Liberals

Liberal Christians feel that the writers of the Bible were inspired by God when they wrote their accounts, in the same way as a poet or an artist might be inspired. The writers of the Bible have insights into human life and into God and they were able to put these insights into words. Their insights can help others find their way to God. The writers might have had an experience of God and they have tried to put this experience into words, but they may have made mistakes. These writers held beliefs about the ancient world that we know are now wrong (for example, they believed the world was flat). They would have been influenced by the commonly accepted beliefs of the time about the position of women and slaves. Our progress today has been guided by God, liberal Christians would believe, and so we know now, that women and men are equal.

Liberal Christians point out that many passages of the Bible are poems, and they say we shouldn't interpret poetry literally, but symbolically. Some liberal may even say that the accounts of Jesus performing miracles should be taken symbolically. So when the Bible describes Jesus healing a blind man, the important point in that Jesus can make us see spiritual things in life, not that a man was healed of blindness. Some liberals might go so far as to say the Virgin Birth is a symbolic story, but a story showing that God was in Jesus more than in any other person.

What is important to a liberal Christian is finding the essential truth in the Bible stories, which they believe sometimes contain errors.