Should We Take the Bible Literally or Spiritually? with Ryan Hurd

Ryan Hurd from the Davenant Institute joins us to talk about the "spiritual" and "literal" readings of Scripture. Evangelicals often misunderstand the "literal" sense as referring only to the historicity of the Bible. But the church throughout the ages understood the literal sense in terms of the "letters" of the text in addition to its historicity. The "literal" and "spiritual" readings do not oppose one another, but work together as a cohesive unit in order to deepen our understanding of God through his word. Ryan draws upon Origen, Augustine, and Aquinas in order to retrieve the classic senses of Scripture that Christians utilized for ages. We also talk about ways ordinary lay readers can grow in their reading of Scripture in a way that furthers their joy and worship of God.

Show Notes

Ryan Hurd is a systematic theologian whose area of expertise is doctrine of God, specifically the Trinity. His primary training is in the high medieval and early modern scholastics as well as the 20th century ressourcement movement. He has written a number of articles and regularly does translations of early modern theology sources; but his primary project is writing a systematics of the Trinity.

Master of the Sacred Page Video Series by Ryan Hurd