Fundamentalist (literal) Interpretation of Scripture

[John1]

As you can see I am rather new to this board. What has surprised me has been the number of protestants that are on the forum and who are here to tell me what i as a catholic believe, why i am wrong and to attempt to convert me. I have already been converted and it was the other way. I have no animosity to other christian groups, I like Joel Osteen who a lot of protestants criticize because he does not preach enough hell. My god is a loving god who focuses us on forgiving.

I am not interested in 1., converting to protestanism, 2., having my catholic faith become more protestant like. I dont feel ,well yes I do feel like they are nice enough people but I would not want my children marrying one. i would prefer my children marry catholics.

I just pray that my daughter remains a Christian and marries a Christian, Catholic or Protestant (when she’s much older of course).

This board has some really good discussions. There seems to be some intelligent people with some good information. of course there a quite a few of the “defenders of the faith” who seem to prefer making accusations and demeaning remarks rather than have a civil discussion backed up by history and facts. Anyway, I like spending time here reading what other people have to say and I hope you will too. I think you will find out that there’s always someone trying to “convert” you to their way of thinking, even inside the RCC, i.e some Roman Catholics agree with Vatican II and some don’t. I try not to get too offended with the folks that are trying to convert me, because I do believe that, for the most part, they really believe what they are saying and in their mind they are trying to help me.

 

[tnystrom]

There seem to be quite a few folks, both Catholic and non-Catholic, on this forum that hold to a literal reading of scriptures. The basis of their argument for this interpretation seems to be that all scripture is inspired by God and therefore must be taken literally regardless of any evidence that brings into question the literal accuracy of parts of scripture.

I was reading a link provided by wildleafblower and came across a link to another document titled “Interpretation of the Bible in the Church” by the Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1994, chaired by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. There is much discussion about exigesis throughout the document, but there is one section that I think really gets to the heart of the matter.

From the document:

And:

And finally:

There is much more there, but I want to be carefull pasting too much into this post. The full discussion on the fundamentalist interpretation can be found in section I F of the document which can be found here:

ewtn.com/library/CURIA/PBCINTER.htm#3

Now, I know my non-Catholic friends will blow this off because they have nothing but scripture to rely on, but what about my Catholic brothers and sisters? Does this make you stop and think about your position regarding the literal reading of ALL of scripture?

Peace

Tim

It makes me think that that which is to be taken literally should and that which is to be taken figuratively will. Good and useful quotes. It is important to look at how the Church has historically interpreted passges. This keeps us from going off the deep end with Protestant Fundamentalists.

 

[Jolly_Joe]

There seem to be quite a few folks, both Catholic and non-Catholic, on this forum that hold to a literal reading of scriptures. The basis of their argument for this interpretation seems to be that all scripture is inspired by God and therefore must be taken literally regardless of any evidence that brings into question the literal accuracy of parts of scripture.

I was reading a link provided by wildleafblower and came across a link to another document titled “Interpretation of the Bible in the Church” by the Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1994, chaired by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. There is much discussion about exigesis throughout the document, but there is one section that I think really gets to the heart of the matter.

From the document:

And:

And finally:

There is much more there, but I want to be carefull pasting too much into this post. The full discussion on the fundamentalist interpretation can be found in section I F of the document which can be found here:

ewtn.com/library/CURIA/PBCINTER.htm#3

Now, I know my non-Catholic friends will blow this off because they have nothing but scripture to rely on, but what about my Catholic brothers and sisters? Does this make you stop and think about your position regarding the literal reading of ALL of scripture?

Peace

Tim

Well, he’s just plain wrong. He’s talking about people who use the term fundamentalist to describe themselves but aren’t really fundamentalist but usually actually violate the fundamentals. They are often legalists and it seem commonly have lost the understanding of scriptures.

A good explanation of true fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible can be seen in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermaneutics. See the complete statement at bible-researcher.com/chicago2.html

Points it makes include:

Article XV
WE AFFIRM the necessity of interpreting the Bible according to its literal, or normal, sense. The literal sense is the grammatical-historical sense, that is, the meaning which the writer expressed. Interpretation according to the literal sense will take account of all figures of speech and literary forms found in the text.

WE DENY the legitimacy of any approach to Scripture that attributes to it meaning which the literal sense does not support.

The literal sense of Scripture is strongly affirmed here. To be sure the English word literal carries some problematic connotations with it. Hence the words normal and grammatical-historical are used to explain what is meant. The literal sense is also designated by the more descriptive title grammatical-historical sense. This means the correct interpretation is the one which discovers the meaning of the text in its grammatical forms and in the historical, cultural context in which the text is expressed.

The Denial warns against attributing to Scripture any meaning not based in a literal understanding, such as mythological or allegorical interpretations. This should not be understood as eliminating typology or designated allegory or other literary forms which include figures of speech (see Articles X, XIII, and XIV).

Fundamentalist interpretation, the grammatical-historical hermaneutic rejects a literalistic interpretation.

A literalistic interpretation of Revelation, since it is written as apocalyptic literature would make no sense. And unfortunate thing that those who literalistically take it and make it the center of their preaching would do well to understand.

There are many who do literalistically interprete scripture, they are not taking it in the literal fashion. And idiom must be recognized as an idiom in order to be literally interpreted. A literalistic interpretation of an idiom is no interpretation at all, only a mistake. Often those who are literalistic don’t even realize that their bible contains many places where the translators gave them a different reading in order to try and transmit the meaning and not a word for word literalistic translation.

Hope that clears up the common misunderstanding that fundamentalist interpretation is literalistic. It should be correctly stated that fundamentalist interpretation is grammatical-historical while many who call or think of themselves as fundamentalists but who actually aren’t turn to a legalistic style of literalistic interpretation.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

“Catholics worship Mary” vs “Fundies worship the Bible”…the longer I stay at CAF the more I realize it’s pretty much CARM in Catholic clothes, although the moderators here are much more fair.

The Mods at CARM seem to be OK… ​