John Lennon’s lyrics “All you need is love. Love is all you need,” are either the truest words ever penned or the most perverse.

For these several months we have discussed the problem of literalism, which is essentially that there are two almost opposite uses of the idea of literalism. For Augustine…

Note: If you haven’t read the first four articles in this series, please do so. We are in the midst of a cumulative argument about literalism within biblical hermeneutics and the best way to understand and practice interpreting the Bible….

“But we should depart as little as possible from the literal sense. . . . If we do not find it signifying anything else in normal linguistic usage, that is how we must interpret the expression, however much it may conflict with reason. . . .

In our last article, we established that Augustine rejected the possibility of the Bible containing myth, any attempt to interpret nature independently of the Bible, and…

Originally, I had intended to consider Spinoza’s caustic literalism, but events and more study suggest that we should begin in chronological order with our friend Augustine’s “historical literalism.”…

Let’s introduce ourselves to the cast of theologians. Augustine (354-430 AD) was a theologian in North Africa and perhaps the most…