Jeff Russell

Howdy,

1) All of that makes good sense to me, and I know is close to how many Christians interpret the Bible - religiously inspired, but not inerrant. I didn't really get into this in this write-up, but I think there's real value in having a fairly compact corpus of writing that is treated as having "all the answers" and as "if it's in here, there's something important and true about it, even if it's not 'literally' true as a truth-proposition about the material world." It encourages very deep engagement and finding of non-obvious insights, both of which I think can foster great spirituality. On the other hand, there definitely are Christians that think the Bible is literally true the way science is meant to be literally true, and that the kind of qualifications you give don't count, because God is eternal and all-knowing, so whatever He said then is just as true now as it was then, in just the same way. I get the impressions most Christians are somewhere in between these two ends of interpretation, and may vary in how they interpret different parts of the Bible (e.g. "The Gospels are basically accurate historical accounts, while the early books of the Old Testament are more myth, and the books of ancient Hebrew Law are legal documents that give some insights into morality, but shouldn't be followed word-for-word by us.")

Anyhow, point being, I wasn't trying to suggest all Christians are Biblical literalist fundamentalists, more I was making the point that some amount of "if it's in here, it's right" is pretty core to Christianity, and that makes dealing with apparent contradictions harder than an outsider stance for interpretation.

2) Thank you for subscribing! Somehow your request ended up in spam, which was annoying, so thank you for the heads up, I found it and have added you to the list.

Cheers,
Jeff