I take The Bible Literally and beleive in Universal Salvation.

It annoys me how it's only with The Bible where people feel the need to go down this rabbit hole of "do you take the figures of speech literally?", no other book is talked about that way.  And yes there are also accounts of visions and dreams that use symbolic imagery.

One Baptist Pastor I used to know said he prefers to say he takes The Bible Seriously rather then Literally.  The thing is there are people who take nothing literally and feel from their POV they're taking it just as seriously.

What's important to be understood is that I'm a Six-Day Young Earth Creationist, and I believe in a literal Virgin Birth and Bodily Resurrection from The Dead.

I watched Brad Jersak's video about "How the Church Fathers interpreted Scripture" in which he makes many valid points I agree with.  But every time a prominent figure in the Universal Salvation community makes clear they're not a Creationist and don't take all of The Bible Literally, it reinforces a perception that you have to do that to believe God will Save Everyone.  But for me this doctrine is proven because I take Romans 5 and Ezekiel 16 highly literally.

Now I'm also not gonna say you have to agree with me on how to interpret Genesis to be a "True Christian", I'm not interested in heretic hunting.  The issue is I want Literalists to know that the Literal interpretation of Scripture supports Universal Salvation.  Ezekiel 16 taken literally promises restoration for Sodom.

Peter Hiett has an approach to Genesis and Revelation that is kind of similar to Jersak's, though he defines his view as being very literal.  The whole "time is relative from the viewpoint" argument could be useful to Creation Science.  But I'm firmly against any view that has any kind of Death already happening prior to Adam's Sin not even mainly because of anything Genesis says, but because of Romans 5, 1 Corinthians 15 and 2 Peter 3, those Chapters make a literal historical understanding of Genesis vital to New Testament theology.

Brad Jersak talks about The Bible coming in different genres, and yes I agree the Psalms and Job are not history books.  And most of Jesus parables I don't think are events that literally happened either.

But the problem is when does the Book of Genesis change genre from Myth to History?  Does it ever? Because it's clearly presenting itself as an ongoing narrative, the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 are there to connect it's three different eras.  And then Exodus and Numbers genealogically link themselves to the later part of Genesis.

And Genesis has nothing truly comparable to what you see in Pagan myths, there are no embodiments of the elements or abstract concepts that also behave like sentient life forms.  Nor any myths about the Sun just not doing her job for awhile and hiding in a cave, we have an example of that at Ugarit but it didn't make it into The Bible.

Jersak says that a "man literally named Man and a woman named Living" is clearly a symbolic myth.  But you see all Hebrew names have meanings, Ancient languages weren't like modern English, all their names also were common words.  Adam's name means Human because his descendants were named after him, that's actually not what it originally meant, he was named after the substance he was made from.

It is only with Early Genesis that there is this attitude that thinking these events literally happened must somehow take away from learning it's applicable lessons.  I have a study called "Ye Hath God Said", I know full well there is a lesson to be learned here.  But we also learn lessons from the narratives told about Jesus and the Kings & Prophets of Ancient Israel, that doesn't mean those events didn't happen.

I'm absolutely someone who understands the importance of context, I just did a post on Dinosaurs and Dragons where I talk about the difference between literal zoological descriptions of animals and animals being used symbolically.

Brad Jersak talks about the Early Church as if none of them valued Literalism.  But actually the Antiochene School did, however their tradition was suppressed by Justinian following the 5th Ecumenical Council.

He also says that we should be careful about calling The Bible the Word of God because Jesus is The Word of God.  "Logos" is what's used of that title of Jesus in John 1, 1st John 1 and 1st John 5.  When Paul in Ephesians 6 refers to "the Sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God", he says Rhema.  Church tradition has always understood there to be a distinction between between the Logos and the Rhema.

The issue when addressing the doctrine of Endless Torment in "Hell" isn't about if they're literal or not.  Even if you want to believe the KJV rendering is literally true it's still a matter of what's being called "Eternal" and what even does "Eternal" truly mean.  And then after that is the issue of understanding what the Greek and Hebrew truly said.

The only area where my approach can even be slightly called a less literal one is how I approach the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man in Luke 16.  But again that is a parable, it's those wanting to Hellfire Preach from it treating it different then how they do other parables.  And I've done a post on that subject fully showing that even if it is a Literal event that actually happened it still doesn't prove endless torment.  The idea of endless punishment is refuted by Luke 12.