Galileo Galilei Quotes

The Bible is the inerrant ... word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc.

The infallibility and inerrancy of biblical teaching does not, however, guarantee the infallibility and inerrancy of any interpretation or interpreter of that teaching; nor does the recognition of its qualities as the Word of God in any way prejudge the issue as to what Scripture does, in fact, assert. This can be determined only by careful Bible study.

Fanciful spiritualizing, so far from yielding God's meaning, actually obscured it. The literal sense is itself the spiritual sense, coming from God and leading to Him.

Extremists often derive their inspiration from literal interpretations of texts that should rightly be read not as Associated Press reports from the ancient world, but as theological and literary enterprises requiring independent intellectual assessment.

No man … ever believes that the Bible means what it says; he is always convinced that it says what he means.

There's a slippery slope in regard to authority. If you say that the history in Genesis is not true, then you can just take man's ideas as true. When you go outside of Scripture, why shouldn't you just reinterpret what marriage means? So our emphasis is on the slippery slope regarding authority.

We must allow the Bible to say what is says, not what we think it ought to say.

In questions of this sort there are two things to be observed. First, that the truth of the Scriptures be inviolably maintained. Secondly, since Scripture doth admit of diverse interpretations, that no one cling to any particular exposition with such pertinacity that, if what he supposed to be the teaching of Scripture should afterward turn out to be clearly false, he should nevertheless still presume to put it forward, lest thereby the sacred Scriptures should be exposed to the derision of unbelievers and the way of salvation should be closed to them.

Theologians always try to turn the Bible into a book without common sense.

It's the generally accepted privilege of theologians to stretch the heavens, that is the Scriptures, like tanners with a hide.

Fundamentalism does mean reading quite conservatively and literally, saying 'the Bible is the word of God and we have to follow it. What it says is this.'

Yes, I think that when the Bible refers to a horse or a horseman, that's exactly what it means.

There are two views of interpreting the Bible in America: that every word is literally the truth without qualification, and then the other view is, it's called plenary inspiration, which holds that all religious truth taught in the Bible is true from God, but each word is not necessarily interpreted literally.

Philosophers are best able to understand properly the allegorical passages of the Koran on the basis of their logical training. There is no religious stipulation that all such passages have to be interpreted literally.

The Bible is … authoritative on everything of which it speaks. And it speaks of everything.

We read the whole Bible, cover to cover, over and over again... It wasn't that we read selective parts of the Bible. It was that we interpreted it in this very selective way.

It is one thing, then, to say, "The Bible contains the religion revealed by God ," and quite another to say, "Whatever is contained in the Bible is religion, and was revealed by God." If the latter be accepted, metaphor and allegory become literal statements and the errors and absurdities of bibliolatry follow.

I studied scriptural interpretation, which is more about how people get meaning out of texts, looking at stuff in the Old Testament - Muslims, Christians, Jews, different interpretations of the same texts.

The dogma of the infallibility of the Bible is no more self-evident than is that of the infallibility of the popes.

This scripture [Romans 13:1-6] is wrested from the scope of God's Spirit, and the nature of the place, and cannot truly be interpreted to mean that the power of the civil magistrate may be exercised in spiritual or soul matters.

Where the Scriptures speak, we speak; where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent.

You are required to believe, to preach, and to teach what the Bible says is true, not what you want the Bible to say is true.

People take things too literal in the Bible and it's totally wrong.

If we are perplexed by an apparent contradiction in Scripture, it is not allowable to say, 'The author of this book is mistaken'; but either the manuscript is faulty, or the translation is wrong, or you have not understood.