Quotes About Literalism

Unless biblical literalism is challenged overtly in the Christian church itself, it will, in my opinion, kill the Christian faith. It is not just a benign nuisance that afflicts Christianity at its edges; it is a mentality that renders the Christian faith unbelievable to an increasing number of the citizens of our world. The

I have a problem with people who take the Constitution loosely and the Bible literally.

If the Bible had said that Jonah swallowed the whale, I would believe it.

Entrenched scriptural literalism is, in my opinion, completely out of touch with reality.

It is already apparent that the 'minimalist' view of the Bible as wholly fictitious and unhooked from historical reality, may be as much of a mistake as the biblical literalism it sought to supersede.

Transgender casting is a kind of literalism. It is the same with racial casting. This means that you can now only play Othello if you are black. There is something quite tainted about it. It is a form of racism in itself.

It turns out that the commonly used standard we cited above of interpreting the Bible through our plain sense, common sense, ordinary and usual meaning is an act of cultural prejudice. Our Western plain sense literalism is simply not the priority in a very symbolic genre of a different culture with a different plain sense than ours, different colloquialisms and memes than ours, and a different sense of what is ordinary and usual.

Literalism is like giving a child a calculus book as a step stool to reach a washbasin. In so doing, much is lost that lies with the proper use of the book. Certainly children need step stools, but that particular use misses the true potential the book has to offer.

The English language is shot through with idioms and expressions which allude to violence without inciting it, most of which pass without notice unless they're called to your attention. One of the most disingenuous moves in the incivility wars is to treat these expressions with a specious literalism; politics makes Freudians of us all. (205)

The creation tale of Genesis is very impressive, even in modern terms, if it is treated symbolically and allegorically. But again, the tendency for many people is to accept it literally and to fight ferociously against deviating from it by one iota.

It's not gray," Clary felt compelled to point out. "It's green." "If there was such a thing as terminal literalism, you'd have died in childhood," said Jace.

Among the many problems with taking the Bible literally is it reduces the most mysterious and complex of realities to simple - even simplistic - terms. Yes, scripture speaks of fire and damnation and eternal bliss, but the Bible is the product of human hands and hearts, and much of the imagery is allegorical, not meteorological.

If there were such a thing as terminal literalism, you'd have died in childhood.

The lengths to which Bible believers will go to defend violent and contradictory passages – wedding themselves at times to outright foolishness – suggest that biblical literalism is rooted in fear.

The theistic evolutionist considers the days in Genesis as periods of time, long periods of time. I do not believe that is true. God's marking off the creative days with the words, "And the evening and the morning were the first day," etc., makes it clear that He was not referring to long periods of time but to actual twenty-four hour days.

Christians claim their faith gave rise to modern science even though the Bible literally contains talk of a six-day creation, a three-tired universe, a worldwide flood let loose from the firmament above, nine-hundred-year-old men, talking snakes and donkeys, a sun that stood still, and a hell in the deepest parts of the earth, and they still want to claim their faith gave rise to science?

Nor till the poets among us can be"literalists ofthe imagination"—aboveinsolence and triviality and can presentfor inspection, "imaginary gardens with realtoads in them," shall we have it.

dogmatic kind of biblical literalism that gained increasing strength among evangelicals toward the end of the nineteenth century was reduced space for academic debate, intellectual experimentation, and nuanced discrimination between shades of opinion.

Of course," Braithwhite added, "it didn't really happen that way. Biblical literalism is for the simple. But it's a useful parable.

With our habit of sensible literalism we have a difficult time believing that the ancient mythopoeic imagination could have been a valid tool for serious knowledge.

Literalism involves a fundamental misconception of the mental processes of biblical man and ignorance of his modes of self-expression. It thus misrepresents the purport of the narrative, obscures the meaningful and enduring in it and destroys its relevancy.

The real deceivers are the literalists, who say, I cannot tell a lie.

Literalism is a hermeneutical decision (often implicit) stemming from the belief that God's Word requires a literal reading.

a literal reading of Genesis is not the firmly settled default position of true faith to which one can "hold firm" or from which one "strays." Literalism is a hermeneutical decision (often implicit) stemming from the belief that God's Word requires a literal reading.