United States or French Guiana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I tell them that the shark, red fish, etc., must have been mere figurative names for chiefs and districts, and the finny troops under them were doubtless living men, but in all these stories the Samoans are rigid literalists, and believe in the very words of the tradition.
As we have said, the menace presented by such unintelligent literalists is probably a good deal more dangerous to a democracy than to a government of any other form.
If one will read the words in their context, he will see that this thought was utterly foreign to the mind of Paul. Indeed, one who will carefully study the epistles of Paul will find that he himself was a literalist of the literalists. If literalism is deadly, then the teachings of Paul are among the most deadly ever written.
In 2 Cor. iii. 6, we are told that “the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.” This is sometimes interpreted to mean that the literal interpretation of Scripture, the interpretation that takes it in its strict grammatical sense and makes it mean what it says, kills; but that some spiritual interpretation, an interpretation that “gives the spirit of the passage,” by making it mean something it does not say, gives life; and those who insist upon Scripture meaning exactly what it says are called “deadly literalists.” This is a favourite perversion of Scripture with those who do not like to take the Bible as meaning just what it says and who find themselves driven into a corner and are looking about for some convenient way of escape.
Gibson can scarcely be said to practise. . . . The difference between the Pre-Raphaelites and himself is deep and genuine, they being literalists and realists, in a certain sense, and he a pagan idealist. Methinks they have hold of the best end of the matter. March 18th.
Once and again, in the course of his Tetrachordon, he expresses his contempt for the grubbing literalists, who, in their microscopic infatuation over one text at a time, miss the view of the whole waving field of all the texts together. Yet he shows much ingenuity in parts of the verbal proof, and produces also commentators of repute who agreed with him.
Gibson can scarcely be said to practise. . . . . The difference between the Pre-Raphaelites and himself is deep and genuine, they being literalists and realists, in a certain sense, and he a pagan idealist. Methinks they have hold of the best end of the matter. March 18th.
I was appointed bodyservant to the paymaster of the ship, a bucolic old Bourbon of the most pronounced aristocracy. This excused me from military and naval duty, and I was privileged to wear plain clothes. I attached myself to a small group of pietists called Plymouth Brethren, orthodox theologians, literalists in interpretation of the Scriptures and exceedingly straight-laced in their morality.
What does it matter how deep you say in hundreds or thousands of feet the Canyon is, when you cannot see to the bottom of it? Strict literalists may stick out for the exact figures in feet and inches from rim to river elsewhere given as the scientists of the United States Geological Survey have recorded them but to me they are almost valueless.
On the other hand, poltroonery is the acknowledging an inferiority to be incurable. Incapacity of melioration is the only mortal distemper. There are people who can never understand a trope, or any second or expanded sense given to your words, or any humor, but remain literalists, after hearing the music and poetry and rhetoric and wit of seventy or eighty years.
Word Of The Day