On the Heresy of Literalism

When the fundamentalist and literalist get you down you might want to read the following. Some good Christians will say if you don't follow fundamentalism and literalism, you aren't a real Christian.


On the Heresy of Literalism

by Kevin Lewis

The liberal religionist at play, chafed by years of engagement in the South with the intractable furniture of the Fundamentalist mind, wonders: what if the tables were turned? What if the accusers of faithless compromise were themselves accused of heresy?

What if the conservators of an historically partial interpretation of doctrinal purity were themselves to be indicted for the error of their way? What then? What helpful theological dialogue, if any, might ensue?

The culture wars rage. More and more bystanders are joining the usual combatants and taking sides. It is difficult to raise this issue without appearing only to be launching an ideologically inspired attack on the Religious Right. But a theological and hermeneutical issue too often avoided for the sake of a dangerous tolerance does need to be addressed.

The history of American Christianity has been dominated by revivalism and Protestant evangelicalism, particularly in the South. As result, countless earnest Christians have come to rest in the assumption that the only way the truth of the Bible can be maintained is by claiming it to be literal truth.

This is the belief that Scripture should be read as literally as possible in every respect, and especially wherever not to do so would seem to deny the power of God to operate apart from the laws of nature. Latter-day appeals to "Inerrancy" as a fighting principle insist upon this literalism, often appearing to bait both skeptical and more traditional contemporary minds.

But is this heresy? In 1980 Episcopalian pastoral theologian, Urban T. Holmes observed flatly that "literalism is a modern heresy-perhaps the only heresy invented in modern times." But he did not proceed to argue the case. No one has.

Heresy is traditionally understood to emerge within a community of faith when a legitimate point of belief is over-emphasized to the neglect of other equally legitimate, complementing, occasionally countering points of belief needed to make up the delicate balance of doctrines in an "orthodox" rule of faith. Heresy emerges as a truncating distortion of the faith. From the earliest times, Christian heresies have inflicted damage from within upon the Church's theologically ordered system of faith, constructed from the biblical testimony and crystallized in concise credal formulae.

The heresy of literalism as such is a modern, post-scientific phenomenon. Its beginnings can be traced in seventeenth-century Protestant orthodoxy, but it bloomed with twentieth-century Fundamentalism, when the modern world fully embraced the dynamic power of natural science. Scientific method crucially altered the Western mind. After Descartes we became principled skeptics, doubting in order to find out the truth. The notion stole into the religious mind that biblical narratives make proposals that only appear to compete with testable scientific findings (to test our faith) while ultimately, if miraculously, conforming to scientific truth.

Hence the apt, related observation by another Episcopalian theologian, Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse, that Fundamentalism is to be regarded as "the bastard child of science and religion." Heretical literalism is the issue of an adulterous mis-match: the bastard-child product of a modern religious imagination formed or perhaps deformed by uncritical embrace of scientific method.

So rose up in history a reactionary Christian mind, panicked and defensive, straining to assert scientific proof (thereby establishing absolute certainty) for its Scripture and the articles of belief it wished to communicate. Thus did literalism teach the "letter" to drive out the "spirit" of the biblical writings, effectively misusing the text in order to promote a corrupted theological agenda. The effect is a rigid constriction of the inspiring Word.

Bob Jones, Jr., in a recent documentary film, puts it this way: "The Bible doesn't contain the Word of God; the Bible is the Word of God."

The combative answer: there are better, more legitimate, less blasphemous ways than this to affirm that the Bible is the Word of God. The Word is to be affirmed without the heresy of divinizing each word of Scripture as though it fell from heaven a perfect expression of the mind of God. The drive for certainty in a skeptical age is more dangerous to our faith than we might suppose. It leads away from "faith" to a calculating "belief" not satisfied with the promises of God but restless to prove, verify, and guarantee those promises with scientific precision.

Ironically, biblical literalism misunderstands the biblical faith in the very course of struggle to understand and defend it in a changing cultural context. Biblical literalism commits a seductive form of idolatry. The literalist misleads Christians by asserting the idolatrous notion that the words of inspired Scripture adequately and sufficiently bind the God revealed in Scripture to the narrow limitations of scientific, "common sense" interpretation.

The requisite balancing principle is forgotten: that Scripture produced under "inspiration" by mere mortals simultaneously conceals as it reveals the Word-requiring an act of faith and careful, "Inspired" personal interpretation to grasp the Word spoken to the self. Literalism errs fatally when in implicit arrogance it denies the mystery of the revealed but sovereign, never-fullyknowable God.

Viewed functionally, as opposed to analytically, such error becomes heresy when it so misleads that it blocks the individual's path to salvation through Christ, promised in gospel and creed to those who truly accept the invitation to repent, believe, and follow Him. It makes scriptural inerrancy a basic article of faith which must be believed if the Bible is true.

The early period of Christian theology was rife with dispute over such paths deemed erroneous, each attempting to protect a particular element of the tradition but prompted by a concern so lopsided that the "Improved" or more "relevant" version of the faith proposed became a stumbling block to the received biblical faith in Christ.

Under the terms of the traditional faith consolidated in the creeds and major doctrines, the salvation on offer through Christ will elude those who fall into such disabling idolatry of the Word. By scorning to affirm the inscrutable sovereignty of the biblical God -- as a counterweight to that God's revealed loving promises -- the literalist traffics with a diminished false god of convenience.

There is no mistaking the harm that the false theology of the literalist has done and continues to do -- to believers and seekers alike. But, then, the liberal religionist would not remain liberal if he (or she) were actually to cry down the cultural literalism that turns fellow committed Christians unwittingly, though not without consequence, into heretics. Though literalism compounds the genuine scandal of the gospel with an ersatz scandal of its own devising, 'tis impolitic to say so within the "household of faith."

So, shedding sword and buckler, the liberal religionist retires from the fray with a sigh. He (or she) returns to the quiet of study, the building of community, the making of peace, and, when possible, green fields. And yet, now and again, he (or she), touched by the culture wars of the day, dreams of an honest donneybrook: of a cleansing battle royal for the integrity of the living faith handed down from the past.


http://people.cas.sc.edu/lewiske/heresy.html

 

Literalism was okay until science shined its candle against the darkness of religious superstition. The church, former predator, shrivels in the corner, begging for mercy as intellectual fortitude kicks it to the myth bin.

 

I think its gained momentum with the Protestant Revolution. but even most Protestants weren't literalists.

 

The rise of fundamentalism was a response to Darwin.

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/PROJECTS/FTRIALS/conlaw/Fundamentalism.html

 

It has actually been my experience that it is the Atheists who claim I am not a good Christian because I am not a literalist. For the record I have observed the same phenomenon in the case of Muslims as well.

 

This certainly suggests heresy. A sort of God-in-the-box: known, nailed and pigeonholed.

"The literalist misleads Christians by asserting the idolatrous notion that the words of inspired Scripture adequately and sufficiently bind the God revealed in Scripture to the narrow limitations of scientific, "common sense" interpretation.

The requisite balancing principle is forgotten: that Scripture produced under "inspiration" by mere mortals simultaneously conceals as it reveals the Word-requiring an act of faith and careful, "Inspired" personal interpretation to grasp the Word spoken to the self. Literalism errs fatally when in implicit arrogance it denies the mystery of the revealed but sovereign, never-fullyknowable God"

Religious literalism has a feel of bloody revolution to it. 2000 years of human thought- gone. Wiped out. And it isn't literalist. It's cherry picked. Somethings are held to be the Word and must be adhered to the letter, others are not, they are symbolic or relevant to ancient times, but not now.

 

Literalism needs to be defined as well. No reasonable person would interpret obvious literary expressions literally. If I say "Bob is a lion", it doesn't mean Bob is a predatory big cat Panthera Leo moving on four legs with paws. It obviously means Bob is brave, courageous.

At the same time, the opposite of literalism would be to change the apparent meaning of a word or sentence without considering the context or historical usage. If I say "Your hair is too long. You should get a hair cut." And someone comes along and says: "Hair refers to the vain desires of your heart, so the sentence "You should get a hair cut" means you should cut out from your heart all vain attachments and desires", that would be forcing a meaning into the text which is not apparent.

 

It certainly came to the fore in reaction to Darwin.

 

Well, the creation story, Joshua's wars, Noah's Ark and the Exodus can't be taken literally .. The Bible wasn't ever intended as science and history.

 

Well, you and I can't take them literally, but Literalists do.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...und-in-turkey-science-religion-culture/#close

Looking for Noah's Ark is sort of quaint, but there's nothing quaint about using it to ban schools from teaching the Theory of Evolution.

Imagine accusing the Westboro Baptist church of heresy.

 

Well they are wonderful stories for children.

 

Lol! true.
No hang on. I just remembered some of those stories - R rated wake up screaming in the night stuff. Not good for children.

 

What if the moral contradictions of religious text are God's challenge to prove you are worthy of divinity?

 

You have a point. So many of the stories begin with the slaughter of babies .... or the first borns.

 

And God said: "Go forth and commit genocide"

I'm thinking of the tribe God commanded the Israelites to wipe out, but their name escapes me. They kept popping up again though. I think they were literature's first zombies.

Literalists tell me it really happened and God was right because these people were thorough rotters. They weren't God's people: must have been the product of a rival firm.

 

And what if they aren't? What if they have nothing of the divine but much of the human condition to teach us. What if the true solace is we are not alone, but it's because we have each other - our common flawed humanity: not because we have God.

 

All Scripture is inspired by God.

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/men-moved-by-the-holy-spirit-spoke-from-god

 

Moabites, Amalekites and others.

 

It was the Amalekites I was thinking of.

 

Inspired, not dictated. And as we can't possibly know or interpret or understand the mind of the God, we can't claim our interpretation of Scripture is correct. Nor can we assume that the prophet's interpretation of his/her divine inspiration was correct when the Scripture was written. To claim to know God's will? Wow! That's heresy!

 

God is all knowing and all powerful. Do you not think He could get His message to us exactly as He wanted?

2 Timothy 3:16

15From infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16AllScripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction,for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17so that the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work.…

 

I would never presume to know the mind of God. I leave that to scriptural theists.

 

The Amalekites lived in the Negev.. That wasn't Jewish either.

 

The only thing we really need to know is that we are sinners, bound for Hell. But God loved us so much that He sent His Son to pay the price for that sin. If one asks God to forgive them, in Jesus name, and ask Him to be Lord of their lives, they will have eternal life.That is all anyone needs to know. It's so simple a child can understand it.

BTW. Why do you think Jesus quoted the Old Testament so many times? Think about that.

 

Because Jesus was taught those bronze age stories.