31 - Figures of Speech and God [C]

Figures of Speech and God

Last time we got into various things related to the essence of God and trying to understand God, and how God is expressed in Scripture. That, of course, generated a number of comments after class. One observation was made by someone who said: "What you were really saying tonight is that too often we get to the point where we look at the essence of God in terms of basically the ten attributes we usually talk about, and we get a sense that we control the data about God and we really understand God." The reality is God is incomprehensible, and though what we understand about God is true it is far from exhaustive, and when we really start thinking about God it just really blows our whole conception of who God is.

When we think we control what we know about God and that we have a handle on God, God is going to surprise us because He is not within the strict confines of finite human understanding. And so often when we probe the depths of Scripture and start pushing in areas that we are not used to pushing it does challenge our conceptions of God.

1 Kings 11:9 ^NASB "Now the LORD was angry with Solomon because his heart was turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice, [10] and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods; but he did not observe what the LORD had commanded."

How are we to understand this phrase that the Lord was angry with Solomon. Either we understand this literally or we understand this figuratively. Those are the only two options that we have. The Hebrew word that is used here is a verb, anap. The past two letters is the noun for nose. This is a verb that derives from the word for nose because the way a Jew would express the concept of anger literally would be to say that someone's nose burns. So people come along and say, "How can you claim that God doesn't have emotion? It says right there that the Lord is angry." But as you probe into the language you realize that what the Hebrew uses is an anthropomorphism to state an anthropopathism. That is something that needs to be analyzed and understood.

We really get into a problem because we run into that ceiling that all finite creatures will have when trying to understand the infinite and the incomprehensible. We have to recognize what Isaiah 55:8, 9 says, "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD. For {as} the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts."

The point that God is making here is that we as creatures can only understand God in an extremely limited way because He is infinite. All of His attributes are infinite. He is far beyond anything that exists within the creation.

Then we have various analogies that people go to to explain, for example, the Trinity. Other analogies are used to try to explain God that all come out of the creation/creature side that always break down when you try to push them very far in understanding that which is incomprehensible and that which is infinite, because nothing is going to fit. In fact, that shows and displays the very nature of the concept of analogy. Because in analogy what we are doing is using something that is familiar or common to everyone's experience to show some area of similarity (not identity) to something unknown, unseen or unexplainable.

We find that the Bible does this through figures of speech. Figures of speech are used throughout the Scripture and much of the Old Testament is written in poetry. Even in the major prophets a lot of when God speaks is set in poetry. Poetry has its dynamic because it utilizes figures of speech. So if we are going to understand what the Bible means we have to understand the forms and conventions of language used. This is part of literal interpretation. To recognize that there are figures of speech is a consistent part of understanding literal and plain interpretation. A figure of speech has a literal meaning.

There is an extremely strong tendency for people to think that somehow when you said it is a figure of speech analogy that somehow you've said that it has less significance, less meaning, less value. That is really a dismissive concept when if you really understood that literature uses figures of speech for enhancements. It is a rhetorical way to put something in boldface and italics, underline, exclamation points; it is not a way of minimizing what is being said. It enhances it. It uses comparisons, analogies and pictures that dramatize something and makes it stand out much more than if it is said in just standard prose, for example. You have to understand these analogies and what these comparisons are, and that involves getting into the culture of the original language. 

A test: Figurative or literal?

1.  "God is my rock."

2.  "You will strike the rock."

3.  "The rock, his work is perfect."

4.  "He will cover you with His pinions, and under His wings you may seek refuge."

5.  "And the fir trees shall be terribly shaken."

6.  "The pot is boiling."

7.  "They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them."

8.  "The tongue is a flame of fire."

9.   

When you are studying the Scriptures and you are looking at something you have to decide whether it is a figure of speech or not. Once you decide that it is figurative you have to be able to identify the kind of figure that it is.

Test answers

1.  = figurative. Is there any part of rockness that is in God? No, but what you see when you see a rock—thinking of a large rock—you think of something enormous, immovable and unshakeable, something in which you can hide and no matter what the storms are you are protected. That is the imagery here. God is a source of protection, He is immovable, He is unshakeable.

2.  = literal. Exodus 17:6. That is when Moses was told to strike the rock with his staff and the water would come forth.

3.  = figurative. That is assigning God the same value as rock. It is just naming Him, calling him the Rock.

4.  = figurative. Pinions are feathers, the outer layer of feathers. It is a picture of a mother bird covering her nest where the young are to protect them. The key there is God. Does God have feathers? God does not have feathers. Does God have wings? Nobody says that God has wings. What you have in the comparison is not in the analogue, which is God.

5.  = figurative. It looks literal but in the context the fir tree stands for that which is made from the fir tree, which is spears. It is a military context, and so it is called a metonymy of source for what comes from it, and so the fir tree is a figure of speech.

6.  = figurative. A pot doesn't boil; water does. It is tricky and you have to think about these things. Figures of speech have become so common in our every-day language that we fail to realize that we are using a figure and we think we are being literal.

7.  = figurative. They don't have Moses. Moses is dead. The prophets are all dead. They have what they wrote.

8.  = figurative. Does a tongue produce fire? Is the tongue hot? Does the tongue catch things on fire, literally? Nothing in the figure is in the analogue, in the tongue.

This is consistent throughout many different figures of speech where there is this comparison between two things.

Psalm 18:2 is a verse that packs five different metaphors into one verse. ^NASB "The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, My God, my rock, in whom I take refuge; My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold." Horn represents power in animals.

What is a figure of speech?

From Dr Zuch's book, Basic Bible Interpretation:

The laws of grammar describe how words normally function. In some cases however the speaker or writer purposely sets aside those laws to use new forms…

Forms are called figures of speech. Then He quotes E.W. Bullinger. Why? Nobody else has done anything close to what Bullinger did in the analysis of these concepts.

… As Bullinger wrote, 'A figure is simply a word or a sentence thrown into a peculiar form, different from its original or simplest meaning of use.' If we say it is raining hard we are using a normal, plain statement. It doesn't really catch your attention so much as if you say it is raining cats and dogs. So if we say it is raining cats and dogs it means the same thing but it is an unusual, more colorful way of expressing the same thought. When we say the tea-kettle is boiling we mean not the kettle but the water in it.

He goes on to quote another authority on interpretation and Bible study methods.

'A figure of speech is a word or phrase that is used to communicate something other than its literal, natural meaning… 

In other words, if you look up tea-kettle and boiling in a dictionary you will get the normal literal meaning.

  … but when it is put into a phrase it takes on a meaning that is different from the sum of its parts …

 This is because we create these images and language in order to add drama to a speech.

He then gives these examples of figurative expressions in modern day English:

'That argument doesn't hold water.' So if I were to say to you that argument is weak, that doesn't have the same impact as that argument doesn't hold water.

It dramatizes; it emphasizes; it brings a fuller sense of what I am trying to say. It doesn't minimize or diminish it.

'Stand up for the Word of God.' Standing up for the Word of doesn't involve literally standing up, it involves taking a stand for something. Being tickled to death doesn't mean you are literally tickled; it is an idiom meaning you are extremely pleased. 

When John the Baptist said, 'Look, the Lamb of God" he was not pointing to an animal but to Jesus who was being compared by John to a lamb. The individuals hearing those words and readers today reading those words are challenged to think of how Jesus was like a lamb. The Jews frequently sacrificed lambs. John had in mind no doubt had in mind Jesus' forthcoming sacrificial death on behalf of others and in their place.

And so it is the role of a lamb that is being compared.

In each of these examples certain aspects and statements are not true in their normal sense, but yet the sentence for conveying truth. The argument is inadequate, we are to defend and live in accord with the Bible, we are pleased, Jesus is a substitutionary sacrifice, figures of speech express truths in vivid and interesting ways, and so since the Bible has so many figures of speech it is important to recognize them and determine what they are communicating because they are communicating something. 

We have a problem, and that problem is that people don't understand figures of speech. We are the products of our modern government-sponsored education that has conspired to keep us ignorant and uneducated, and so we have a paucity of grammatical and rhetorical education. So when we hear somebody who makes certain statements that have been stated throughout the centuries of Christianity we just have trouble when it comes to this particular area.

As Bullinger points out, little has been done on this. The ancient Greeks and Romans did a lot on it, but during the Middle Ages when there wasn't a lot of education in these areas related to grammar and rhetoric, things were lost.

At the time that Bullinger wrote there was a professor of rhetoric at the University of West Virginia, and he wrote:

There is no even tolerably good treatise on figures existing at present in our language. Is there in any other tongue? There is no consecutive discussion of them of more than a few pages. The examples of brought forward by all others being trivial in the extreme and threadbare while the main conception of what constitutes the chief class of figures is altogether narrow, erroneous and philosophical. Writers generally, even the ablest, are wholly in the dark as to the precise distinction between a trope and a metonymy, and very few even literary men have so much as heard of hypocatastasis or implication, one of the most important of figures, and one too that is constantly shedding its light upon us.

We use figures, therefore, to heighten, dramatize, or emphasize things. The use of figures of speech does not minimize or diminish what is said but it is a literal truth which is language that is not literal. A figure of speech adds color, attention, makes abstract ideas more concrete, and encourages reflection upon the figure which would not otherwise occur.

Bullinger writes:

Applied to words a figure denotes some form which a word or sentence takes different from its ordinary natural form. This is always for the purpose of giving additional force, more life, intensified feeling, and greater emphasis; whereas today figurative language is ignorantly spoken of as if it made less of a meaning and deprive the words of their power and force. A passage in God's Word is quoted and it is met with the cry, O that is figurative, implying that its meaning is weakened or that it has quite a different meaning. Or, that it has no meaning at all. But the very opposite in the case for an unusual form is never used except to add force to the truth conveyed, emphasis to the statement of it, and depth to the meaning.

Carl F. H. Henry:

Whatever Christian theology means by the impassibility of God, it does not mean that God's love, compassion and mercy are mere figures of speech.  

Notice that word "mere." He is assuming that a figure of speech in minimized, that it diminishes the meaning of something rather than intensifying it.

There is this mentality that infers that if you classify this as a figure of speech you have somehow said that it doesn't mean anything or its meaning is diminished. That just shows that these guys haven't done their homework on figures of speech.

Bullinger classifies over 200 figures of speech, some with thirty or forty variations and each with names.

Three specific types of figures: zoomorphisms, anthropomorphisms, anthropopathisms.

These are all figures of speech involving the substitution of one idea over another where the use of a word is in a way that is not its normal literal meaning.

Bullinger writes: 

This change is brought about and prompted by some internal action of the mind which seeks to impress its intensity of feeling upon others. The meaning of the words themselves continues to be literal; the figure lies in the application to the words. This application arises from some actual resemblance between the words or between two or more mental things which are before the mind.

When the literal application of the words is contrary to ordinary plain human experience or from the nature of things themselves then we are compelled to regard the application as figurative.

These can be applied to sense or with reference to a person. When you use this kind of a substitution with reference to a person it can involve personification, attributing human characteristics to inanimate objects. We do this in movies. Also we can attribute human characteristics to other things, such as God.

One form that we use is zoomorphism.

Dr Zuch:

Whereas an anthropomorphism ascribes human characteristics to God, a zoomorphism ascribes animal characteristics to God or to others.

If we look at every one of the zoomorphisms that are listed by everybody and listed by Scripture, God doesn't actually possess any of those animals characteristics. That is the point. That is evident when you look at the data. God is non-corporeal.

These are expressive ways of pointing out the actions and attitudes of the Lord in a picturesque way. The psalmist wrote: 'God will cover you with his pinions' (Psalm 91:4). Readers will think of young chicks of birds being protected under the wings of a mother hen or bird. Job depicted what he considered to be the furious anger of God lashing out at him when he wrote that God 'gnashes his teeth at me'. God doesn't have teeth.

Another is the use of the term "horns," Psalm 18:2, or to brood or to incubate. When you see the Genesis 1:2, the Holy Spirit hovered over the earth, that is a word that is used to describe a mother hen or bird brooding or hovering over her nest. That is the image that is there, a zoomorphic image.

There are other attributes that are used to describe God. Interesting plant characteristics are ascribed to God. The Messiah is called the Branch of the Lord. (Isaiah 4:2; 11:1)

There is another metaphor that you probably missed. That is, God is light. Genesis 1:3 says that God created light. As the creator He is distinct from light. Light is not an eternal reality, it is distinct from God; it is part of the creation. And it is a physical property which has all of these measurable finite characteristics that are part of the creation.

Another passage talks about God as a consuming fire and a jealous God. So here we have imagery again emphasizing something about God's character. Fire is a part of the creation, a physical substance. It is used to express the intensity of God's judgment as that which judges those who have been disloyal to Him. That is the idea in jealousy. It is a figure of speech.

An anthropomorphism is the ascribing of human characteristics or actions to God which He doesn't actually possess. There is a reference to God's fingers, Psalm 8:3; His ear, Psalm 31:2; eye, 2 Chronicles 6:9; face, Psalm 16:11; mouth, Numbers 21:8.

God has a voice? Scripture says God speaks. It says, "They heard His voice." Yes, but sound is physical. You can measure it. It is part of the physical universe, a part of creation. Voice is an attribute that applies to the physical creation. God is outside of that creation, but as the creator He is able to manipulate the creation to give out that which is heard and sounds to us like a human voice. But it is not. That is not saying that God, doesn't speak, and doesn't communicate. But we have to understand that speaking and these kinds of things, just like that pot boiling and just like Moses and the prophets, are figures of speech. It doesn't mean that there is no reality there; in fact it is a way that dramatizes God's ability to communicate to man. 

The word introduced last time, a classic historical term used to describe the attributes of God, the statements attributing emotion to God, is the term impassibility. What this basically means is that God doesn't suffer as a result of what His creatures go through. It is defined as the attribute of God's being unaffected by anything outside of Himself. 

The one reality that we find in every zoomorphism and anthropomorphism is that God does not actually possess the physical features to which He is compared. However, when we come to discussing emotions in God something else enters in. People just have this resistance to saying that God doesn't have these feelings, that God doesn't actually have emotions. Why would that be?

First of all, it is because some assume that from our frame of reference or finite experience that emotion or feeling that we experience is essential to relationship. God doesn't have emotions and can't relate to us. But if these figures are real they are figures and what they are saying is that God does relate to people. They are saying that God is capable of relationship. He is capable of intimate relationship with His creatures.

Second, we assume that saying that God does not have feeling or emotion necessarily means that He is uncaring, unconcerned, distant, unfeeling, cold, uninvolved, and that He is basically a metaphorical iceberg completely removed from human suffering or human pain. But what I am saying is that all of these figures of speech—the anger of God, the jealousy of God, etc.—are used to enforce the fact that God is a caring, concerned, involved God who is capable with profound, intimate relationship with his creatures. But what is on the other side of that comparison is so far beyond anything we could ever think of in terms of feeling or emotion that we can't even comprehend it. That is where we bump into the incomprehensibility of God. God is bigger than anything we have ever thought of or imagined.

One thing that we have to recognize is that this doctrine of impassibility is a profound or important doctrine.

Nicholas Wolterstorff (A conservative within the Reformed background). Several years ago his 23-year-old son died in a tragic accident. This event generated an reaction in Wolterstorff which led to a revolution in his understanding of God. He writes:

Any Christian who reflects on living with grief has to reflect on living with God in grief. And that immediately leads into the issue of impassibility. I knew the traditional picture. God surveys with uninterrupted bliss what transpires in this vale of tears, which is our world. In the situation of my son's death I found that picture impossible to accept, existentially impossible. I could not live with it; I found it grotesque. Perhaps if I had firmly believed it was the correct picture I could have brought myself to the point where I no longer rebelled against it, but by this time I had, for more or less theoretical reasons, found the doctrine questionable. This experience pushed me over the edge, you might say. It did more than that though, it led me to reflect on the doctrine much more thoroughly and seriously than I had before. For I knew that in rejecting the doctrine I was disagreeing with the greatest minds and hearts if the Christian church. I was not and I am not able to do that lightly.

Then he goes on to say what the implications are. And this is from a man who is not a dummy.

The picture that comes to my mind is of those sweaters knit in such a way that when you pull on one thread the whole thing unravels before your eyes. Impassibility is one component in that tightly integrated traditional way of understanding God. My interest in the structure as a whole accordingly led me to become interested in eternity, in simplicity and asciety, and also in impassibility. Once you pull on the thread of impassibility a lot of other threads come along. Asciety, for example. That is, God's independence, his unconditionness… One also has to give up immutability and eternity…

This is a profoundly significant issue. If you do away with impassibility, Wolterstorff says, what you also have to give up is the independence of God, the immutability of God, and the eternity of God.

An anthropopathism is a figure of speech ascribing human emotions to God which He doesn't actually possess. Passages like Zechariah 8:1 ^NASB "Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'I am exceedingly jealous for Zion, yes, with great wrath I am jealous for her.'" God is rejoicing in Isaiah 62:5. God is expressing sorrow and grief in Genesis 6:6; Judges 10:16. Repentance, Genesis 6:6; anger, Exodus 15:7. Vengeance, Jeremiah 9:9; hatred Psalm 5:5; Jealousy Nahum 1:2; displeasure, Zechariah 1:15; Joel 2:18. 

As Bullinger puts it, it is the idea of ascribing these human emotions to God, human passions or actions to God. It is also known as condescension.

As analogies or comparisons these are terms that have meaning within a human frame of reference. But according to the definitions of figures of speech they are not identical to essential realities within God. They correspond analogically but they are not identical for what is on the other side of the comparative equation.

Scholars have attempted to articulate this in terms of vocabulary. There are those who say God does not have passions but He has affections. Others would say there is divine emotion as distinct from human emotions. Still others try to express it as immutable feelings in God versus mutable feelings in man.

The positive side of this is that these attempts recognize and seek to preserve impassibility but they sacrifice clarity through the use of oxymorons, i.e. where contradictory terms are used to express an idea. So immutable feeling is a contradictory idea because a feeling is by definition mutable. So again we are left with this thing called figure of speech. We are bumping into that glass ceiling of incomprehensibility.

Love, peace, joy and emotions. Emotions by definition are a reaction or response to something. Mindsets, mental attitudes are commanded;  emotions are not. So love in the Bible is not measured or characterized by feelings or affected statements but by actions of obedience, a lack of certain sins, a type of thinking, a loyalty to God.

Example: Jesus never lost His joy. To say so is the height of heresy. Jesus always had perfect, immutable joy. And He had perfect joy in His humanity. When we read the statements when He is in the garden of Gethsemane He is in emotional turmoil in His humanity. Emotionally He is a basket case almost. So much so that He is sweating blood. But He doesn't lose His joy, because that is His mental attitude. Joy is a mental attitude, love is a mental attitude; peace is the absence of conflict.

Words that we can use that don't refer to emotions. Care, is sometimes used in an emotional sense but if you look in the Oxford English Dictionary it has the sense of looking after someone, providing for someone. Comfort itself is not an emotion or emotional word. It means to do that which contributes to comfort or to console someone in grief or sorrow. It is a state of ease or freedom from pain or constraint. Concern means to regard something as important and to be involved in providing the solution. These are all true of God. He is intimately and profoundly involved with us.

So how do we understand these emotional terms in reference to God? We understand that they are comparisons and that these are terms that have meaning within a human frame of reference, but according to the definition of figures of speech they do not correspond to internal essential realities in God. But they tell us things about God. They tell us He is concerned; He cares; He has mercy.

In the history of Christianity it is frequently noted that the concept of impassibility is the dominant view. However, in my continued reading what happens is people come along and they say that this concept was really borrowed by the Greeks. But what you have in the ancient Greek thought is this thing called the chain of being. Everything participates in the same being and God is just at the top of the chain, you don't have a creator-creature distinction. 

Anselm:

You [God] are truly compassionate in terms of our experience, yet you are not so in terms of your own. For when you see us in our misery we experience the effect of compassion. You, however, do not experience this. Therefore you are compassionate in that you saved the miserable and spare those who sin against you, and you are not compassionate in that you are not affected by any sympathy for misery.

God's actions toward us are experienced by us in terms of our common experiences, and so they are communicated to us in those terms—language of accommodation—and they are experienced by us as wrath or anger or jealousy, or some of these other emotions. But in the person of God in His essence they are not emotions. But that does not say that God does not care intensely, that God is not involved intimately, that God is not concerned profoundly with every detail of our lives.