Originally Posted by
dwashbur
I get what you're saying, but I always have difficulty with the phrase "absolute truth." The problem is that it means different things to different people. Too many people think it means "everything is literally true." If that's the case then 1 Sam 13:1 is a problem, because it says "Saul was years old when he became king." Our translations usually supply "30" because a few very late copies of the Septuagint have it. In the Hebrew, there's no number. So I have difficulty seeing such a statement as "literally true." Revelation 4:6-8? Are those monsters literal? If they are, heaven sounds like one scary place! The list goes on. One person sees these things and understands that we're dealing with various types of literature and language, figures of speech, word pictures and all the rest, as well as problems with the way the Bible has come down to us, a la 1 Sam 13:1 (obviously a word has dropped out somewhere along the way). But another person sees those problems and can't acknowledge them, because it's all or nothing for them: either we have a perfect King James just the way Paul wrote it, or we're tearing down the Scriptures and the faith.
The truth is, there ARE a lot of gray areas in the Bible. At least one person lies and God praises them for it. There's a lot of that sort of thing, and we don't do ourselves any good by not facing it and dealing with it.