What follows is the draft script of a paper I presented at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in San Antonio on November 14th 2023.

Introduction

It’s worth noting that when John Locke condemned the use of metaphorical language as “perfect cheats” he was, in fact, speaking metaphorically. The irony exposes a fundamental truth: figurative language is far more pervasive in our thought and discourse than we generally appreciate. It’s hiding everywhere, and Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) provides a persuasive explanation of why that is: human beings cannot understand their world without it. We structure and frame our thought and discourse about abstract concepts like death, friendship, and love from more physical and tangible human experiences. “Life is a game,” we say, because our visceral familiarity with games and sports inform our concept of “living life;” we can “win” or “lose” it, and in it we “earn points” but “cheaters never prosper” and in the end “nice guys finish last”¹

This is all well and good, but is it exegetically useful? CMT may be a helpful explanation of how our brains work, but can it actually generate or establish new exegetical conclusions? Sure, the “life is a game” association explains why Paul, at the end of his life, declares “I have finished the race” (2 Tim 4:7), but does it tell me anything about what that means?Does it disclose anything that I didn’t already know, or couldn’t come to better appreciate by using the more standard and traditional tools in my historical-critical toolbox? Or, to put the question of this paper succinctly: is CMT merely descriptive—useful in so far as it describes the dynamics of human thinking—or is it methodologically generative—useful because it provides a tool for uncovering the meaning of a metaphor that would not be accessible otherwise? Is it useful?²

Well, as I just learned yesterday, there’s apparently a law—and this is a real thing, Betteridge’s law of headlines—there’s a law that “any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.” I’m afraid that I submitted my proposal for this paper before I learned about that law, so I should say up front that I do not intend to answer my question with a no. As a scholar who has spent years reading and applying a wide range of models for understanding metaphor, and as one who absolutely respects gatherings like these, in which we share serious ideas and receive serious feedback, I refuse to utilize such cheap journalistic tricks to garner attention. My position is far more nuanced and refined to be so reduced to a “no,” or even, for that matter, a simple “yes!” CMT is true, but is it useful? My thesis is: kind of.

To be more specific: in this presentation I will argue that CMT does provide an efficient and non-redundant tool set for exegetical analysis of figurative language in Scripture. It does this in at least three areas. (1) Linguistically and anthropologically, it highlights structural patterns of human thinking and communication that establish continuity and connection between modern and ancient audiences. (2) Historically, it encourages the exegete to study and personalize the particular kinds of experiences that would have structured the original author’s conceptual world and how those experiences inform the metaphorical association under scrutiny. (3) Pastorally, it opens up opportunities to explore other possible metaphorical associations consistent with, but not explicitly affirmed by, the original author.

Defining Terms

Before moving to the substance of the discussion we need to define a couple of terms. This is, after all, a conference paper; we must honor the rules of the game.

CMT

First, CMT. I’m assuming that if you’ve chosen to be here rather than at one of the other more exciting discussions, then you have a basic knowledge of what CMT is. Pioneered and popularized by theorists like Lakoff, Johnson, and Turner, Cognitive (or conceptual) Metaphor Theory posits that metaphors and other figurative language, far from being merely ornamental replacements for otherwise more univocal language, are a fundamental and irreducible component of human thought. Metaphors arise as we humans seek to understand, systematize, and explain the nature of our reality and experiences. CMT presents itself as an alternative to older approaches, whether it be to the simplistic “replacement” theories of Aristotle and Locke, or the complex network of signifying relationships posited by structuralists, or the more artistic and literary theories offered by Ricoeur and the New Hermeneuts. The source and operating power behind metaphorical language is not rhetorical persuasion or the pursuit of beauty or the creative reimagining of reality; no, it’s a basic building block of thought itself.

Furthermore, like all aspects of human thought, CMT observes that metaphorical associates are inherently and inseparably embodied. It is, in this respect, a sub-discipline of the now vast field of Cognitive Linguistics, in which meaning, meaningfulness, and communication cannot be separated from personal and enculturated experiences. We will have more to say about this later, but for our present purposes we can note that the “stuff” out of which metaphorical associations are made, and thus through which we understand our world, are the component parts of lived experience, which in turn are necessarily and inseparably situated within fundamental material and anthropological elements: bodies, sensory experience, society, culture, history, and the physical universe, to name a few.

The significance of this observation can be particularly and forcefully seen when it comes to abstract ideas–ideas that we often consider “basic” or “universal.” Consider the way we talk about something like human maturation—the kind of physical, emotional, and spiritual development that occurs from infancy to adulthood. We use a variety of metaphorical domains to conceptualize that process. For example, PEOPLE are PLANTS, so our kids “grow up” and “blossom,” or maybe they’re “late bloomers;” teachers “cultivate the mind of a child;” Paul “planted,” Apollos “watered,” and God “gave the growth” (1 Cor. 3:6). But what does it really mean to mature as a human person? Try to describe it without using a metaphor. It’s hard. How about death? Falling in love? Calling and career? It’s tempting to think that these descriptions, conventional though they may be, are merely artistic descriptions of something we otherwise no more scientifically and precisely. CMT’s claim is that the reverse is actually true—these metaphorical structures provide the way in which we know about these things. They are irreducible components of (at least certain ways of) knowing.

True

Our next definition: true. Maybe the definition of “true” is obvious, but the word deserves further comment since I’m not arguing the case but rather simply assuming that CMT is something like true. I want to say briefly, though, that I’m not claiming that CMT is the only true model for thinking about metaphor, or that it is the whole truth. It is a model among models, and is good at certain things and not, in my own view, at others. So for our purposes here I mean by “true” that CMT “explains at least some aspect of metaphorical language/discourse that other theories do not, or are less apt at accounting for.” In that respect, it is my judgement that CMT, and also Cognitive Linguistics, of which it is a component part, have proven themselves incredibly useful for moving the discipline of forward.

But what discipline are we talking about? That brings us to the final definition.

Useful

What do I mean by “useful?” Here I would like to be careful. One obvious response to my titular question is “if the theory is true, then it is obviously useful.” I agree. The explanatory force of CMT—the fact that it is something like “true”—is in itself useful. It helps us to better understand how human beings conceptualize their world, and particularly how we “know” abstract and non-material aspects of our basic experience. What is death? Defining death as “the cessation of certain neurological pathways that produce sustained consciousness alongside other metabolic processes by which the body maintains itself” does not really capture the meaning of death. That’s not, in the end, what death is. CMT in this case describes a mode of knowing, an epistemological process by which we, as God’s creatures, come to understand the complexity of the real, the meaning of which (in my view) is not to be equated with a positivistic or materialistic description of things, but is in fact more than such a description. CMT is a useful epistemological category.³

However, despite the fact that this paper ended up in the ST section of ETS, such theological and epistemological reflections are not my real concern. That’s not what I mean by “useful.” I’m a professional exegete, and an amateur historian and linguist, and so I want to know if this approach to metaphor contributes to my exegetical and hermeneutical toolbox. Can I better understand the text by self-consciously applying the insights of CMT? The fact that CMT is true does not necessarily entail that it is useful in this sense. CMT may tell me a great deal about how human cognition works, but does that knowledge directly help me better understand the text? After all, if my brain already works this way when it comes to metaphor, why do I need to know that it works this way in order to understand metaphor? Knowing how breathing works doesn’t help me breath better (or does it?), so why would knowing how metaphor works help me appropriate them better?

And while we’re on the topic of useful, let’s put the question of “how useful” on the table. What I mean is there’s a very good reason for avoiding CMT. Actually, there’s a very good reason for avoid Cognitive Linguistics in general, and CMT in particular. It’s hard. It’s difficult. Maybe it’s like using quantum mechanics to calculate what time you while arrive home; maybe you’ll get a more accurate measurement, but it’s unnecessary and would probably take you more time than the trip itself. G. B. Caird wrote in his now classic The Language and Imagery of the Bible that, with respect to linguistics, he was “just an amateur.” That’s how a notable and world-renowned scholar, historian, and exegete felt about his own appropriation of linguistics some 80 years ago, and the field of linguistics has marched ever on. Most biblical scholars will never be more than hobbyists in these areas (and we probably should do a better job of behaving accordingly). CMT feels this pinch. To apply it in anything other than a superficial way requires a depth of training, and the results at that point do not seem worth it.

So by “useful” I mean something fairly specific. First, “essential.” That is, CMT needs to provide either a unique or more efficient path to the conclusion than alternative models. Second, “significant.” The conclusions need to be important enough that they are worth the time, or at least not ineffective when done at the level of an amateur. Now obviously this value is relative to where you are. If your work requires you to write a lexicon, then CMT is going to be extremely significant. But if you’re content to trust a lexicon, then less so. I see a similar relationship with other disciplines, like textual criticism. We can thus measure usefulness by the significance of the conclusion, the efficiency of the method, and the necessity of the method.  

Some Suggestions for Usefulness

And so is it useful in this sense? Yes. I have six preliminary suggestions for acknowledging and rating its relative usefulness, organized into three categories.

Linguistically/Anthropologically

Linguistically and anthropologically, it highlights structural patterns of human thinking and communication that establish continuity and connection between modern and ancient audiences.

1. A language system

First, CMT provides us a language and system for describing the relationships between metaphors and human thought. The emphasis here is on that last phrase “and human thought” or “embodied experience.” We of course already have good technical language for describing the literary and lexicographical aspects of metaphor, but what CMT provides is the cognitive connection. This is something new, and it’s something that cognitive linguistics is fairly strong at overall. The whole point of the method is to understand and describe the features of language and communication in terms of embodied experience; it is not content to merely describe the linguistic system but to see the linguistic system in its relation to human thought processes, modes of knowing, in short: cognition. Structuralism does not give us this because in structuralism the description must be enclosed in the linguistic system. Literary theorists like Ricoeur and Bakhtin (where I have done more academic work) likewise are not interested in such a description, mostly because they resist thinking about language as a system at all; they are more interested in metaphor as a creative and imaginative process. With CMT, by contrast, metaphor is embodied, enculturated, and a function of lived experience. Having scientific verbage to describe that process provides the exegete with another set of tools they can use to probe “the mind of the author.”

For example, the author of Hebrews talks about the presence of God as drawing near to a heavenly “tent” (Heb. 8:1-2); it’s a fairly robust and consistent description of eschatological presence in terms of the tabernacle experience of Israel. CMT provides us language to talk about this; the tabernacle cult is the source domain, the Christian life the target. But why tent? Why not temple? Well, I have to go back to Hebrews 3-4; we are “wilderness wanderers.” CMT provides a description of that metaphorical mapping as well. That’s a LIFE is a JOURNEY metaphor, and now I can see and explain what Hebrews is doing. It is blending metaphorical domains, and the LIFE is a JOURNEY domain (which, it’s worth noting, is a fundamental human experience shared across time and culture) structures the various mappings that take place in the CHRISTIANS are PRIESTS domain (which is not as universal) such that we land on tabernacle rather than temple. Tents are good for journeys; temples less so. I could further extend this by making use of “bidirectional mapping,” where the target domain (the Christian Life) helps the reader understand the source domain (the wilderness cult). We don’t need to do that nw, but we can note here that it can be done. CMT gives me language for all of this.

This “use” of CMT is more descriptive than generative, but it is useful. It provides a model and organizational system by which I can describe the thought of both author and audience, how that thought coheres, why it works the way it does, and how it is grounded in lived and enculturated experience.

2. Increased self-conscious awareness.

Related to this, CMT brings to the foreground cognitive and communicative processes that would otherwise be intuitive, and therefore not self-consciously addressed or recognized. In foregrounding an intuitive process it subjects our thinking to critical analysis, which in turn provides opportunity for extension, development, and even change. (As an aside: I feel very similarly about speech-act theory. It’s a robust description of something we do naturally and intuitively, but since I do it naturally and intuitively I don’t really need speech act theory to do it well. However, it makes me self-conscious about my language, and because it does that I can more quickly and efficiently identify what’s going on in challenging hermeneutical situations).

In most cases this aspect of CMT will not turn up something “new.” It’s not going to generate a discovery that one couldn’t arrive at by some other method, at least with respect to authorial intent (though I do want to revisit this in a minute when we come to the personal appropriation of metaphors). However, while the increased self-consciousness may not generate new knowledge, I must say that it very much increases efficiency of analysis. It doesn’t take all that long working with CMT before the basic organizational categories become second nature. I can’t “unsee” LIFE is a JOURNEY or LOVE is HEAT or DEBATE is COMBAT. And as soon as I see these things in the biblical text a lot of exegetical observations simply pop into place. I would refer to the preexisting example of the tent as a JOURNEY idea. Likewise we could talk about PEOPLE ARE BUILDINGS, for which temple is obviously a more adequate vehicle. CMT increases my general awareness of metaphorical modes of thinking and, as such, allows me to do the work more quickly.

3. The emphasis on experience and natural knowing

This ability of CMT to bring intuitive cognitive processes to the foreground is additionally helpful because it “ordinary-afies” authors and the authorial process. We often make Biblical Study harder than it needs to be. I see this often in my own work on typology and literary interpretation, but it’s there in more grammatical-historical approaches to exegesis as well. Take Eph. 6, the Christian in complete armor. How many times have we read pages and pages on the way Roman sandals were constructed, why soldiers wore them, how they are associated with “readiness.” We may be over-complicating exegesis. After all LIFE is a BATTLE, and Paul’s discussion here is simply generated from that very conventional way of thinking. Going into historical detail may not be the best use of our time; the point is not the structure of the Roman belt, the point is the surprise that truth is a weapon.

CMT thus simplifies exegesis; it can work to un-encumber it from over analysis and, in so doing, putting the text back into the hands of normal readers.

Historically

This last point could be read as anti-historical or anti-intellectual, but that need not be the case. Historically, CMT encourages the exegete to study and personalize the particular kinds of experiences that would have structured the original author’s conceptual world and how those experiences inform the metaphorical association under scrutiny. I have two sub points here.

4. Better historiography and cultural study

First, CMT provides a useful reminder that if we are to understand authors we need to understand their embodied and enculturated experience of the world. CMT calls us yet again to the important work of historical research. Does CMT provide unique avenues for that kind of historical study? Maybe it does. One of the insights of CMT is it puts a lot of weight on fundamental experiences. It is a reminder that the more common and natural and basic the experience, the more likely it will be incorporated as an “image-schema” in our worldview. In this sense, like history and anthropology more generally, CMT can be used to explain and expose the thought-world of ancient thinkers, but as it does so it pays closer attention to the common than it does to the uncommon. We can do all the work we want on ANE cultic practices, comparing and contrasting the Hebrew bible’s presentation with its surroundings, and integrating all of it within ancient cosmology and religion. But have we ever slaughtered an animal for food? Which is more fundamental when it comes to understanding the Passover (and, by typological transference, the Lord’s Supper)? Which is more properly basic? And yet, in all our study about sacrifice in the ancient world, probably most readers of Scripture have not drained an animal of its blood—I haven’t, and I’m from Texas—and yet it’s the latter knowledge that is more fundamental to the imagery than the former. CMT is a reminder that when we are doing our historical and cultural work we need to pay attention to the fundamentals, not just the higher order of though with which we are most comfortable.

5. The use of the imagination as a tool of knowledge

On the other hand, and I’m sorry but I’m going to go a bit further with the Passover lamb idea—on the other hand I don’t need to have experienced the slaughtering of an animal to understand the metaphor. I can actually “build” that experience out of other experiences that I have had. How am I able to do that? Because of my imagination. My imagination is able to construct an experience that I’ve never experienced out of more fundamental experiences. This, too, is an incite that cognitive theory brings to the surface.

How is this useful to us? CMT is a reminder that my brain naturally does this and provides me again with tools to understand what my brain is doing and, perhaps, do it better and more self-consciously. The imagination is a useful research tool. Imagination assists historical-critical exegesis. I’m told in Genesis that God separated the waters above from the waters below, and I’m told that a kind of barrier or firmament keeps those waters at bay. How am I supposed to understand this? One avenue is to do a deep dive into ancient Hebrews cosmology. That’s useful. But CMT reminds me that there’s another more basic process at work: lived experience. So another method suddenly opens up to me as a student of Scripture. I could, and go with me here, look up. I can divest myself of what I know about the universe and simply describe the world in the way I’m experiencing it. I can use my imagination to speculate about how those heavenly waters are restrained. I can use my imagination to fill in the gaps of what it’s like to shepherd sheep.

This need not replace a more historically rigorous approach, but it can supplement and compliment it, and there are two advantages here.

First, it’s less susceptible to historical prejudice, to the innate tendency to look down on pre-scientific cultures. The language they use and the way they conceptualize their world isn’t the way it is because they’re “pre-scientific” or “primitive” or “backwards;” it’s because it’s grounded in experience. They are describing the world as they are experiencing it, just as we do; after all, even in our modern cosmology the sun still “rises and sets.”

Second, and here we can transition to my final point, this way of doing it—engaging our imagination and setting it along the trajectory of thought embedded in the text—is often a more effective tool for understanding the impact that the text has. When God stretches a protective firmament around the earth, he is protecting me from the deluge of waters that threaten it; God has built the firmament, and it will not fail unless he wills it (2 Peter 3)..

Pastorally and Epistemologically

And on that note I have my sixth and final suggestion for the usefulness of CMT. I’m not entirely sure how to classify this one, but I find it the most intriguing of the lot, and potentially the most controversial. I have chosen to categorize this as a “pastorally” and/or “epistemologically” useful function of CMT for exegesis, by which I mean this: CMT opens up opportunities to explore other possible metaphorical associations consistent with, but not explicitly affirmed by, the original author.

6. It generates new knowledge

It can be used, in short, to generate and communicate new knowledge. Now, again, CMT is not trying to be an epistemology, nor is it trying to describe a mode of study; rather, CMT is designed to provide an account of how new “knowledge” (if we’re comfortable calling it that) is created. However, in so far as CMT exposes what we do intuitively to study and criticism, perhaps we can use its insights to cultivate new ways of understanding old things.

For example: what does it mean to be “in” Christ? What does it mean to die? The Bible gives me a trajectory of source domains to think about those topics. I’m given legal categories, familial categories, kingdom/political categories, etc. And yet the body of human knowledge—the totality of lived experience, and what we know about that experience—does not cease with the ancient world. There is no reason to think that that are so called “primal” metaphorical ideas, like LIFE is a JOURNEY—to which nothing new can be added. Let’s take something the we only know about because of our modern scientific cosmology: gravity. RELATIONSHIPS are GRAVITATIONAL. We were “pulled together;” she’s my “star;” your life should be “in orbit” around the church. Is that not another way of understanding Christological union, and one which is not reducible to other biblical metaphors? The Christian life is always in Christological orbit.  My scientific knowledge of gravity gives me a new set of explanations for how my world works, and raises new kinds of questions, the answers to which require new metaphorical mappings, and in the end increase the body of human knowledge. Yes, I would be doing this naturally, but CMT helps me own the process and do it consciously rather than unconsciously.

Conclusions

So what should we conclude about CMT? In general, that in exposing patterns of human thought to scrutiny, study, development, and critique we can do a lot of what we ordinarily do better. It’s kinda like exercise. I don’t need to know how my muscles work in order to do pull-ups or deadlifts, but knowing that information does help me do both. It helps me to think about where I position my hands on the bar, what muscles I’m trying to focus on and activate, how often I should do certain kinds of exercise in order to maximize my gains. It’s not necessary, but it is useful.

1. My principle sources for CMT relevant for this article are Zoltan Kovecses, Metaphor: A Practical Introduction, 2nd Edition, 2e edition. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); G. Lakoff and M. Turner, More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1989); George Lakoff, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Mark Johnson, The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding, Reprint edition. (Chicago London: University of Chicago Press, 2008). [↩]
2. Many biblical scholars, including myself, have applied the insights of CMT to exegesis; to name a few: William P. Brown, Seeing the Psalms: A Theology of Metaphor, 1 edition. (Louisville, Ky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002); Erin M. Heim, Adoption in Galatians and Romans (Leiden ; Boston: BRILL, 2017); B. Howe, Because You Bear This Name: Conceptual Metaphor and the Moral Meaning of 1 Peter (Boston: Brill, 2006); Charles Owiredu, “Sin Is a Person: Some Ontological Metaphors in the Bible,” Acta Theologica 41.1 (2021): 87–100, https://doi.org/10.18820/23099089/actat.v41i1.6; Nicole L. Tilford, Sensing World, Sensing Wisdom: The Cognitive Foundation of Biblical Metaphors, First edition. (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2017); Ellen van Wolde, “Words Become Worlds: Semantic Studies of Genesis 1-11,” in Words Become Worlds (Brill, 2021), https://brill.com/display/title/2327. [↩]
3. Now, as an aside, some in the cognitive camp would of course demure that this is but wishful thinking. The materialists in the bunch might object to the word “know” and the correlation I’ve made between CMT and epistemology. Some might conclude from CMT theorists that in fact what we “know” about death and love and life and the rest of it isn’t really knowledge—things really are what physics and biology say they are, and we describe meaning to those things through consciousness and embodied cognition and the brain’s relentless work of metaphoricalizing the world. To this line of thinking I am legally required, as one trained in a Van Tillian approach to philosophy, theology, and apologetics, to mention at this point that though analogical knowledge is not necessarily “absolute” knowledge, univocally related to things as they are known by God, nevertheless that does not make it untrue. In fact, at some basic level all our knowledge participates in this analogical process, and yet it is a true, albeit human and finite, way of thinking God’s thoughts after him. [↩]