the absurdities of the Bible

Nearly everyone who's anyone in theological circles loves to claim St Augustine as a theologian extraordinaire. We quote him often, finding within him a church father to ground any number of our ideas. 

Since that's true, my fundamentalist brothers and sisters often find it odd that I quote Augustine to illustrate the absurdities of a strict biblical literalism.  

Now to be honest, I think there's a place for a literal reading -- if by "literal" one means that the biblical text is restrained in its meanings by what the original audiences would have heard and read.  That kind of historically-grounded reading is at the heart of how I read the text.  That said, this historically-informed "literalism" often leads in directions that make me, my liberal friends, and my conservative friends anxious.  Because it means approaching the Bible with a humble, listening ear, one that is grounded in the breadth and depth of truth that we find in history, science, economics, psychology, sociology, etc., too. 

But it's true.  If you're strictly literal -- in a one-to-one correspondence way -- with this text, you come away with so many absurdities. 

To quote St Augustine:

I began to believe that the Catholic faith, which I had thought impossible to defend against the objections of the Manichees, might fairly be maintained, especially since I had heard one passage after another in the Old Testament figuratively explained.  These passages had been death to me when I took them literally, but once I heard them explained in their spiritual meaning I began to blame myself for my despair, at least insofar as it had led me to suppose that it was quite impossible to counter people who hated and derided the law and the prophets (Confessions 5.14). 

I was glad too that at last I had been shown how to interpret the ancient Scriptures of the law and the prophets in a different light from that which had previously made them seem absurd ...  I was pleased to hear that in his sermons to the people Ambrose often repeated the text.  The written law inflicts death, whereas the spiritual law brings life, as though this were a rule upon which he wished to insist most carefully.  And when he lifted the veil of mystery and disclosed the spiritual meaning of the text which, taken literally, appeared to contain the most unlikely doctrines, I was not aggrieved by what he said, although I did not not know whether it was true (Confessions 4.4). 

Now, I don't think "allegorical" interpretation is exactly the way I want to go either.  But if we're honest, even about Augustine, my friends who say "The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it", just aren't being fair with this text.