But those who had relegated this kind of teaching to the literalists, the fundamentalists, the closed-minded evangelicals, had been left behind. All of a sudden it was all right to take Scripture at its word!
This is like the academic equivalent of that fantasy in A Christmas Story where Ralphie imagines he’ll go blind from soap poisoning. It’s that impulse to rub it in one’s detractors’ faces when one is finally proven right.
