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I keep getting jerked around here.

I am told that the Bible is inerrant and must be obeyed as written.

I point out that there are things that don't work out with a straight literal reading, and say you have to interpret.

Then it is either A. No you don't, that is blasphemy, or B. No there are no problems with literal reading (hundreds of examples are posted on line, starting with the order of creation between Genesis One and Two) or C. The Holy Spirit reveals the truth and resolves apparent conflicts, or my favorite, D. You just have to "Rightly divide God's Word", like that is not interpreting the meaning, like that is somehow substantially different.

When I say that relying on revelation is not literal reading, you say "Many Christians would disagree.", like that somehow makes it literal reading? No, it is avoiding the issue and pretending that it has been refuted. It is a glaring inconsistency.

I point out the potential downside of relying on revelation rather than literal reading, with the example of Jim Jones, who claimed revelation over literal reading. You seem to discount this by pointing out that he didn't adhere to the letter of scripture, as if that absolves the revelatory approach that he did use. It is the opposite.

Then others will chime in with statements like, "I am a Fundamentalist, and I don't know where you get the idea that we use a literal interpretation of scripture". That is kind of the common definition of the term. When I google it, the first thing I get is:

fun·da·men·tal·ism, noun; "a form of a religion, especially Islam or Protestant Christianity, that upholds belief in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture."

I am sick of the circular run-around, and the angry bigoted bashing of Catholics, and don't really want to keep being dragged back into these same loops over and over.

I have long wondered why Jews aren't Republicans, and why they don't see Christians as some of the strongest supporters of Israel (which I believe they are). I have heard from Jewish friends about their discomfort with evangelicals, but I did not understand it until now, I had not felt it myself until this experience, despite knowing many over the years in the military.

I think that faith is one of the main aspects that distinguish Christianity from other major religions. Every major religion has faith, just as all will have some strains of philosophical intellectualism, some fundamentalists, some devoted to social service, some devotional practices, and so on. But in my assessment, Christianity has some particular excellence in the development of faith.

It can do great things, but it can have some negative expressions as well (just as love can have negative expressions in possessiveness or jealousy). I see over zealousness and closed mindedness, when folks seem quick to abandon logic, reversing themselves or resorting to absurd sophistry, and triumphantly conclude that they have logically proven their case. Nothing will be allowed to get in the way of the predetermined conclusion.

It has been interesting to discuss things, but in total I come away turned off that it typically boils down to a sudden shift in argument, waving a "magic wand" like I have the Holy Spirit and you don't, or simply total non-sequiturs (unrelated statements, personal attacks, unrelated attacks on other things like the Catholic Church. or simply re-asserting whatever was challenged without refuting the challenge).

I come away with the expectation that if I attempt to reason with Protestant Fundamentalists online concerning religion, I will encounter unkind, unfair, and ultimately inconsistent argumentation; and that there will be no admission of a lost point, no matter what (which feels pretty creepy).

I had long since come to a similar conclusion about debating fundamentalist muslims, although their ultimate bottom line is so much worse - violence and censorship. One other thing that I have found both muslim and Protestant Fundamentalism to share, is an above average degree of bigoted disrespect for the practices and beliefs of others. I come away with the feeling that this whole thread was basically bigoted Catholic bashing to reinforce a sense of superiority (absolutism, actually).

I really want to back out of this discussion, and feel bad that I may have injured anyone's faith. I got drawn in trying to quell what I saw as inter-Christian hostility, and ended up engaged in it. I don't feel nearly as bad arguing politics. So please pardon me if I don't respond to future questions, and feel free to take parting shots.

And may God bless you all with kindness and wisdom and love all around.

When I google it, the first thing I get is:

fun·da·men·tal·ism, noun; "a form of a religion, especially Islam or Protestant Christianity, that upholds belief in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture."

Yes, that is a very popular view of Christian fundamentalism. It is also highly misleading. People once thought all Irish people were alcoholics, too. Popular misconceptions die hard. I am sorry you didn't respond to my last post to you. I believe I understand where you are coming from, and it was my intention to help you see inside our heads a bit, sort of my way of trying to defeat the natural prejudices that lie between our two world views. Evidently I have failed. If you respond no further, that is your choice. But if you are reading this, please consider a few things before closing the door absolutely:

Christian fundamentalism was, at its inception, a healthy reaction to the wholesale rejection of supernaturalism that was going on in Christianity in the wake of Darwin and the Enlightenment. The focus on literalism was selective. Accepting the Scriptures as true in all facts does not equate to accepting forms of literalism that reject the ordinary use of metaphor or other figurative language. The problem ran deeper. The Enlightenment was a door being opened to pseudo-rationally reject all forms of supernaturalism. The fundamentalists pushed back by arguing from faith that God could and did still interact with the world miraculously.

For example, when we say Jesus rose from the dead, we really believe that. It was not figurative because nothing in the ordinary language of the text would lead one to believe the authors were being figurative about that specific thing. They even had the chance to go all metaphor with the resurrection but chose instead to die for the truth of it rather than recant.

Likewise with creationism. We believe God could have created the world in any manner He saw fit, even if human science can only see certain aspects of that world. Seven days or seven seconds or seven billion years. None of those are outside the supernatural power of God. So we elected to believe what God had chosen to reveal to us and use that as the filter on science. Humanistic empiricism seeks to reverse that process, where whatever we see today, the science fad of the moment, filters God's revelation to us, which we're supposed to take with a grain of salt anyway, because the underlying assumption, per Hume, is that if you can leave out the supernatural to explain anything, you're obligated by Reason to do so. This is because under the new rules of the Enlightenment, Reason had become God. That's why they capitalized the "R." Seriously.

But in all of this, the focus of fundamentalism was not to reject the rich tapestry of layered meaning in the Scriptures, but to reject the Enlightenment's descent into atheism, initially shown by the symptom of systematically rejecting all things supernatural. This is why we cringe when those with the popular perception of the matter put us in the "strictly literal" category. That's level of literalism is actually a mental illness. Truly. Nobody is an absolute literalist. It isn't possible without clinical mental defect. When we hear Jesus say "I am the Door," or "I am the True Vine," we are just like every other normal human being. We know that's a metaphor.

But the reason we know that is because we have a specific methodology for interpreting texts. It is the ordinary method ordinary folks use to interpret all texts. It is called the Historical-Grammatical method. We simply look at the full historical, cultural, grammatical, semantic context, try to figure out what the original communication meant in its original context, and build our truth system from that. A lot like Constitutional Originalism. Sometimes that produces strictly literal results, such as belief in a literal resurrection. Sometimes it leads us to find figurative language not intended to be taken literally, such as "I am the Door," "I am the True Vine," "I am the Bread of Life," etc.

So perhaps you see the problem here. You have used a flimsy, poorly crafted Google definition of a complex and richly textured movement. What can possibly result from that but disappointment?

There is more that could be said, but I'm going a bit long here. In any event, it's just true that in these encounters we have a lot of stereotypical images to overcome. It can be hard. Grace on all sides, and much patience, would go further, IMHO, than people giving up. The subject matter is worth the effort.

Peace,

SR

Believe as you like, but you again didn’t acknowledge my questions to you on Jesus. I agree with evangelical teaching - which comes straight from the Bible - that says the most important question we have to answer in life is “who is Jesus”?

And again, you post so many straw men, your own interpretations which are, not surprisingly, logical and perfectly right to you. I actually was a liberal Christian most of my life, and only read the whole Bible about a decade ago, so from experience I know the difference of looking at Christianity from my own worldly perspective, or through what the Bible has revealed.

And without agreement on who Jesus is, we can only talk past each other on things.

And again, too, you mention something like Genesis 1 and 2, as if they’re proven contradictory to you, and to everyone. They aren’t to me, and to many other people. The logical questions we have are how and why did all this come to be, and how and why did man come to be? Genesis 1 answers the first and Genesis 2 the second, and Genesis 2 merely gives a more in-depth look at man’s creation as it is only briefly talked about in 1. The animals being formed out of the ground in 2 aren’t the exact same animals formed in Creation, but only animals of types already created and brought forth out of the ground for Adam to see them, and possibly to live in the Garden. There’s no guarantee from the wording that every beast was there, and certainly sea animals were created by God in the “second story” but there is no actual mention of them - no mention because God chose not to bring them before Adam.