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Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language
By Sallie McFague
Philadelphia, Fortress, 1982. 225 pp. $13.95.

A metaphor is no mere ornament of language. We live by metaphors. Philosophers and literary critics have long proclaimed these messages about the powers in our metaphors. Now Sallie McFague, Vanderbilt Divinity School theologian, draws ably from theories of metaphor and philosophies of religious language to fashion a "metaphorical theology." The book is a sequel to her earlier work, Speaking in Parables: A Study of Metaphor and Theology, and its intellectual spirit "comes out of a post-Enlightenment, Protestant, feminist perspective" which McFague characterizes as "skeptical, relativistic, prophetic, iconoclastic."

What is "metaphorical theology?" Broadly put, it is talk about God that explicitly focuses on the simultaneously adequate and inadequate nature of its language. Whether we speak of God as rock, father, mother, liberator, or spirit, a metaphorical theologian will stress that each term is and is not adequate for talking about God. The power of metaphors, in fact, rides on this tension of the "is and is not" (p. 65). As an example, McFague more than once considers the metaphor of a Zen sutra: poetry is "a finger pointing to the moon." In this metaphor, poetry is shown to be a way to a light that shines in darkness. But this insight is lost if poetry and finger are crudely identified. The power of this metaphor is that poetry is/is not a finger pointing to the moon. A metaphorical theology harnesses this indirect power in metaphors to speak about a God shrouded in mystery.

Much is at stake in constructing a metaphorical theology. For McFague, it can be nothing less than a way to revitalize contemporary religious language, saving it from an "idolatry" that absolutizes human

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words (as in biblical literalism) and from an "irrelevance" that closes the Christian community off from new ways to speak of God (as in rigidly patriarchal domains that lack a language for women, blacks, or third world peoples). Metaphorical theology resists idolatry by refusing to absolutize its human language, and resists irrelevance by boldly exploring possibilities for every new language to portray God.

This book does not just call for a metaphorical theology. It is a book of many exercises: spiritual, scriptural, scientific, and philosophical. After issuing her call to metaphorical theology (chap. 1), McFague sets out on a long journey, deftly gleaning insights from such thinkers as C.H. Dodd, Robert Funk, Leander Keck, and William Beardslee in biblical studies; from Gadamer, Ricoeur, Crossan, and Kenneth Bourke in hermeneutics and literary criticism; from Aristotle, Heidegger, Whitehead, Toulmin, and T. Kuhn in philosophy; and from Frederick Ferre', Ian Ramsey, and Ian Barbour in the philosophy of religious language.

Viewed as a whole, McFague's journey charts its course "from religious language--the language of images and metaphors--to theological language--the language of models and concepts." In chapter 2 she shows that her concern with metaphor is not just a current intellectual preoccupation of the academy, but also a concern appropriate to Christianity's own scriptures. McFague shows how the powerful message of the tradition rides on metaphors. She focuses especially on parables as "extended metaphors." These startle us with new images of God's relation to us. What is more, Jesus not only taught in parables, but is himself a "parable of God." Jesus as an "extended metaphor" of God means that Jesus is and is not God; "hence, idolatry and 'Jesusolatry' are avoided, and while we look through the story to gain an understanding of what it means to live under God's rule, we cannot make the illegitimate move of identifying Jesus with God" (p. 5 1).

From metaphor and parable in Scripture, McFague moves on to models, first as they function in science (chap. 3) and then in theology (chap. 4). This is no detour from her metaphorical concerns, for a model is a sustained and systematic metaphor. Without claiming that "all is metaphor" in science, McFague ably shows the pervasiveness of models in social and natural science, in technology, in the humanities, as well as in the imagination. Her chapter on models in science is a fine introduction to complex issues in the philosophy of science, but her main intent here is to learn from science what role models may play in theology. What she learns here is important for the theology she suggests in the remainder of the book. Four points are crucial: (1) models provide intelligibility for the unintelligible; (2) they do not picture entities, they approach the unfamiliar by displaying structures of relations in areas of life with which we are more familiar; (3) they provide an ever-widening scope of explanation often invoking notions of "reality as a whole;" and (4) models are "paradigm dependent," limited to the formulators' points of view. This last point is especially important, suggesting that multiple metaphors and models are required.

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When considering models in theology (chap. 4), McFague strives to show how these extend and systematize the parabolic metaphors of Scripture, taking us into the discourse of creed, doctrine, and concept. For McFague the root-metaphor in Scripture and for theology is "the kingdom of God"; that is, our being under God's "impossible way of love in contrast to the loveless ways of the world" (p. 108). This is what Jesus teaches in parables and through himself as parable of God. This also is what theological models should systematize for the Christian's mode of being in the world. This way of being abjures "identification [of human language with the divine], possession, absolutism, stasis, conventionality and spiritism," relying solely on relationship with God. A metaphorical theology should use both concrete models such as "friend," "liberator," ,'mother" and "father," but also more abstract ones such as "providence … redemption," and "creation." All these are needed to portray the human relationship to God.

It is only at the end of her intellectual journey that McFague addresses the feminist theological task. After her own very helpful summary of "revolutionary" and "reformist" feminist positions, McFague offers her own reformist stance. A "reformist" position does not take feminist critiques as ground for dispensing with the Christian vision, but instead seeks the liberation of women within a Christian paradigm. So she returns to Christianity's root-metaphor, the kingdom of God, to show how a relatedness with God means liberation for humans. Integral to her reform is her proposed model of "God the friend," which she offers as a timely and appropriate supplement to the parental imagery of "God the father" and "God the mother."

McFague explicitly acknowledges the inadequacies of her model (loss of a numinous sense, its individualist connotation, suggestion of equal status between God and believer), but she is equally firm about the significance of her metaphor. It provides a model that lifts up key imagery found here and there in the Bible, as in Jesus' reference to the son of man as the friend of tax collectors and sinners (Matt. 11:19). It also is a model meaningful for a time when neither female nor male experience is exhausted by parenting. It is a more egalitarian model moving away from the bierarchalism that feminist critiques have uncovered and felt to be harmful. The book concludes with brief comments on what her new model means for our views of God's authority, saving activity, and for our worship of God.

This is an impressive volume that will provoke wide-ranging and substantive theological discussion. First, it is a well-written book and hence eminently readable. Although it addresses several complex issues in religion and philosophy, it will have a wide audience. In the classroom of the theological school, it quickly draws its advocates and provokes its critics, yet in ways that move many to new viewpoints and insights. The patient and intelligent lay reader will also find this an accessible volume, addressing the contemporary concerns of oppression and liberation as well as the long-standing problem of how we talk and think about God.

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McFague's Metaphorical Theology is one in a trilogy of substantive, wide-ranging feminist works that have appeared within the last year, joining with Rosemary Radford Ruether's Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (1983) and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza's In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (1983). If there are still those who think that the feminist contributions to theology are but an isolated, marginal--perhaps passing--intellectual development, then this trilogy should put those lingering suspicions to rest. As McFague's work shows, feminist criticism engages fundamental concerns with ramifications that not only revise but also can renew theological reflection.

Granting these notable strengths, let me address two major issues that I think remain unclear in this work.

The first issue concerns McFague's overall view of her work. At several points she roots her project in what she calls a "protestant sensibility" that is characteristic of our time, thriving on the "skeptical, relativistic, prophetic, and iconoclastic." Protestant that I am, I am not so sure that the "protestant sensibility" has any such special claims to a "metaphorical theology," and it is unclear to me why McFague styles her work an intensification of "protestant sensibility." Granted, the negating "is not" features of metaphor resonate well with the Protestant critical spirit, with the "Protestant principle." But a metaphor also rests on a certain trust in similarity; it assumes that something is disclosed to us about the unknown, however much our language is not fully adequate. A fully metaphorical theology, as with Tracy's notion of the "analogical imagination," can relate within itself the "sacramental" to the "prophetic" or "protestant" sensibilities.

My second concern raises a further question that seems crucial for any of us who will follow McFague in constructing a metaphorical theology: "What are the relations of our metaphorical language to contexts of social, political, and institutional use?" She calls on Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and feminist thinkers to suggest that our world is language. So, "whoever names the world owns the world," and "a revolution in language means a revolution in one's world" (pp. 8-9).

Feminists themselves have called into question this linkage of language and world. Ruether noted in New Women, New Earth (1975): "As long as the system of male domination prevails, linguistic modifications can be fed back into this system, creating the appearance of change that becomes more difficult to criticize." Similarly, anthropological linguist, Catherine A. Callaghan, argues that "the socio-political sphere of a culture is the independent variable upon which the conceptual realms of myth, interpretive theology, and religious observance and language depend." ("The Wanderings of the Goddess: Language and Myth in Western Culture," Phoenix: New Directions in the Study of Man, III, No. 2, Fall/Winter 1979, p. 32.)

While a single book cannot take on every relevant, weighty matter, McFague's contribution nevertheless could be stronger if she discussed

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the powers of metaphors in relation to socio-cultural and political forces. Does metaphorical language have its powers without social and institutional use? What if systems of social interaction are so "systematically distorted," to use Jurgen Habermas' term, that language loses its power to shape our world? Without a more explicit treatment of language's power in relation to culture, many will only dimly foresee McFague's much hoped for "revitalization of religious language." She briefly alludes to this problem when commenting on Habermas' criticism of the "hegemony of linguisticality" in Gadamer's hermeneutics (p. 64). When facing Habermas' criticism, McFague, like Gadamer, must show how language has its power to revitalize when faced by the entrenched distortions of economic and social privilege.

Mark Kline Taylor
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey