Reading Scripture Faithfully with Os Guinness

In this video, Os Guinness continues the dialogue regarding how Christians read scripture, and points out the common misconception that a choice must be made between reading scripture literally or faithfully.

Video Transcription

I’m a social scientist and when pollsters approach evangelicals they tend to say, “Do you take the Bible literally?” And evangelicals, to be faithful, say yes. But that’s terrible. The reformation put on the map a view of historical interpretation that interpreted every part of the Bible according to a genre, a type of literature. You interpret history historically; law, legally; poetry, poetically.

When the Psalms say, “The mountains skipped like rams,” no fundamentalist thinks the mountains popped up and down. That’s ridiculous. In fact, no one takes the Bible literally in that wooden way. The key question is, what is the type of literature, what’s the author trying to say, and so on. Under the pressure of modern pollsters and the trend towards fundamentalism, many Christians have gotten themselves boxed in a corner trying to defend things in Scripture which Christians down through the ages never have.