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1980’s Metaphors We Live By is a classic book by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. The authors suggest that the conceptual metaphors we use in day-to-day conversations both reflect and create the way we think, feel, perceive, and interact in the world. A popular American metaphor like “time is money” shapes our collective cultural values and cultivates our individual interior lives. This process helps people transition from tangible physical and social experiences to more abstract things ideas such as money, time, and work. The spiritual implications are enormous.
All of Christian theology depends upon metaphor because it’s ultimately trying to describe the indescribable. That’s why the Bible is chock-full of ’em. It’s also why I much prefer a more Jewish poetic metaphor like “God is a rock” to the more Greco-Roman philosophical prose of “God is immutable.” Both phrases communicate many the same qualities, but the former connects more tangibly to the lived experience of almost everyone. The larger point, however, is the need to be mindful about our language. Oftentimes it forms us much more than we realize.
Did you know that Western and Eastern Christianity have differing primary metaphors through which they understand salvation? Most Jesus followers are unaware of this, but it’s true. In both Catholicism and Protestantism, the chief metaphor has long been a courtroom. It’s about legal standing, including a verdict regarding guilt and innocence, to appease the justice of God’s wrath. Yet in Eastern Orthodoxy the chief metaphor is a hospital. It’s about treatment, including a diagnosis for sickness and malady, in order to heal the broken communion with God.
Without elaborating on the complexities of various salvific theories, it’s enough to say the West really screwed the pooch on this one from an incredible diversity of positions. There’s too much theological breeding with Roman law.1 But ya know what? The specific articulation of how one understands atonement isn’t the focal point here. What’s important is that Jesus followers be conscious and discerning with our theological metaphors. Whether it’s a courtroom or a hospital, a sword or a ploughshare, it really does have a profound influence on how we exist in the world.
The original beatniks were wordsmiths. The Beat Generation was a proto-poststructionalist literary movement containing much poetry and prose alike. These were readers and writers who were mindful of how specific metaphors shape a reader’s perception of the narrative arc. Also, the beats loved identifying and questioning cultural presuppositions instead of mindlessly continuing existing traditions. Put the two ideas together? It seems to me you’ve got a helluva model for beatnik Christianity questioning the presuppositions of Christian culture’s traditional metaphors.
Personally, I like something of an old and new hybrid between Irenaeus’ 2nd century Recapitulation Theory and N.T. Wright’s 21st century New Perspective on Paul.↩
