Can We Take the Bible Literally?

Can a person, in all intellectual honesty, believe that the events of the Bible are literally true? Was the world created in six literal days, did the Red Sea literally turn to blood, and was Jesus bodily raised from the dead? Retired Bishop John Shelby Spong says "no" to all of the above. He cites the "intellectual revolution" from Copernicus to Einstein as having made it impossible for educated people to view the Bible as literally true.

Spong argues that the biblical miracles cannot be true since Newton showed that the universe operates according to fixed natural laws. Moreover, Darwin surely disproved that humans are a special creation made in God's image. According to Spong, "there has never been a human perfection from which we have fallen away. There has been rather only the evolution of higher consciousness..." (Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes ). Spong further maintains that Einstein has "demonstrated the relativity of all articulated truth." 

The biblical narratives, written within a pre-modern framework, can simply not be taken literally by the intellectually honest post-modern thinker. Yet Spong refers to himself as a Christian and to Jesus as his Lord. Spong hopes for a time in which the church will not consider literal understandings of Scripture to be the litmus test of orthodoxy. He envisions a church in which those who cannot intellectually force themselves to believe in a bodily resurrection of Jesus can still be embraced as Christians. He puts himself in this category, also rejecting such foundational doctrines as the virgin birth and the ascension.  

It sounds to me as if Spong is saying that we have simply outgrown a literal reading of the "myths and legends" of Scripture. We have become too sophisticated to believe all that and any thinking person who does has intellectually compromised. At least that's how I understand Spong. 

I have agreed with much of what Spong says in his book which has been the launching pad for my last several posts. He certainly caused me to think. I cannot overemphasize the book's significance for articulating the New Testament's use of the Old. I've been trying to communicate much of this to the church for years and I now have the means to do so even more adequately.  

But I disagree when Spong asserts that the Gospel authors did not intend their works to be taken literally. He surely overstates the case when he says that "Jewish people did not relate to sacred history as if it were an objective description of reality." Even if we grant that to be occasionally true, it seems that for Spong "Jewish" consistently equals "non-literal." I think it's a stretch to imply that Jewish authors of antiquity were never concerned about literal history or objective reality. 

Spong is correct in that reading the Scriptures through a Jewish lens will open up a whole new world for us. But I'm not convinced that reading the Bible through a Jewish lens will always imply a non-literal reading. Spong attempts to form too solid a link between the Jewishness of a work and its "supposed" non-literal intent.   

While I know that Spong is a champion of human rights and rails against Anti-Semitism, some of his arguments about what makes a book Jewish are almost reminiscent of some of the original motive behind the Documentary Hypothesis. German theologians dissected Jewish Scriptures, assigning the Pentateuch to various authors, believing the Semitic mind to be too irrational to recognize all the "contradictions." Spong, likewise, has not painted the Jews of antiquity in a very rational light. But in all fairness, I'm sure he meant to show that what a modern Westerner considers "rational" would not even occur to an ancient Jew. While this is true to an extent, I don't think it's true to the extent Spong believes.     

Spong believes that thinking Christians must work to deliver the gospel from "literal distortions" or else it will die. But does the gospel really need us to save it? And is there really a gospel if there is no bodily resurrection of Jesus? What does it mean to believe in the resurrection?

What if someone in our church family decides to stop taking the resurrection literally? Do we excommunicate them or do we say, "Well, that's okay. We admire your intellectual honesty. So just stay on board and help the rest of us make the world a better place"? What do you think?

More on the resurrection in my next post.              

Comments

[Bob Bliss]

Why Does Spong even bother to call himself Christian? Considering what he believes he would be better off in some other religion. I have never understood why he hangs around in a church that has some vestiges of biblical belief.

[Frank]

Einstein demonstrated "the relativity of all articulated truth"? Gee, Dr. Spong, I always thought he was talking about motion and time and space. You know, that Newton's laws don't predict with certainty what can or can't happen in the physical universe. But that couldn't be true, because physical relativity would leave open up the possibility of exceptions to Newtonian laws. And they always have to be obeyed, or else we might just have a miracle now and then. And that can't happen, right?

And humanity is progressing towards "higher consciousness"? Dr. Spong, I'm afraid you've never had the pleasure of seeing today's college students at 9 a.m. Most of them look like something that just slithered out of the primordial soup. But you could still be right since early last century we fought the war to end all wars. Oh, wait. . .

[Wade Tannehill]

Bob,

Your question is a good one. I'm wondering that myself.

[Wade Tannehill]

Frank,

Sooo, if Einstein really demonstrated the relativity of all articulated truth, this would mean that Newtonian laws are relative and this would open the door for exceptions to those laws. hmmm.

I think I have been objective in my responses to Spong's book, even applauding much of what he says in regard to the presence of the OT in the NT and in regard to a more Jewish approach to Scripture. But I find it completely unnecessary that these conclusions would lead to where Spong thinks they do.

[Warren Baldwin]

Appreciate your review/discussion of this book that I probably wouldn't have read on my own. wb

[Wade Tannehill]

Warren,

Good to hear from you. So now you're going to rush right out and buy this book, right? ;-)

[preacherman]

Great question.
I think we should strive to see the word of God as applicable to our lives yet it was written so many years ago to a certain culture.
The question I have does it change for our culture to become applicable today.
Is that what Christ would do?

Great post and discussion brother!!

[Wade Tannehill]

Preacherman,

That is the big question isn't it?

How different would the Bible be if it were written in our time? And do we have the right to rewrite or reintepret it for today's mindset?

[Darren Beachy]

I like what Spong says, "We must take the Bible seriously but not literally" (or something like that). I would concur with this.

[Wade Tannehill]

Darren,

I appreciate your willingness to share what seems to be a dissenting view judging from the other comments. Of course some would equate taking the Bible seriously to taking it literally.