Christ's message is eternal... but given at a certain point in history.

Christians rightly say that the truth revealed in Christ is not temporary, but rather eternal. That is true, but it does not mean literalism and it does not mean that we are to drop interpretation. The mistake comes when some believers quietly turn that into a different claim: because the truth is eternal, every biblical utterance should be treated as though it arrived outside history and therefore needs no interpretation any longer, but rather has to be taken literally in the same way 2000 years ago as now. That is not fidelity. It is a refusal to take the form of revelation seriously. It is refusal to use the very rationality that God gave us.

God revealed Himself at a point in time and He spoke through people, in a language, inside a history, under particular conditions, and finally through the Incarnation itself. The Word became flesh, and that means revelation came through time on purpose. Context is part of the way God chose to speak. That's why he SUMMARIZED the LAW so we're clear how to interpret it¹. We have to interpret the laws and his message through those lenses. Including Paul's letters.

That is why flat literalism is such a poor approach. It mistakes mental lazyness for faithfulness and pretends obedience means refusing to use your brain, refusing to use the luxury of context and perspective that WE have now that Jesus's immediate audience DID NOT. But the Church never had the luxury of living that way. Christian life immediately raised questions that bare repetition could not settle. What of the Gentiles? What of the Mosaic law? What of communities living under different conditions and pressures? The need for interpretation did not arrive with modern liberalism. It arrived with the life of the Church itself.

Literalism is not even traditional. Ever since the very beginning the Church fathers were clear that much of the Bible is metaphorical or allegorical in Nature and has to be interpreted. The book was NOT meant to be read without context and teaching. That's why the Church exists. It is a protestant innovation to take it literally an to put it above interpretation, in an effort to undermine the Church's influence. Well, that backfired didn't it? Not even Luther would advocate for the literalism you see Evangelicals push in the US. Not even Luther would look at the data we have now and still say "yes, the earth is 6000 years old".

And the ironic part is that literalists do not even follow literalism consistently. The second a verse becomes inconvenient, interpretation suddenly appears again. “That was symbolic.” “That was cultural.” “That was fulfilled.” Exactly. That is called hermeneutics. The Church just has the honesty to admit interpretation is unavoidable instead of pretending every random guy with a study Bible is reading Scripture in some perfectly “plain” way.

And look at the results. If the Bible were truly self-interpreting in the way Evangelicals claim, Protestantism would not have exploded into thousands of denominations all contradicting each other while claiming the Holy Spirit personally endorsed their reading.

The Church understood from the beginning that Scripture had to be read with history, tradition, philosophy, and teaching. Augustine, Aquinas, the Fathers, none of them treated the Bible like a divine instruction manual. Christianity survived for 2,000 years with nuance intact. Then modern fundamentalism shows up and acts like faith means proudly refusing context, scholarship, and basic literary understanding.

Look, Jesus, in his message, in context was liberating to Women. He empowered them, he addressed them in a time when no one would. He allowed them to touch him in public and would discuss theology with them. He approached the criminals, the tax-collectors (that one is hard...), the prostitutes. He was inclusive. If you're using the Church and His words to be exclussive, you're not following. You're twisting His words to support yours.