186 - Should the Scriptures Be Taken Literally? | Church History Matters I Science & Religion Series

Church History Matters

Scripture Central

Religion & Spirituality:christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.9 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2026

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The holy scriptures are sacred records written by real people—prophets shaped by their culture, language, and historical moment—yet inspired by the Holy Spirit. In this video, we explore how God works through imperfect humans to communicate eternal truths, and why the scriptures were never meant to function as scientific textbooks or literal play-by-play histories in every detail. Instead, the scriptures are primarily concerned with why we exist: our relationship with God, our divine identity as His children, and the purpose of life. They use poetry, symbolism, metaphor, and narrative to teach spiritual truths that transcend time and culture. Taking every verse literally can sometimes cause us to miss the deeper message God intends to convey. Science, by contrast, excels at answering different questions—how the universe works, who was involved, what happened, and when and where events occurred. When properly understood, science and scripture are not enemies but partners, each addressing different aspects of truth. This video invites viewers to adopt a faithful and thoughtful approach to scripture—one that honors inspiration, welcomes scholarship, and allows both revelation and reason to work together in the search for truth.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You can see the temptation for modern people to read Genesis 1 as a science text.
0:05.0	But don't do it.
0:06.0	The Bible is the result of a creative collaboration between humans and God.
0:11.0	What about when scientific and religious truths seem to clearly contradict each other?
0:17.0	The early Israelites would have no idea what he's talking about.
0:20.0	So he speaks after the manner of their language.
0:21.6	The possibility and the logistics of like gathering two of every kind onto a little boat made of gopher wood.
0:26.6	We're ready for some pretty sophisticated and intentional theological writing that will blow our minds.
0:33.6	They are not intending their writings to function as modern science textbooks.
0:41.2	People who try to set up a conflict between science and religion by assuming that everything
0:47.3	we read in the Bible should be taken literally.
0:49.8	Biblical authors are doing theology, not science.
0:53.4	This is maybe the part where I need to get on my soap
0:55.4	box a little bit. Scriptures are so cool. Hello, Scott. We are back. Second episode in our new
1:04.0	series on science and religion. And we got some, we got some serious material to chew on today, don't we?
1:12.8	Absolutely.
1:13.8	Yeah, we're just going to get into it today talking about scripture and science.
1:20.0	So that should be fun.
1:21.6	Yeah.
1:22.5	Yeah.
1:23.1	And we should mention, you know, you and I are known as church history guys, but we both taught
1:28.0	seminary and institute for a number of years and love the Old Testament. And it was a little
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 22 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Scripture Central, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Scripture Central and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.