The Literal Interpretation of Scripture

The literal interpretation of Scripture is an idea that is often misunderstood, both outside the Church and inside it. To a modern (or postmodern) person, to read something literally means to blindly take it in a strictly non-figurative sense. When someone is accused of interpreting of the Scriptures literally, what is usually meant is that the accused takes a rigid, narrow-minded view of what the Bible says. This accusation is usually leveled at the kind of person who thinks the earth, which God created in six 24-hour days, is flat; that women should only ever wear dresses; that smoking, drinking, playing cards, and dancing are evil; and that fun, in any form, should be abolished¹. The accusation is usually leveled by someone who is offended at the position the accused has taken on some moral or political issues. In our relativistic culture, narrow-mindedness is almost the last sin which is generally recognized. Someone accused of literally interpreting the Bible is thought to be narrow-minded, intolerant, bigoted, rigid, uncharitable, and probably stupid, bereft of the mental capacity to recognize a simple figure of speech.

Unfortunately, these accusations are sometimes true. It is easy to find examples of conservative Christians who do hateful or intolerant things and use the Bible to excuse or explain their actions--if your only source of information about Christians were the news, I'm not sure how you would escape the conclusion that all Christians are like that. More usually, however, these accusations are false--even the most narrow-minded bigot you can imagine does not think that because Jesus says, "I am the door," (John 10:9) that He therefore has hinges and a knob. To the contrary, Christians who do and say hateful and wicked things usually have a highly developed, symbolic understanding of the Scriptures; they need it. If they were to pay attention to what the Bible actually says, in plain, ordinary language, they would not be able to justify their actions!

Historically, the term "literal interpretation" has a very different meaning than what people usually think of when they hear the term today. When originally coined, it meant "taking words in their natural meaning" (from the Online Etymological Dictionary). By the time of the Protestant Reformation, scholars had developed a four-fold method Biblical interpretation which had drastically skewed the way the Bible was understood:

Medievalists developed a fourfold approach to interpreting the Bible: the literal, showing what God did; the allegorical, showing what at surface level God hid; the moral, revealing what believers should do; and the mystical, or anagogical, showing the heavenly life in which, for Christians, things will end. In effect, the method obscured the true meaning of the Bible by imposing arbitrary meanings on it. Theology took precedence over careful literal-historical exegesis.
-- J.I.Packer² (emphasis in bold mine)

In the context of this elaborate scheme of biblical interpretation, the literal meaning of the text was what an ordinary person would understand if he read the text. This was considered to be the lowest, basest, most common meaning of the text, fit for peasants and other people "who could not grasp the intricate  nature of language (i.e., figures of speech, mysterious sayings), while the deeper meaning was for the learned or more spiritual."³, ⁴

To the Reformers, however, this literal meaning was the primary meaning.In fact, this school of interpretation was one of the significant things that the Reformers were protesting. They believed that this assignment of arbitrary meanings to the Scripture was used to support and reinforce the false beliefs and corrupt practices then present in the Church:

The Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century reacted against the misuse of the Bible in Late Medieval theology. They insisted that authority rested not in leaders or fathers of the church but in a proper understanding of the text derived from correct methods of literary interpretation. Reformers starting with John Wycliffe (c. 1330-1384) insisted on the grammatical-historical approach to the Bible. The German reformer Martin Luther (1483-1546) broke with the nonliteral, allegorical approach that was dominant in his training and returned to the patristic emphasis on the centrality of Christ in Scriptures. He was adamant that the Bible be approached not through fanciful allegories or merely to support established dogma but through ordinary language and literal, historical and grammatical exegesis.^{5, 6}

The literal sense, the actual words and their ordinary meaning, is the only one of the four-fold senses from which we can understand what God is telling us in the Scriptures. In other words, when God inspired the words of Sacred Scripture, He said what He meant.There is no need to go seeking mysterious, hidden meanings in the text⁷. We just need to understand what He has said.

To interpret the Bible literally, therefore, does not mean to take a strict or narrow-minded view of what the text says but simply to try to understand what it says. Understanding what the Bible says (or what any book says, for that matter) involves several key things:

• Vocabulary
• Grammar
• Awareness of context

Vocabulary

Understanding individual words is the bottom level for understanding any verbal communication. If you don't know the words I am saying you cannot possibly derive meaning from the sentences I am speaking. For example, if I were to say to you, "The nurse came in with a sphygmomanometer," you would have no idea what was going to happen to me unless you happened to know that a sphygmomanometer is a device for measuring blood pressure. Similarly, when reading the Scriptures, if you don't know what is meant by words like sin, righteousness, justification, or holiness, you will often fail to understand what the Bible is saying.

If you think of verbal communication as a Lego model, words are the individual blocks. If you don't have very many blocks, you can't build very many or very interesting things. Building up your vocabulary is like buying more Lego kits. The more words you have, the more ideas you are able to express and understand.

Grammar

Contrary to popular belief, grammar is not solely a means by which teachers are able to torture their students⁸. While it is effective and amusing in this capacity, grammar is actually the rules by which words can be strung together to form meaningful combinations. It is grammar that tells us the difference between "Robert ate the cake," and "The cake ate Robert." (It is also grammar that makes Yoda funny: "The cake! The cake, Robert ate, hmmm?")

If words correspond to Lego blocks, grammar corresponds to the way that the studs on one block fit into the recesses on another. When you put two words together without following the rules of grammar it is like putting two Legos next to each other without fitting them together correctly. You can't build anything significant unless you use them the way they are intended to be used.

Context

According to Google's dictionary, context is defined as follows:

con·text
/ˈkäntekst/
Noun

1. The circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed.
2. The parts of something written or spoken that immediately precede and follow a word or passage and clarify its meaning.

In terms of the Lego analogy, context is the way all the surrounding bricks influence how you think about each individual brick or group of bricks. Bricks (words) taken in isolation do not convey the same impression by themselves as they do when they are put together into a larger model. For example, these are reddish-orange flat 4x6 bricks:

By themselves, they are not very interesting, but when used to form the skin of a giant space Kraken tearing apart a Super Star Destroyer they are pretty awesome!

Context can be viewed at many levels. At the most basic level, context should be considered by looking at a passage's immediate surroundings: what was said before it and what was said after it. At a broader level the topic being discussed forms part of context--a drain is something very different if you're talking about plumbing than it is if you're talking about what chasing your toddler does to your energy level.

Often, the context of a piece of writing includes the historical situation of the people in the story and/or the original reading audience. The culture the author and the culture of the people about whom the author is writing form an invisible context that surrounds what he writes. By understanding more about those cultures, you gain better understanding of what you are reading. If you had never heard the legend of the Kraken or if you had never seen The Empire Strikes Back, your reaction to the Kraken/Star Destroyer model might have been something like, "What is that thing that octopus is holding?" However, if you knew what both the Kraken and the Super Star Destroyer were (as I hope you did!), your reaction might have been more like, "Dude! That thing is huge! If only the Rebel Alliance has been able to harness the power of the Space Krakens in their struggle against the Empire!"

Context also includes the genre or type of literature that is being read. By knowing the genre, you know a lot about what to expect out of what you're reading. For instance, if you were reading an column by Dave Barry, (like this, or this, or any of these), you would have very different expectations than if your were reading the Wikipedia article on Special Relativity. With the Dave Barry column, you would expect to find jokes and hyperbole and a keen commentary on the human condition. With the Special Relativity article, you would expect to find formulae and diagrams and discussions of experiments. Similarly, in the Bible, you would have different expectations when reading a poem than when reading a history and still different expectations when reading a letter or a prophecy.

Literal Interpretation

The Bible comprises many books written in different styles at different times, by different (human) authors. In order to understand what the  Bible says you must understand all of the things we have been talking about and apply them correctly. In the words the Reformers would have used, you must interpret the Bible literally. To do this, you must understand:

• The basic meaning of the words
• The grammar by which the words are fit together
• The immediate context of the text
• The historical context of the text
• The literary context of the text

This sounds pretty complicated when you write a 10 page essay about it, but in reality it's just a long-winded explanation of something very simple: read the Bible the same way you would read anything else. When you read Dave Barry, nobody has to tell you that it's funny or that he's exaggerating; you know that because you can read.

When you read the Bible, it works the same way. There are, of course, difficulties--the Bible is obviously more complex than a Dave Barry column, but for the most part, the Bible says what it means. When God says, "I hate dishonesty," He means that He hates dishonesty and that you, therefore, should be honest. When He says, "I hate divorce," He means that He hates divorce and that you, therefore, should not get divorced if you can help it. When He says, "I am the door," he means that He is the only way in to His Father's kingdom and that He wants you to come in. When He says, "I am gentle and humble of heart," He means that He is not harsh or mean and that if you come to Him, He will be kind.

Footnotes:

1 I do not mean to imply that I am specifically for or against any of the particulars in this list. I am merely attempting to paint a picture of what most people think of people who understand the Scriptures literally--except for fun, of course. That really should be abolished.^↩
2 Most of the information in this post comes from J.I. Packer. I seem to remember reading this material originally in a book called The Authority of Scripture, but this book seems to be either a figment of my imagination or at least to be out of print. The quotations here are taken from a book called, Understanding Scripture, which is a collection of material by several authors. I can't recommend this book enough. It's quite awesome.^↩
3 More J.I.Packer. I have the Kindle edition of the book, so I'm not sure how to give page references...^↩
4 The four-fold method of interpretation had a long history. It had developed from the school of allegorical interpretation founded by church fathers like Origen and Clement of Alexandria. Acceptance of this method was never universal. Throughout church history, many of the greats, including St. Jerome, St. Augustine of Hippo, and St. Thomas Aquinas, rejected this approach and embraced the literal-historical method.^↩
5 Surprise! More Packer! Emphasis mine.^↩
6 Exegesis means interpretation or explanation. It is originally a Greek word which, literally translated, means to "lead out of" the text, that is, to allow the ideas to come out of the text as it leads you.^↩
7 It is easy to feel superior to the medievals, but modern people are just as susceptible to looking for arcane and hidden meanings in the Scriptures. This type of biblical interpretation is foundational to many cults. Christian Scientists, for example, believe that all truth in the Bible is spiritual rather than physical. In order to properly understand what the Bible is saying, you must interpret it through the lens of Mary Baker Eddy's book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which provides all of the "true" meanings of the words in Scripture. These meanings have much more in common with the Gnostic heresies of third century than they do with historical Christianity and the plain meaning of the words in the Bible. On a more popular level, Michael Drosin's 1994 book, The Bible Code was nothing but an esoteric interpretation of the Bible that looks for hidden wisdom in the Scriptures while ignoring their plain meaning.^↩
8 Robert Carrington may believe that torture is grammar's primary use, but most scholars disagree...^↩