6 Metaphors of God in Sacred Texts
DesCamp and Sweetser in an article published in 2005 analyze a total of 44 metaphors from the Hebrew
scriptures and 50 from the Christian scriptures, for example God is a Father, God is a Shepherd, a Rock,
and so forth. Their analysis points towards relational metaphors between God and Humans, for example
Father-child, Lord-servant, and so on, which show “a two-way, loving relationship, with asymmetric
power but symmetric love” (p. 233).
7 Elsewhere I’ve claimed that one very pervasive conceptual metaphor of the Bible is God is a Lover (Evola
2004, 2005) and you have the blend on the handout. This metaphor permeates the Sir Hassirim, or the
Song of Songs, as well as Psalm 45. In this metaphor, God and devotee are seen as LoVER and BELoVED, and
there is symmetry, albeit illusionary or temporal for the devotee, to the point that the devotee, because of
his or her experience of mystical union, can profess “I am God”. What is interesting about the Song of
Songs is that God is never mentioned once, which is probably why this metaphor was not taken into
consideration in the aforementioned essay; yet, at least as far back as Rabbi Akiba in the 2nd century, this
book was already traditionally seen as an allegory of the love of God, and many saintly figures have used
this conceptual metaphor to talk about the Divine Love and Mystical Union (for instance the spanish
mystics Teresa de Avila and Juan de la Cruz). The same conceptual metaphor manifests itself in other
theistic religious systems such as Judaism, Islam and Hinduism.
This doesn’t mean that this particular metaphor is acceptable or present for all devotees. In a bit I’ll try to
show some evidence for the fact that each individual has a “preferred” way of representing God, motivated
by their own life experiences.
But it does seem rather surprising that eroticism should be used to talk about God at all. This is not
platonic love: it's the typical language used in the poetry of passion, where the beloved lusts for the kisses
and caresses of the lover, fearing separation, giving up one's own family and social dignity to be with the
lover. In fact there's a whole genre of mystical literature, cross-culturally, which is based on erotic
metaphors, and many people consider these writings as the greatest, not only poetically, but also
devotionally.
Now, isn't it contradictory that a religious system, whose laws concerning sexuality are so rigorous and
whose punishments are so harsh, would even admit more or less explicit descriptions of those same acts
to talk about the sublime? Why should people even talk about God and the Divine in terms of a human
source domain? Why not use other non-human domains, like clothing or mechanical objects, especially
when for so many religious systems it is a sin to represent God, in particular as a human?