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From: credmond@watmath.UUCP (Chris Redmond)
Newsgroups: net.religion.christian
Subject: About Literalism
Message-ID: <15117@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 18-Jun-85 08:33:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: watmath.15117
Posted: Tue Jun 18 08:33:39 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 19-Jun-85 02:47:12 EDT
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 23

Somebody made a comment recently about the sloppiness of the press in
referring to "taking the Bible literally" when what was meant was a
different concept.
   Well, maybe.  But the example given was a bad one: of course nobody
takes the statement "I am the vine" as anything but a metaphor.  It
would not be literalism to take that literally, it would be stupidity.
Literalism requires the reader to take literally the larger statement,
"Jesus said, I am the vine," because that's what is really being
said.  In other words, "Jesus used a metaphor." 
   It is possible to accept that "the vine" is a metaphor, and tohave
any of a large range of opinions about the literal truth of other statements
in the Bible -- such as, to take a hoary example, Jonah and the whale.
   Personally I do not find it either necessary or desirable to take
every such statement as historical truth.  There is a line in one of the
traditional catechisms -- a Presbyterian one, I think -- which describes
the Bible as "the only infallible rule of faith and practice", and I
find that a more helpful approach than trying to take it as an infallible
history or science book.
   However, that's a digression.  Perhaps the person who made the original
comment would help us with a list of terms and definitions:  infallible,
inerrant, literal, and so on?  And perhaps a scale of them, from least
to most liberal?
                          Chris