No, I'm Not a Biblical Literalist

 

No, I’m Not a Biblical Literalist

 

The Scripture quotations contained here are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used with permission. All rights reserved.

 

I participate in a small group of clergy colleagues that meets once a week via Zoom. We call ourselves a lectionary group, and, though we also do check in and provide each other needed support, we usually do get around to discussing one or more of the readings from the Revised Common Lectionary for the coming Sunday. We all pride ourselves on being progressive open-minded Christians. We don’t believe that God wrote the Bible. We don’t believe that everything in it, or really much in it at all, is factually inerrant. We’re all trained, at least to some extent, in modern biblical criticism. We’re all seminary graduates, and we all have experience as church pastors. We’re all getting on in age. Three of us are retired. Only one of us is still serving as a church pastor (thought one of us has, until very recently, been the Executive Director of the Interfaith Taskforce on Homelessness in the Seattle area). Our discussions of lectionary passages can be quite interesting. We don’t always agree on how to read and find meaning in a particular biblical text that we’re considering. I suppose the group wouldn’t be much fun if we did.

We are not biblical literalists; but my wife has told me that one of our group, once told her that I am a biblical literalist. I don’t know how seriously he meant that statement, but it did remind me of a difference in the way the two of us often approach reading a passage in the Bible. It is the difference between reading a text for what it actually says and reading it to say what we’d like it to say. I’ll use the passage we discussed during our meeting this week as an example. It’s John 17:1-11. These verses are the beginning of what’s called the Priestly Prayer that John’s Jesus prays as the end of his life on earth approaches. The passage has Jesus refer three times to people he says God has “given” him. At 17:2 he says, “since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.” The “him” here is, of course, Jesus, and the “you” is God. At verse 17:6a Jesus says, “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world.” In verse 17:9 Jesus says, “I am not asking on behalf of the world but on behalf of those whom you gave me.” My friend who told my wife that I’m a biblical literalist and I had quite a disagreement at a recent meeting or our group about how to read these words. Let me explain.

I believe, indeed, I am thoroughly and strongly convinced, that any interpretation of any passage in the Bible must begin with an understanding of what the passage actually says. We start with what the words of the passage actually are. Any text, including any Bible text, has it own internal integrity. It says what it says. It doesn’t say what it doesn’t say. No legitimate exegesis of any biblical text (or of any other text for that matter) can begin without first understanding what the words of the text are and what they mean. Only then can we move to the task of discerning what the text may or may not mean for us in our contemporary context.

When we consider the actual words of John 17:1-11, we see that it posits two opposed sets of people. The text calls one of them “the world.” It calls the other one some version of “those whom God gave to Jesus.” The two groups are not the same. In the context of this text, we must understand “the world” to be a universalist term for all of the people of the earth. “Those whom God gave Jesus” are clearly a smaller group of people. It is the group people who have been drawn to Jesus and accepted his claim (which he makes in John but not much of anywhere else) that he came to earth from God (Whom he here calls “the Father”). The text then makes a distinction between the large group, “the world,” and the smaller group. It states quite explicitly how the small group got separated from the large group with regard to their relationship with Jesus. They are with Jesus because God gave them to Jesus. The unavoidable conclusion from the word “gave” is that Jesus’ followers did not come to Jesus of their own free will. They are with Jesus because God gave them to Jesus. Those whom God gave to Jesus are the passive recipients of God’s act of giving. Their coming to Jesus was God’s doing not theirs.

My colleague who thinks I’m a biblical literalist doesn’t like that notion. Neither do I. He objects to this passage because on its face it obviates the notion that people have free will. It makes faith in Jesus not our choice at all. It’s God’s choice. We are the passive objects of that choice not free, active subjects making our own faith decisions. I agree with my friend that this is the proper way to read this text, and I disagree with it as much as he does.

That, however, is where we part ways. During the Zoom meeting in which we discussed this text, he kept reading human free will into it. He thought that somehow it is possible to read the words of this text as affirming human free will, something that on its face it simply does not do. I am convinced that my friend was reading this text to say what he wishes it said not what it actually says. I know the temptation to read biblical texts that way. I feel it myself. I wish that this text affirmed human free will as much as my friend does. Yet when I feel the temptation to read something into a text that just isn’t there, I remember my training. I remember the rule of biblical exegesis that while we may often legitimately draw various meanings out of a text, we cannot read a meaning into the text that isn’t there. Our exegesis must not wander too far from what the text we’re considering actually says. We must always recognize that the words of a text are what they are even when we wish they were something else. That, I’m afraid, is what my friend was not doing with this text. He was making it say not only something it doesn’t say but something that is actually the opposite of what it says.

So does my insistence on the exegete sticking with what a text actually says rather than reading something into it that it does not say make me a biblical literalist? By no means! A biblical literalist would insist that it is true that God brings people to faith rather than people bring themselves to faith because that’s what this text says is true. I say it is not true. It is a common notion that faith is God’s gift, which may be true. What isn’t true and can’t be true is that God offers that gift to some but not to others. God doesn’t pick and choose that way. God never obviates human free will. We humans are created in the image and likeness of God. Any creature created in that sacred way must have free will. Those made in the image and likeness of God are not automatons who God operates by some kind of spiritual remote control. I say that our text says what it says, and I say that our text is wrong about what it asserts as true.

So, no. I’m not a biblical literalist. I am an ordained Christian minister who tries to adhere to academic standards as best I know them when I am interpreting scripture. I am convinced that everyone who interprets scripture is obligated to do the same. One of those standards is: Don’t wander too far from the words of the text. The text is what is and isn’t what it isn’t. We don’t have to agree with any text we’re reading. We all have an obligation to do our own discernment about what a biblical text means (though I trust we will do that with the assistance of good printed authorities on the text or under the direction of someone trained in proper biblical exegesis). I have been called apostate for disagreeing with a particular biblical text. But no, I am neither a biblical literalist nor an apostate. I am a Christian who strives to practice my faith with spiritual and intellectual integrity, not that I can claim always to succeed in practicing it that way. That doesn’t mean I have to accept everything in the Bible as inerrant, which I certainly do not. It means, among many other things, that I will not wander too far from the actual words of a text I’m interpreting. May we all adhere to that indispensable standard of biblical interpretation.