Either I have spoken to you in person or I have spoken with someone with the same school of thought. You gave me the coolest dejavu!

Geoff, I believe all of the points made by The Bish have legit roots. He’s not making this up. (and by legit, I don’t mean doctrinal, rather they are a legitimate part of certain schools of thought some of which were shared by the early brethren.)

So far we have two votes for metaphor (not counting mine), one 50/50, and one 75/25 for literal.

Just for statistics sake.
. Eden – figurative
. Tree of Life – figurative
. Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil – figurative
. Cherubim and a flaming sword – figurative
. Adam and Eve – literal
. Adiaphotos(Cain) and Amilabes(Abel) – literal
. Serpent – figurative
. Lucifer – literal
. Protestant preacher – figurative
. Pre-mortal Peter, James and John – figurative
. Tree of Lehi – figurative
. Dream of Lehi – figurative

Having read more of your posts on personal revelation, I now feel I have a better understanding of where you are coming from. I am sure I am oversimplifying by trying to summarize your position in one sentence, but it seems that you are basically saying that we start out unsure of how to identify and interpret the revelation that we receive, but that we can get better. I cannot argue with that. I appreciate your encouragement to us to make the effort to get better.

I find myself in many ways identifying with Glenn in your post, Personal Revelation: Where to Start. But there are differences. I do not have Glenn’s worries about a few people “abusing personal revelation”, as he puts it. I have long ago accepted that phenomenon as an inescapable part of human nature and decided not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Glenn said, “I value the role that both the skeptic and the believer play in my life, but it really is a struggle to keep them from ripping each other’s heads off.” My skeptic and believer have signed a truce and are now happily working together for me. I have through a long process of patiently and fairly (honestly) examining both their views nursed my believer into admitting that he does not “know” anything (by my definition of the word “know”) and my skeptic into admitting the same. I do not make decisions anymore without consulting both, and the three of us seem to make a pretty good team for discovering the truth. (But of course, how would I know? That’s a joke—partially.) I decided to call for the truce and let them both have their say from then on, because like Glenn, I finally realized the value of both of their views, but apparently, unlike Glenn, (no criticism of Glenn intended) I realized that I can chose which one’s viewpoint to blend into my view of reality at any given time without having to silence the other. And no view that I synthesize has to be permanent. As with every other issue of faith that I can think of, in the case of personal revelation, my skeptic and my believer both have valuable insights. They both deserve to be heard.

Thanks for your interesting and thought-provoking blog, Geoff.

Any offense taken was washed away with my characteristically acerbic comment #86.

Jacob J.,
I didn’t claim in #83 that Geoff was 100% sure of his methods. Nor did I say the two of you believe whatever you want. I assumed that because Geoff appeared to be ignoring my comment about the “question of the ‘validity of the scriptures’” that he was ignoring the issue (choosing the blue pill). I shouldn’t have assumed. I never said you didn’t understand your epistemelogical limitations. That’s one of the things I was trying to determine. Sorry if you felt you were being insulted. That was not my intention.

Thank you both for answering my questions.

You started here by asking if there were any methods other than arbitrarily deciding what seems plausible to us for figuring out what in the scriptures should be taken literally. I offered a post that suggested genre and historical context as methods for figuring out when some things are not literal. You countered that genre and historical context are just smoke screens for someone’s a priori pre-conclusions.

I don’t know how we got from there to you thinking we don’t understand our epistemelogical limitations.

Let me ask you this: You have been arguing that we believe whatever we want and ignore all contrary evidence. What evidence do you have to support that point of view? Or is it just the thing that you believe because you want to despite any contrary evidence?