MetaCatholic

The inerrancy conversation will probably rumble on. For a summary, see Nick Norelli’s post, or the last paragraph of John Hobbins’ reply. For a very slant-wise look at creeping inerrancy see ElShaddai Edwards on translations. In some respects, however, it is less the formal declaration of inerrancy which is the problem, but rather the literal wooden-mindedness of many of those who adopt this badge.

As well as having so thoroughly claimed the idea of inerrancy as to render it entirely impossible to use the term (sorry, John), “fundamentalists” have also overdosed on claims about the literal sense of scripture. Unfortunately, they have created the impression that reading the literal sense of scripture is the same thing as taking it literally.

Despite claims sometimes put forward that the Reformation restored, or even established, the importance of the literal sense of the text, the importance of the literal sense goes back a long way. Here is St Thomas Aquinas:

Thus in Holy Writ no confusion results, for all the senses are founded on one — the literal — from which alone can any argument be drawn, and not from those intended in allegory, as Augustine says (Epis. 48). Nevertheless, nothing of Holy Scripture perishes on account of this, since nothing necessary to faith is contained under the spiritual sense which is not elsewhere put forward by the Scripture in its literal sense. (ST 1.1.10)

St Thomas accepts the other traditional senses of Scripture: allegorical (by which the Gospel is found in the Old Testament), moral (by which things and events understood christologically signify how we should behave) and anagogical, by which scriptures are related to the final end of all things in glory. However, he clearly subordinates these to the literal sense, saying that no passage may be expounded by any of the other senses to teach something that cannot be found elsewhere in the literal sense.

More importantly, he goes on to explain the literal sense further:

The parabolical sense is contained in the literal, for by words things are signified properly and figuratively. Nor is the figure itself, but that which is figured, the literal sense. When Scripture speaks of God’s arm, the literal sense is not that God has such a member, but only what is signified by this member, namely operative power.

The literal sense is not taking things literally. It is slightly unclear whether Aquinas is saying they should not be taken literally if they are not intended to be taken literally, or if they cannot be taken literally. It is certainly true for him that it is impossible that God has an arm. It is perhaps less clear that every use of language either Aquinas or most of us would interpret figuratively was entirely figurative for the original authors. The degree to which, say, OT anthropomorphisms are self-consciously metaphorical is open to question.

This means that the “literal” sense of the text is determined both in a theological framework, and by literary sensitivity to language, rhetoric and genre. It is, sometimes, the exact opposite of taking the text literally. By and large the magisterial Reformers are in continuity with Aquinas on this point. However, by moving away from the other senses, they perhaps desensitise their followers to pluriform readings and multiple meanings of the sort that have only started to emerge again through newer forms of literary criticism. Without that wider hinterland of reading, they may have helped pave the way for taking the literal sense literally.

I suggest that our biggest issue with the inerrantists is not per se their professed belief in inerrancy, but they combine it with a preference for reading the text literally, confusing that with the literal sense, and displaying the literary sensitivity of a Dalek.