Are Theological Progressives Smarter and More Spiritual than “Literalists”?
Responding to a listicle claiming that it is better to interpret the Bible figurativelyby Lita Sanders on September 14, 2024.
The media often attacks Christianity in ways that are not intellectually sound or honest. A careful examination of media pieces shows that their accusations against Christianity are baseless, but the sheer volume can prove overwhelming to Christians. As an example of how Christians can think about media pieces that are shared with them, we’re responding to a listicle that was sent to us, “17 Important Reasons the Bible Shouldn’t Be Taken Literally.”1 Part 1 dealt with arguments attacking the Bible, and this article will deal with arguments attacking believers who interpret the Bible as written.
Objection: Ancient Believers Were Stupid.
While most attacks against ancient worldviews wouldn’t necessarily call ancient people stupid, they certainly imply that we’re more sophisticated today, not least because we have modern science and they didn’t. However, ancient people were more intelligent than modern people often give them credit for.
Ancient cultures thought differently about truth than we do.
The listicle uses creation in six days as its example for this item and claims, “It’s about conveying God’s power, not being a geology textbook.”2 Creationists should be glad that the Bible isn’t a scientific textbook because those have to be updated every few years to keep up with new discoveries! Rather, the creation account is history. It doesn’t give details of how God set the laws of physics to just the right values to allow for life, but the simple, factual account gives us a framework for thinking about science.
Ancient people also didn’t attribute everything to miracles just because they didn’t know about microbes. Ancient people knew that at a certain age, a woman was unlikely to get pregnant and that virgins don’t normally get pregnant at all. They knew that men normally sink in water and donkeys don’t normally talk. In fact, the average ancient person’s life was more immediately dependent on cycles of seasons relating to harvest so could probably discern more about the natural world than the average person today. They sometimes expressed truth in poetry and other figurative ways, and so do we. If your friend tells you, “It’s raining cats and dogs outside!” you don’t ask if there are any dachshunds. And your meteorological report will probably tell you what time “sunset” is, even though we all know the earth revolves around the sun.
In a more scholarly setting, you may hear that Hebrews thought about existence in terms of function and that creation week was more about assigning existing things their function rather than creation out of nothing. In many ways, the Old Testament is concerned about the function of things, but that does not mean that there is no way for the Old Testament authors to consider existence apart from function.
Objection: Believers Today Are Stupid
Again, most articles would not put it quite that bluntly. But there’s a certain smug superiority about how much more sophisticated progressives are. However, people have been looking down on people who believed Scripture as written from almost the moment it was penned, so we are in good company! And we can see how weak these attacks really are when we take a moment to examine them.
Literalism often leads to cherry-picking.
The listicle claims that believers ignore passages about loving the poor but focus intensely on ones condemning homosexuality and pronounces, “This isn’t true faith; it’s using the Bible to justify existing prejudices rather than being challenged to actually live as Jesus taught.” Jesus actually taught that marriage was between one man and one woman for life (Matthew 19:3–9), which is mildly inconvenient for the listicle. But even more inconvenient is the fact that Christians are the most generous group of people, giving far more to charity than other religions or atheists.3
Progressives, however, cherry-pick what they believe is important. It’s important to give to the poor, but not to “judge with right judgment” (John 7:24) regarding behaviors that the Bible and even secular culture have condemned until recently. It’s important to practice hospitality, but the moment you insist that Jonah was actually in the fish for three days, you’re an ignoramus who clearly doesn’t appreciate the finer nuances of literature.
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Literalism encourages rigidity.
The listicle opines, “If there’s one right answer, it shuts down exploration. Faith is a journey!” Anyone who has been involved in circles that take the Bible as written knows that simply interpreting the Bible as a historical document does not mean that we have all the answers about it. People who believe that the Bible is God-breathed debate about how long the Israelites were in Egypt, what the nature of the Bethlehem star was, and how best to obey God’s commands in a host of different areas. However, taking the Bible as written gives us a starting point and the hope of going in a concrete direction, rather than endlessly wandering around feeling in the dark.
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