Vol. I • 1978 http://www.creationism.org/csshs/v01n2p18.htm
METAPHOR:
AN EVIDENCE FROM DESIGN OF
THE CREATION MODEL PART II
Kathy Lynn Hutson
METAPHOR:
AN EVIDENCE FROM DESIGN OF
THE CREATION MODEL PART II
Kathy Lynn Hutson
A. AS AN ELEMENT OF LITERATURE
How is it, then, that metaphor is an evidence from design of the creation model?
First, as an element of literature the prominence of metaphor gives mute testimony to a consistent, almost subconscious awareness in man of the unity of nature. This constant comparison and analogy between two objects or phenomena in the empirical realm, or between the empirical and the metaphysical realm, attests to man’s inner knowledge that the variable elements of nature (diversity) exist within a consistent framework (unity). The historical philosophical struggles between Grace and Nature, unity and diversity, the One and the Many are reflected in the consciousness that one can learn from the diverse pieces of nature something of the unified field, and likewise learn truth about the pieces from the unifying concepts.
A confidence in this “psycho-physical parallelism,” as Lewis called it, can only come from a base of supernatural creation. Chance selection does not produce order: nor diversity of matter, unity of mind. Whenever a poet compares two different things, commits a semantic transgression, crosses linguistic boundaries, he expresses confidence in the basic unity behind two different linguistic categories, from which he can transmit, in the words of Shelley, “the before unapprehended relations of things.”42 Given the creation model, this unity is perfectly understandable. The same Creator who made the diverse natural phenomena, made the mind of man; thus the two would be expected to exist in harmony. Furthermore, one would predict that the handiwork of this personal God would reflect His nature, just as the works of man reflect his. Since the creation model presupposes a perfect, personal, omnipotent Deity, all ultimate Truth would reside in Him and be reflected in the diversity of His creation. And thus, the Scriptures attest to the fact that all creation teaches, not comprehensive truth, but some truth about the ultimate Reality (Rom. 1; Ps. 19). Therefore, the only basis for valid metaphorical comparison and analogy between the diverse objects of nature is supernatural creation; as a corollary, the ages-long persistence of metaphor as the essence of poetic expression witnesses to the truth of the creation model.
Another teleological aspect of metaphor as an element of literature includes the creation mandate, the fact that in Genesis I, God directs man to subdue and rule the earthly creation; and in Genesis 2, to name the animals. The act of naming (naming well, that is) requires an understanding of the object to be named. Adam named the animals by examining them; and having come to some understanding of their nature, gave each a suitable title. This represents the first step of man in ruling nature; understanding enough to intellectually subdue the diversity of the creation about him. “Intellectual subduing” is the essence of poetic expression, as in Wheelwright’s statement that metaphor “partly discloses hitherto unknown aspects of What Is.” That is the repeatedly avowed goal of the artist, to give the viewer/reader a new, revelatory perspective through which to better understand, and thus to control, the diversity around him. Thus, skillful poetic expression is an extension of subduing and naming, through the wise use of metaphoric relationships. In the Bible skillful poetry and prose are called wisdom literature and are full of metaphorical expressions (e.g., Proverbs, Song of Songs). 43 D.A. Hubbard summarizes the relationship of wisdom writing and man’s subduing;
Theologically wisdom has as one of its functions an explication of Genesis 1-2. It is part of the outworking of God-given commands to subdue the earth and name the animals. Understanding the creation is not merely a means of success for man, it is a divinely-designed way of blessing. By acquiring and applying wisdom man fulfills one of the purposes for which he was created. 44
An interesting note here, by way of example, on the wisdom of Solomon is that this king was called the wisest man on earth. I Kings 4 indicates that Solomon had a high degree of knowledge about the plant and animal kingdom. Since his proverbs and songs are full of references to the natural realm, is it not possible to speculate that the human means of gaining his extraordinary wisdom was observation and correlation of this empirical data, combined with semantic transgression, resulting in the highly metaphoric poetic revelation of Proverbs, for example? There is a basis, then, in the creation model for gleaning wisdom from metaphoric activity. The evolution model has no such basis, which is the subject of the following section.
B. AS A PRINCIPLE OF LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT
Metaphor is also an evidence from design of the creation model in its broader role as a principle of language and thought. However, it will be enlightening to examine first the plight of language and metaphor in the evolution model.
1. In The Evolution Model
This can best be accomplished by examining metaphor in light of the three main principles of the evolution model mentioned in Section II: 1) naturalism, 2) net increase in complexity, and 3) uniformitarianism
First, language, in line with the naturalistic character of the evolution theory, was originated completely by man. Thus, it is subject to the limitations of man’s perceptions; accordingly, language and categories began exclusively as an inductive process. But herein lies the problem. If man alone created language, how does he have any assurance, given the imperfection of human perception, that his words correspond accurately with the nature of things, What Is? It is here that the philosophical implications of “radical” or “necessary” metaphor discussed in Section II come into play. For if there are truly thoughts that require metaphors as their only means of expression, then the thoughts depend upon the metaphors. Wheelwright’s words must haunt the evolutionary thinker: semantics and ontology are inseparable; the latter is dependent on the former. It is also Wheelwright who, in discussing the difference in the Western and Eastern mind, asserts that the translation and publication of the Oriental classics in the late 1800’s has had as great a philosophical impact on the West as Darwin. He then quotes a common Eastern view of the language/truth question from the Tao Teh Ching: “The Tao (Reality) which can be spoken is not the real Tao,” 45 citing this as the oldest clear expression of the basic semantic dilemma. There is, then, a barrier between the human subject and the object he seeks to know. This linguistic epistemological dilemma arises from the belief that man alone created language.
But humanists have a “hope,” by which they try to avoid a final dilemma. It begins with their theory of the origin of language. The classic debate on the subject is found in Cratylus between Aristotle and Plato over whether the words originally chosen for objects had or had not some natural kinship with the things they were chosen to designate. 46 History has basically sided with Aristotle, according to Brown, agreeing that there were few cases of kinship, most words being arbitrary sound-symbols. Later, as the scenario goes, words were chosen for ideas and concepts by means of metaphor. 47 Man began, then, by creating sound-symbols for objects, and later used those symbols as comparisons to express conceptual thought. As Hudson Maxim states; “Man parted company with the brute when he began to have ideas which could not be expressed by ... arbitrary symbols of concrete ideas.”48 Note, however, there is no indication here of the source of these abstract ideas. Brown also quotes the famous philologist Max Muller:
The fact that all words expressive of immaterial conceptions are derived by metaphor from words expressive of sensible ideas was, for the first time, clearly and definitely put forth by Locke, and now is fully confirmed by the researches of comparative philologists. 49
The “hope” then of the evolution model comes from the theory of the upward development of the mind of man. These new ideas which came inexplicably to man’s mind and sought metaphorical expression are prototypes of how metaphor shall continue to “mediate” between man and truth, or as it were, between heaven and earth. The semantic dilemma that Wheelwright so effectively perceived in the words of the Tao he cannot accept as an ultimate dilemma. He writes:
Attempts to express and justify the inner meaning of What Is are notoriously difficult. ... But the doom is not complete; for by imaginative language some inroad, genuine though a slight, can be made into the semantic wilderness. Since imaginative language is basically metaphoric ...there is a natural collusion between metaphor and myth in man’s attempts to discover and utter “the inner meaning of the universe and of human life.” 50 (Emphasis original)
Weller Embler echoes this “leap of faith” in metaphor and the arts, interestingly, in terms of the One and the Many.
It is possible, after all, that something more than language, or the symbolism of the arts, is required for total meaning. Language can go only so far; and beyond language, beyond meaning is existence—silence. True we strive for total meaning through style, subject, context, relationships, and it may well be that in our most inspired moments we come close to total meaning, meaning as we understand it in the linguistic and semantic sense. There comes to mind the poem “Ars Poetica” by Archibald MacLeish in which there are the lines “A poem should not mean/ But be.” This suggests that there may be in the arts some insights that are more than the sum of the rhetorical devices used to convey them, something beyond metaphor whose meaning is solely the creation of the original, of the singular, of the one. 51 (Emphasis original)
Embler here expresses the faith of the evolution model, that by some mysterious means metaphor and the arts can be mediators between man and the ultimate meaning he seeks. But the irony is that Embler himself portrays what is “beyond language” as “silence.” It is a Western echo of the Tao: The ultimate Meaning which can be spoken is not the real Meaning.
The problem with this mediatorial view of poetic language, or any man-conceived language, is best expressed by Emmett:
Our minds seem impelled to seek or to create significance in their world as a whole. ... But, we ask, what warrant have we to suppose that the world views which result are more than the products of the mind’s own impulse towards the creation of forms in which the imagination can rest, and a feeling of significance can be enjoyed? May not such world views, whether metaphysical or theological. prove in the end to be simply word patterns? 52
It is evident from this honest observation that the naturalistic aspect of the evolution model has no resolution for the semantic dilemma of whether language truly corresponds to the nature of What Is.
Another characteristic of the evolution model one would expect to be represented in linguistic considerations is the net increase in complexity presumed by this theory. Language, according to the naturalistic presupposition, slowly evolved from primitive to more complex patterns by means of metaphoric activity and these mysterious conceptual ideas that “came” to the human species and forced development of linguistic skills, However, philologists have no evidence that this increasing complexity has occurred. In fact, the evidence is to the contrary. A noted anthropologist, Ralph Linton, writes
We know absolutely nothing about the early stages in the development of language. …The so-called primitive languages can throw no light on language origins since most of them are actually more complicated in grammar than the tongues spoken by civilized people. 53
Even the staunch evolutionist George Gaylord Simpson states: “The oldest language that can reasonably be reconstructed is already modern, sophisticated, complete from an evolutionary point of view.” 54
Finally, the uniformitaranism of the evolution model has assumed that the present nature of the development of language has been roughly consistent and can therefore be used to extrapolate backward indefinitely in linguistic theory. Thus, on the unfounded assumption that linguistic development has always been the same, they posit theories of the origin of language as a human phenomenon and the variety of languages as a social phenomenon. To transfer biological terminology to this discussion, they exercise faith in a linguistic macro-evolution (chirps to Chaucer) on the scientific philological data that can only support micro-evolution. In the same sense that chimney moths in England adapt, or evolve, to accommodate changing environments, but still remain chimney moths, language adapts and changes within certain linguistic boundaries, but has never been non-language; just as no signal system of animals has ever developed into conceptual language. Simpson confirms the absolute uniqueness of language to the human race:
Human language is absolutely distinct from any system of communication in other animals. That is made most clear by comparison with other animal utterances, which most nearly resemble human speech and are most often called “speech.” Non-human vocables are, in effect, interjections. They reflect the individual’s physical or, more frequently emotional state. They do not, as true language does, name, discuss, abstract, or symbolize. 55
Furthermore, as Morris points out, the evolution model cannot adequately explain the great variety of languages, on the one hand, and yet their structural unity which makes the science of linguistics possible, on the other.
The evolutionists cannot be assured of a true correlation between language and reality. To compensate, they are forced to a “leap of faith” in the mediatorial powers of metaphoric activity, but due to a naturalistic starting point are left with the spectre that their “truths” are no more than arbitrary word patterns. As a result, many serious thinkers have abandoned this faith and accepted the logical conclusions of bare naturalism; i.e., there is no correlation between words and reality, between the phenomenal and the noumenal, no psycho-physical parallelism in the universe. These are the 20th century poets. Some have represented what is called “pure poetry.” They have deliberately stripped words of meaning by making nonsensical word combinations, by playing games with words and finally by using them as bare sounds, declaring that a poem is pure only when it makes mere verbal music, devoid of meaning. There are no significant internal relationships among categories: thus, metaphor is nothing more than random combination. Richards, who of course objects to this tendency, quotes one of its adherents, Andre Breton, leader of the French Super-Realists:
To compare two objects, as remote from one another in character as possible, or by any other method put them together in a sudden and striking fashion, this remains the highest task to which poetry can aspire. 56
Wheelwright labels this type of metaphor “diaphoric,” citing Gertrude Stein as an example with some of her random combinations, such as “Toasted Susie is my ice cream” and “A silence a whole waste of a desert spoon.”57 Stein, says Wheelwright, “in contriving such diaphoric word patterns, considered that she was reducing poetry to the status of music.”
But perhaps most intriguing is his discussion on the relationship of diaphoric metaphor to the philosophy of evolution:
The essential possibility of diaphor lies in the broad ontological fact that new qualities and new meanings can emerge, simply come into being, out of some hitherto ungrouped combination of elements. If one can imagine a state of the universe, perhaps a trillion years ago. before hydrogen atoms and oxygen atoms had ever come together, it may be presumed that up to that time water did not exist. Somewhere in the later vastitude of time, then, water first came into being—when just those two necessary elements came together at last under the right conditions of temperature and pressure. Analogous novelties occur in the sphere of meanings as well. As in nature new qualities may be engendered by the coming together of elements in new ways, so too in poetry new suggestions of meaning can be engendered by the juxtaposition of previously unjoined words and images. Such diaphoric synthesis is indispensable as a factor in poetry. 58
However, Wheelwright maintains that the diaphoric aspect of metaphor is only at its best in combination with epiphor, or the conventional cognitive, comparative aspect of metaphor, which indicates his (and many others’) philosophical inconsistency; what he can trust alone to create water and worlds, he cannot trust to create poetry. This inconsistency is a dishonest but desperate attempt to hold on to the truth and beauty of metaphor, rather than admitting with Gertrude Stein that on an evolutionary base “A rose is a rose” and that is all it is.
2. In The Creation Model
The creation model, on the other hand, as declared in the historical record of Genesis, better correlates the data surrounding the problems of metaphor, language and ontology. The aspects of this correlation can best be organized under the three basic characteristic principles of the creation model discussed in Section II: 1) completed supernatural origin 2) net decrease in complexity, and 3) historic catastrophism.
The completed supernatural origin of the creation applies directly to the language issue. The creation and transmission of language by the Creator as implied in Genesis 1-2 deals with the major problems encountered by the evolution model. First, rather than all language being derived, by metaphor, from the arbitrary sound-symbols of primitive man, basic linguistic categories were transmitted to man by God, from which metaphorical development could stem.
In Genesis 1:3 “God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.” Notice in this narration that God uttered the word light before it came into being. The text could easily have said “God thought.” but it does not. As a historical record, the text must be studied in light of what it actually says, not what modernists believe it “really means.” It reads, “God said, ‘Let there be light.’ “Thus, language as man understands it, was created and spoken before the natural phenomena came into existence. The word light not only pre-existed the phenomenon of light, but in a real sense it defined or sculpted that piece of nature. That historical record leads to a most profound and applicable conclusion; namely, that the word for the natural phenomenon of light is perfectly correlated to the nature of light. And so the pattern is repeated throughout Genesis 1 for “firmament,” “dry land,” “vegetation,” and “living creatures.” The linguistic categories and basic vocabulary of the universe, then, were created and spoken by God at the beginning; thus, language, when first uttered by God, actually formed reality, and in consequence perfectly corresponded to the nature of What Is.
These linguistic categories, or what might be called the “general terms” of creation, were subdivided in the case of at least three categories, and perhaps more. Genesis 1:5 says, “God called the light day, and the darkness he called night.” This “calling” represents a naming process which God undertook in the early part of creation. He not only “spoke” the creation into being, but further “defined” it after its creation with words such as day, night, earth and heaven. The fairly obvious purpose for such a naming process (or one purpose) which is the same purpose for language itself, is communication—communication with man. Thus, the origin of human language was God’s spoken language, perfectly correspondent to the physical objects He had created, and the subsequent transmission of that language to man.
The conclusion that man received his basic linguistic categories from God, whether by instruction or fiat creation, is supported by the implications of Genesis 2. After the creation of man, God talked to him. By Genesis 2 He probably had instructed Adam in His linguistic categories (or created him speaking) and was thus already able to communicate meaningfully. He had told man that he was man; He had told man of light, earth, heavens, living creatures.
Second, the creation model explains the well-established fact that man has developed language by means of metaphor, this development being founded upon the linguistic base given him by God. The very metaphorical/analogical capability of man derives from his creation in the image of God. This explains the uniqueness of man as the only language-speaking creature. Unlike any of the other creatures, man was made, according to Genesis 1:27, in the image of God, i.e., personal and intelligent, capable of speaking God’s words and thinking God’s thoughts after Him. This speaking ability is one of his major distinguishing features, as Simpson confirmed: and this job of naming, as Hubbard states, is one of his means of subduing. Thus the metaphorical development of language is only possible because of the analogical capability of man’s mind in God’s image.
Third, Wheelwright developed extensively the idea of the dependence of knowledge upon language, 59 and from this Embler rightly concludes: “More often than not, our thoughts do not select the words we use: instead, words determine the thoughts we have.” 60 If this is true, and it is becoming more apparent among thinkers that it is, then the purity of man’s knowledge is indeed subject to the purity of his words and metaphors. As much as philosophers may want to avoid this dependence on metaphor and seek a “purer” terminology, there is no true option in a philosophic context for man to speak literally. As C. S. Lewis succinctly states: “It is abundantly clear that the freedom is often only a freedom to choose between that metaphor and others.” 61 In both the creation and evolution models, then, man is dependent on metaphoric activity which is built on a linguistic foundation. The difference in the models is the nature of that foundation. In evolution that word-foundation consists of arbitrary human sounds with no verifiable correspondence with the true nature of things. In the creation model, the base is the audible (not mystical) spoken words of God to man.
To see the centrality of metaphorical activity in man’s language development, it is necessary to go back and pick up the Biblical record in Genesis 2. Here, God gave Adam the task of further naming the creation (2:19). From the word-foundation which God had already given him, the categories such as “cattle,” “birds,” and “beasts of the field” (2:20), man himself was to “call,” just as God had done. The interesting thing here is that man had to “create” names, in effect, develop language further by building upon the foundation the Creator had established. And, indeed, the means of that naming was exemplified in his first recorded act of naming, the naming of woman (Gen. 2:23):
And the man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Ishah Because she was taken out of Ish.’
He names woman (Ishah) in terms of man (Ish). The first recorded words of man are a metaphor. The Hebrew word Ishah is a metaphorical derivative of Ish. Man’s first naming was a metaphorical activity built upon the ontologically pure linguistic foundation given him by God.
These observations from Genesis 1-2 give reasonable solutions to the problems the evolution model faced but was unable to solve. The creation model answers the semantic dilemma presented by the humanistic naturalism of evolution. First, the word-foundation from which man metaphorically derives words was God-made, not the man-made, meaningless, arbitrary sound symbols of evolution. Thus, they correspond with reality. When man then began to develop language metaphorically from the foundation, the metaphors also could be accurate and dependable, ontologically and epistemologically. Second, the basis for comparison between the diverse elements of creation, the learning of one from the other, and the basis for “semantic transgression” or the “system of associated commonplaces” is the overall unity of creation and its role as a reflector of the Creator and His Truth. Within the creation model, then, the earthly, or the phenomenal, is a legitimate way to learn both more about the phenomenal and some true facets of the heavenly, or the noumenal (Ps. 19; Rom. 1).
However, while the first man was capable of taking the pure language of God and developing perfect derivations through metaphor, another historic event in the Scriptural records which controls the creation model is the Fall of man (Gen. 3). As creation scientists have stated, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or entropy, is a result of this historic event. Entropy, or the tendency of nature toward decay, confusion, and death affects all aspects of creation, even language. It is this decaying or confusing aspect of language that is central to the second principle of the creation model, the net decrease in complexity.
The Fall spoiled man’s perfect perception and thus the metaphors which were derived from his perception. Therefore language would be expected to tend toward a decrease in complexity and accuracy, as man’s metaphorical derivations became contaminated. The part of civilization closest to the pure language of the first man would be expected to have the most piercingly precise and complex linguistic delineations. And interestingly, as the words of Linton and Simpson attest even the most primitive language available for philological study is still complex, and the expectations of evolutionary theory that early language would be simple and general have not been corroborated. 62 Indeed, the extant languages of early great civilizations are as comprehensive and poetically sophisticated as our own.
Linguistic entropy would also explain the numerous difficulties and breakdowns in language and communication. Some have described metaphor as the wonderful process of change and adaptation by which language progresses up the evolutionary scale. This change is only “wonderful” if that process is an upward trend, but the upward direction of the evolutionary theory is a presupposition, not a fact. Rather, might the constant change and flux of language be a decay and “dying” of old words and the necessary creation of new ones because they were abused, distorted or confused by their users? This dying of excellent language systems has been witnessed throughout history, and the present-day abuse and resulting ambiguity of language is experienced in everyday living.
A final note seems appropriate for this discussion of the net decrease in complexity of language. Because men are unable to create new words in the sense God did, to create new, non-metaphorical, literal terms out of nothing, the pretense of doing so is a denial of creaturehood and the Fall. Man, finally, has no choice, as the metaphysicians would hope, between metaphor and pure abstraction. “We did not at first observe,” writes Lewis, “that where we were promised a freedom from metaphor we were given only a power of changing the metaphors in rapid successlon.” 63 The irony is that if indeed autonomous man created a word with absolutely no metaphorical relation to any other word, he would be doing nothing more than emitting a meaningless, arbitrary sound-symbol, the activity which he ascribes to the most primitive of men. Would this not be considered a net decrease in complexity?
The third summary characteristic of the creation model, historic catastrophism, also has a key role in the development and nature of language. As mentioned earlier, a naturalistic upward development of language has no corroboration in philological studies, nor does the rise of extremely diverse languages throughout the world. These diverse basic language systems have no apparent “mother” language, nor any indications of such a familial relationship. They are distinctly different. On the other hand, they have a structural unity that spawned the science of linguistics. This unity and diversity are explained by another Biblical event by which the creation model of language must be defined. This event is the Tower of Babel.
Just as creation scientists find evidence for the physical catastrophism of the Noahic Flood which is the source of much geologic data, linguistic catastrophism exists similarly in the account of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. At one time, all men spoke the same language, basically the same language of Adam’s family. The historic record of the “confusion of languages” by God’s supernatural intervention is the basis for both the unity and diversity of the various language systems. This diversity and unity might be understood by comparison to the animal kingdom. While there are a vast variety of respiratory animals, there is a structural unity or similarity in the tissues, organs and systems of mammals, reptiles and birds. Likewise, while there is a great variety of mammals, there is a structural similarity between kangaroos and chimpanzees in that they are warm-blooded, mammalian and bear their infants live. By comparison the same diversity of “kinds” in the animal kingdom, as outlined in Genesis 1, appears in the linguistic kingdom, but not until Babel. A central conclusion to be drawn here is that the different language systems of the world also originated by the direct words and works of God, not human social development over long periods of time. Thus, those who grant a supernatural birth for the origin of language, and yet persist in the human development of divergent languages, are not consistent with the creation model. Here again, the philological evidence for micro-evolution of languages (for example, the French and German influence upon the Anglo-Saxon tongue in the formation of the modern English language) is not a valid basis for the macro-evolution of the various language systems.
To summarize, language originated with God’s own words, which He spoke to man. Upon this word-foundation, man then developed language by means of metaphor, having confidence in the underlying unity of all nature. With the Fall, this capability for perfect metaphorical development was destroyed, leaving metaphor a useful, but fallible tool. Finally the diversity of the world’s language systems resulted from a supernatural intervention many generations later by the Creator of language.
In conclusion, metaphor and the metaphorical nature of language and thought are best explained in the light of the creation model and stand as evidence for its validity. The semantic ontological dilemma of the humanistic view of the origin of language presents insurmountable problems, and the “leap of faith” in metaphoric language by the evolutionary humanist is admitted by honest thinkers to be hollow indeed. The creation model alone gives meaning to language and metaphor.
Besides being of purely theoretical and teleological value, these discussions of the creation view of human language have tremendous pedagogical advantages. In a day when literary instruction frequently degenerates into relative and arbitrary modes of interpretation, the solidity of the Biblical view of language is a comfort. Language was intended to communicate specific meaning and to the degree that true communication does not occur, it is a verbal failure either by the speaker or by the hearer. There are precise interpretations for meaningful literature skillful words do not “mean one thing to me and “something else to you.” To say this about the great literary works of history is to pridefully and ignorantly demean the articulate and talented men and women who skillfully created them. And the persistence of such views is one of the means of the net decrease in complexity of language and the breakdown of communication. The creation model gives the student confidence in the true significance of language. Language is not once-removed from reality, as the Tao and contemporary Western rhetoricians would have it; but the very words of God which He spoke to man are the words that molded the universe. And the student of language can know and be stimulated by the finite but nevertheless vast power of the words of a man made in the image of the speaking God.
While metaphor has been taught as a significant element of literature, it could be taught as the very principle of language and thought by which language develops and by which man perceives wisdom, as in the highly metaphoric wisdom literature of the Bible. Man’s thought is derivative, derivative of the thoughts and words of God. This gives true vitality to metaphor, because there is hope of reaching true wisdom as men’s metaphors conform to the nature of God’s world, directed by the Truth of God’s Word; there really is a psycho-physical parallelism in the universe. Metaphor is truly a means to wisdom. Thus, the literary and philosophical value of metaphor is indispensable to a full understanding of the very act of learning itself. Man’s words and thoughts derive from God’s words.
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." (Proverbs 1:7).
FOOTNOTES
41 Ibid., p. 8, 17.
42 Percy Bysshe Shelley, cited in Wheelwright. p. 52. Metaphor is a predominant literary aspect throughout the Bible. The prophets use metaphorical expression constantly in their poetic messages (e.g., the extended metaphors of Ezekiel): the typology within old Testament history is a metaphoric extension (e.g., the book of Hebrews contains typological teaching): and the very parables of Jesus are obvious metaphors.
43 Holy Bible, by Solomon.
44 D. A. Hubbard, “The Wisdom Movement and Israel’s Covenant Faith,” Tyndale Bulletin 17 (1966), p.22.
45 Wheelwright. p.22.
46 Brown, p. 25.
47 Ibid.
48 Hudson Maxim, cited in Brown, p. 29.
49 Brown, p. 29.
50 Wheelwright. p. 130-131.
51 Embler, p. 137-138.
52 Emmett, p.2.
53 Ralph Linton, The Tree of Culture (New York: Alfred A. KnopI, 1955), p.9 cited in Morris, p. 184-5.
54 George Gaylord Simpson. “The Biological Nature of Man,” Science, Vol. 152 (April 22, 1966), p.477, cited by Morris, p. 185.
55 Ibid., p. 476, cited in Morris, p. 183. For those who may be inclined to amalgamate the creation and evolution theories, it is interesting to note that the first thing the Bible records man doing verbally is naming (Gen. 2): and the second, discussing (Gen. 3). The problem for the theistic evolutionist, then, is that the first man is recorded as doing the very thing which separates him most radically from the animals.
56 As cited in Richards, p. 123.
57 Wheelwright, p.79.
58 Ibid., p. 85-86.
59 Ibid., p. 26.
60 Embler, p. iv.
61 Lewis, p. 46.
62 Another note regarding amalgamation of the evolution and creation models of language: the evolutionary scenario. of course, would never have early man using any word that lie had not derived from sense experience. How, then, could Eve use the word “death” with the serpent in Genesis 3 when she had had no experiential encounter with this phenomenon?
63 Lewis, p. 47.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Black, Max. Models and Metaphors. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1962.
Brown, Stephen J. The World of Imagery, New York: Russell and Russell, 1927.
Deere, Jack S. “Metaphor in The Song of Songs.” Unpublished Master’s thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1975.
Embler, Weller. Metaphor and Meaning. DeLand, FA: Everett/Edwards, Inc., 1966.
Emmett, Dorothy M. The Nature of Metaphyskal Thinking. London: MacMillan and Co., LTD., 1953.
Hubbard, D.A. “The Wisdom Movement and Israel’s Covenant Faith,”
Tyndale Bulletin 17, 1966.
Lewis, C. S. “Bluspels and Flalansferes,” The Importance of Language, Max Black, editor. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-HalI, Inc., 1962.
Morris, Henry M. Scientfic Creationism. San Diego. CA: Creation-Life Publishers, 1974.
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Richards, I. A. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. New York: Oxford University Press, 1936.
Wheelwright, Philip. Metaphor and Reality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967.
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