You Can't Take the Bible Literally

At a glance

Relevant Scripture

“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:”

2 Timothy 3:16 KJV

UECF.NET summary

Keller separates two different questions hiding inside this objection. The first is a textual-transmission question: has the Bible been so distorted through copying and translation (the "telephone game") that we cannot know what was originally written? He answers by pointing to the discipline of textual criticism and the sheer quantity and quality of New Testament manuscript evidence — far exceeding what survives for most other ancient texts historians rely on without similar suspicion — which allows scholars to reconstruct the original wording with a very high degree of confidence. The second question is interpretive: how should a given passage be read — as historical narrative, poetry, legal code, wisdom literature, or apocalyptic vision? "Taking the Bible literally" in the sense of ignoring genre is not what careful, historic Christian interpretation has ever meant.

On moral objections — particularly around gender and sexuality — Keller argues that every era, including our own, has cultural blind spots that later generations find obvious, and that this cuts both ways: we should not assume our own culture's current moral consensus is the neutral, final standard against which all others must be judged. He also points out that the Bible frequently critiques and subverts the assumptions of its own surrounding culture (elevating women's testimony and dignity in ways countercultural for its time, restraining rather than endorsing practices like slavery within its own historical moment) rather than simply mirroring it — evidence, he argues, that it is not merely a product of its time even though it was written within a particular time. He closes by inviting readers to engage difficult texts with the same careful attention to context, genre, and purpose they would extend to any other document they wanted to actually understand rather than dismiss.

Main themes

• Textual transmission and interpretation are two different questions that deserve two different answers.
• New Testament manuscript evidence is unusually strong by the standards of ancient historical documents.
• Reading well means attending to genre, not flattening every passage into the same kind of literature.
• Every culture, including ours, has moral blind spots; the Bible sometimes challenges its own culture's assumptions rather than simply reflecting them.

Key ideas

• The "telephone game" objection concerns copying accuracy, which textual criticism actually addresses well for the New Testament.
• Genre-sensitive reading, not wooden literalism, is the historic Christian approach to interpreting Scripture.
• Assuming today's cultural consensus is a neutral standard for judging all others is itself an unexamined assumption.
• Passages that elevate the marginalized or restrain harmful practices show the Bible sometimes resisting, not merely absorbing, its cultural moment.

Important concepts

• Textual criticism — The scholarly discipline of comparing ancient manuscripts to reconstruct, with high confidence, the original wording of an ancient text.
• Genre-sensitive reading — Interpreting a passage according to the kind of literature it is — narrative, poetry, law, wisdom, or apocalyptic — rather than treating all Scripture the same way.
• Chronological snobbery — C. S. Lewis's term (which Keller echoes) for assuming a later era's views are automatically more advanced or correct than an earlier era's.

Related Bible references

• 2 Timothy 3:16
• 2 Peter 1:20-21
• Luke 1:1-4
• Psalm 119:105
• Galatians 3:28

Practical Christian application

• Before dismissing a difficult passage, ask what kind of literature it is and what its original audience and purpose were.
• Read one short, well-regarded introduction to New Testament textual evidence to test the "telephone game" objection for yourself.
• Notice one place where your own culture's assumptions might be as invisible to you as any ancient culture's were to it.

Questions for study