Why the Answer Is Yes and No

1

SHOULD WE TAKE

THE BIBLE

LITERALLY?

WHY THE ANSWER IS “YES” AND “NO”

By

DAVID MALCOLM BENNETT

(B.Th., M.Th. [with merit], PhD.)

CHAPTER 1

What Do We Mean When We Say

“We Take The Bible Literally?”

A TV preacher once said “I was reading the Bible the other day and the words literally jumped up off the page.” I know what the dear man meant, but the words did not literally jump up off the page. Print on the page has a reliable habit of staying there. It may metaphorically jump, but it does not do so literally.

Similarly, a football commentator was heard to say, “It’s literally murder out there today”. Well, it may have been a pretty rough game, but no one was literally deliberately killing anyone else. At least, I hope not. It may have been “murder” figuratively, but it was not murder literally.

That word “literally” is a tricky little fellow and its use with regard to the Bible is frequently open to misuse. We are often urged to take the Bible literally, but if we took the whole Bible strictly literally we would make nonsense of much of it, for the word of God is full of all sorts of figures of speech, such as metaphors, similes, euphemisms and symbolism, not to mention parables, which are made-up stories designed to teach theological and ethical truth.

An example of these figures of speech is when Isaiah spoke of “those who hope in the Lord” soaring “on wings like eagles” (Is. 40:31). This does not mean that those of us who hope in God will have flying lessons, rather it means that those who hope in God will have their spirits lifted and that God will sustain them through the difficult times. (See also Ex. 19:4 for a very similar idea.) Other examples are that of a certain being in Revelation, who is described as a lamb (Rev. 5:6) and is also said to have a sword sticking out of his mouth (Rev. 1:16). These are obvious references to Jesus Christ as Saviour and to the incisive power of His word. These Scriptures do not mean that Jesus walks around heaven bleating like a sheep, nor does He have a literal sword in His mouth. Those figures are symbols that describe Christ’s role as Saviour and the power of His word.

Is taking the Bible literally the best way of understanding it? Indeed, what do we mean when we say, “I take the Bible literally”? There are really two levels of literalness in language. The primary, strict form is when you say, “I see”, and you only mean that which you see with your eyes. The secondary form is when you say, “I see”, and you mean, for example, I understand. Each of these interpretations can be referred to as literal, but the former is clearly more literal than the latter. In other words, the first form only allows each word to bear a strictly literal meaning, while the second, which is in the strictest sense a metaphor, becomes literal by common usage. The literal meaning has been described as “the basic, customary, socially designated meaning”,1 which allows for both these forms to be considered literal.

Taking all that the Bible says literally in the first sense clearly will distort much of its meaning. God graciously speaks to us in human language, and in that makes abundant use of figures of speech, just as we do in everyday language. Clearly a strictly literal meaning is not always intended in the Bible and we must not, therefore, take all Scripture strictly literally. But, in addition, it is questionable whether the secondary meaning always satisfactorily allows for the way in which the Bible is written.

The symbol of the lamb in Rev. 5:6, mentioned above, may be regarded as literal in the second sense because it is a “customary” meaning (i.e. it commonly appears in Revelation as representing Christ; see also Jn. 1:29, 36; Acts 8:32-35 and 1 Pet. 1:19). However, it is far from certain that the sword (Rev. 1:16) can be fairly regarded as literal even in the secondary sense. True, you get the idea of God’s word cutting like a sword in Eph. 6:17 and Heb. 4:12, but can that usage be regarded as a first century “customary, socially designated meaning”? It certainly isn’t its basic meaning. It seems that to call that symbol literal is just struggling to apply that word to it simply because it sounds orthodox to do so, even though it is inappropriate. It stretches the meaning of the word literal too far.

This raises the question of whether the word literal is even the right word to use with regard to understanding the Bible. It is, I would suggest, probably time for the word literal to be thrown out the window, at least when it is used for an overall method of interpretation, and something else substituted for it. Certainly many people insist upon a literal interpretation of all Scripture, without really knowing what they mean, for they frequently depart from it when it suits them, sometimes in quite bizarre ways.

In addition, some who are advised to interpret the Scriptures literally, seek to always do so in the stricter of the above senses, sometimes with disastrous results. For example, it is not unknown for someone to cut off their hand or other bodily part after taking Christ’s command in Matt. 5:30 literally. The painful absurdity of this is apparent when one considers that if this verse is taken strictly literally, then one may only cut off the right hand. The left hand may cause one to sin even more than the right, but there is no command to deal with it. Obviously this Scripture is not meant to be taken literally.

This Article’s Aim

The aim of this article, then, is first to examine the ways in which many people use the word literal in interpreting the Bible, and notice the many problems arising from that. It will then seek to find a suitable alternative for the term literal and demonstrate a rational, spiritual and reliable method of understanding the Bible.

It will, thus, present appropriate methods of interpreting the Bible. But some readers may object, “But we shouldn’t interpret the Bible. We should just take it as it is written.” This objection is common enough, but with any document written by one person and read by another, interpretation is not just desirable it is inevitable. We do it all day, every day, with written and spoken language. It is normal, everyday practice. All readers (or listeners) have to determine what the author meant by what he or she has written, whatever it is. That is interpretation. This task becomes more difficult when the documents concerned were written many hundreds of years ago, and from within a very different culture.

All students of the Word of God interpret what they read, even those who protest that they don’t. Let us imagine some Christians sitting down to read, say, the first chapter of John’s Gospel. If those people are about their business they will pray over the passage and ask themselves and God questions as to its meaning, like: “Who is ‘the Word’?” (v.l), “What does it mean when it says, ‘the Word was God’?” (v.l), or “What does it mean to be given ‘the right to become children of God’?” (v.l2). Those Christians would, we hope, come up with answers, and these would be their interpretation, their understanding of that passage. That interpretation may be Spirit aided, indeed, we hope that it would be, but it still would be interpretation.

Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart very wisely say that that the correct practice should be “not no interpretation but good interpretation, based on commonsense guidelines.”2 The technical term for interpretation is hermeneutics, and in the final chapter of this booklet we will try to discover the best possible hermeneutical principles to apply to our study of the Bible.

CHAPTER 2

Literalism

A Reaction That Has Gone Too Far

In the second half of the nineteenth century higher criticism and modernistic interpretations of the Bible made a great impact upon the Christian Church. The interpretative methods of the scholars involved in this work were far from literal and were often very damaging. Not surprisingly, there was a strong reaction against this from many Christians, particularly in America.

In the middle of that century a movement emerged called Dispensationalism. This was based on the teachings of scholars from the British Isles, mainly belonging to the Plymouth Brethren. This group believed that the Bible was the word of God, in line with the traditional Protestant understanding of Scripture, but contrary to the emerging modernistic or liberal ideas. However, in addition to that, they adopted an excessively literal hermeneutic that has been called “a rigidly applied literalism”,3 which quite quickly became orthodox for many. They had moved from a traditional literal approach to a method that was rigid and, at times, twisted the meaning of Scripture. This new method, which we will call “literalism”, was also applied to the highly symbolic books, such as Daniel and Revelation, often with rather odd results. It was like putting a straitjacket upon Scripture.

This is not to say that all who teach a literal interpretation of Scripture are dispensationalists. Scholars from some other schools of thought also urge Christians to take the Bible literally, but what they usually favour is less rigid and more rational than that taught by dispensational teachers. For example, Stephen Sizer, a present-day Anglican scholar, argues in favour of a literal interpretation of Scripture, but his concept is rational and logical. In his terms, “literal” means to interpret “according to the usual rules of grammar, speech, syntax, context and genre”.4 His method is not rigid like the dispensationalists and consequently he treats the Scriptures more fairly. In addition, not all extreme literalists are dispensationalists, though most are. The primary focus in this chapter will be on dispensational views.

It is almost certain that the widespread acceptance of this new, ultra-literal hermeneutic was a reaction against the non-literal methods of critical scholars. Clarence Bass says that this kind of thinking “parallelled the rise of the rationalistic attack upon the authority of the Bible”, and was a response to it.5 In his biography of C.I. Scofield (a literalist and the compiler of the Scofield Reference Bible), Charles Trumbull includes details from a page of Scofield’s own private Bible, which shows comments against higher criticism of the Scriptures. Scofield seems to have regarded a rejection of that criticism and a promotion of an evangelical alternative as the “Burning Quest” for his day.6 His strong opposition to modernistic methods of interpreting Scripture was one of the reasons why he eventually changed denominations.7

In addition, in Sir Robert Anderson’s “Preface to the Fifth Edition” and introduction to The Coming Prince it is extremely clear that Anderson saw his work as a response to the higher critics.8 In addition, towards the end of his introduction there is a hint that he believed that new methods should be adopted. He said,

The attempt to put back the rising tide of scepticism is hopeless. Indeed the movement is but one of many phases of the intense mental activity which marks the age. The reign of creeds is past. The days are gone for ever when men will believe what their fathers believed, without a question … orthodoxy in the old sense is dead, and if any are to be delivered it must be by a deeper and more thorough knowledge of the Scriptures.9

It is true that Sir Robert’s words could be seen just as a call to all Christians to read and understand the Bible for themselves, rather than be dependent upon their teachers, pastors and parents. But his words seem to suggest that he was aware that not only was Christianity entering a new age, but that a new approach to the Scriptures was necessary.

This opposition to the excesses of modernism was justified. It was right. Indeed, the higher critical approach to Scripture is often very damaging. But the path of extreme literalism chosen by leading teachers led many into a new way of understanding the Bible, rather than back into a traditional one. In addition, this literalism, particularly when applied to such books as Daniel and Revelation, tended to distort the Bible’s message rather than reveal it.

What Do We Mean By Literalism?

We will now look at what some of the advocates of this literalism say. Sir Robert Anderson said, “Literalness of fulfilment may … be accepted as an axiom to guide us in the study of prophecy.”10 And he especially had in mind here the books of Daniel and Revelation. A few generations later, Tim LaHaye, of Left Behind fame, argued, “all prophecy should be interpreted literally whenever possible”.11 Once more LaHaye had Daniel and Revelation particularly in mind, but also many Old Testament prophecies and such New Testament passages as Matthew 24.

David L. Cooper puts the literal principle in more detail. He describes “The Golden Rule of biblical interpretation” as

When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense; therefore, take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning unless the facts of the immediate context, studied in the light of related passages and axiomatic and fundamental truths, indicate clearly otherwise.

At first reading Cooper’s “Rule” seems sound. However, when one considers it carefully it does not allow for the different forms of literature that make up the Bible or for such literary devices as parables, and his other Rules of Interpretation do not really make up for the lack in his “Golden Rule”. He gives a few hints about different forms, but nothing very explicit.12

This failure to recognise that different types of biblical books need to be interpreted in different ways is very common amongst those who insist on a literal interpretation. Clarence Bass argues that John Nelson Darby, a major developer of the dispensational system of interpretation in the nineteenth century, was “indifferent to literary distinction.”13

More recent examples of this lack can be seen in the writings of Paul Benware, Mark Hitchcock and Thomas Ice and Grant Jeffrey. It is noticeable that in the chapters on hermeneutics in their books Benware and Hitchcock and Ice, though they include some good and useful material, fail to talk about the different forms of literature that make up the Bible, such as poetry, history, letters and apocalyptic.14 The same can be said of Jeffrey in his principles of interpreting prophecy.15 They mention context, metaphor and symbolism, but not the varied nature of the different books in the Scriptures. Indeed, Jeffrey says that we should interpret the language of prophecy, including Daniel and Revelation, “in the same manner” that we use for “any newspaper account or a nonfiction book”.16

Yet the Bible’s prophetic books are, for the most part, very different in form and nature from today’s newspapers and most books of non-fiction. In fact, the form and style of some passages in the prophetic books are startlingly different from a modern newspaper. In addition, prophecy itself comes to us in varied forms, such as, narrative, poetry and apocalyptic, and each needs to be understood differently. So the varied types of books and parts of books in the Bible need to be handled differently, and this does not seem to be understood by many teachers who insist on a literal interpretation.

One cannot read, say, the visions in Daniel in the same way as Paul’s letter to the Romans. And this seems to be one area where teachers who insist on a literal method of interpretation go wrong. They tend to apply an unnatural hermeneutic and take literally passages of Scripture that were never intended to be taken literally, particularly failing to see or underestimating the heavily symbolic nature of such books as Daniel and Revelation. It is true that they acknowledge the use of symbolism in Scripture, but they do not do so sufficiently, and they consequently stifle and confuse the biblical message. They tend to see a literal meaning, whether primary or secondary, when often that is not likely to be the intended meaning of a particular passage.

However, it is true that some dispensationalists do acknowledge the two forms of literalness, mentioned in chapter one. For example, Hitchcock and Ice accept this. They say that the first form is the denotative, in which “The literal interpretation is the explicit assertion of the words.” The second is the connotative for use with figures of speech, in which “The literal interpretation is the specific intention of the figure” (their emphasis). Thus allowance is made for figurative language.17

Yet insufficient allowance is made for it, inconsistencies abound, and it would seem that many at local church level are more literal in their interpretation of Scripture than leading figures in the movement. Nor do they allow for the fluidity of language. A word, phrase or sentence in one type of literature can mean something quite different when used in another form.