{"id":1545,"date":"2013-08-29T00:06:47","date_gmt":"2013-08-29T07:06:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/?p=1545"},"modified":"2014-11-18T10:19:35","modified_gmt":"2014-11-18T17:19:35","slug":"metaphors-in-theology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/metaphors-in-theology\/","title":{"rendered":"Metaphors in Theology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having identified a multitude<\/a> of<\/a> metaphors<\/a> in the Nicene Creed, I have some concluding reflections.<\/p>\n

First of all, I hope that it is clear that this project had nothing to do with “watering down” theology.\u00a0 Most of the time, when people talk about taking theological ideas metaphorically, they mean that they don’t really believe it.\u00a0 If someone says that they believe “God is a metaphor” (i.e. for the sacredness of the world, or compassion for the needy, or whatever), that means that they don’t really believe in God; they’re actually atheists cloaking themselves in religious language.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, if there really is<\/em> a Creator of infinite power and wisdom who designed the Universe, it makes sense that he would be beyond our capability to grasp.\u00a0 We can say what God is not, but we cannot understand him in any positive way except by making metaphors.\u00a0 Precisely because we Christians believe that God exists, we have to resort to metaphors in order to describe him.<\/p>\n

You may have noticed that many of the metaphors I pointed out in the Creed are actually ordinary figures of speech which are used all the time by regular speakers.\u00a0 While others are attempting to describe aspects of the Divine Nature, which transcends all understanding.\u00a0 I make no apology for including both of these together.\u00a0 Metaphors are practical as well as mystical.\u00a0 The human mind is an incorrigable metaphor-machine, and we pretty much resort to metaphors all the time, even for understanding things which are closer to earth than God.\u00a0 Yes, Theology is metaphorical\u2014but then again so is everything else.<\/p>\n

Perhaps this is another way in which we humans are created in the “image of God”.\u00a0 Even God the Father, it seems, uses a metaphor to understand himself: his self-understanding is the Word (the rationality, intelligence, self-expresssion) of God which is coeternal with him.\u00a0 It turns out though, that the Son is a quite excellent metaphor for representing the Father, since he is exactly like him in every respect.\u00a0 (Hint: this paragraph contains another metaphor).<\/p>\n

Now, let me draw out some implications for how we do Theology.\u00a0 Atheists love to point out that the biblical description of God is full of contradictions.\u00a0 This is, of course, quite true and a natural consequence of the fact that we understand God through metaphors.\u00a0 That is, we say that God is like <\/em>a Father, or like <\/em>a Judge, etc.\u00a0 God is unchanging, and yet he changes his mind when we intercede for others.\u00a0 He cannot be contained in the highest heavens, yet he tells Jesus to sit at his right hand.\u00a0 All things are possible for him, yet it is impossible for him to lie.\u00a0 He dwells in impenetrable darkness, and yet in him there is no darkness at all.<\/p>\n

If the metaphors contradict each other, that doesn’t mean that the reality is self-contradictory.\u00a0 It just means that the images <\/em>conflict, if you take them literally.\u00a0 But you aren’t supposed to take them all literally.\u00a0 Paradox is a way of seeing the invisible.\u00a0 You can see in three dimensions precisely because the image in your left eye doesn’t quite agree with the image in your right eye.<\/p>\n

(This should be enough to show why we Christians don’t have to literally believe that 1 = 3.\u00a0 It’s fun to express things in a paradoxical way, but here we’ve helped you out a little by inventing some vocabulary.\u00a0 The thing that God is one of is called, in technical language his substance <\/em>or essence<\/em>.\u00a0 The thing that he is three of is called persons<\/em> or hypostases.\u00a0 <\/em>1 substance = 3 persons is not actually a logical contradiction.)<\/p>\n

You might wonder what ties all of this speculation down.\u00a0 How do we know our metaphors correspond to an actual objective reality?\u00a0 The answer is simple.\u00a0 Metaphors about the beauty of nature, or social justice, cannot turn water into wine, or raise the dead.\u00a0 In the end, Theology is about selecting the most reasonable<\/a> theories<\/a> which explain the sense-data<\/a> of certain human beings.\u00a0 Just like, you know, Science.<\/p>\n

But if we can’t recognize the metaphors in Theology, then of course we will end up thinking it is superstitious and ignorant and cannot be reconciled with Science.<\/p>\n

Rationalists like to tell a narrative something like this:\u00a0 “The ancients were ignorant and made up a bunch of mythology which they took literally, but now we know that it contradicts Science\u2122.\u00a0 Sensible atheists like ourselves reject this mythology, while the more sensible among religious people manage to hold onto it, by reinterpreting most of it to be metaphors.\u00a0 Yet if people had known about Science\u2122 from the beginning, they never would have believed in God or heaven or angels or any of that.”\u00a0 As if the culture which gave us the Song of Solomon<\/a> was incapable of understanding the idea of metaphor!<\/p>\n

Many of the images, taken literally, would indeed be silly.\u00a0 For example, the Bible is full of body-language descriptions of God, yet no serious Christian theologian has ever<\/em> thought that the Father has a body.\u00a0 That’s because the ability to use and recognize metaphors didn’t come down from Heaven to Earth during the Age of Enlightenment.\u00a0\u00a0 It has always been with us, as long as there have been human beings.\u00a0 So if we don’t watch it, people might even use metaphors to descibe scientific theories<\/a>!<\/p>\n

Of course, even if people did mistakenly believe something to be literal, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the core idea is eliminated by reinterpreting some of the details as being metaphorical.\u00a0 (There’s a good discussion about this in St. Lewis’ book on Miracles<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

As a specific example, there is one <\/em>example of something I think is a metaphor in the Nicene Creed, which historically at least some Christians have taken literally, although almost no one would nowadays.\u00a0 I refer to Heaven being literally up, somewhere among or outside the planets or stars.\u00a0 This is most famously illustrated in St. Dante’s Paradiso<\/a>, in which the blessed in heaven are assigned positions associated with the various planets.\u00a0 Dante himself was certainly aware of the allegory in his own poem, but I assume he was illustrating a common conception.\u00a0 Arguably, then, this is an exception to my statement<\/a> that the metaphors in the Creed “would have been understood by educated ancient people”.<\/p>\n

So let’s suppose that the Apostles, when they witnessed Jesus’ Ascension<\/a>, literally believed that Heaven is above the Earth.\u00a0 What of it?\u00a0 Either they actually saw what looked like Jesus going into the sky or they didn’t.\u00a0 If they didn’t see it, then Christian theology is just wrong, apart from any considerations involving Science.\u00a0 If they did see it, we still need to explain it somehow, even if we understand it using different imagery than the Apostles did.\u00a0 Although, since our own image of going to another universe would probably be just as metaphorical as theirs, maybe we should just stick with their metaphor, once we recognize that it is a metaphor.\u00a0 It was, after all, the metaphor Jesus<\/em> was using, to communicate something about where he was going.<\/p>\n

I’m not trying to say that all of the tensions between Science and Religion instantly disappear, once we recognize the existence of metaphors.\u00a0 There are substantive issues to discuss.\u00a0 But we won’t be able to discuss them, if we can’t distinguish the symbolism from the claims about reality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having identified a multitude of metaphors in the Nicene Creed, I have some concluding reflections. First of all, I hope that it is clear that this project had nothing to do with “watering down” theology.\u00a0 Most of the time, when people talk about taking theological ideas metaphorically, they mean that they don’t really believe it.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theological-method"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1545"}],"version-history":[{"count":51,"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1595,"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions\/1595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wall.org\/~aron\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}