I talked earlier about how “literal” interpretation isn’t easy to define. The whole idea of what “literal” interpretation means needs interpretation. The frequent insistence on thinking only in literal terms (whatever that means) has led to the caricature of other kinds of interpretation. Nonliteral interpretation, many are told, is just a strategy to avoid what the Bible clearly says. When something in the Bible threatens people (read: makes them draw a different conclusion than the one they favor), those panicked souls resort to “allegorizing” or “spiritualizing” the text.
That’s nonsense.
I’m not denying that people do come up with weird interpretations to avoid something they don’t like in Scripture. I’m denying that this is an acceptable portrayal of nonliteral interpretation. It had better be, since New Testament writers do at times take their Old Testament nonliterally.
The myth is that “nonliteral” somehow means “not real” or “I don’t want what I’m reading to be real.” The kind of nonliteral interpretation the New Testament writers sometimes engage in is hardly the result of wishing something in the Bible isn’t true.
The idea behind the kind of nonliteral interpretation you’ll find in the Bible is that sometimes the meaning of the text transcends what we would expect the passage to “literally” mean. The text means more than what immediately pops into our head. Nonliteral interpretation presumes that what God means by a statement might go beyond what humans presume. Since the spiritual realm is just as real as our physical, embodied existence, we have no right to make such presumptions. Nonliteral doesn’t mean not real. It often means more real than you imagined.
For example, there is a considerable debate over the nature of the Antichrist figure in the New Testament. Some say the Antichrist will be a man, perhaps the Devil incarnate. Other say that Antichrist is a symbol of evil. In both perspectives the suffering of believers that ensues from the appearance of this man/evil is real. It would be dishonest for the “literal man” perspective to argue that the “symbol of evil” side wants to escape what the text says. Whatever the text means, the evil will be a clear and present danger.
Don’t embrace caricatures of interpretive approaches you don’t like or have little experience with. Find out what an approach really says.