Unchurchy Concerns – Literalism

One issue that keeps coming to the fore is how we seem to be immersed in an understanding that the only way to read and interpret the Bible is through the inerrantist lens of literalism. Inerrancy is that idea that the Bible is one seamless whole and that as God’s word, every phrase has the same depth and authority over life. If it is God’s word, then it must be true in a literal sense, because God can’t lie.

I had a seminary student in my classes who entered with the notion that every one of Jesus’ parables were actual stories of particular people who had lived and experienced exactly what Jesus describes in each parable. Thus, if Jesus compares the Reign of God to a woman who lost a coin, cleaned her house to find it, and then called her friends to celebrate, that must have happened to the T. If Jesus told a story of a shepherd losing a sheep, it was not a general story, but a specifically true event. It Jesus spoke of a lost son who found himself slopping pigs, then Jesus was telling the facts of that event in the lives of that son, his father, and his elder brother.

What, then, do we do with the story of the prophet Nathan confronting King David with the story of a poor man with one sheep being oppressed by a wealthy man who takes that single sheep to feed a stranger who has come to him for hospitality? David considered that Nathan was indeed telling about an event that had transpired in the community around David. When David spoke out to condemn the man, Nathan responded with, “You are the man.” Suddenly, the truth in the story comes out, even though the story itself is revealed as a fabrication to hide the truth. It is a lie. It is, however, a lie that communicates truth in a way that David is able to see himself in a new light.

Nathan’s words are not to be taken literally. In fact, taking them literally was a trap for King David. The truth being communicated was not given by direct communication of truth. Truth was presented in a call for reflection, for looking at oneself in the mirror of the story. Truth was hidden in the question we bring to the text: how am I like these characters? That does not depend on a literal interpretation. A literal interpretation actually interferes with the truth being communicated.

We find another case among the prophets in which Micaiah tells a king what he wants to hear as though it were the message of Yahweh. Then the same king complains that Micaiah is not telling the truth, so then Micaiah tells the king the message Yahweh indeed has for him, one the king did not want to hear and for which he imprisons Micaiah. Truth is conveyed, though in a convoluted way. A lie is part of the process of communication. That requires we address the text in a different light than assuming that every phrase should be read as the literal truth. One phrase communicates a pure lie. Another tells the unwelcome truth.

Applying the same principles, there are different ways of reading other texts like Noah’s Ark, the story of Jonah, or the crossing of the Sea of Reeds without resorting to a forced literalism. The flood narrative is a theological response to flood narratives from Babylon. The story of Jonah can be easily read as a parable through which Israel can see itself in a mirror. The crossing of the Sea of Reeds does not require literal walls of water, as chariot wheels getting stuck in a mudflat is enough to stop an army from pursuing a people on foot. In fact, Exodus chapter 15 follows up this liberation by Yahweh with exclamations of how various nations of their future enemies heard of Yahweh’s great victory. Do we need to worry that what is reportedly a song sung spontaneously in the aftermath of that crossing reflects events that had not yet occurred? Only if we are forced to interpret the text literally.

— ©Copyright 2023, Christopher B. Harbin 

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