N.T. Wright and Pete Enns: What Do You Mean by Literal?

In this video Conversation, senior biblical fellow Peter Enns asks Rev. N.T. Wright to respond to a reader question about science and faith. Specifically, the reader asks, "If you take Genesis in a non-literal fashion especially the creation stories, why take anything in the Bible literally—such as the Gospels? Do you take the Gospels literally?"

Category:

Education

Tags:

• literal
• metaphor
• Scripture
• faithful reading
• Genesis
• Adam
• Bible
• creation story

[TerraFirma92]

@johncalvinhall

Moreover there is also good Christian philosophy and tradition...So unless you demonstrate that his is "bad" and that the initial people who wrote Genesis intended it to be an account of literal cosmological and biological events, then your statement is reduced to a baseless assertion.

[TerraFirma92]

@johncalvinhall

John,

Obviously during interviews most questions are to be elaborated on. He didn't want to answer the question with a simple "no" because it seems he thought that it would be blurring important distinctions-- in this case its the way the Genesis texts are looked upon on the outset as either "literal" or "metaphorical".

Furthermore you simply quote a passage from scripture without giving us any reason why what Tom is saying classifies as vain and deceitful philosophy.

[BronyEditor]

@timtekron Not true. Biblical inerrancy is not the same as Biblical literalism. One can adhere to inerrancy without being a biblical literalist.

[norwayguy1976]

@TerraFirma92 @TerraFirma92 Greetings. But God himself wrote on the tables of Moses: "On six days I created the earth". What do we do with the tables. Genesis is not the only account of the "six days". Yet I remember a mystic. I reject intelligent design and fundamentalism as fairy tales. But I maintain a conservative mysticist: I do not understand it. I cannot add anyting, I cannot take anything away.

[norwayguy1976]

I believe in two contradictary things. One: I believe that we can use as much as we can from science and evolution, except of the creation of humans, which must have been done directly. And number two: To not take anything away, or add anything. A type of poetic creation, poetic truth a la C.S. Lewis (as video mentioned about the Parables, it makes no sense to discuss the details, open for the risk of fairy tales).

[timtekron]

Ironically, Mike Licona endorses this video to support his hermeneutic. But, what needs to be understood is that both Enns and Wright publically speak against the inerrancy of Scripture. While they both have academic respect, they also have drifted away from an evangelical understanding of the full inspiration, infallibility, and inerrancy of Scripture.

[orlando098]

I'd say this answer is as slippery as a politician's who doesn't want to give a straight answer, and that it strikes me as a typical theologian's tactic to start analysing the language of the words in the question rather than answering it. "Do you take the gospels literally?" "I want to say the world literal is confusing.... (waffles for four minutes). No it isn't, it's a perfectly normal English word which we all understand.

[orlando098]

What a bunch of waffle; he totally avoids the question, which is: what is his justification for saying Genesis is poetic writing to be interpreted symbolically (God didn't create the world in 6 days and place Adam and Eve in it, it's just a metaphor for his close relationship to the world), but everything in the New Testament is factual (Jesus rose from the dead and ascended and will come back as judge and raise the dead and create a new Earth) and people who disagree are wrong.

[flash91214]

The world crumbles, economic collapses, environment degrades, the poor die from starvation and still we stay up late wondering if the creation is literal 24 hours. Even St Augustine doubted whether the Genesis account neede to taken from a literalist timeframe,,,NTanswers the question well.

[TheMichael197513]

Wright makes a very informative point as always!

[scifiwritir1]

Give 'em an inch, N.T., and they'll take a mile!