Has Christianity Become Less Literal?

There is a line of thought that Christian thought has become incredibly less literal as time goes on because literal interpretations are no longer tenable. We are forced to look at the Old Testament and other portions as being purely parable, not because we have always believed as such, but because it is now standing on untenable ground. 

But this really is not the case at all...

The Old Testament has been interpreted very liberally, with almost a sort of mysterious meaning, and the literal meaning has been treated as surface level. 

St. Maximus the Confessor is famous for looking at many Old Testament passages as parables, and you see this in other very early Christians. 

Here is St. Maximus the Confessor writing in the early 7th century:

"Intelligence and reason are to be treated like the bondservants of Hebrew stock who are set free at the end of six years (cf Deut. 15:12). They labor like a servant and a handmaid for everyone who practices the virtues, since they conceive and realize the qualities of active virtue, and their whole strength is as it were drawn up against the demons that oppose the practice of the virtues. When they have completed the stage of practical philosophy - and this completion is represented by the sixth year, for the number six signifies practical philosophy - intelligence and reason are set free to devote themselves to spiritual contemplation, that is to say, they contemplate the inner essences of created beings."

(In the Philokalia)

This quotation comes from the 5th century saint, St. Neilos the Ascetic: 

"Similarly, when a slave has come to love his master and his own wife and children, he may reject true freedom because of his bonds of physical kinship: and so he becomes a slave for ever, allowing his ear to be pierced through with an awl (cf Exod. 21:6). He will never hear the word that can set him free, but will remain perpetually a slave in his love for present things. This is why the Law commanded that a woman's hand should be cut off if she seized hold of the genitals of a man who was fighting with another (cf. Deut. 25:11); in other words, when there was a battle between her thoughts, whether to choose worldly or heavenly blessings, she failed to choose the heavenly and grasped those which are subject to generation and corruption - for by the genitals the Law signifies the things which belong to the realm of change."

(in The Philokalia)

St. Neilos the Ascetic

One of the more grave issues that we face is that this sort of misinformation about the Church fathers and what they thought, coupled with assumptions about historical thought in general, begins to create and foster atheism. It puts all of Christianity on a much weaker footing than it really is by trying to box it into bad theology. 

Because of a lack of familiarity with actual, true Christianity, due to poor, secular public education, the faith has suffered immensely, and we are failing in our duties to put God in His rightful place. 

Freedom & God's Plan (A response in Reddit)

 Recently, I saw a Reddit thread that somewhat caught my eye and decided to have a go at a response. 

In the initial post which concerned the problem of evil and how it is not resolved by justice in the afterlife, I saw the following quotation: 

This falls into Epicurus' malevolent description. God is able to stop evil but doesn't because justice will be served. If you could prevent a crime from happening, the moral decision would be to try and stop it not WAIT for it to be committed then exert justice. If you see a baby strapped to a chainsaw by a maniac, do you un-do the baby from the chain-saw or wait for the baby to be chopped up, then strap the maniac to the chain-saw? Evil on earth either matters or it doesn't. If it matters, then God is malevolent for allowing it but if it doesn't matter I could just go about on a murder spree since God will "make all things new" or "send my victims to heaven and torture me forever".

My response came largely inspired by the Church fathers: 

 The actual purpose of life is not to be enjoyed by being constantly shielded from injustice, but rather, the purpose is to morally grow and to actually deal with and digest all of our experiences.

To believe that we should always simply enjoy life and not grow from it reminds me of this quotation from Ilias the Presbyter:

"In addition to voluntary suffering, you must also accept that which comes against your will - I mean slander, material losses and sickness. For if you do not accept these but rebel against them, you are like someone who wants to eat his bread only with honey, never with salt. Such a man does not always have pleasure as his companion, but always has nausea as his neighbor." (in the Philokalia)

As St. Peter of Damascus says:

"Every trial and temptation is permitted by God as a cure for some sick person's soul. Indeed, such trials not only confer on us forgiveness of our past and present sins, but also act as a check on sins not yet committed." (in the Philokalia)

Life is to be viewed as a journey, ultimately, and thus even the evil things which befall not just us, but which befall others that we hear about, are to be considered as tools for us in our own spiritual journeys.

The man who loses a leg in a drunken motorcycle accident experiences excruciating pain, and then all sorts of subsequent emotional and mental pain from the loss of his leg. Yet, he has the power to make this a tool for change in his life to save himself from alcoholism and mortal sin.

Of course, that is not to say that we should view people who fail to transform themselves immediately after a great trial as somehow a moral failure... that is not our place to judge, or even to think about. Nor is this some callous way of justifying any evil thing that we ourselves do or indulge in...

But it is appropriate to understand the purpose of life not as some mere exercise in counting merits and demerits, but as one in which we are supposed to advance ourselves and our neighbors, taking advantage of both the good and bad times to learn our lessons and move forward.