EvC Forum: Best approaches to deal w/ fundamentalism

Kelly writes:

Those who adhere to a theistic evolutionary viewpoint have reduced the Bible to being nothing more than an allegory or a non-literal work. They think everything in the bible is therefore just symbolic. True fundamentalists believe that Scripture is meant to be taken literally, except where instructed by the content to take it otherwise. If the creation story is not literal then how does one know what is literal (if anything) in Scripture? Was Jesus a literal person? How does one know the difference between what is literla or symbolic if not through the actual context of the Scripture itself? If Jesus is not literal, then is our salvation literal? Is Heaven Literal? Do you see the problem?

Hi Kelly

You ask how you can trust in the Bible if you can't read it literally. Actually I'd ask you how you can trust it if you have to read it literally. There are just too many things that obviously don't fit when you try to read it literally. (Two creation stories for a start.)

I take the Bible very seriously and my Christianity is the basis for how I live my life, but I suggest that trying to turn the Bible into a science text or a newspaper just demeans the message that God is attempting to pass along.

Here is a quote from CS Lewis, (which I have posted before), that you might find helpful.

quote:
Just as, on the factual side, a long preparation culminates in God’s becoming incarnate as Man, so, on the documentary side, the truth first appears in mythical form and then by a long process of condensing or focusing finally becomes incarnate as History. This involves the belief that Myth is ... a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination. The Hebrews, like other peoples, had mythology: but as they were the chosen people so their mythology was the chosen mythology — the mythology chosen by God to be the vehicle of the earliest sacred truths, the first step in that process which ends in the New Testament where truth has become completely historical.

Miracles Ch 15 CS Lewis

Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

2 online now:	PaulK, Tangle
Newest Member:	ChatGPT
Post Volume:	Total: 916,787 Year: 4,044/9,624 Month: 915/974 Week: 242/286 Day: 3/46 Hour: 0/1