Concepts – Figures of Speech

Sommer on the Anthropomorphic Argument from Silence

From Benjamin Sommer’s The Bodies of God and the World of Ancient Israel:

This may seem to be an argument from silence, but silence from a large sample of literature is indeed significant. The Hebrew Bible contains a wide variety of texts, from multiple genres, produced over several centuries. If its authors intended us to realize that they used anthropomorphic language figuratively, at some point surely some of them would have said so or would have given us reason to sense that their language was figurative.

Unanswered Questions – Day is like a Year

A question for those you believe God is outside of time:

This are song lyrics from a secular song:

What a year this day has been
What a day this year has been

What do they mean?

Likewise, Peter makes a similar statement.

2Pe 3:8 But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

What does this mean?

Question logic: The closed view takes 2 Peter 3:8 as some sort of metaphysical claim and adherents do not usually allow for the possibility of a figure of speech. If you ask them about a parallel secular statement, it will be a lot harder for them to make their claim with a straight face.

Rice on Metaphors

From The Openness of God:

But most scholars would reject a sharp division between literal and figurative theistic language in the Bible. This implies that all metaphors are alike, and such a view obscures the rich variations within the biblical descriptions of God.

While no metaphor provides us with a literal account of the divine reality – a one-to-one correspondence to its object – this does not mean that all metaphors are equally distant from the object represented… most Christians would agree that God is more like a shepherd thank a rock, and more like a parent than a shepherd. So within the broad spectrum of biblical metaphors, some are more important than others. These metaphors bear a stronger resemblance to the divine reality – they are closer, so to speak, to the intended
object…