Last week I offered four reasons not to read the Bible literally. But what’s the alternative? I mean, isn’t reading it literally taking the Bible at face value, taking it most seriously? Actually, I’m not sure it is, and in this post I want to begin to offer an alternative. To do so, we need to begin with just a little bit of history. Many of our categories for thinking about truth in relation to facts developed about three and a half centuries ago, but were relatively unknown to biblical authors. You see, disillusioned by the religious fervor that fed the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), the early architects of what would later be called...

I’ve gotten a number of questions of late about the conservative, or literal, way of reading the Bible. It’s that way of reading the Bible that’s maybe best summed up in the bumper sticker, God Said It. I Believe It. That Settles It. Most of us, it seems, have at least one friend or family member who reads the Bible this way and although we may covet their confidence, we often don’t feel like that way of reading the Bible “fits” with us or “works” for us. I use quotation marks to name these feelings because it’s often hard to describe what doesn’t seem accurate or faithful about...