I could be wrong about the way I'm using the word Fundamentalist, but I think of it as characterized by Biblical Literalism.
But I still feel that somewhat has to be applicable to you when you refer to The Bible as a justification for your view, and that’s what’s throwing me for a loop here.
I believe that literalism fundamentally obfuscates the spirit and intent of the Bible.
Christianity tells us God is a Spirit that cannot be fully comprehended from a human point of view. In the Bible a “transcendent” God is represented as "seen through a glass darkly" (1 Corinthians 13:12) at best “we know in part”, it tells us “The word of God is not bound” (2 Timothy 2:9). Jesus said, “his Father’s house had many mansions” (John 14:2), He invited His listeners to “seek the Kingdom within” (Luke 17:21). Literalism is simply incompatible with these core principles of Christianity; they cannot be expressed literally.
The words of the Bible were meant to resonate on many different levels to bring about a synthesis of mind, heart, and soul, they were meant to be listened to with the heart and responded to with the heart in order to give expression to the soul that is within the words and events that they expressed. The original words surely revealed dimensions that go beyond the surface understanding of any written translation, they were designed to integrate the listener's reality with God's reality and show how they are one. You simply cannot confuse a literal translation of the words with the experience of Truth that they attempted to impart.
For me, it is the truth that "is within" that the Bible speaks of and to. If we listen to that "voice within" we will know how to interpret it and we will be able to distinguish between what is permanent truth and what is cultural bias. Consequently, when I read the Bible, I try to read it with my heart rather than my intellect and to do so I change my focus from actively pondering the external events to passively opening to the internal, transcendent knowledge within.
The point being that we cannot confuse the words and the language with the reality and truth that they attempt to represent symbolically. Language is no more than a very limited symbol of the reality experienced and then expressed, changing in time and place, and meaning different things to different people of different points of view, in different contexts.
Literalism creates a blindness that flows from thinking reality is as we have labeled it with words; we miss out on the depth and wonder of reality if we limit it to the words we use to describe it Literalism attempts to make faith stagnant, it doesn’t allow doctrine to change and adapt to circumstances in order to have contemporary meaning, and that is tragic because Scripture is referential to much more than some strange events that happened a long time ago, as Huston Smith said, "It is about religion alive".
Religious narratives achieve greatness because of their power to generate meanings, not because of their value as a literal record of facts and events. Literalism necessarily imposes a reinterpretation of the transcendent dimension in the narrative that defines it as religious in the first place, by assuming that "narrative", implies record, it doesn't. With literalism you are only opening the text to scrutiny that only sharpens doctrinal debate and results in divisiveness. A literal reading of scripture does not foster religious awareness, it distracts from, and conflicts with, the goal of transcendence, in the end, the text is negated.
Isaiah 55:8-9
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
The Bible includes history andprophecy, poetry and love songs, allegories and parables, none of which isconducive any kind of "literal" translation.
Be that as it may, The Bible is much more then just that.
Too often we get lost in the pettiness and divisiveness of Biblical detail and in so doing we forget that its message is about unity and love.
I read the Bible to be inspired by its pages. I do not go to it as though it were an unyielding oracle that related once and for all the will of God. For me, this is to make the Bible a pretentious idol, a barrier to creative and personal thought, and a myth. I do not accept the Biblical myth that many try to impose on me, I do accept the Bible as a profound work of both historical and current significance, and for me, the myth of the Bible is nothing compared to the reality.
Considering the linguistic journey the Bible took to arrive at an English translation, I don't think a literal translation is even possible.
Does that journey significantly alter the meaning?
Yes, and it in necessarily unavoidable.
Ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, Koine Greek, Latin and English is a rough approximation of the journey that had to be taken to arrive at an English translation of the Bible, all of these languages use different words, syntax and grammatical structures. Translation from one language to another always results in an inexact interpretation of words, meanings, and context.
Old Testament Hebrew was a very primitive language, it was the first alphabetic language, it consisted only of consonants with no vowels written in the text, and there is no "past, present, or future" tense in Hebrew. The Hebrew language had only about a 30,000-word vocabulary, Greek had a 250,000-word vocabulary and English has over 300,000 words. One Hebrew word could be used in dozens of different ways, and the meaning was determined by the context, Koine Greek, for example, had four different words for "love"; Hebrew only had one. It is absolutely impossible to translate most Hebrew words exactly into modern English. Greek had many verb forms that do not exist in English, and Aramaic uses different verb forms depending on whether the subject is male or female.
Aramaic was the native language of Jesus and the one he mostly taught in, Aramaic is structurally and grammatically very different than English, as is the context in which the words were spoken, written, and then read today. Aramaic is not just structurally and grammatically different than English, it is also very different in that it is a rich, poetic language that utilizes webs of constellated meanings to represent ideas. Jesus "spoke as no man had spoken before", and he spoke as "One who knows", he used words to inspire and initiate, to involve the listener, and to transmit complex ideas through imagery. The language he used was polyphonic, poetic, and profoundly imaginative, and he taught the truth of the Kingdom mainly in parables, which is an "invitational" form of speech that stimulates the imagination and needs to be completed in the mind, heart and soul of the listener. It is a great tragedy if we try to take words and expressions that were originally meant to resonate on many different levels of meaning, on intellectual, metaphorical, and universal levels, and translate them into explicit representations of material facts. If we do so, we are bound to "miss the mark", so to speak.
With all due respect, the fact is there is no such thing as a "literal" translation of the Bible, that contention becomes meaningless in view of it’s many translation through such different languages.
The authors of Scripture were interpreting and expressing a spiritual experience that lies prior to and beneath language, typically described as “transcendent” and “ineffable”, because it’s too immediate and direct to be adequately described with words and language, and consequently, we must resort to symbols, allegory or metaphors to even try to express it. I believe that the genuine spiritual experience reveals dimensions that go beyond the surface understanding of any “symbolic” religious concept or idea, and Scripture is designed to help provide the reader with access to that transcendent spiritual experience, it certainly is not a substitute for it.
If morality depends on the will of God, I think that would make it absolute rather than objective.
What’s the difference?
Absolute truth is a statement that is always true, regardless of circumstances, while objective truth is a statement that is based on facts and is independent of personal belief.
If morality is based on the will of God, then it is a matter of the personhood of God, which is a personal belief that is absolute, but by definition, it is not objective.
