blindwatchmaker

As anyone who has read my other thread concerning the nonsense in the Bible can see, the standard tactic for dealing with biblical inconsistencies and contradiction is to say "Oh, that wasn't meant literally, it's just a metaphor."

My question then, is what would be the Christian line on who gets to choose what's literal and what is metaphor and on what basis are these decisions made?

Amaleq13

In my experience, it has been "literal" as the first line of defense with "metaphor" as the fall-back position. If even they can't buy a literal interpretation, it "must" be metaphor.

Angrillori

Heh, as I said elsewhere, it's literal until it's proven wrong. Then it's a metaphor.

Postcard73

This problem played a big part in my deconversion. I went to a fundamental baptist church, and I started to question some of the stuff in the Bible because a literal interpretation conflicted with what I was being told. I became particularly fixated on Romans 9:14-24. To this day I am convinced that this passage is speaking about predestination, and I don't think it's very obscure; but every Baptist I showed it to would tell me I was interpreting it wrong. Why? Because my church believed in foreknowledge, and predestination conflicted with this concept. I began to realize that as a xian I was expected to believe that all of this supernatural miracle stuff from the gospels had happened exactly as written, but I had to interpret what other (often straightforward) passages meant so that they would fit with what the church wanted me to believe. I wasn't willing to interpret the "normal" stuff in the Bible while accepting the supernatural stuff word for word at face value, and I thus began to doubt the validity of the entire Bible...

truelies

It would appear that the REAL problem is the Baptist unwillingness to recognise that the Bible does in fact teach Predestination, something that many Christian Churchhes have no problem with.

Postcard73

The church I attended put a huge amount of emphasis on evangelizing the masses. I think a lot of the people I knew thought that if each of us were predestined for heaven or hell, then witnessing would be pointless. I don't know why they didn't just assume that their witness might be an integral part of God's pre-designed plan to lead one of the lucky chosen into the fold...

I think Angrillori was pretty close with her comment, though I know a lot of xians who don't think the Bible can be proven wrong. I would say that the Bible is literal until a passage needs to be metaphorical to better confirm (or conform to) one's world view...

Magus55

Its based on how the Bible is written. Both context, and the writing style from Hebrew and Greek.

Magus55

I think Romans 9:14 is very ambiguous if you're trying to use it as a defense for predestination. I think your other problem is you don't look at the Bible as a whole. The Bible works as a whole to reveal the full truth. When you examine the rest of the NT, predestination is not taught. Salvation through faith is the focus, even by Jesus Himself. If the rest of the Bible, including Jesus' own words conflict with the idea of predestination, then we are likely interpretating Romans 9:14 wrong. Predestination for certain purposes to be carried out is Biblical; the predestination of ones salvation however is not. But since no one on this board really cares anyway, its pretty much a moot point so carry on.

blindwatchmaker

Yeah right.

It's obvious isn't it.

That's why half of what was considered literal two hundred years ago is now considered metaphor, and why there's still very little agreement amongst the twenty thousand flavours of christianity about which is which.

Surely you can do better?..

Toto

I recall this question - what in the Bible is to be taken literally, what metaphorically - asked of a Greek Orthodox organization. Their answer was that their tradition told them, and since they read the New Testament in the language in which it was written (snubs to American televangelists evident there) and claim direct descent from the original disciples of Christ, that must be it.

The problem for Protestants who have rejected most of Christian tradition in favor of sola scriptura is that they have no tradition to save them from textual difficulties, since they have rejected that tradition as corrupt and/or paganized. But they won't take the next step and reject the scripture for the same reason.