Rational Agnostic
Well-Known Member
Rival most certainly did not make up these categories. They appear all across Christian studies, under various titles depending on denomination.
Here is but one example:
Which Laws Apply? by R.C. Sproul
If this is new to you then you aren't nearly as researched on Christian studies, apologetics or otherwise, as you think.
I know that Rival did not make up the categories, but I think that the Christian apologists did make them up arbitrarily. Which is fine if that's what they want to do. But someone claiming to be a biblical literalist who eats shrimp while claiming homosexuality is a sin is not really a biblical literalist. That is the main point of the thread. Perhaps I'm more biased in this way because I grew up around a lot of hard-core Fundamentalists who claimed to take all of the Bible literally, even though simple illustrations like this show that they really don't take it literally.