All talk of God is picture language; it cannot be literal. “No one has seen God,” as the Bible puts it. God the maker of universes is so far beyond the capacity of human experience and language that only metaphor and analogy can provide ways of talking about “him”.
Tim Bulkeley, in a brief piece on why God-language needs to broaden out beyond traditional maleness.
It's interesting that generally within (at least the christian) religious tradition there is a remarkable variety of metaphor to describe one or other "facet" of divine nature (breath, love, power, a shield, a mother hen) yet pop culture seems to have but one metaphor: old white guy.
ReplyDeleteI'm more interested in why, all histrionics aside, religious worship switched from earth mother to earth father.
ReplyDeletePolitics comes to mind, but I have not seen a definitive answer to this question.