Recently I was discussing the issue of the atonement with a PCA friend of mine and it became apparent that our differences on this doctrine were based on much deeper differences in theology. We traced our subtle disagreement backwards but I will start here from the beginning: with Creation. Creation is not just the beginning of history, it’s the beginning of theology. Creation itself reveals the truth about God that is pre-requisite knowledge even for discerning the Scriptures. The Judeo-Christian narrative of an ex nihilo creation reveals a great deal itself but the product of Creation, the universe, reveals God’s nature because it was intended to. It does this by what can be referred to as “the divine metaphor.”

God is Simple
The more we learn of the universe, the more we appreciate its complexity. But this itself is, in some way, counter-intuitive because we observe that in the natural world, whatever is complex must have a creator which is more complex. A house is complex, but more so an architect. It would seem to follow that since the universe is so complex, God must be even more complex. But complexity entails a composition of various parts and God is not composite. An individual man includes things, like his particular attributes, which are not included in ‘humanity’, but God, who is not composed of “matter and form”, does not include anything which does not belong to ‘divinity’. Humanity is the form of a man; his particular physical components are his matter. Together, this form and matter compose a man. But God is not composed; He is pure form and is not a body. God is altogether simple. Therefore, it is wrong to say that lesser complexity necessarily comes from greater complexity as is shown by God’s simplicity.¹ It is however, true that lesser unity necessarily comes from greater unity although it is beyond the scope of this paper to demonstrate. It is important to understand God this way because it informs how we interpret Divine revelation.

Now this may sound too philosophical for some appetites or maybe superfluous. Why do we need philosophy if we have the Scriptures? The problem with this attitude is that it is impossible to start with the Scriptures as our absolute basis for theology. When we approach the Scriptures, we already have some beliefs which are formed by reason and these beliefs are presuppositions through which we will read every verse. This is why it is important to have a theological starting point which is based on sound reason and is then informed by the divine Scriptures.

Creation Reveals the Truth of God
Now God is simple, but our means of knowledge are all complex. That is, we derive knowledge of God, who is simple, through His complex creation. Aquinas says: “We can speak of simple things only as though they were like the composite things from which we derive our knowledge.”² This does not mean that we cannot arrive at reliable knowledge of God because this is precisely how God chose to reveal Himself to us. When I speak of “the divine metaphor”, I do not mean that our means of knowledge are not real, but that they are divinely established metaphors, teachings from the mouth of God, as it were, about Himself. The universe teaches us of the truth; that is, God.³

Big things in nature have important things to teach us of God and His nature. Though He is not male or female, our sex tells us something about God. But this is not to say that God’s masculinity, as divinely revealed, is merely metaphoric (as if it weren’t true). On the contrary, it is true and it tells us something important about Him. Masculinity is not our metaphoric projection onto God’s identity; it is exactly the other way around. Masculinity is a divinely established reality intended by God to teach us something about who He is. In the same way, fatherhood is not our metaphoric projection onto God’s person, man’s fatherhood was established by God to show us who He is. To be clear, God is properly called Father.⁴

This is why we must handle with care the way the Scriptures speak of God. We have a tendency to project ourselves onto God as if He were only an all powerful and sinless version of ourselves in the sky. On the contrary, we were made in His image and not the other way around!⁵ A potent example of this important point is passion as applied to God. God is immutable and therefore is free of passions.⁶ That is, a passion is never properly applied to God, only analogically⁷ The Scriptures, however, often speak of God’s “anger” (e.g. Exodus 4:14, Leviticus 26:28). Thus, it must be understood that the Scriptures speak analogically of God’s anger.

When we hear the word “metaphor”, it has the connotation of something being false. For example, if I tell you something and then later I say, “I was only speaking metaphorically”, you get the impression that I haven’t told you the whole truth or that I haven’t been straight forward. But this is not the case with the divine metaphor(s) precisely because they are divine. God has established these efficacious ways for us to understand Him, and these are the best means available to us to know Him although the Truth exceeds what can be expressed to those of us with limited capacity.

Implications
Nature itself is divinely established to lead us to Truth. That is why errors cannot be illustrated by nature except with great difficulty. St. Paul compares the Church to a human body⁸ and the fullness of this metaphor is only found in the Catholic Church as shown in Called to Communion’s recent paper on the Visible Church. It is important to mention that the Catholic Church is a body, but it is only analogically compared to a human body. The model of an essentially invisible Church does not fit this metaphor nor any metaphor which can be found in nature and this is part of the reason why we know it to be false. True things are easily illustrated by natural phenomena but nature must be falsely interpreted to be used as a supporting metaphor of a false proposition. Recalling that man’s fatherhood is divinely established to teach us about God’s Fatherhood, we can see how the human body is created, in part, to teach us the nature of the Church and her unity. This is why Paul’s analogy of the Church to a human body is not merely a helpful illustration; it is a “divine metaphor.”

Seeing that nature itself, revealed by God, is so inclined to teach us truth by metaphor, it comes as no surprise that the divinely revealed Scriptures make frequent use of allegory and symbolism. When the modern skeptic reads that John the Baptist wore camel’s hair and a leather belt⁹ , he thinks that the author is trying to conjure up a connection between St. John and Elijah¹⁰ . It has never occurred to the skeptic that what is said of John may actually be true. But on the other hand, when the Scriptures speak of the sun standing still¹¹ , it has never occurred to the skeptic that the Scriptures might be speaking metaphorically. It’s obvious in the latter case, but in the former as well, a metaphor is at play. The divine metaphor opposes both fundamentalism and skepticism. The gospels record that Jesus rose on the third day, and the skeptic wants to insist that the gospel authors are inserting their own symbolic theology. This assumes the very antithesis of my argument: that God is not capable of enacting anything with meaning!

On the contrary, the Scriptures are the God-breathed account of the created universe and the salvation story. It is not surprising that this account is full of symbolism and metaphoric language. This is not to say that the accounts must only be taken metaphorically. In fact, those who appreciate the “divine metaphor” prefer a literal reading in some cases (like the three days in the tomb). On the other hand, it informs and validates the allegoric method of Old Testament exegesis that the Catholic Church has long employed. Now, as Origen showed, an allegoric method of interpretation does not indicate that a thing cannot be literally true. ¹² This is because God uses real things in nature to teach Truth by allegory. We call this, again, the “divine metaphor.”

The consequences of misunderstanding God’s simplicity may seem subtle but they can have far reaching effects. Fundamentalism, for example, is replete with errors caused by an oversimplication of Biblical language concerning God and His actions. This is why it is important to have, among other things, a solid understanding of God’s simplicity and immutability. It will demonstrate that some things said of God must be analogical and thus help us avoid certain theological errors.

So this brings us back to where the discussion began: the atonement. In recent times, the concept of Christ suffering vicariously for our sins has surfaced under the Protestant atonement theory known as Penal Substitution. This is caused by a misreading of key texts especially regarding God’s wrath. I do not intend to fully engage the theory, which is still popular among Protestants, but a couple points would be worth mentioning. First, wrath belongs to the passions and as mentioned above, it is not properly attributed to God, as if He were subject to it, but only analogically. Secondly, the theory falsely teaches that God is moved from wrath to forgiveness by the act of the vicarious sacrifice of Calvary. If God could be moved from a state of love, to a state of wrath, and then back to a state of love, then the Penal Substitution theory of the atonement, in which God the Father pours out His wrath on His Son until His anger is spent, would be a possibility. But if God cannot be moved at all, as the doctrine of immutability insists, then a conception of the atonement in which the Father pours out His anger on Christ until His wrath is spent is not possible.

Further, if we understand God’s simplicity and immutability in this way, it has implications regarding justification. It follows from God’s immutability that justification must entail a change in man not a change in God. Christian theology has no room for a change in God nor a change in how God sees His people. Penal Substitution, as described above, and the concept of imputed righteousness, which teaches that we are moved from enmity to friendship with God without actual change in ourselves, both seem to contradict God’s immutability because they entail changes in God rather than changes in the created order.

The Reformed would argue for a third option since they too affirm God’s immutability. They would say that the change, at initial justification, is not a change in God or a change in man but a change in the relationship between the two. Now there are two types of relationships: intrinsic, such as familial, and extrinsic, such as geographical. In the case of the latter, a change in the relationship may take place without any inherent change in the involved parties. That is, the change in relationship may be effected by extrinsic change. If one party moves, the geographical relationship is altered, but neither party has been inherently changed. On the other hand, in the case of an intrinsic relationship, a real intrinsic change must occur in one or more of the involved parties in order for the relationship to change. For the relationship of two men to go from friendship to enmity, something must happen in one or more of the friends. They must undergo a change in disposition toward the other.

Now it is clear that God did not change when man first sinned. It should also be clear from the above that God does not change during the process of justification. So if it is true that in order for an intrinsic relationship to change, a real change must occur in one of the involved parties, then the doctrine of imputed righteousness must be false. But it is conceivable, at this point, that it is not universally true that in order for an intrinsic relationship to change, a real change must occur in one of the involved parties. Ordinarily it certainly is true, but suppose that God, from eternity, decreed that the righteousness of His Son would effect the necessary change in the relationship between man and Himself such that a real change was not necessary in either party. This is impossible because it is like saying that God could make a square circle. God can’t do something that is not capable of being done by its own terms. God cannot cause an intrinsic change by non-intrinsic means because then it would not be an intrinsic change. Further, the model of imputed righteousness has no precedent in nature, i.e. it is not supported by the divine metaphor.

Now I would not pretend to have sufficiently dealt with the nuances and arguments that the Reformed would readily employ in defense of this pivotal Evangelical “dogma”, but I hope I have at least given the reader something to consider.

Conclusion
The Divine Metaphor is one primary way that we begin to know God. It is the pedagogy of nature itself. It informs our understanding of God and is confirmed by the Scriptures. It may not be apparent to some why it is so important to understand God rightly from the start. But if we start with a proper understanding of who God is, informed by divine revelation, then it will help us avoid errors like fundamentalism, penal substitution, imputed righteousness, and many others. I should make it clear that I have not intended, in this post, to advance a particular theory of hermeneutical method, the atonement, or justification. I brought these up as brief examples of errors caused by a misapprehension of the divine metaphor and consequently God’s nature. Whatever is left wanting in the discussion of these points will be handled at a later date with more thorough treatments.

Going forward let me encourage you to look closely at nature expecting the Divine Metaphor.

1. Summa Theologica I Q.3 a.1-8 [↩]
2. Summa Theologica I Q.3 a.3 [↩]
3. John 14:6 [↩]
4. Summa Theologica I Q.33 a.2 [↩]
5. CCC 370; Gen 1:27 [↩]
6. Summa Theologica I Q.9 a.1-2 [↩]
7. Summa Theologica I Q.20 a.1 r.1 – Aquinas says, “Therefore acts of the sensitive appetite, inasmuch as they have annexed to them some bodily change, are called passions; whereas acts of the will are not so called. Love, therefore, and joy and delight are passions; in so far as they denote acts of the intellective appetite, they are not passions.” [↩]
8. 1 Cor 12:12-31 [↩]
9. Matt 3:4, Mark 1:6 [↩]
10. 2 Kings 1:8 [↩]
11. Josh 10:13 [↩]
12. See, for example, McCartney, Dan “Literal and Allegorical Interpretation in Origen” Westminster Theological Journal 1986. Online text. Origen said, “The incidents which are historically true [in the OT] are much more numerous than the spiritual interpretations which have been woven in by the Holy Ghost for pedagogical reasons.” – De principiis (4.3.4) [↩]