Literally?

If there's one Hankism that drives me a bit crazy as a writer and English major, it's his use of the word literally. The word means as it is, without exaggeration or embellishment, factual, actual, as we see on the Merrian Webster website:

lit·er·al - adjective \ˈli-t(ə-)rəl\

1 a : according with the letter of the scriptures
1 b : adhering to fact or to the ordinary construction or primary meaning of a term or expression : actual <liberty in the literal sense is impossible — B. N. Cardozo>
1 c : free from exaggeration or embellishment <the literal truth>
1 d : characterized by a concern mainly with facts <a very literal man>
2: of, relating to, or expressed in letters
3: reproduced word for word : exact, verbatim <a literal translation>

lit·er·al·ly - adverb \ˈli-tə-rə-lē, ˈli-trə-lē, ˈli-tər-lē\

1: in a literal sense or manner : actually <took the remark literally> <was literally insane>
2: in effect : virtually <will literally turn the world upside down to combat cruelty or injustice — Norman Cousins>

Usage Discussion of LITERALLY

Since some people take sense 2 to be the opposite of sense 1, it has been frequently criticized as a misuse. Instead, the use is pure hyperbole intended to gain emphasis, but it often appears in contexts where no additional emphasis is necessary.

The way Hank Hanegraaff uses it, what he is talking about is the literary interpretation. The Bible is literature. It is not a mere textbook filled only with facts and rules. It tells stories and relates historical narratives; it includes prophetic and apocalyptic books; it contains songs and collections of wise sayings. On top of that, it makes rich use of imagery and figures of speech - Jesus is the lamb of God, God is our father, the church is the bride of Christ,

Again, from the Merriam Webster site:

lit·er·ary - adjective \ˈli-tə-ˌrer-ē\

1 a: of, relating to, or having the characteristics of humane learning or literature
1 b: bookish
1 c: of or relating to books
2 a: well-read
2 b: of or relating to authors or scholars or to their profession

What most of us would call the literal meaning of Scripture is what Hanegraaff labels woodenly literal in contrast to the literary meaning of Scripture that he labels literal. (Confused?)

Naive Reading

One danger the Roman Catholic Church foresaw in giving the average believer access to the Bible in their own language was that people would misinterpret things - not that this didn't also happen with the Latin Bible, but at least people who could read Latin had a formal education.

And they were right. While Protestant Reformers tended to be well educated and understand how to read the Bible as literature and interpret Scripture in the light of other Scripture, some of the less educated went off the deep end based on a very literal reading of the Bible.

I think this is due in part to concrete thinking. When reading science fiction or fantasy, we understand that serpents might speak, dragons might be real, and so forth. But when reading the Bible, some people believe that the serpent formed human words and that a real dragon will appear at the end of the world. They forget that every day we use analogies, metaphors, similies, and other figures of speech - and so did those who wrote the Bible.

It's understandable that young children would take things literally, and that uneducated adults might do the same thing, but educated adults should know better. Sometimes the Bible literally means exactly what it says, but sometimes it uses figures of speech to make it point, and that's exactly the issue Hank is dealing with when he talks about taking the Bible literally but not woodenly.

A Different Type of Autograph

Most people think of the signature of a famous person when they hear the word autograph. Others might remember collecting notes from friends in their high school yearbooks. And collectors think of the value of a genuine Shakespeare, Washington, or Lincoln autograph.

Bible scholars are talking about something different. For them, an autograph is the original manuscript for a book of the Bible - and those were written so long ago that none of them have survived to the present day.

That said, we have thousands and thousands of manuscript copies as evidence that such originals did exist, and by comparing these copies with each other and in light of their dates, we can come very close to reconstructing the autographs. There are places where a copyist may have dropped a word or letter, a couple places where passages may be been added (the woman caught in adultery is perhaps the best known example), spots where a name has been changed to a pronoun or vice versa, and other relatively minor differences among the multitude of existing copies.

The important thing isn't that there are so many little differences, but that there is so much consistency over centuries of making copies from copies of copies. As Hank Hanegraaff always points out, God has maintained the integrity of Scripture despite all the years of copying. And most important of all, the message of the Bible has survived unscathed despite the text being handled by humans for so many generations before the advent of the printing press, which finally made it easy to produce thousands and millions of identical copies of the sacred text.

Even though the autographs are gone and most of us can't fathom the original Hebrew and Greek of all those copies, God has also made sure that we have sufficiently accurate translations into English (and many, many other languages) that the message we read today is the same one written into those original manuscripts.

Who Is Daniel Knight?

Who is this Daniel Knight, and what qualifies him to write this blog?

Like Hank Hanegraaff, my parents were Dutch immigrants. They first emigrated to Canada (Hanks family came to the US). They were from the Reformed tradition and helped transplant their faith to their new homeland, part of a wave of Dutch immigrants responsible for establishing dozens and dozens of Christian Reformed congregations across Canada. (For an overview of that period, see The Dutch Reformed Presence in Canada.)

My parents brought their three sons to Grand Rapids, Michigan, in early 1963 so my father could do youth work for the denomination. We had all been baptized as infants, brought up in the church, attended Christian schools, and had devotions with breakfast and dinner every day. I took to Reformed theology like a duck to water and made profession of faith (our version of confirmation, believer's baptism, etc.) at 16. Unlike Hank, I never turned my back on the faith.

The following summer my family went back to Canada, and a year later I left for Trinity Christian College in suburban Chicago. There I made friends with believers from different traditions - Baptists, Lutherans, Adventists, Presbyterians, Catholics, and Reformed. And I struggled with issues like infant baptism vs. believer's baptism - and how to reconcile the faith of my friends who were Christians but share the theology I grew up believing was the best and most true theological system.*

After two years at Trinity, I switched to Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI, just a few blocks from my parents' new home after immigrating once again. Here I once again gravitated to those from different traditions, and I eventually graduated with a group major in English, history, and philosophy. I had originally wanted to become a pastor, but my inability to learn foreign languages ended that plan. Journalism would have been a great path, but there was no journalism program in that era. I did take every writing course offered.

I worked a lot of retail jobs over the years, and my writing and analysis skills always helped. When the fledgling World-Wide Web came into public consciousness, I began my own websites in 1997 - LowEndMac.com for Mac users who want to get the most out of existing gear, and Reformed.net (since defunct and now being replaced by the Dutch Reformed Wiki) to share my research while attending seminary.

Over the years, I have become convinced that God is more interested in our having a relationship with Him than in our having perfect theology. I believe that you can have some less-than-perfect beliefs (after all, we are imperfect beings living in a broken world) and still be welcomed into God's family. Truth matters, but so do love, acceptance, and encouragement. As Hank often says, there are secondary issues that need not divide us as God's redeemed. Not that good theology isn't important, but without faith, it doesn't transform our lives.

I have belonged to Christian Reformed, Reformed, Episcopalian, and Evangelical Covenant churches and currently attend an undenominational one. I worship alongside people from many different traditions, and it is Christ who unites us.

I have been listening to The Bible Answer Man since October 2012 and am a big fan of Hank Hanegraaff, even if we don't share the same view on every issue. But that's part of God creating each of us different - not even identical twins are exactly the same. We need to become the unique people God planned for us to be, accepting that others are just as unique and loving them as God's creation.

* The Christian Reformed Church has a long history of being theologically rigorous. It has sometimes spent years and even decades debating issues such as the role of women in church office, the charismatic movement, and the issues associated with homosexuality, as well as whether it was permissible to dance (handled back when I was in college). I have great appreciation for the theological rigor, but less appreciation for the name calling and polarization that has so often taken place over these issues, sometimes to the point of entire groups leaving the denomination to form their own group over what many consider to be secondary issues.

Eternal Verities

Veritas means truth, so when Hank Hanegraaff is talking about "eternal verities", he is talking about unchanging truths. But why use a Latin phrase when plain old everyday Anglo Saxon English is so much clearer?

Because the concept of eternal verities goes back quite a ways. The Oxford Learners Dictionary defines it as "an essential basic moral principle". In other words, eternal verities are truths that are universal (as opposed to cultural) and timeless (as opposed to time-bound).

The opposite of eternal verities is relativism, a morality that changes over time or across cultures. For instance, we live in a culture that has legalized abortion and is hard at work to make it socially acceptable - and a culture that is making homosexual marriage acceptable and hard at work to make it legal. Treating abortion as a morals-free personal medical decision and equating homosexual unions with traditional man-woman marriage is not a matter of eternal verities.

Examples of eternal verities:

• God created the heavens and the earth.
• God has a plan for every part of creation.
• God loves his creation and his creatures.
• There is such a thing as sin.
• Murder is wrong.
• Lying isn't good.
• Treat others as you would want them to treat you, the so-called Golden Rule that has existed in practically every human culture known

The list could go on, but you get the idea. Whether you personally believe these things or not, according to the Bible they are eternal truths.