RE: Hitler was genocidal and evil. Yahweh’s genocides are good; say Christians, Muslims &
September 4, 2020 at 12:44 am
(September 3, 2020 at 10:57 pm)Belacqua Wrote: In The Song of Songs, in Chapter 4, the speaker says about his lover:
Quote:You are a garden fountain,
a well of flowing water
streaming down from Lebanon.
No no one believes that the speaker is actually in love with a garden fountain. Readers understand this is a metaphor.
Therefore, NO CHRISTIAN is 100% literalist in how he reads the Bible. From there, they debate.
He didn't say 100% literalists but "to some extent".
Indeed, "Song of songs" is meant as a metaphor, but, for instance, as Saint Augustine of Hippo says, pretty much everything else is to be taken literally
Augustine Wrote:The narrative indeed in these books is not cast in the figurative kind of language you find in the Song of Songs, but quite simply tells of things that happened, as in the books of the Kingdoms and others like them.
https://kolbecenter.org/st-augustine-red...f-genesis/
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
