One can derive metaphors from an actual event; but to claim that the resurrection is not an actual event is to confess oneself NOT to be a Christian.
When it comes down to brass tacks, if you can allegorize or symbolize the turning of the river to blood in Exodus Chapter 7, then every verse of scripture is open to being symbolized. The virgin birth... nothing but a symbol, it didn't really happen. Christ's crucifixion... it really didn't happen but it symbolizes a sacrifice for our sins. The resurrection... clearly that is symbolic of our spiritual rebirth, but you don't expect anyone to believe that a man could literally come back from the dead, do you? The Ten Commandments... you don't think God really wrote on tablets of stone do you? How silly. Moses... You don't really believe there was a "Moses" do you? He was a compendium of several people. And all those miracles? Just exaggeration by the authors.
Holy Cow xzins. When I see these threads go this way, I thank God that I was born again into a fundamentalist literalist dispensationalist bible believing church, you know, the type that believes that when God said he was turning the river into blood, that it really was turned into blood, and where when God says that he made the heavens and the earth and all that in them is in six days, that he did it exactly as he said.
Call me an ingorant country bumpkin. But I believe the bible. Where it is subject to literal interpretation (no matter how unbelievable) it is to be interpreted literally. When God says he's going to turn the moon into blood, you can bank on it. The moon will be turned to blood. It won't simply be an illustion. It will be real. I'm not going to try to explain it. I'm just going to believe it.