Taking The Bible Literally

A lot of people say that they take the Bible literally or try to strive for this.  Making no assumptions, however, which does often mean taking the Bible literally, does not usually lead to the same ideas that are culturally associated with Christianity by the historical/contemporary church or by the secular world.  In a linguistic context as pertaining to the Bible, making no assumptions involves recognizing what the words really do or do not say and what does or does not logically follow from the concepts mentioned.  Though avoiding assumptions as a whole is is far broader than this, a necessary part of having true knowledge about anything at all from logical axioms to religious doctrines, it is of course a foundational philosophical necessity in knowing what any text appears to say.

Even what a Biblical text appears to say still is very commonly not the same as what many people have heard.  So many have been told that the Bible teaches that Christians go to heaven right when they die, but a single passage out of many is all it takes to refute the idea: Ecclesiastes 9:5-10 says the dead are unconscious, lacking all emotion, activity, and perception.  Also, Daniel 12:2 says the dead sleep until their awakening at their resurrections.  No one could take this literally, even if they believe they are, and think that these verses teach an intermediate afterlife before the resurrection.  Moreover, a verse like John 3:16 says those without eternal life from Yahweh and Christ will perish, not live forever in torment after their resurrection to be placed in hell as many are told is the case.  This is incredibly clear in itself aside from personal or cultural stupidity.

Even something that appears to literally say one thing can still obviously say something to the contrary in a very literal manner.  Does Ephesians 5:22-33 actually teach gender roles of any kind?  No, it is not that the Bible is saying men and women have their own personality traits and moral obligations (if it did, it would be incorrect here), that only men need to unilaterally love their wives and only wives need to unilaterally submit to their husbands.  Ephesians 5:21 very literally says before the mention of wives submitting to husband's that all Christians should submit to each other, with the obvious prerequisite being as long as there is no sin involved in what one yields to or if one is doing so for rational reasons.  Other parts of the Bible repeatedly say that love, the respect for all humans because of their divine rights, is an obligation all people have towards everyone else.

The literal statements of Ephesians 5 thus cannot be complementarian, but even if verse 21 was missing, it still would not logically follow that Paul is doing anything more than tailoring his commands to a specific church audience where men and women let cultural conditioning poison their worldview in differing ways.  The antidote would be both men and women doing what is good, which does not depend on their genitalia but on righteousness itself, no matter what their community demands.  However, even just in the context of Ephesians 5, gender roles are not taught either way because of both the literal statement of Ephesians 5:21 and the fact that it does not logically follow that addressing husbands or wives means something is morally good only for one gender.

In spite of the literal teachings of the aforementioned verses not being their popular misconceptions, there is sometimes figurative language in the Bible, indeed.  The parables of Christ are full of them.  He clarifies details about the literal truth or concept many of his stories touch upon, however.  Other miscellaneous statements are also figurative.  Is Jesus literally bread (John 6:35)?  A divine being inhabiting a human body cannot possibly be the same as a piece of bread, yet Jesus calls himself the bread of life.  The context literally clarifies that Jesus is like bread that sustains people, but far beyond what human food allows for (6:32-40) due to granting eternal life.  The text always has some clarity about what it is not talking about even if its intended meaning is generally obscure or comparative trivial.  Take the Bible literally when the context requires this and make no assumptions at all, though, and these things become obvious in light of reason.