Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§12.3 The Kingdom of God
suming his absence) would presumably be signalled by at least a vision of divine
glory settling again on the temple (cf. Ezek. 43.4-5). So we need to ask also
whether the hope of (final) forgiveness of sins (rendering future sin offerings unnecessary?)
and the hope of outpoured Spirit (rendering fresh teaching of the law
unnecessary?) was as idyllic (symbolic) as the hope for abundant prosperity or
paradise restored, and whether there was a realistic hope for the complete eradication
of evil and transgression.
Here we need to be particularly careful with the term 'metaphor' itself. In
literary criticism 'metaphor' is a type of trope, a 'trope' being a figure where the
meaning of an individual word or phrase is altered or 'turned' from its conventional
sense. 116 Thus metaphor is different from 'simile', for in a simile the
words continue to bear their conventional sense, whereas 'metaphor is using a
word to stand for something different from the literal referent, but connected to it
through some similarity'. 117 Metaphor, Ricoeur has observed, is a semantic innovation
which produces its meaning-effect by the impertinence of its attribution.
118 In his Rule of Metaphor, 119 he tells us, he 'risked speaking not just of a
metaphorical sense but also of a metaphorical reference in talking about this
power of the metaphorical utterance to redescribe a reality inaccessible to direct
description'. 120 Similarly in her definitive study of metaphor, Janet Martin
Soskice points out, inter alia, that physical objects are not metaphors, nor are
metaphors merely decorative ways of saying something that could be said literally.
Rather, metaphors are ways of saying that which cannot be said literally or
which a literal description would be inadequate to describe. In religious language
metaphors can be described as 'reality[-]depicting without pretending to be directly
descriptive'. 121
116. Trope ('turn, turning'). The usage is classical; Quintilian defined 'trope' as the artistic
alteration of a word or phrase from its proper meaning to another (Institutes 8.6.1).
117. S. Wright, The Voice of Jesus: Studies in the Interpretation of Six Gospel Parables
(Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000) 8.
118. 'With metaphor, the innovation lies in the producing of a new semantic pertinence
by means of an impertinent attribution: "Nature is a temple where living pillars . . .". The metaphor
is alive as long as we can perceive, through the new semantic pertinence . . . the resistance
of the words in their ordinary use and therefore their incompatibility at the level of a literal interpretation
of the sentence' {Time and Narrative vol. 1 [Chicago: University of Chicago, 1984]
ix).
119. The Rule of Metaphor (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1977).
120. Time and Narrative l.xi.
121. J. M. Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985) here
145. Wright is familiar with this discussion (New Testament and People of God 63): 'metaphors
are themselves mini-stories, suggesting ways of looking at a reality which cannot be reduced to
terms of the metaphor itself (129-30). Cf. Caird's rather looser discussion of metaphor in Language
152-59.
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