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{"id":22433,"date":"2018-05-03T18:00:21","date_gmt":"2018-05-03T12:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/?p=22433"},"modified":"2018-05-03T19:29:26","modified_gmt":"2018-05-03T13:29:26","slug":"abstraction-and-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2018\/05\/abstraction-and-image\/","title":{"rendered":"Abstraction and Image"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In his recently published Lewis on the Christian Life<\/em><\/a>, Joe Rigney devotes a few pages to expounding Lewis\u2019s understanding of the relation between abstract theological statements and the images of Scripture. He endorses the abstractions as a caution against false inferences that might be drawn from the images, but he warns that the abstractions aren\u2019t to be taken as \u201cliteral\u201d truth or as data of revelation.<\/p>\n

Thus, for instance, Rigney presents two theological statements:<\/p>\n

\u201cA. When God is angry, smoke goes up from his nostrils (Ps. 18:8).<\/p>\n

B. God is absolute Being and all human characteristics are inapplicable to him\u201d (55).<\/p>\n

Lewis doesn\u2019t think that B is literal and A a \u201cpoetical decoration or . . . a concession to the \u2018primitive mind of the ancient Jews.\u201d Rather, neither can be taken literally. And A at least has the advantage of being revealed:<\/p>\n

\u201cB can make no claim to be a revelation: we have made it. A does make this claim. . . . To prefer B is to think that the symbol we have made is better than the symbol He has made. I think we are right to use B as a corrective whenever A, taken literally, threatens to become absurd: but we must instantly plunge back into A. Only God Himself knows in what sense He is \u2018like\u2019 a father or king, capable of love and anger. But since He has given us that picture of Himself we may be sure that it is more importantly \u2018like\u2019 than any other concept we might try to substitute for it\u201d (quoted 56, fn 16).<\/p>\n

Lewis recognizes that \u201cScripture doesn\u2019t take the slightest pains to guard the doctrine of Divine Impassibility. We are constantly presented as exciting the Divine wrath or pit \u2013 even as \u2018grieving\u2019 God. I know this language is analogical. But when we say that, we must not smuggle in the idea that we can throw the analogy away and, as it were, get behind it to a purely literal truth. All we can really substitute for the analogical expression is some theological abstraction. And the abstraction\u2019s value is almost entirely negative. It warns us against drawing absurd consequences from the analogical expression by prosaic extrapolations. By itself, the abstraction \u2018impassible\u2019 can get us nowhere. It might even suggest something far more misleading than the most naif Old Testament picture of a stormily emotional Jehovah. Either something inert, or something which was \u2018Pure Act\u2019 in such a sense that it could take no account of events within the universe it had created\u201d (quoted 56-7).<\/p>\n

Rigney cites Lewis\u2019s two rules for interpreting images: \u201c1) Never take the images literally. 2) When the purport of the images \u2013 what they say to our fear and hope and will and affections \u2013 seems to conflict with the theological abstractions, trust the purport of the images every time<\/em>. For our abstract thinking is itself a tissue of analogies: a continual modeling of spiritual reality in legal or chemical or mechanical terms. Are these likely to be more adequate than the sensuous, organic, and personal images of Scripture \u2013 light and darkness, river and well, seed and harvest, master and servant, hen and chickens, father and child? The footprints of the Divine are more visible in that rich soil than across rocks or slag-heaps. Hence what they now call \u2018demythologizing\u2019 Christianity can easily be \u2018re-mythologizing\u2019 it \u2013 and substituting a poorer mythology for a richer\u201d (quoted 58; emphasis added).<\/p>\n

If there is one motto I\u2019d like to convince theologians to adopt, it\u2019s this: \u201cTrust the purport of the images every time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"