I get asked this question quite a lot. Usually more aggressively in the way of "everybody knows you cant trust the bible, its not to be taken literally" or things along those lines. But this is not actually a very hard question to answer. But I will tell you now that when you do answer this question it will lead to harder ones.
Lets say you decide to write an account of the events of the summer last year. You send it into your local newspaper and explain that this is a true story of the events of last summer and you were there for some of the events as well you also interviewed eye witnesses about the events. But when it gets published it gets published under fiction, or in the poetry section. This would make no sense at all. You were very clear this was non fiction, and was not up to personal interpretation.
Which brings us to a book like Luke-Acts. How does he start the account? This is from the ESV
"Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, 2 just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, 3 it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4 that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught."
Luke states that he has complied a narrative, interviewed eye witnesses, followed things closely, and has written them down in an orderly fashion. There is no room here for anyone to suggest that it can be interpreted as symbol or metaphor, or that it is up for interpretation. Someone could suggest that it is a lie. That is one of the tough questions that will follow after you address this concern We will talk about that in a future blog about how you can know the Bible to be true.
The main point here is context. In all documents context is key. "Context context context" if I were to write in this blog that yesterday here in Vancouver it was raining cats and dogs, you would immediately know what I was talking about and probably wouldn't decide that my account was unreliable. There is symbol, and metaphor in the Bible. Actually the bible is filled with all the beautiful uses of literature. But how do you know what is real, and what is interpretive? Context, just like you would understand any other document.
