A Pastor’s Perspective on the Dangers of an Ultra-Literal Perspective
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Today's video features Greg Boyd. Greg Boyd is founder and senior pastor of Woodland Hills Church, an evangelical mega-church in St. Paul, MN. In 2000, Greg founded Christus Victor Ministries (CVM) a nonprofit organization that promotes Greg’s writing and speaking ministry outside of Woodland Hills Church while raising funds to further research projects related to his ministry.
In this video Conversation, Greg Boyd considers the implications of an “ultra-literal” approach to scripture. Such an all-or-nothing mindset, which often defines the fundamentalist worldview, does nothing to promote unity among believers.
But perhaps closing the gap between those who read the Bible literally and those who take more exegetical liberty is not as difficult as it might sound. For example, Boyd notes that though many evangelicals claim to read the Bible with a literalist perspective, most do not. For example, when we read in the scriptures that the earth is held up by pillars—or that the earth is surrounded by water—the majority of readers would understand the metaphorical language without accepting the text as reporting scientific fact.
Some believers conceive of their faith as a proverbial “house of cards”—where shifting one element will collapse the whole thing. To help believers get past this mindset, Boyd suggests that pastors and theologians would do well to model “responsible exegesis” that moves away from rigid literalism and allows the scriptures to truly communicate the message of Christ.
“Faith doesn’t hang on interpretation,“ says Boyd. “If we have Christ in common, then all of our disagreements will be relatively minor.”
Commentary written by the BioLogos editorial team.
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