Do I take the Bible literally? Well, that would depend on what you mean when you say “literally.”

 Are you asking me whether I believe what the Bible teaches? Yes, I do, because the Bible is the voice of God. You don’t exist for yourself, but for Him. Unbelief is an ugly thing. I belong to the Lord, and I follow His voice.

But if you’re asking me if I read all biblical books as if they were laboratory logs, then the answer is no.

The biblical books are communicative events in which human authors communicate to us God’s will through the working of God’s Spirit in them. This is really what we mean when we say we read the Bible literally. We take it according to its litera—according to its language and type of literature.

If you’re asking me if I believe the Bible, again, my answer is yes.

I believe it and work to understand it, especially since I know that God inspired it in human language so that I could gain this understanding by carefully studying that human language.