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Metaphors, Symbols, Analogies and God the Father

What do Christians generally mean when they use the term “Father” for God? Is there an implied ontology of gender in the divine appellation “Father”? What images did the term convey for Lactantius?

Christians alternatively have viewed the concept “Father” (with God being the referent) as literal, symbolic, metaphorical, analogical or catalogical in nature. First, we will make a distinction between symbolic and metaphorical usage in Bloesch’s paradigm and Sallie McFague’s, then subsequently discuss the analogical and catalogical uses that Bloesch analyzes.

Metaphors and symbols. Everil Cameron has reviewed the role that metaphoricity and rhetoric play in Christian discourse. She writes: “Metaphor is at the heart of Christian language.”[1] Augustine agrees, citing the Hebrew prophets as examples of those who “conceal” celestial truths under the guise of metaphorical speech.[2] Writing in the thirteenth century of our common era, Thomas Aquinas also explained the nexus between God’s self-disclosure and metaphorical vocalizations in the following way: “Now we are of the kind to reach the world of intelligence through the world of sense, since all knowledge takes its rise from sensation. Congenially, then, holy Scripture delivers spiritual things to us beneath metaphors, taken from bodily things.”[3] Thomas seems to predicate the term “father” of God not metaphorically but properly (See ST 1.33.2 and Zonana 57). Father distinguishes the Father from other persons in the Trinity. It is predicated first of God, as to the thing signified (res significata), then of creatures, based on Thomas’ reading of Eph 3:14-15. The manner of signifying is the modus significandi. On the other hand, father is not predicated first of God according to the human modus significandi. Although Thomas reasons that “Father” is a divine proper name, he recognizes the significant role that metaphors play in communicating divine verities.

Biblical language is evidently “reality depicting” in that it mediates what is ultimately real by means of literary images or metaphors. Additionally, the words of scripture posit a veridical relationship between God and the world.[4] Scriptural metaphors such as “King” or “Father” presuppose divine personal agency, which provides a basis for God’s authentic rapport (i.e. a relation of mutual understanding or trust and agreement) with the world.[5] Father accordingly is not an anomalous metaphor for the Judeo-Christian tradition; neither is it an unconventional or alienating term for most Christians.[6] This particular divine appellation is a standard, foundational Christian metaphor that readily calls to mind images of a biological male parent.[7] For this reason, the trope “Father” may admittedly now and again evoke negative conceptual associations.[8] Conversely, so may the term “mother.” Nevertheless, paternal or maternal abuse should not preclude one from using “Father” terminology for the divine one. The Latin axiom, “Abusus non tollit usum” is apropos here.[9] As a result, Christians may not desire to repudiate the metaphor “Father,” rejecting it as foundational, on the basis of traumatic childhood experiences or familial disfunctionality alone.[10] In this case, one may need to demarcate between the speaker-intended meaning of a signifier and its lexical meaning.[11] That is to say, it is requisite to differentiate a referring-expression’s pragmaticity from its semanticity, its generalized conversational implicature from its communal-based lexical meaning.

Donald Bloesch argues that metaphors originate “in cultural experience and only imperfectly” describe the reality to which they point.[12] Their inadequacy stems from the fact that they are apparent locutionary and cognitive products of factical existence in toto. As such, metaphors are historically conditioned concepts that impoverishly signify the divine. Concurring with Bloesch in this regard, Marsh avers: “All our expressions are metaphors drawn from our own experience to express what God means to us.”[13] However, if all theological metaphors derive from human language, then they all equivocally and, most likely, inadequately name God.[14] Bloesch suggests that one cannot legitimately conclude there is a necessary semantic relationship between a theological metaphor and its transcendent referent.[15] Hence, instead of construing the term “Father” as a metaphor, Bloesch contends that this term is a “symbol” which corresponds ontologically (in some important way) to its transcendent referent.[16] The exact nature of a “symbol” in Bloesch’s paradigm will be discussed below.

Symbols and analogies. Bloesch defines the lexeme “symbol” as “any kind of imagistic language whose meaning cannot be directly comprehended by theoretical reason.”[17] Being “imagistic,” Bloesch argues that symbols imperfectly reflect what they set out to describe. Yet, unlike metaphors, they point to extramental realities, although Bloesch subsumes metaphors and analogies under the same general rubric “symbol.” Ultimately, Bloesch labors under the Barthian notion that metaphorical knowledge is not “real” (i.e. conceptual) knowledge, whereas analogies[18] do convey “conceptual content.”[19] The upshot of Bloesch’s analysis is that propositions such as “God is a Rock” are considered metaphorical, but the assertion “God is the Father of Jesus Christ” is said to be analogical.[20] Hence, there is an “underlying congruity” that obtains vis-à-vis two distinct entities, namely, God and human fathers.[21] The divine term “Father,” Bloesch claims, is a hierarchical, organic and analogical symbol that does not imply the Christian deity is male.[22] Forsooth, divine fatherhood encompasses divine motherhood: there is a sense in which God is both Father and Mother to creation.[23] Indeed, historically, most Christians (including Lactantius) have not ontologized God’s gender with respect to his designation “Father.” God transcends gender for them.[24]

Since “Father” supposedly functions as a divine symbol, rather than a metaphor, Bloesch indicates that this divine appellation is a datum of special revelation, not human experience; it is neither factical nor historically conditioned nor psychically nor sociologically constructed but emanates from divine self-disclosure in the person of Jesus Christ.[25] For Bloesch, the term “Father” is therefore “the controlling symbol” for God,[26] and it is “closer to being literal” since its signification is essentially transparent.[27] Nevertheless, God’s paternitas challenges common human understandings of paternitas, calling these so-called patriarchal structures into question and simultaneously making abusive structures render an account to God.[28]

Catalogies. In contrast to metaphors and analogies, catalogies are supposedly products of divine self-disclosure, not human experience. They come from above, thus the name catalogies.[29] One knows what divine terms such as Father mean by realizing that God is our heavenly father (ibid). Soskice contends that heresy insists on viewing God as a literal Father (Speaking the Christian God, p. 83). See O’Collins 13: Metaphor asserts identity between two subjects and thereby generates “new perspectives on reality . . .” such as “Christ is the lion of Judah.”

Non-Metaphorical Speech and God

Is all human discourse concerning God metaphorical in nature? Is it possible to speak literally regarding God, especially where his fatherhood is concerned? Influenced somewhat by Janet Soskice, Paul Brassey claims that the ostensible literary redaction “Deutero-Isaiah” (DI) implies that any affirmatory locution respecting God is of necessity metaphorical: “Human language must fail in direct description of the deity; it is inadequate to the task.”[30] According to Brassey, all divine referring-expressions in DI are metasememic in nature, not literal.[31] This intimates that one cannot refer to God univocally; all theological discourse is putatively a delineation of both what is and what is not the case metaphysically or in terms of objective properties.

Alternatively, some theoreticians have suggested that not every locution or enunciative act concerning God is metaphorical, however.[32] John Cooper distinguishes between metaphor as a figure of speech and all language being “metaphorical” by virtue of the inherent finitude of rational creaturely essences and their respective speech-acts.[33] For instance, while divine titles may subsist within the matrix of inadequate human langue or parole, appellations designating the divine one are not necessarily metaphorical in the sense that they are tropes (e.g. egw eimi ho wn is evidently not tropic). Additionally, Thomas Aquinas contends that one may predicate certain expressions of God (viz. “Father”) properly.[34] Context and intent of signification apparently determine whether divine names are metaphorical or proper markers of identification.[35]

Another thinker, who believes that not all God-talk is metaphorical, is Duns Scotus (1266-1308 CE). Apophatic or negative theology (via negativa) has a protracted venerable history in the Christian tradition. Nevertheless, Scotus argues that denials concerning the divine essence are only intelligible “in terms of some affirmation.”[36] He contends that if we as rational creaturely essences deny that God is X, Y or Z, “it is because we wish to do away with something inconsistent with what we have already affirmed.”[37] This, of course, calls to mind Scotus’ univocity of being theory, his suggestion that univocal predication with reference to God is, under certain circumstances, possible.[38] But what does the Subtle Doctor mean by the term “univocity”?

Scotus believes “that concept [is] univocal which possesses sufficient unity in itself, so that to affirm and deny it of one and the same thing would be a contradiction.”[39] For instance, we predicate the concept “being” of necessary and contingent beings, God and creatures. However, if the term “being,” which can reference one entity, does not have the same lexemic value when we predicate it of either God or creaturely essences, then it has no meaning at all for human communicative agents vis-à-vis God.[40] And a God about whom one cannot articulate significatively soon becomes irrelevant. Moreover, John Sanders suggests that if literal predication to God is not possible, then “we will be back in the cave of agnosticism.”[41] Thus, while Scotus too posits a theory of analogy pertaining to speech about God, the Subtle Doctor also maintains that the concept of analogy presupposes univocity.[42] There are two other reasons that Scotus espouses univocal speech regarding God though. First, if the term “good” does not have a univocal denotation when we apply it to both God and creatures, it seems somewhat unfeasible to predicate “good” of either God or the created order.[43] Second, Scotus thinks that if we cannot know what God is, we cannot know that he is. Hence, there must exist some context in which one can speak univocally with reference to the creator of all things.

In conclusion, it is clear that there is an ongoing lively debate regarding the nature of metaphor and God’s paternity and how Christians should linguistically communicate divine paternity. Nevertheless, the point most germane for the present study is the Lactantian concept of God the Father. His writings suggest that the ancient rhetor thought of the divine appellation “Father” as a metaphor. In Aristotelian terms, metaphors are nouns or names transferred from one entity to another. Cicero espoused this view and Lactantius no doubt held it as well. The manifold ways in which Lactantius refers to God as Father also imply that he is employing the term metasememically and rhetorically, not properly. Substantiation for these points will be presented in the remaining chapters of this study.

Excursus: Nietzsche and Metaphor

Nietzsche insists that contexts are never “absolutely determinable.”[44] They are mutable, in a constant state of flux, thus ever partaking of Heraclitean becoming. Nietzsche also thinks that there are no brute facts, only institutional so-called “facts.” Metaphor therefore filters all forms of human perception and all cognition takes place under the aspect of indirection.

Nietzsche further argues that metaphors are words that bridge distinct entities. All naming is accordingly an abuse of language; it is catachrestic. For Nietzsche, metaphors are not “natural kinds” but contingent, cultural or factical social constructions.[45] He explicitly writes that there are no facts, only interpretations. That is, there are no facts in themselves or, at least, we cannot establish that there are facta bruta.[46] But it is no wonder that Nietzsche refuses to believe there are facta bruta since he claims that God is dead and ultimately no extrametaphorical grounding for the play of signifiers.[47]

Unfortunately, Nietzsche does not explicitly define the referring expression “metaphor.”[48] However, he conscripts Ubertragung and ubertragen in order that he may taxonomize “the basic operation of tropes in general rather than name metaphor as such.”[49] Ubertragen in Nietzsche evidently designates the “central operation of tropic economy as such.”[50] This “tropic economy as such” would include metaphor proper, metonymy and synecdoche, all of which Nietzsche views as different forms of metasememic transference.[51]

We can observe an example of such thinking, when we find Nietzsche positing an identity between Will and Wave (Wille und Welle) aphoristically in the posthumously named The Will to Power.[52] The sensible objects of the phenomenal realm correspond to subjective or intentional states. Consequently, the distinction between metaphor and world breaks down in the writings of Nietzsche.[53] In other words, the empirical world of sensibilia is merely the inner world externalized.[54] The phenomenal realm is a transcendental projection since Nietzsche thinks that human volition holds primacy; the world as metaphor thus appears to be a result of Nietzschean voluntarism.[55] For Nietzsche, all truth is “anthropomorphic” or filtered: reality is a mere “transference” or ubertragung.[56] He collapses the distinction between metaphor and world.[57]