How else can we describe our weather? We could talk millibars and wind-speeds. We could talk humidity levels and chill-factors. Our weather-forecasters know better. They describe weather as a living thing. It advances. It has fronts. It organises rain. It pushes east and gives way in the west. It is engaged in a struggle. It endeavours to achieve goals. It rises. It sinks. It is not just that there is the irresistible allure of something like personality; there is nothing better.
Or perhaps our weather-forecasters are like surgeons conducting an operation on a living patient. The patient appears on a map stretching from the Scillies to the Shetlands. What we see is something happening. We know that this is all far-fetched but it helps us understand. The map of the London Underground does much the same thing. It clarifies what is otherwise obscure. When we talk of falling in love we are doing the same thing.
The biblical writers speak of God in this way because they would otherwise be silent. We read that God stretches forth his hand to redeem (Exodus 6.6). It is as though God our Maker is a constructor who goes about his job the way we do. He gets things done. If God is an active God, he is active in this way, the biblical writers seem to be saying. We could hardly imagine the writers taking any other course than that of extrapolation, i.e. taking our mundane manners and methods as inflating them to a work on the cosmos. They talk of God as though he has arms and legs.
And all this goes on with a place as it is said for God’s creatures at his right hand. Eternal life is difficult enough to contemplate but we can all picture the guest of honour having the best seat in the house next to the house-owner. Is God really right-handed?
What the weather-forecasters do and what the prophets and other writers do in the Scriptures is match their declarations to the limited understanding of their hearers. To do anything else would be in vain. When astronomers talk to us about quarks and dark matter they have gone beyond our accepted conventional vocabulary. They are using words in a way that is beyond our means.
To speak of God it is necessary to resort to metaphor. This is not to reduce our Maker to a figure of speech. It is to put matters in comprehensible language, picture-language if you like. Nothing else will do.
IN FRENCH AND GREEK
Menus come in French. French vineyards have proved all-conquering. How much longer this will continue will prove interesting as competitors offer their products. The Good News of the Gospel comes in Greek and we mostly rely on English translations for our understanding of it. Among the many translations the CEV (Contemporary English Version) was designed to be read aloud and to be comprehensible. It is worth consulting.
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