Metaphor And Religious Language Analysis

To speak of God is fraught with complexity. To capture with mere language and words the divine mystery that creates and permeates the universe seems almost absurd. Yet Christian faith calls us to respond to the God who has come near and revealed Godself in human flesh. Reformed theologian Carl E. Braaten writes that, “As soon as the first philosophers searched for the logos, the meaning, of their native rituals and myths, they reflected on the problem of speaking of God in human terms. If we take our language about God as literally descriptive, we run into idolatry. If we retreat to the other side and negate the adequacy of language altogether to speak of God, we run the risk of saying nothing at all.”1 Braaten articulates a central tension …show more content…
To do so I will examine the work of Sallie McFague, primarily her book Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language2 and Janet Martin Soskice's book Metaphor and Religious Language.3 McFague, a Protestant, and Martin Soskice, a Roman Catholic, both explore the intersection of religious language with feminist thought, and both assert that metaphor is the primary mode of speech by which we should speak of God. There accounts often differ, however. For McFague, metaphor serves as tensive, true and false, description that avoids the idolatry of literal language, and fosters relevant, meaningful speech through accounting for diverse literary contexts. Many metaphors are needed, according to McFague, plurality of experiences of God. Martin Soskice, on the other hand, is primarily interested in the philosophical significance of metaphor and its capability to refer to the transcendent. She rejects the tensive use of metaphor explained by McFague, and instead understands metaphor as disclosing and revealing through language that which was previously unspeakable or explainable. While differing in their approach, McFague and Martin Soskice demonstrate that metaphor opens up a way for speaking meaningfully about …show more content…
She identifies her approach as Protestant in the sense that the “Protestant Principle” which, as described by Paul Tillich, is primarily concerned with fear of idolatry.12 The Protestant tradition is metaphorical insofar as it “tends to see dissimilarity, distinction, tension and hence to be skeptical and secular, stressing the transcendence of God and the finitude of creation.”13 Whereas the Catholic tradition “tends to see similarity, connection, harmony and, hence, to be believing and religious, stressing the continuity between God and creation.”14 McFague understands these as necessary caricatures and even complementary for each is untenable without the other. But, for McFague, the Protestant sensibility is more fitting for our time and for her project of forming a “theology, a form for our talk about God both at the primary religious level of images and the secondary theological level of concepts, which takes the Protestant sensibility