even Christians at all). In any case, and much like how my views on the inerrancy of the Bible initially shifted over time from a harder view to a softer view, so too was the case when it came to my view about interpreting the Bible literally. Having more or less absorbed a rather hard-line approach to biblical literalism, I initially pretty much believed that everything in the Bible (with rare exception) was to be taken literally. As such, any and all reports about what appear to be historical events were to be interpreted accordingly, whether the creation of the world in six days, the story of Adam and Eve in the garden, the story of Jonah being swallowed by a big fish, etc. Indeed, the more miraculous the story, the more important it was that I should interpret it literally. In some senses, I had absorbed not just any old form of literalism, but a very particular form of literalism – a sort of “literalism of the spectacular.” Although I never had a problem with the possibility or reality of miracles (and honestly still don’t), I nevertheless eventually began to wonder why it was that I, and others I knew, seemed so preoccupied with emphasizing how important it was that stories in the Bible (especially those involving miracles) should be interpreted literally.

In any case, and as alluded to above, I eventually became more comfortable with a softer form of literalism that was willing to grant that perhaps not everything in the Bible needed to be taken literally. That is, perhaps some of the stories in the Bible could be interpreted metaphorically instead of literally, such as the story of creation (where each day might symbolically represent millions of years) or the story of Jonah and the fish (which might be taken as a parable instead of factual history), etc. Yet, even then I still held onto this idea that at least the really important stories in the Bible should still be taken literally. Stories such as those involving Adam and Eve, Noah and the Flood, Moses and the Exodus, and – most importantly of all – the virgin birth, supernatural ministry, and bodily resurrection of Jesus. Thus, although my views did soften to some extent, there was still very much of this underlying emphasis on the “literalism of the spectacular” on the “big things” that I felt very intent on preserving for some reason, as if I couldn’t understand how these stories could be seen as important or true in any meaningful sense unless taken literally (that too, however, would change in time). However, it’s probably important to note at this point that I didn’t primarily struggle with taking the Bible literally because I began to have doubts about the possibility of miracles or about whether certain stories (if taken literally) were really true or not (I was much too well equipped to handle objections of that sort at this stage in my journey), rather my struggle was much more foundational than that. 

Namely, it was the idea that, in order to be a faithful Christian, it was of critical importance that I not only believe, but also emphasize and defend, the literal truth of the Bible at almost any cost – this was the view that I began to doubt and struggle with the most. It wasn’t so much, at this stage at least, that I didn’t believe many of these stories to be literally true (although I did later become more or less agnostic on the topic in many cases), but rather that I didn’t see why it was so critically important that I ought to. Indeed in many ways (both on this topic and many others) I found myself increasingly in a rather unique and precarious position of believing that the view I had grown up with was both reasonable and defensible (on the one hand), while also finding myself increasingly agnostic towards it (on the other hand). Although it may not be common to think this way, for me (at least) there is a pretty big difference between seeing something as reasonable and/or defensible and seeing something as true. What became a precarious struggle for me was, in many ways, losing the latter while retaining the former (indeed this still more or less captures how I see things today in many respects).

Similar in a way and yet slightly different, another way of seeing the Bible that had a major impact on my thinking growing up was the view that led me to see the teachings of the Bible (whether dealing with doctrines or ethics) as absolute in nature. Typically implicit in the common phrase that “the Bible is the ultimate authority for faith and practice” (or something similar), in holding this view I saw the Bible as telling us in an absolute character both what God wants us to believe and how God wants us to live (indeed in many ways that was the whole entire point of the Bible). As I saw it, any other way of approaching the Bible that didn’t acknowledge the absolute character of its teachings led to the slippery slope of relativism (the four-letter-word bogeyman that was responsible for almost everything wrong in the world, as I saw it) – a sort of “cafeteria” way of being Christian, a way of being Christian where we simply “pick and choose” the particular doctrines or ethical teachings we like (I’ll have more to say about this later, but suffice it to say that I think we all inevitably “pick and choose” on this score whether we realize it or not). And although I never placed much emphasis on the creeds until later in my journey, much of how I saw the Bible inevitably translated into how I came to see the creeds as well. As such, the creeds for me became more or less summarized statements of essential Christian doctrine that, despite their fairly self-evident historical conditionedness and use of metaphorical language, were (like the Bible) to be taken as both literally and absolutely true (carrying with them their own form of inherent divine authority). As a result, to recite the creeds faithfully meant to agree with the literal and absolute factuality of every statement in them (no intermittent “pausing” or “crossing of fingers” allowed).

In any case, and although I could elaborate in much more detail (and will likely do so down the line), hopefully by now I have been able to at least give a fairly decent (if not woefully brief) overview of the core of how I used to see the Bible (in sum: inerrant, literal, and absolute), as well as perhaps a glimpse into how it became the first major area of struggle for me. A struggle which, ironically, intensified as I increasingly came to love and study it. But it wasn’t just my views on the Bible alone that I ended up struggling with. Rather, there was another very important aspect of my faith that I’ve hinted at several times already, an aspect that, when coupled with my struggles surrounding the nature of the Bible, served to effectively place me on the fast track to a full blown crisis of faith – that aspect being how I understood the nature of the Christian life (with particular emphasis on how I understood the meaning of faith). It is that particular aspect which I struggled with the most, an aspect which ended up being the focus of my thesis in grad school (that I later published as a book), and an aspect which I will attempt to give a brief overview of next time.

Until then, thanks again for reading and – as always – stay curious, seek truth, and love well.

Cheers,