Biblical Literalism is a Fiction

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan. And

Dan Beecher I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things, Dan? You're in your, your horizontal stripes. So you are, you're not concerned for your height today.

Dan Beecher No, I, you know, I am, uh, I'm much more of an Ernie than a Bert.

Dan McClellan There you go.

Dan Beecher And so I figure I- I'll just go with what I, with w- w- I, we'll just rock it. We'll, we'll see what happens.

Dan McClellan That, that sounds fair. Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's gonna be fun today. We- we've got a really interesting topic for today, and it is a, uh, it's a what's that? And the what's that is biblical literalism. And I know we're gonna have some people in the comments just coming for us. So bring it. Watch the show first. That's the one thing. Yeah. Like, if you're coming for us in the comments because you see, you've read the title or the thumbnail, um, maybe watch the, the episode first and figure out what it is we're saying.

Dan McClellan I, I get comments like- And then attack us ... I love when I get comments like that on my videos- ... where people are like, "Well, what about this?" And then the next comment down is like, "Nevermind, I watched the rest of the video." Yeah, there you go.

Dan Beecher But feel free to dive into the comments, attack us. This is, this is gonna be a, a fun one. Let's dive into what's that. All right, so biblical literalism, the taking of the Bible literally, I guess, uh, is what we're talking about.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher The idea that everything that we read is prima facie what it says it is, or what it is- ... or something, what King James decided it would be. I don't know. What, what are we talking about here?

Dan McClellan Well, yeah, liter- first off, I, uh, my hot take, uh, if I'm, uh, if this is, uh, Metro or Subway hot takes, um, I don't think there's such a thing as a biblical literalist. Just-

Dan Beecher Oh, snap ... r-

Dan McClellan right off, right off the, the top rope, I'm just gonna say it. There's no such thing.

Dan Beecher Coming in hot.

Dan McClellan Yes. Biblical literalism is, is a fiction that is used to try to curate the authority of the Bible and to assert authority over, uh, what the Bible actually says. Mm. But that, I think that is how we'll, we'll circle back and round off this discussion because, uh, what I wanna talk about, I w- I wanna start way back in, in the early church with, uh, what's going on as soon as the Bible is complete and we begin to have readers of the Bible. Because while everybody always had some notion that, you know, these as inspired texts, these things are true, but what precisely that meant was not really hammered down. Mm. And it could mean a lot of things. There could be literal applications, there could be, uh, moral applications, there could be all kinds of different applications. So the, the, like, the main representatives of a more thoughtful and a more insightful approach to what exactly are these things we call scriptures, I think are, are represented, uh, best by folks like Origen and Augustine. So Origen- Mm ... is third century CE. Augustine is, uh, end of the fourth, beginning of the fifth century CE. And these are authorities who swung a lot of weight, uh- Mm ... in their day.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And also what they had to say about a number of doctrines influenced how Christianity would develop for basically down to today in, in certain segments of, uh, Christiandom. Mm-hmm. But, um, but Origen was, was famous, uh, in my opinion, for, for, uh, asserting a few different ways to read the text, and one of them was, uh, what he called the plain sense, or the historical sense, or the literal sense, would be what the words themselves seem to mean just on the surface. And the thing is, if you're, if you're approaching this collection of texts thoughtfully, you recognize that there are some issues with asserting that the plain sense of these texts is all 100% accurate and true. Because there are places where things conflict with each other, and there are also things that are problematic.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And for instance, Origen very famously, we have our, um, Psalm 1:37, the, the imprecatory psalm where, uh, you know, we have the blessed, uh, are the ones who, who take your babies and dash them against the rocks.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And this is, this is the, um, post-exilic author kind of fantasizing, uh, basically about killing Babylonian children, and, uh, is just so, ooh, looking forward to it so much. And Origen realizes this is problematic. So- O- Origen

Dan Beecher was anti-baby killing? That's weird.

Dan McClellan He, like, yeah, he was, he was one of the first, back before it was cool.

Dan Beecher Nobody had thought of that before- ... not killing the babies.

Dan McClellan Well, there's, and you know, this goes back to the fact that, um, well, that, that's another discussion. At some time, at some point we'll have to talk about how we went from God cares only about our people to God cares about all people.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But still mostly only our people, and, like, which is stuff we get even down to today with your how dare you be toxically empathetic and, um- Right ... it's supposed to be about our people. So anyway, um- Yeah,

Dan Beecher J.D. Vance and his, his- ... uh, circles, his concentric circles-

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ...

Dan Beecher of caring about people.

Dan McClellan And the Pope was like, "Uh, no, that's-

Dan Beecher No, I don't like that ...

Dan McClellan incorrect." But anyway, uh, he, uh, argued that there, that the, the surface sense, the plain sense was like- the least important or the least significant sense.

Dan Beecher Interesting.

Dan McClellan And that it was moral and anagogical and other senses that were more spiritually profound and more important and were what the scriptures intended.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So when it came to our imprecatory Psalm, Origen said, "No, no, no, no. This is not literal. This is not suggesting that it would be a good thing to kill these babies. The babies of Babylon are your impure thoughts, and so you've gotta take those thoughts and you gotta dash them against the rock really, really hard." Um, and, and so-

Dan Beecher I'm having a baby of Babylon right now.

Dan McClellan Um, and you, the, the idea there being that, that what the author is trying to communicate, or at least what God is trying to communicate through this, is something more moral, is something more spiritual.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so that is the sense that we should be looking out for, and we shouldn't worry about not, not just the parts that are immoral, but we shouldn't be taking literally the notion that there was evening and morning, day and night before the creation of the sun.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So, like, Origen was like, "Eh, yeah, the, the whole six days of creation, those aren't literal 24-hour periods. We're not... We don't need to think of it like that." Um, and, and he also acknowledged, "Hey, you know, sometimes the Gospels didn't agree with each other on certain things, and you need to just relax."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And, yeah.

Dan Beecher Just chill.

Dan McClellan Don't worry about it. Yeah. Enhance your calm. Uh, see if anybody gets that one. Um, and, and Augustine was kind of the same. He, he took a, a, a more of a hard line stance on some things. Like creation, he insisted was, was a little more historical. That's how creation happened.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan You know, he, um, he wasn't ... You know, I can imagine Origen being kind of like, "Yeah, man, take it easy. You don't gotta-

Dan Beecher Yes

Dan McClellan ... it's not, it's not like that." Um, but-

Dan Beecher It's all good, man

Dan McClellan ... August- Augustine was more like, "It, it be like that." And, um- But he did warn, warn people about, um, you know, asserting things that were just scientifically dumb. He w-

Dan Beecher Mm

Dan McClellan ... he was more educated philos- well, they were both very, very philosophically erudite and educated, but Augustine, um, wore that philosophical erudition closer to the surface and was so, like, "Don't assert the literalism of things that, uh, are just gonna make us look stupid, that, that- ... that we know just aren't true." And so there was a brand of, of literalism, if you wanna call it that, only to the degree that they understa- stood there was truth in the scriptures-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... but it might not be resting on the surface. It might be a little under the surface. We might have to dig down a little bit, look for a moral sense, an anagogical sense, uh, something like that. And so, you know, the Song of Songs, you don't wanna take that too literally. Uh, it's erotic poetry. And so, you know, folks like Origen, who some people think Origen castrated himself in order to facilitate, uh, a more easy, uh, uh, celibate life. Uh, and so he was not gonna be the kind who's-

Dan Beecher That's one way to do it. It'll-

Dan McClellan It, it is one way to do it. It's-

Dan Beecher It'll be effective

Dan McClellan ... it's, uh, it's probably the more expensive way to do it, depending on what quality of, of, uh, of guy he went to. Um-

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan I don't know what they called them in that time period, but, um-

Dan Beecher I got a guy.

Dan McClellan But, um, you know, you go to the Song of Songs, and it's like, why is this erotic poetry in scripture? And it's like, oh, this is, this is Jesus in the church, you know. Jesus is just like, "I love your breasts, church." Um, they look like some deer. Um, so-

Dan Beecher We have not-

Dan McClellan But-

Dan Beecher Have we done the Song of Songs? We've, we need to do that.

Dan McClellan Ah, we need to do the Song of Songs. Yeah. There's, there's-

Dan Beecher I hope someone's, I hope someone's listening right now who can write that down for us. That would be great.

Dan McClellan Um, so the last thing they were gonna do is champion the plain sense of this erotic poetry.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And what was, what was most important was the Christological sense. This was, this was how you find Christ in, in the scriptures. And, um, and I'm sure you recall from growing up, uh, among the Mormons as, as one of them for a time- ... the whole, uh, everything is about Christ. And, you know, that's kind of, that's, that's the Where's Waldo project of Latter-day Saint engagement- ... with scripture, is find Christ in the scriptures.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And it's like, oh, there's, the, it talks about a rock over here. Oh, the rock is Christ. You've found Christ in the scriptures. Congratulations. And so, um, if there were problematic parts of it, you just had to find a way to read Christ into it, and you were like, "See? The Christological sense overrules any other sense. I have, uh, I have won- ... the day. Huzzah." And, um, and this, this gives way in the medieval period to your, your literal, your allegorical, your moral, and your anagogical. And, and the fi- the, you know, whatever is salvific, whatever is about salvation, whatever is about Christ, that's the most important. And-

Dan Beecher What, what is the word... You, you said anagogical, and I don't know that word.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Um, that's... You're gonna make me look it up, too. Um- Bec- 'Cause it's a, a, a method of mystical or spiritual interpretation, particularly in scripture, that looks beyond literal, allegorical, or moral meanings, those are the other three-

Dan Beecher Okay

Dan McClellan ... to discover a text's hidden reference to eternal life, heaven, or the afterlife, leading, derived from Greek for leading up. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, um- But that's the, that's the highest sense and though, and so that's, if you can find that sense, you're, you're golden.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And particularly if it means overcoming-

Dan Beecher You can stop looking at it. You, you can no longer, you've, y- you have then achieved that particular scripture, and you can move on forever.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And, and so you have an awful lot of that going on into the, into the medieval period, and this is where, you know, we get to the Renaissance and the Reformation, where there's, you know, now we have battles between the, the individuals and, and some of the clergy and the church. And if, if the scriptures have four different layers of meaning, and a lot of it is kind of up in the air, who's the ultimate authority over that? Oh, well, the church is, which, which endows the institution with an awful lot of authority, an awful lot of power.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And this is one of the, uh, the vectors of the concern of the reformers, was the church has too much authority over what the scriptures have to say. And so there's, there's an attempt to kind of wrestle that back a little bit by suggesting that the sense needs to be located in the actual text itself. And so you have a bit of a pushback against the, uh, the anagogical and the other three ways to read the scriptures to try to collapse it down a little bit and suggest we need to rely on the text. Sola scriptura comes out of the, uh, the Reformation period and the rhetoric against the church's authority. And there's-

Dan Beecher And that's just, sola scriptura just is the idea that the scripture only is, is the authority and-

Dan McClellan Right. Yeah

Dan Beecher ... and so-

Dan McClellan The, the scripture alone is, is the sole and sufficient authority for all things. And, and in this period, a lot of folks are, like, related to faith and salvation, not necessarily related to the origins of the Earth, or not necessarily-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... related to the genetic origins of humanity. Certainly, there were a lot of folks who asserted that as well, but when they, when you backed them into the corner, it was really mostly about matters pertaining to faith and salvation.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan That was their concern.

Dan Beecher It's funny because when I started to look into this a little bit, and I didn't, you know, I, I couldn't read 10 books about it, uh- ... for today's episode, but when I looked into it, I w- I came into it assuming that sort of Luther and Calvin was where literalism was going to start in finding its, its footholds, and it turns out not. Like, they still had plenty of allowance for, like, metaphor and poetry and, and figurative speech, um, and, and sort of a non-literal view of, of cosmology.

Dan McClellan Yeah. There's, there's absolutely a sense, um, in which they're, they're definitely moving the needle, but really what we're talking about is, 'cause everybody recognizes there, there is poetry, there is metaphor, there is allegory, there are all those things in the scriptures. And so really, what we're looking for is where we're gonna put the threshold-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... between this is literal versus this is figurative. And, and the rea-

Dan Beecher Well, and also, like, what you have to believe.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Like, there's this sense of, like, you, where, where do we put the line of, like, you know, this is fuzzy, or this is open to these kinds of interpretations, but this, you have to believe it this way sort of idea.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And, and so there are, there is a sense that, you know, we're going back to a six-day creative period. We're, we're going back to all of humanity descended from, uh, Noah and his three sons and their three wives, uh, and the table of nations represents, you know, the, the genealogy for all humanity. Um, it's n- it's not nearly as, uh, strict though, because, you know, the, the, the threshold is, is closer to the allegorical side than, uh... Or actually, I should say it the other way around. The threshold is moved so that there's more room for allegory, metaphorical interpretation, and things like that. And in no small part, because the more literal you interpret things, the more you introduce, um, inconsistency, and the more you stake claims that might get you in trouble. Because, you know, we have things like Galileo, who, uh, said, "You know, I think we might be going about this the wrong way," and had an awful lot of pushback. And, and when you get into the nitty-gritty of the, of the, the debates and, and what the church was really saying, like, you, you, you have to get pretty deep into where we're drawing the line between what is, uh, figurative and, and what is not. But it's still nothing compared to what would happen after the Enlightenment and once we get into the modern period, because that's where we get... A, a number of things happen. One, with the, the Renaissance and the Reformation, we get the printing press.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And one of the things that this does is it actually changes the main way that people are experiencing scripture, at least regular old people are experience scr- in scripture, because normally they would hear it read. Right,

Dan Beecher from the pulpit.

Dan McClellan Right. And, um, they would not have the, uh, opportunity to actually hold and read, uh, the text unless they learned to read, which was not within everybody's grasp, and also they, they had to be able to afford to purchase or at least have some kind of access to those handwritten manuscripts. But with the printing press, that began the ball rolling on greater access to the text. Now, it was still the case that m- you know, Bibles were incredibly expensive. They were very big. They were usually chained to the pulpit.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan They were intended for the, uh, the clergy to be read out loud. But so people were hearing the scriptures, and one of the things this meant was that they weren't reading it back to front.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan They, and, and, you know, this kind of relates to h- our discussion with, uh, Michael Peppard about how Catholics encounter the Bible.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan That is kind of closer to how- Christians have experienced the scriptures throughout history, and so it wasn't like they were hearing all these things, and they were like, "Wait a minute, I recall this passage over here says this one thing, but then this passageway over here says this other different thing." So there was-

Dan Beecher Well, yeah, you couldn't go back and do... Even if you did recall two things and you were like, "I'd love to check that out," you had no means of checking it out. You couldn't just fl- Yeah. You couldn't flip through and be like, "Ha ha, I found something" because- Yeah ... you didn't own the book.

Dan McClellan So the inventing of the, the printing press and the Reformation, which, which arrogated more authority to interpret the scriptures away from the institution, um, that kind of created this snowball effect where people were gaining more access to the text, people were, were reading it a l- a little bit more, uh, literally. And then we get into the Enlightenment, we get into historical criticism, where suddenly the way we're thinking about the world changes. Rationalism, uh, becomes more salient. Uh, we're less dependent upon, uh, the claims to revelation and, uh, miracles and all that kind of stuff. You got Thomas Jefferson with his little pen knife cutting- ... all the, all the miracles out of the New Testament. And so you've got a much more critical approach that develops, and then we get into the 19th century, and, and this is where I think we really have the confrontation, uh, where, uh, the trajectories kind of clash. Mm. And it, it mainly has to do with things like the origins of humanity- Mm-hmm ... uh, the nature-

Dan Beecher Of, of the species, if you will. Yeah, of,

Dan McClellan if you will, yes. Uh, if you're nasty, so to speak. Um, according to the parlance of our times. Uh, yeah, you, you have that. You have, uh, w- the relevance of that to the practice of enslavement. Mm. You have, um, growing concern for how long the Earth has been around, and you have the discovery of dinosaurs, which kind of threw a wrench into, uh, a lot of these things. And so, um, the rise of modern science, the scientific method, um, critical theory, all these kinds of things challenge, uh, traditional interpretations of the Bible, and the response was to lean into literalism- Yeah ... was to say, "No, we gotta take it more literally." And, and that's, when we get into the 20th century, we get this, uh, this, the publication of this series called The Fundamentals, which I think were published between 1910 to 1917-ish, somewhere in there. Have you ever heard of the, these publications?

Dan Beecher No, I've never heard of The Funda- I guess, I, yeah. I-

Dan McClellan So, so this is what I, I think is kind of the main pivot towards what we might call fundamentalist Christianity.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Because this is, uh, this is a series of publications basically arguing, uh, lashing out against, uh, the historical critical method, against critical scholarship, to draw the line in the sand and say, "These are the fundamentals of being a Christian, and you have to accept these in order to be on our side of things." And it was, it was doubling down on some concept of a literal approach to scripture, where it's, it's no longer just kind of, you know, your, your hippy-dippy origin, um, you know, hit the blunt and then say, uh, you know, it, just relax about these contradictions and stuff. They, they developed the, uh, the notion of the inerrancy, the historicity, the univocality, all these things of the scriptures as, as more firm identity markers, as a way to object to rising, uh, critical scholarship. And then we get the Mo- uh, the, the Mokes scumpy tri- no, the Scopes Monkey Trial.

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan Uh, 1925. Uh, last July was the 100-year anniversary of the- Wow ... Scopes Monkey Trial. And this was suddenly how we interpret-

Dan Beecher Which is by the, we, we should just, if you don't know, that was the trial here in the United States where, uh, they were, they were sort of, uh, adjudicating whether or not evolution could be taught in schools.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And, and, and this was basically how literally should we be interpreting the Bible, and should that literal reading of the Bible govern how we, how public education works?

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Um, and so, you know, you have things like creation as six 24-hour periods, the global flood, historical Adam and Eve, uh, the genealogies from the table of nations. All these things were asserted as 100% true, not because we had been studying it and we arrived at this conclusion, but because we needed to assert this as a rhetorical line in the sand to try to prevent the further encroachment of, uh, critical scholarship and the historical critical method.

Dan Beecher Well, yeah, it's literally the- May I have your attention, please? Oh, shit. May I have your attention, please? Sorry, yeah. A fire has been reported in the building. Oh, my God. Okay, well, that was exciting. Uh, I literally just spent the last 20 minutes bundling up all of the animals in my, uh, we have a guest, we have a houseguest who has, whose, whose cat is here now. So not on- I had to bundle up two cats and a dog, and I was halfway down the stairs, uh, uh, you know, six flights of stairs, when I was informed that... No, it was just a test. So we, that was fun. Uh, we had a, a little, a little adventure there. But let's get back to what we were talking about.

Dan McClellan Awesome.

Dan Beecher Fortunately, uh, we, we kind of know, uh, what we were talking about, uh, which was-

Dan McClellan Which is out of, uh, which is not our norm, but, um- Yeah, right ... yeah, we w-

Dan Beecher We don't pay attention to us. We don't know what we're, what we're on about. Uh-

Dan McClellan We were talking about the establishment of these, of these fundamentalist Christian positions on, on literalism, six 24-hour creation days, the global flood, historical Adam and Eve- Yeah ... literal genealogies. As, as we've said many times on the show before, dogs and cats living together

Dan Beecher Live-

Dan McClellan Mass hysteria Mass hysteria Yes

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan Um, so, and, and this leads to... And, and obviously, the fact that the development of a more strict literalism functioned as an identity marker over and against, um, you know, festering, uh, critical scholarship i- is, is... That's not gonna make things go away, it's just going to, um, make things get worse. And I think I wanted to just briefly mention the, um, Chicago Statement on Inerrancy. Are you familiar with this?

Dan Beecher I've heard of it-

Dan McClellan Dan

Dan Beecher ... but I'm not... Yeah. So, so walk us through what that was and, uh-

Dan McClellan So, uh, they decided in October of 1978 to, to get a bunch of, uh, folks, uh, together for the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. Um-

Dan Beecher Oh, this is '78? Wow, okay.

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah.

Dan Beecher Late in the game it feels like.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, you, you know, you've got a, um, civil rights happened, uh, so that's, you know, that's causing an issue. We've got a lot of... The '70s were a rough time for a lot of evangelical Christians who really-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... didn't like, um, civil rights. And so- ... uh, there,

Dan Beecher the,

Dan McClellan lot, lotta conflict going on in, uh, among literalist readers of the Bible and who are not really literalist readers. Anyway, um, the-

Dan Beecher We'll call them fundamentalist readers of the Bible.

Dan McClellan There you go. Um-

Dan Beecher Because we have the, the, the- The

Dan McClellan fundamentals

Dan Beecher ... the fundamentalists-

Dan McClellan Yes

Dan Beecher ... the fundamentals having been published, so sure.

Dan McClellan They come together for the purpose of affirming afresh the doctrine of the inerrancy of scripture, making clear the understanding of it, and warning against its denial. And it's, uh... I've, I've seen a few different iterations of this, but I think I may have pulled up the 1978 one. It's got 25 articles.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and, and-

Dan Beecher It's a lot

Dan McClellan ... each article is like, we affirm X and we deny Y. And so-

Dan Beecher Oh, you got one of each. Okay.

Dan McClellan Yes. This is, this is like if you wanted to get a d- if you said to Siri, "Print out Dogma Over Data," this is what- ... you would get. Um-

Dan Beecher I think you just made a bunch of people's phones do something.

Dan McClellan Um, I don't think... Uh, uh, only if Siri has access to their printer.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Um, but article 15 is one that I highlighted, because it, I think it kind of gets to, uh, the heart of what we're talking about here. Uh, "We affirm the necessity of interpreting the Bible according to its literal or normal sense. The literal sense is the grammatical, historical sense; that is, the meaning which the writer expressed. Interpretation according to the literal sense will take account of all figures of speech and literary forms found in the text. We deny the legitimacy of any approach to scripture that attributes to its meaning which the literal sense does not support." So, so this is basically, um, dredging Origen's body back up to once again, uh, announce it anathema, uh, because the literal sense is the only sense. However, literal here also includes the, uh, intent to use things figuratively.

Dan Beecher Which is funny because, uh, yeah, A, that's not what literal generally- ... is, is referring to, and B, uh, it, that's open to interpretation again.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher So, like you've, you've just said it only literal except when it's not.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher And that doesn't seem helpful to me.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and, and, and here's why there's no such thing as a literalist. Who gets to decide when it is or isn't?

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Well, obviously I do. And by me, I mean whoever is talking, and-

Dan Beecher Me, Mark Driscoll. Or me, Franklin Graham, or-

Dan McClellan Yes

Dan Beecher ... Billy Graham, or-

Dan McClellan Yes

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So when you have two passages where a, a critical approach would say the literal sense of this one flatly contradicts the literal sense of this one, um, then you've gotta pick one. You say, "This one's the one that's really literal, and the other is the, um, the figurative one."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan You've gotta wave that away and reinterpret it. Because really, what, what the authority is is not the Bible in its literal sense. The authority is your tradition and whatever interpretive tradition is propping it up.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Um, and so if you-

Dan Beecher What- whatever way, whatever way we can interpret this to prop up, uh, the, the hate du jour or the, uh, the, the non-scientific-

Dan McClellan The ideology, the dogma du jour.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yes. Um, because they've got a lot of things in here as well talking about how the, um, the scriptures can never, uh, disagree with each other and- ... and they deny any reading that, uh, that disagrees with, um... And, and you know, none of these things are, are based on any kind of, uh, evidence, uh, or, or pure logic or reason. We're starting from the dogmas, and then we're constructing the rationale, the rationalization for the dogmas. 'Cause when it comes down to it, you've got a, like, you've got a bunch of passages that very clearly acknowledge other gods. Um, and you know, we've talked about 2 Kings 3, like this is not poetry. This is not a psalm.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan This is the author who seems to be kind of in an, in, in a slightly reluctant and embarrassed way acknowledging that, uh, well, Adonai got beat by the god of another nation, so.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Moving on anyway, um-

Dan Beecher Or even, even if he's not beat, you've got all of Exodus talking about all of the Egyptian gods and how they're performing miracles just like the, the, just like Adonai has done.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And so, like, it, yeah, it, I guess it's all literal until that point, in which case those are just demons and-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... or that's the devil or whatever and...

Dan McClellan And so when you, when you look at literalism, it's just ideological literalism.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's not textual literalism. Textual literalism results in acknowledging contradiction, it results in acknowledging, um, scientific falsehoods, it results in acknowledging- ... uh, perspectives and facts and, and historical events that, that don't line up with what we know about reality. And, and that, you know, that's just a bridge too far for, uh, for folks who are, are trying to push back against, um, what they call modernism. I mean, we're already post-postmodernism.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But they refer to, uh, to historical criticism as modernism, and, and there's a whole other discussion to have there. But, um, pushing back against that, they can't give any ground. They've already decided we're, we are deeply entrenched in this opposition. We're d- And, and in fact, one of the articles, uh, "We affirm that Genesis 1 through 11 is factual" "... as is the rest of the Book. We deny that the teachings of Genesis 1 through 11 are mythical, and that scientific hypotheses about Earth history or the origin of humanity may be invoked to overthrow what Scripture teaches about creation."

Dan Beecher That's so crazy to me.

Dan McClellan So, so basically just, just saying, yeah, uh, the Bible overrules science. Um-

Dan Beecher It's so funny because they are so mad about all of these modern, this modern science, and they, it, and what's weird is that this, their perspective, this literalist perspective, is super modern.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It is less than 100 years old, really, in the way that they're practicing it. And, and th- yet they're still... Or, or maybe a l- you know, 150 or something like that.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But up until that point, Christianity didn't look like that.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and it's, uh, it, it's, it shows it's all contextual and, and, and at least in the case of things like inerrancy today, it's, it's reactive.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's reacting against stuff more than it's actually going out and seeking stuff.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Uh, it's, it's trying to protect the ground that they have, uh, that they feel they have won in the culture wars. Uh, and, and it, it results in, you know, if, if you have this in Galileo's day- Ooh. You know.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan There, we, we'd have a much different public school system today. Um, they, this is, this is not giving any wiggle room, uh, to, to the Scriptures. This is, this is dictating to the Bible what it is and is not allowed to be, to do, and to say.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And, uh, which, which demonstrates where the real authority rests.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Rests with the tradition and the interpretive tradition. It does not rest with the Bible.

Dan Beecher Well, and what's funny is that it starts by, it starts with the notion of we have these dogmas that we are going to hold to, and so we're gonna craft a, uh, a sentiment about literalism that gives us space for these dogmas to stay real, even in the face of modern science. And then that's, and then they, it gets pushed too far. It gets, like, other people take that and run with it, and then we got flat Earthers again- ... which we didn't have anyhow.

Dan McClellan Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan Beecher Like, it goes, it goes beyond, well beyond where they're trying to go because that's the natural conclusion to what they themselves have put in place.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So if- Do you want flat Earthers? Because that's how-

Dan McClellan Yeah, that's how you get flat- ... you get flat Earthers ... yeah, yeah. Oh, and we have, you know, I don't... Oh, my gosh, there's so many people- ... on social media, the, the whole, uh, what, the firmament people.

Dan Beecher Oh, yeah.

Dan McClellan "We, we never been to the Moon"-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... because you just hit the f- you just bounce off the firmament. You can't get the... Um.

Dan Beecher All right. Well, I think, I, I think that's a great, uh, a great sort of primer on, uh, on f- the, on literalism, uh, so I'm gonna call it at that.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher So if you would like to become a part of helping make this show go, uh, you can do an any number of things, like comment, subscribe here on YouTube. Uh, that's always super helpful. Share. Share our videos with people that you think will get mad about it- ... or people that you think will appreciate it, either way. Uh, you can also become a patron of the show over on, uh, patreon.com/dataoverdogma. We really appreciate when you, when you do that. Uh, you can get access to, uh, early and ad-free versions of every episode as well as the after party, which is, uh, which is just bonus content that we do for you every week. Uh, and also, there's a, a thriving community over there where you can hit those comments up, and it's really interesting and, and great. So please go over and do that. Thanks so much to Roger Goudy for editing the show. Thanks to JJ Neward for being our new producer, and we'll talk to you again next week. Next time. Next time.

Dan McClellan Bye, everybody.