Metaphorically speaking
Author: David Schlafer
The Revd Dr David Schlafer is a leading American homiletician; he is the author or editor of several books about preaching. |
“They were merely speaking metaphorically.”
Underlying such a dismissive assessment lies the assumption that speaking in metaphors is taking language on something of a holiday — a fantasy flight — an escape from the real world, the world that can only accurately be described by speaking of it “literally.”
The classic reply to that limited understanding of language (and the world), was once aptly articulated by philosopher of language, Jerry Gill:
Literal speech, he snorted,
is dead metaphor. What Gill asserts may not be “the whole truth, and nothing but the truth;” but there’s truth aplenty there – metaphor-infused as his own assessment is.
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The intent of so-called “literal” language is to tie things down — to name them as they are, to distinguish them from what in the world they’re not. The “point” of literal language, is to make a “point” — usually a single point.
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Metaphorical language, conversely, seeks to open things up — to make unusual, unexpected, even seemingly unlikely connections between many different dimensions of “what’s real.”
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Literal speech tries its best to put things in their proper place. Metaphorical language tries to set things loose — to open the doors of the categories in which literal speech can lock them; to let all those “locked down” things “come out and play”. (Taking a cue from Gill, I’m using metaphor here to describe the function of metaphor.)
What has this to do with Scripture, Liturgy, and Christian Living? All these brim and bubble, dance and sing with language infused by metaphor.
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Rather than primarily propounding “points” of doctrine and “principles” of conduct, Scripture speaks in a profusion of images, allusions, stories, illuminating gestures.
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Taking its cue from Scripture, the Liturgy of Christian Worship does the same.
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And Christian Living — it’s not a matter of pronouncing propositions anywhere near as much as it is a mode of being wherein we share with one another —well — images, allusions, stories, and actions that function as illuminating gestures.
The Second of the Ten Commandments clearly enjoins:
You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them. (In other words, “do not attach any fixed words about the divine to solid objects - and don’t even think of ascribing ultimate value “literally” to any created thing.)
But as long as they are not fused to physical objects (or political ideologies), words, images, stories, metaphors about God are not only allowed in Scripture, they are avidly encouraged and lavishly expressed. Metaphors run riot all across the pages of Scripture—all gesturing toward the God (and the divine-human drama) that transcends explanation, but is accessible in the multidimensional reality-gesturing that metaphors undertake.
Author/copyright permissions
Reproduced with permission of the author. It is an extract of a longer article which originally appeared in the parish magazine of the Church of the Redeemer, Bethesda.
Photo Credit: Lance Grandahi on Unsplash
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