Theology in the Flesh

How Embodiment and Culture Shape the Way We Think about Truth, Morality, and God

John Sanders

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781506445878
  9781506408422
• eBook ISBN:
  9781506408439
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Theology

Metaphors and other mental tools are used to reason (not just speak) about God, salvation, truth, and morality. Figurative language structures our theological and moral reasoning in powerful ways. This book uses an approach known as cognitive linguistics to explore the incredibly rich ways our conceptual tools, derived from embodied life and culture, shape the way we understand Christian teachings and practices. The cognitive revolution has generated amazing insights into how human minds make sense of the world. This book applies these insights to the ways Christians think about topics such as God, justice, sin, and salvation. It shows that Christians often share a set of very general ideas but disagree on what the Bible means or the moral stances we should take. It explains why Christians often develop a number of appropriate but sometimes incompatible ways to understand the Bible and various doctrines. It assists Christians in understanding those with whom they disagree. Hopefully, simply better understanding how and why people think the way they do will foster better dialogue and greater humility.

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How Christians Reason About Theological Topics, the Bible, and God

7

Christian Doctrines

Introduction

Thinking about theological topics such as sin and salvation makes use of the ordinary embodied cognitive processes we use every day. There is not a particular area of the brain or specific pattern of brain activity associated with religious experiences. Rather, as Brown and Strawn suggest: “there are a multitude of forms of body and brain activity that can mediate and embody religious experiences and the sense of the presence of God, but any particular brain-body event is experienced as religious or not based on the person’s expectations and ways of understanding their subjective experiences.”^[1] The way we understand theology depends upon our everyday conceptual apparatus employing conceptual metaphors, metonymies, blending and the like. Interacting with the sacred does not require an independent conceptual system. If God relates to us, then God will be the consummate cross-cultural emissary and relate in ways we can understand. This chapter examines various theological topics using cognitive linguistics in order to shed some light on Christian debates over topics such as sin, salvation, and divine judgment. In particular, the use of different metaphors can lead to different theological inferences, and thus, different theological models. The last section uses prototypes and radial categories to define Christianity.

7.1 Metaphors for Sin

The concepts of sin and salvation are central to Christian narrative. The human experience of sin is, unfortunately, deep and pervasive, so it is no surprise that numerous source domains are used to understand it. The Bible contains many different ways to construe sin.^[2] For instance, it is thought of as an agent or animal of prey. When God confronts Cain’s anger, God says, “sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it” (Gen 4:7). Other translations read “sin is crouching at the door.” The domain is that of an adversary intending to assault Cain and God instructs Cain to gain control over the foe. A similar idea occurs in the New Testament. 1 Peter speaks of the devil as an adversary who, like a lion, prowls around seeking prey, but Christians should resist him (1 Pet 5:8–9). James says, “resist the devil and he will flee from you” (Jas 4:8).

Paul uses many understandings of sin. For example, sin is thought of as a master who owns us such that we are “slaves to sin” (Rom 6:6-16). Paul here thinks of sin as an agent who “exercises dominion” over humanity (Rom 5:14) and compels our obedience. Paul also thinks of sin as the refusal to give “honor” to God (Rom 1:21). The word “honor” triggers the cultural frame of what is expected of various parties in the patronage system. God, the patron, provides for the well-being of humans and humans are to honor and give thanks to God in return. Paul says that humans actively refuse to perform their expected obligation. Indications of our failure to honor God are specific transgressions, such as envy, deceit, gossip, and slander (Rom 1:29–31). Paul also conceives of sin as “trespassing” where we should not go and as “walking” the path of death when we follow the path of the prince of the air (Eph 2:1–2)^[3]. Paul here uses the Journey metaphor so pervasive in the Old Testament and the Gospels (see section 8.3.3).

James says, “Adulterers! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?” (Jas 4:4) Here, James uses two different metaphors. He draws upon the Old Testament tradition of Israel as God’s unfaithful wife, and then switches to the idea of forsaking friendship with God. Joel Green notes that in these metaphors, the “very epitome of the sinful life is not an act but an allegiance” to the wrong people.^[4]

Robert Bascom discusses four of the images of sin in the New Testament and the entailments of each.^[5] The first is the moral-legal domain in which the sinner is conceived as a defendant before God, the judge.^[6] The second is the medical domain, according to which the sinner is a sick person in danger of dying and needs a physician (Matt 9:12). The third is from the domain of animal husbandry. In this frame, the sinner is understood as an animal that belongs to God, but is lost (Matt 18:10–14). The final domain is that of a journey, so the sinner is one who has either lost her way or deliberately left the path (Matt 7:13–14; 2 Pet 2:15).

Cornelius Plantinga’s Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be discusses a wide array of understandings of sin used in the Bible and Christian tradition.^[7] Sin is conceived as lack of spiritual hygiene, corruption of God’s good gifts, perversion from what God intended for us, pollution and contamination, disintegration from the wholeness of life God desired for us, a parasite preying upon God’s good creation, addiction, and a masquerade—pretending to be one thing (goodness) when it is not. One particularly interesting metaphor he uses is vandalism of God’s shalom—the defacing of God’s gifts intended to enable creatures to flourish.

This brief survey covers only some of the plethora of images that biblical writers and Christians have used from different source domains in order to think about various aspects of sin. The same is the case when it comes to ways of conceiving salvation.

7.2 Metaphors for Salvation

Images of salvation abound in Christianity and link to the manifold ways sin is understood. Conceptions of sin as captivity, being lost, sick, breaking the law, lack of spiritual hygiene, pollution, disintegration, addiction, masquerade, and vandalism will have corresponding understandings of salvation with their own logical structures. Brenda Colijn’s Images of Salvation in the New Testament provides a helpful survey of the main metaphors and how they have been understood.^[8] Among those discussed in her book are: citizenship in God’s kingdom, regeneration, new creation, rescue, healing, redemption, ransom, reconciliation, adoption, vindication (justification), pilgrimage, contest with an adversary, and participation in the life of God.

Thinking of sin as a cruel master who exercises dominion over us as slaves links to salvation as overcoming the power of the devil and liberating us from slavery (e.g., Heb 2:14–15; Col 2:15). Closely allied with this are the notions that the human plight is either that we are captives of war in need of ransom or we have incurred serious debt and have been sold into slavery. Consequently, Jesus is the redemption or ransom paid to release us from captivity or slavery (e.g., Rom 3:24; 1 Pet 1:18–19). In the early centuries of the church, these ideas coalesced into a popular view, known as the Christus Victor understanding of the atonement.^[9] It is interesting that the New Testament writers who speak of the redemption or ransom of Jesus never address the issue of to whom the ransom is paid.^[10] This is in keeping with the use of conceptual metaphors—only some aspects, not all, of the source domain are applied to the target domain. Yet, a number of church fathers, including Gregory of Nyssa, did elaborate on entailments from the source domain, based on their experience of captives and slaves being redeemed.^[11] Gregory said that Jesus, the ransom, was paid to the devil.

In the first-century Roman world, it was very important to pass on whatever inheritance one had to a son. Couples without a son would often adopt one, and sometimes, even slaves were adopted as sons. Adoption radically changed the state of the individual. The adopted son left his old family or status as a slave and took on the new name of the adoptive family, receiving the honor associated with the new family. The cultural adoption scenario carried ethical implications. The son owed allegiance to the new father, not his biological father, and was obligated to conduct his life in a manner that would bring honor to his new family. Paul makes use of this practice as a metaphor for salvation: Salvation Is Adoption Into God’s Family. The adoptees now call God “Abba, Father” (Rom 8:15), their allegiance to God as father now takes precedence over any prior allegiances, and they are to live in a way that honors the divine household. Paul makes a revolutionary modification on both the Roman practice of adoption and the biblical text when he declares that God adopts daughters in addition to sons. When Paul quotes 2 Sam 7:14, he changes the Old Testament text by adding the term “daughters,” so that God adopts both sons and daughters (2 Cor 6:18). Both female and male believers will inherit God’s estate. Biblical writers made use of practices common in society, and sometimes made significant emendations to the concepts.

Several metaphors involve reconciliation. If sin is the refusal to give honor to God, the patron, then salvation will be understood as reconciliation, which results in our giving honor and thanks to the patron for what was done on our behalf. If sin is conceived as committing adultery against the divine spouse or as forsaking friendship with God, then salvation will be understood as restoring the marriage or friendship, which involves forgiveness and reconciliation. Reconciliation of lovers or friends requires mutual actions and responses from both parties not found in some of the other metaphors for salvation (e.g., finding a lost sheep) because reconciliation is a mutual, rather than unilateral, activity.^[12] In this metaphor, God initiates the process by forgiving the wrong incurred and seeks restoration, but a human response of ongoing love is necessary. Salvation here involves both an initial embrace and continuing reciprocal acts of love. The human agent is active, not passive, as in some other salvation metaphors. One question that arises from this sour...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• The Basics of Cognitive Linguistics
• Truth, Meaning, and Morality in Light of Embodiment and Culture
• How Christians Reason About Theological Topics, the Bible, and God
• Suggested Reading
• Subject Index