This past week has given me some time to think about metaphor. We studied the raising of Lazarus in John 11 this week, and I coincidentally (in the sense of simultaneously) was discussing the same in a newsgroup I occasionally read.
Some objections were raised to the idea that the miracle of raising Lazarus was typical of how God regenerates us (obviously objections from the unreformed in the group). One person in particular objected because Lazarus was already regenerated before he was resurrected. He was rightly taken to task for his complaint for reasons that I hope are obvious.1
A metaphor is a constructed figure of speech in which two often dissimilar things are identified by sometimes surprising characteristics.
I refer to the elements compared as the base and the realization. The base is something common to experience and well understood; the realization is that which acquires the characteristics of the base by association.
For example, the well-worn phrase, "You are my sunshine" is a metaphor in which the base is the sun and the realization is the beloved. The beloved acquires the characteristics of the sun in a metaphorical way—bringing light and heat to an otherwise dreary and sad existence.
In the metaphor proposed by the original poster, Lazarus' death is like our spiritual death (and his condition like ours) and his resurrection is like our spiritual rebirth.
Metaphors often contain a locus in which the base and the realization meet. In the case of the raising of Lazarus, the locus is in the command of Jesus: "Lazarus, come forth!" His physical action is paralleled spiritually: the Jesus in the base image is the same Jesus of the metaphorical realization.
It is this commerce between the image and the realization that makes the metaphor so powerful, and it is one of the reasons that Christianity is so compelling (in my opinion). It causes us to revise our understanding of reality when we see that the locus of the metaphor exists on both sides of the equation—does spiritual birth follow the pattern of physical birth, or does physical birth follow the pattern of spiritual?
Metaphor usually implies a lessening of corporeality in the comparison, but Christianity provides a metaphor that is more real than the experiences we use to understand it.
[1] My objection is two-fold.
First, a metaphor is a constructed figure of speech, and so he is not really allowed to tell someone what goes into the construction. He can only show that the construction itself is internally inconsistent (its connections require reshaping our understanding of reality) or externally inconsistent (his conclusions do not support his theology).
Second, his requirement that the realization of the metaphor not contain elements of the base image is arbitrarily restrictive and really prevents him from using any miracle analogically. The locus of the metaphor is where the base image and the metaphorical realization intersect. Since, in his theological system, faith precedes and causes regeneration, faith cannot be an appropriate locus for the metaphor (since the one experiencing the miracle is thereby regenerated, disqualifying regeneration from being the subject of the miracle).
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Uncleanness
I have just finished reading through Leviticus 14 and 15, chapters discussing leprosy and bodily discharges. These are pretty tedious chapters, and Leviticus, I confess, is not the least tedious book I've read (neither the most).
But I was struck by two things as I read.
The first is that uncleanness spreads, but cleanness doesn't. In other words, no one ever possessed pervasive cleanliness—a clean person cannot touch a leper and make the leper clean; rather, touching a leper makes one unclean. The sole exception for this rule is that immediate family members were allowed to touch the bodies of their dead relatives without suffering uncleanness; but in all other cases, touching something unclean, or touching something that touched someone unclean, sufficed to make one unclean.
The second is that the very act of procreation made the participants unclean. So, too, giving birth. While I don't want to say that this is a strong argument for original sin, it certainly does give a different overtone to Ps 51.5.
From a cultural perspective, some argue that these rules were intended to separate the Israelites from the people they were displacing, in which it was common to profane worship with deviant sexual practices.
It is interesting to me that it was forbidden for anyone who was unclean to enter the tabernacle. Those who were unclean were cut off from fellowshiping with the rest of the congregation, and in the case of the lepers, maimed, or deformed, this excommunication was permanent.
At the same time, we have to be impressed with the healing of the lepers in the gospels. It is never recorded in the Bible that a leper presented himself to a priest to verify his cleansing—until Jesus says, "I am willing; be thou clean" (Mt 8.3). In Jesus there is a pervasive cleanness. His cleanness drives away the uncleanness of the leper.
If we understand leprosy, for example, as a metaphor for sin, the application is obvious—Jesus really does cleanse us, and he does it perfectly. I don't want to over-extend this, but I think if we look at the Spirit living in us, this is a continual cleansing, too, just as the fire for the burnt offerings was to burn continually.
But I was struck by two things as I read.
The first is that uncleanness spreads, but cleanness doesn't. In other words, no one ever possessed pervasive cleanliness—a clean person cannot touch a leper and make the leper clean; rather, touching a leper makes one unclean. The sole exception for this rule is that immediate family members were allowed to touch the bodies of their dead relatives without suffering uncleanness; but in all other cases, touching something unclean, or touching something that touched someone unclean, sufficed to make one unclean.
The second is that the very act of procreation made the participants unclean. So, too, giving birth. While I don't want to say that this is a strong argument for original sin, it certainly does give a different overtone to Ps 51.5.
From a cultural perspective, some argue that these rules were intended to separate the Israelites from the people they were displacing, in which it was common to profane worship with deviant sexual practices.
It is interesting to me that it was forbidden for anyone who was unclean to enter the tabernacle. Those who were unclean were cut off from fellowshiping with the rest of the congregation, and in the case of the lepers, maimed, or deformed, this excommunication was permanent.
At the same time, we have to be impressed with the healing of the lepers in the gospels. It is never recorded in the Bible that a leper presented himself to a priest to verify his cleansing—until Jesus says, "I am willing; be thou clean" (Mt 8.3). In Jesus there is a pervasive cleanness. His cleanness drives away the uncleanness of the leper.
If we understand leprosy, for example, as a metaphor for sin, the application is obvious—Jesus really does cleanse us, and he does it perfectly. I don't want to over-extend this, but I think if we look at the Spirit living in us, this is a continual cleansing, too, just as the fire for the burnt offerings was to burn continually.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Happy Returns, Revelation Thoughts
I am back from vacation, having spent a couple weeks in Kenya. I'm writing about it at Abracadafrica, a blog I started for that purpose. It's perhaps a bit warmer than this blog, and more interesting by half.
I read through the rest of Leviticus while I was gone and started reading Jeremiah, but I haven't taken any notes on them, so I'll probably go back to where I was before and start afresh.
We have been going through Revelation in church in the past several weeks, and this has occasioned a little bit of thought. My own eschatology is not well-developed, and I think that concentrating on it to the exclusion of all else when reading Revelation is a mistake. For the most part, we perceive Revelation as a revelation of what is to happen at the end times.
But the book itself tells us that it is actually a revelation of Jesus Christ (Re 1.1). As such, I think our focus should be more on how he is revealed through the book rather than the overplayed mysticism that seems to accompany any sort of commentary on apocalyptic literature.
And so in the letters to the churches we have seven separate revelations of the person of Christ. We see him revealed, too as God—Jesus says, "I am the one who is." (I wonder if the outline of the book is given in the phrase "I am the one who was, who is, and who is to come." The things which "must take place after this" in Re 4.1 fit nicely, I think, in that theme.) I think there are correlations between what we read through the book and the gospels, too.
It's hard to summarize the several weeks we've been in the book, but I'll be keeping my eyes open for more of these incidentals. I don't expect to comment as much on the eschatological distinctives, except as they pertain to showing us who Christ is. I'm beginning to think that the ultimate thrust of the book is to demonstrate the deity of Christ, though I'll have to run it through the various themes and images that prevail in it.
Hopefully regular posting will resume now that I'm back from my trip and can come to this with a little more frequency. It has been a busy month, and not just for travel.
I read through the rest of Leviticus while I was gone and started reading Jeremiah, but I haven't taken any notes on them, so I'll probably go back to where I was before and start afresh.
We have been going through Revelation in church in the past several weeks, and this has occasioned a little bit of thought. My own eschatology is not well-developed, and I think that concentrating on it to the exclusion of all else when reading Revelation is a mistake. For the most part, we perceive Revelation as a revelation of what is to happen at the end times.
But the book itself tells us that it is actually a revelation of Jesus Christ (Re 1.1). As such, I think our focus should be more on how he is revealed through the book rather than the overplayed mysticism that seems to accompany any sort of commentary on apocalyptic literature.
And so in the letters to the churches we have seven separate revelations of the person of Christ. We see him revealed, too as God—Jesus says, "I am the one who is." (I wonder if the outline of the book is given in the phrase "I am the one who was, who is, and who is to come." The things which "must take place after this" in Re 4.1 fit nicely, I think, in that theme.) I think there are correlations between what we read through the book and the gospels, too.
It's hard to summarize the several weeks we've been in the book, but I'll be keeping my eyes open for more of these incidentals. I don't expect to comment as much on the eschatological distinctives, except as they pertain to showing us who Christ is. I'm beginning to think that the ultimate thrust of the book is to demonstrate the deity of Christ, though I'll have to run it through the various themes and images that prevail in it.
Hopefully regular posting will resume now that I'm back from my trip and can come to this with a little more frequency. It has been a busy month, and not just for travel.
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