Literal vs. Metaphorical

Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking the Spell

As I finish reading Daniel C. Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon I find that a prime aspect of religion that he seems blind to is the longstanding dispute between believers who understand their professions of faith in a literal way and those who understand them in a metaphorical, figurative way.

To take a quick example: In the Catholic Church at every Mass we recite the Nicene Creed, which begins, "We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things seen and unseen ... ." Leaving aside the other clauses, what does "Maker of heaven and earth" mean? Specifically, what does it means to say God "makes" this world, our earth?

If you are one of those who understand this idea literally, you may have a hard time with any explanation of the earth's origins that doesn't square with the most direct possible interpretation of the words in Genesis, chapter 1. Which tends to leave the theory of evolution out in the cold.

If on the other hand you understand this idea of God as the world's maker metaphorically, both Darwin and Genesis could be absolutely right.


In talking about the literal versus the metaphorical, I would like to sidestep any attempt at a rigorous definition of the two terms. I am perfectly willing to substitute terms like "simile" or "analogy" for the noun metaphor, "figurative" or "poetic" for the adjective metaphorical.

In fact, I am willing to stipulate that for me, the name of God is a metonymy — a term-substituting figure of speech, such as a "suit" for a business executive, or the "crown" for the king or queen. In this case, the word "God" stands in for the Great Big Truth we would otherwise have no chance of expressing.

What I am really trying to get at is not what a metaphor or a metonymy is, but rather the way in which the human mind works when it is in "figure-of-speech mode," as contrasted with when it is operating in "literal mode."

Moreover, what I am really trying to say is that some people (among whom I count myself) respond to religious language by automatically adopting a "figure-of-speech stance" towards it, while other people reflexively adopt a "literalist stance." Literalists and figuratives, we might call these two groups.


A figurative religionist such as myself is, I imagine, apt to be more of a "liberal" when it comes to his or her understanding of theology; a literalist will tend to be a religious "conservative." Thus do "liberal" and "literal" effectively become direct antonyms, when the discussion turns to religion.

I'm not just talking about how different people read the Bible, mind you. Bible reading is part of it, but in my Catholic tradition, Bible reading is amplified by how believers interpret all the wide-ranging pronouncements the Church has authored down through history, as summarized in, among other writings, The Catechism of the Catholic Church. How we "hear" the creeds we say in church, along with the homilies, the prayers, and all the other parts of the Order of the Mass, depends crucially on whether we are liberal figuratives or literalist conservatives.


Most of the complaints which Dennett makes about religion seem (at least to this liberal figurative) to convict the literalist conservatives.

It is the literalist conservatives who cannot reconcile Darwin's evolution theory with a belief in God. It is they who mock science's materialistic outlook: nothing not made of matter and its movements and modifications exists. It is they who conflate that philosophical definition of materialism with the everyday one: a bias toward gaining material possessions and away from living a life of the spirit.

Literalist conservatives seem to be increasing their share of Christians in this country, and they are certainly not shy about claiming that liberal figuratives like myself are missing the boat. But I would counter that it is they who have it wrong. Christianity has historically not been literal in its reading of scripture.


Accordingly, I think Dennett himself misses a very big boat by assuming that the "spell" of religion needs "breaking" simply because maximally strident, intransigently radical fundamentalism so menaces the common enterprise of all humanity. Yes, that is a spell that needs breaking, but, no, it is not the same intoxication with the Infinite that typifies Christianity in its "Great Tradition" and informs all the other grand and magnificent World Religions.

Huston Smith's The Soul of Christianity

So says religion scholar Huston Smith in The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition. Smith's 2005 book stands as the most eloquent possible riposte to Dennett's, though the latter would only be published the following year.

To Smith, the Great Tradition that was the Christian Church of the first millennium is the answer to all those — whether fundamentalist evangelicals or atheists like Dennett — who would polarize the world into two armed camps, one insistent that Holy Writ must be read literally, the other that it should be read as false.

Smith shows (see p. 17) that there are four levels of biblical exegesis that we must never fail to attend to. At the lowest level is the literal. Next up the line is the ethical: what should believers do or not do. Then comes the allegorical — as with ascribing meanings to Jesus's parables.

Most conservative literalists would not blanch at these three, but the fourth would raise many eyebrows. It is what Smith calls anagogic.

One online dictionary defines an anagogy as "a mystical interpretation of a word, passage, or text, especially scriptural exegesis that detects allusions to heaven or the afterlife." In Smith's view the word encourages a mythical outlook, à la Joseph Campbell; per Reinhold Niebuhr, "Myth is not history, it is truer than history."

The problem for literalists is that anagogic, mythical, mystical modes of biblical exegesis put slavish literalism on the back burner. These modes recognize, first and foremost, that "languages are geared to the worldviews that monitor them" (p. 20).

Recognizing that fact, we moderns accordingly need to transpose the language of the Bible away from the ancient worldviews that informed it, as it was set down, it is quite true ... but over into a mode of understanding that assiduously factors out "the sea change from the traditional to the scientistic worldview that has profoundly affected the way our language works."

Today's biblical literalists — including those who, like Dennett and other vocal nonbelievers, read scripture literally and then dispute it on that basis — don't do that. They are blind to what I think of as metaphorical ways of interpreting religious truth.

In posts soon to come, I intend to expand on the remarks above as I detail my highly positive reactions to Smith's magnificent defense of Christianity in its Great Tradition.