Should We Take the Bible Literally?

In our very polarized culture, many people tend to view the Bible in one of two ways: either they take everything in it 100% literally, or they think it’s all just a bunch of made-up stories that at best teach a few good moral lessons. They think that if it’s the inspired word of God, it has to all be literally true, but if it’s not really God’s word, then there’s not much of a reason to believe that any of it actually happened. Of course there are exceptions, but most people tend to gravitate towards one of these two extremes. So where should we as Catholics fall on this issue?

Sometimes Yes, Sometimes No

Unsurprisingly, we fall somewhere in the middle. The Church doesn’t teach that we have to take everything in Scripture hyper-literally, but it doesn’t allow us to go to the opposite extreme and view it as entirely make-believe either. And there’s a really good reason for this.

See, the Bible isn’t a single book. Rather, it’s a collection of books written at different times by different people in different cultural and historical contexts, and we can’t interpret such diverse works in exactly the same way. Instead, we have to look at each book (and even at different parts within the same book) and determine how the author was trying to convey his meaning to us. Was he writing history (like the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles)? Was he writing poetry (like the book of Psalms)? Was he writing down a bunch of loosely connected maxims (like the book of Proverbs)?

All of these genres convey truth in different ways, so we have to interpret them differently. For instance, poetry often uses figurative language and flowery exaggerations, but we rarely (if ever) find anything like that in historical works. As a result, when we ask if we should take the Bible literally, the answer is...it depends. There are certain parts of it that we should take literally, and there are others that we shouldn’t. It all depends on what part of the Bible we’re talking about.

Creation in Seven Days

That may all sound a bit abstract, so let me give some concrete examples to explain what I mean. Let’s look at a few passages that convey meaning in different ways and see how we take some texts literally and others more figuratively. We can start with the seven-day creation story in Genesis. This is probably one of the most asked-about texts in all of Scripture. Given what modern science tells us, everybody wants to know if we should take the seven days literally or if we can interpret them in a more figurative way.

I already wrote an article on this question, so I won’t go into too much detail about it here (take a look at that article if you’re interested in learning more). Simply put, the text gives us a subtle clue that the seven days aren’t meant to be taken literally. Rather, the author just used them as a literary framework to tell a story that conveys some theological truths about God, the world, and their relation to each other. Consequently, we can tell from the text itself that this is one passage we shouldn’t take literally.

The Psalms

In a similar vein, we have the book of Psalms, which is a collection of 150 poetic prayers, and that description tells us right off the bat that this book contains a lot of figurative language. We don’t take modern poetry literally, and ancient Israelite poetry is no different.

For example, the psalms talk about God’s “arm” a few times (for example, Psalms 77:15, 79:11), and they often describe various afflictions in very flowery, metaphorical language (such as Psalms 18:5, 30:3). Once we understand the nature of the psalms, it’s clear that we shouldn’t take this book nearly as literally as we take some others.

The Gospels

Finally, we can look at the Gospels, some of the clearest examples of historical writing in the entire Bible. When they say, for example, that Jesus performed miracles, we should understand them to mean that Jesus really did perform miracles. Likewise, when they say that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead, we should believe that He literally died on the cross and rose from the dead.

But we have to be careful here. Ancient people didn’t have the same expectations of historical accuracy that we do today, so we can’t judge the Gospels according to modern standards. For example, when we hear today that a certain figure said something, we expect to hear the exact words he spoke, but ancient history wasn’t quite so precise. Since they didn’t have tape recorders to capture the exact words people spoke, they were content simply to get the general gist of what the person said.1

However, once we understand that and take it into account, we can take the Gospels literally. For example, while we may not be able to piece together the exact words Jesus used to institute the Eucharist at the Last Supper (the four Gospels don’t agree on the exact wording), we should believe that Jesus really did take bread and wine, call it His body and blood, and command His disciples to repeat that ritual in memory of Him.

A Complicated Answer

Like many things in life, the answer to the seemingly simple question “Should we take the Bible literally?” isn’t all that simple. The Bible isn’t really a single book, so there is no single answer to that question. Rather, since it’s a collection of books, the answer is that sometimes we should and sometimes we shouldn’t. Certain books are poetic and use a lot of figurative language and imagery, and others are more straightforwardly literal and historical. Even within a given book, some parts may be meant to be more literal than others. At the end of the day, the only way to answer the question is on a case by case basis. As Catholics, we take some parts of Scripture literally and others more figuratively.

Endnotes

1) Darrel L. Bock, “The Words of Jesus in the Gospels: Live, Jive, or Memorex?” in Jesus Under Fire, ed. Michael J. Wilkins and J. P. Moreland, 73-99 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995), 79.