How Metaphors Reveal a Sacramental World

In this conversation, Joey and Graeme discuss how metaphors help us encounter a sacramental world. All of language is metaphorical, and it is the epicentre of meaning.

Podcast hosts are Greame Flett, Jonathan Hoskin, and Joey Millington.

The opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the individuals expressing and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of any affiliated organisations or ministries.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Uh metaphor is actually the locus of meaning for us. Like we need metaphor to actually be able to live in the world. You really need to lean into possibly new metaphors that you never even imagined.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

But he says actually there's these other dimensions, which which is the kind of the mystery part.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

If the world is sacramental, then the world itself isn't just a flat symbol in the sense of pointing somewhere else, but has nothing of that somewhere else in it. Oh, it means that the created order itself is actually revelatory and communicative of God Himself. You're basically making the argument for bringing icons back in church. Yeah, well, yeah, I know. You know, that's basically what you're saying. Yeah. Kurt Koto and welcome to Lunch on the Way. Today Graham and I sat down and we talked about metaphor theory 2.0 about two years ago. Uh Graham Jonathan and I talked about metaphor theory, which launched me into my PhD program, and it was a great conversation, but really just about Lakoff and Johnson's understanding of metaphor theory and how we think it might relate to Christian practice in churches today. But I read more widely. I've read uh Paul Recurr and Charles Taylor and Max Black and A.I. IA Richards and uh numerous others on metaphor as well, and it's a bit more of a well-rounded conversation. Technical at times, yes, but well worth it because what we conclude, and I'll give you the concluding bit here, is that metaphorical description is actually the interspace of meaning, meaning that we live into the world through metaphorical language, and it's actually metaphorical language which makes the world meaningful to us, and we can intuitively live into that. So when it comes to you and I living out what it means to be disciples of Jesus and followers of him, we need to look at the metaphors, maybe even the new metaphors that we get to use that are invitational and open us up to things that we have never seen and were never able to even participate in in the Christian life before. And before we get to this conversation, I need to make two important corrections when I go through metaphor theory a little bit. The first is Paul Recur was not a Catholic, he was a Reformed Protestant in France, never became Catholic. And the second is that I talk about cognitive metaphors when I talk about Lakoff and Johnson. Uh think conceptual instead of cognitive. If you don't know what I'm talking about, that's fine. Uh it's just the terminology matters to me. So there we go. Just two corrections, and that's all. Thanks for watching today's episode on Lunch on the Way. To start things off, we have we have a couple things lined up uh that will be published soon. And so we have an interview with uh Ben McDonald that we just uh uh finalized, and that will be uh Ben McDonald is somebody who works for Apologetics Canada, and he's gonna talk about uh church denominations and more specifically what the one true church is, because within our Alexander Schmiman conversation and Eastern Orthodoxy, we saw that a lot of Eastern Orthodox people were telling us to come to the one true church, and that was a bit um a bit confusing. But also I know anecdotally that there are people who are not I don't know, but I know of who have gone to the Orthodox Church because of that presupposition that it's the one true church, and similarly with Catholicism as well. So we have Ben McDonald lined up to help clarify things on that, which will be good. Um we've uh cemented a date with Brad Homie and Sam Carpenter, who are going this is like I think I'm really excited for this conversation because it is going to bring the hard practical edge to a sacramental worldview. I was having a conversation with Brad the other day, yeah, um, and he was basically saying how um I don't want to tease too much, but he's basically saying how he he knows he's on the right track with what God's doing in his life when he sees a particular butterfly show up in front of him. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

And that's it sounds very Celtic Christianity.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Yeah, and I was like, and he's telling me stories, and he'll probably share them on the podcast. He's just telling me stories where I was like, Yeah, I don't doubt that at all. Yeah. I think you're absolutely right. And and anyway, so that's the so what does it mean for the created order to actually speak back to us?

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Right? Yeah. And so he's gonna talk about that. He's a Modi Christian, and so more indigenous theology, but not something that's totally lost within a Western worldview. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

It's just forgotten about it. I think is the notion that it in the Schmieman's um sacramental notion of the world that opens a space that actually nature does speak to us. Oh yeah. I I told you about Holy Island, eh? Being a Holy Island, yeah. And sitting there in the cafe and these little birds. I mean, they're basically landing by my fingers there.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

I'm going, wow. Thin space. Yeah, exactly. Very thin space.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

And then we have one more. Uh oh yeah, you're away in Christchurch, but I have Sam uh Burroughs has coming over from Australia for the week, and Sam is a friend of the podcast, and Jonathan Hawkins has agreed to come on, and so Sam's gonna talk about uh education, but he's it's very different. So basically he's arguing that there is no such thing as Christian education, there is only education that is thoroughly Christian. And so, what does it mean for there to be Christian education? Well, what is education to start with, and what is actually what is learning? And he goes from a sacramental perspective as well.

SPEAKER_01 5:48

I'm interested in why he goes there.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Yeah. I read a little bit of his article that he wrote, and so we'll we'll go from there. But so we got three things lined up that we haven't recorded yet, yeah, that um that are really exciting. I'm I'm looking forward to it. And it all kind of tails off of the Alexander Schwimmen conversation, to be honest. Yeah. Because that was a big one.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Yeah, well, I mean, I've talked to people that got a lot out of that, still spinning on that one.

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Yeah. But so this this is kind of it's all kind of related, which is good. This this conversation, Graham, it's good for the two of us just to be here to talk a little bit, and we're gonna talk about metaphor. Because it was about two years ago, nearly two years ago, that we had a conversation after you gave me this book Metaphors We Live By, yeah. By Lakoff and Johnson. Yeah. And uh basically uh they made the argument that we live by metaphors, like metaphors are the places that we understand the world. Yeah. And I thought that was fascinating. And so I then kind of adapted that to a church leadership perspective. And I was like, well, if churches are trying to do you know what the Bible's telling them to do in the world, then they probably should use more metaphorical language to help invite people in than maybe propositional language.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

I mean, I mean I remember because it's quite a eureka moment. The eureka moment was you going, I've got my PhD topic. Yeah. That was your action.

SPEAKER_00 7:08

We finished recording and I said I think I might be a she topic. And then sure enough, two years later, I'm I'm what, almost uh basically one and a half fifths done. Wow. So we're we're working our way through. So what that means is I've read a lot more.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

Yeah. So this is the reading a lot more. So tell me, um let's go from there. I mean, what what what what have you been reading? What's some of the books you've been reading?

SPEAKER_00 7:31

So I I read everything that had to do with uh Lakoff and Johnson metaphors we live by, and they they espouse a conceptual metaphor theory, which I'll get into a little bit. And then I had as a as uh an argument against the traditional substitution theory. So here we So just to just unpack that.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

What substitutional theory, conceptual metaphor?

SPEAKER_00 7:55

Yeah. So basically there's three there's more than three, but there's three main ways to understand what a metaphor actually is and what a metaphor does and why it matters. The most reductive and popular version would be the substitution theory of metaphor.

SPEAKER_01 8:10

So this is so the metaphor would be like um uh this microstan is like a tree.

SPEAKER_00 8:16

Yeah. And it's like okay, so it's upright. Yeah. It's solid, it's it's fixed. So a substitution theory of metaphor basically says that you can say what you just said metaphorically in literal language. You don't need the metaphor. The metaphor is only ornamental or illustrative or colors in a little bit and makes it look prettier, what you're what you're articulating. Slightly embellishes it. Yeah, exactly. So if you to say like God is a lion, well, you should just say God is brave. Yeah. That's the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Or God is courageous or strong.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

And that's that's all it is. You're just you're trying to find that one-for-one, word for word, word-to-word, transfer. Yeah. And the reason why that is basically debunked and is not the um it but is still popular, is because it doesn't do justice to what actually happens to both. So after uh basically in the early 20th century, this guy, I.A. Richards, wrote a book, not a book, uh a chapter on metaphor, and he opened the whole space up.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Where was he? Where was he? What what university?

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Oh, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Oh, I j well the reason I was asking that question is because um obviously, you know, we talked about McLuhan. Yeah. McLuhan studies at Cambridge, I think. Yeah. But he comes across some of this stuff. That's why I was interested in that.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

Yeah, I'm not quite sure where, but he basically wrote a a book chapter or uh or a chapter of his book on metaphor and how that kind of plays into everything. And he opened things up with this new perspective called the interaction theory of metaphor. And it's way more mysterious and open and uh and kind of porous a little bit as to what's actually going on with metaphor.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

So I could say something like, Oh, this microphone's like a tree.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Um which could be just the what'd you say, uh uh what do you call it? Um what was the word you use? Not replacement.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Um literal replacement, ornamental.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Ornamental. Yeah. But actually, if we enter a conversation, yeah, that could change. Yeah. Could you say, oh that's interesting you say that, Graham. So what's what's your experience here?

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Yeah, exactly. So what what Richard's what Richard says is actually the thing there he comes up with two terms, the tenor and the vehicle. So let's just go with um let's just go with the God as a lion one. Yeah, right. So God is the tenor and the vehicle is lion. So the vehicle is the metaphorical word that's being used to illuminate more about who God is. And so he comes up with those terms and basically he says that no, it's not an illustrative it's not illustrative because what happens is we actually can't understand God if not for metaphorical language. He would he wouldn't say God, he would use a bunch of other examples, but we actually need the metaphor to even understand anything. And so he break he breaks it all the way down to the fundamental of there's actually tons of words that are used to be metaphorical and used to be new metaphors that are now dead metaphors that we think are literal language, but were always metaphors and still are, they've just kind of entered into our brains as that's just the word and what it is. Um and what would be a good example of that? That would be um I'm really heated up right now, or I'm really I'm really uh fired up. Yeah. Like fired up, that's a metaphor, but we don't think metaphorically anymore when we use that term. It's basically, oh, you're really angry, yeah, is what you mean.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Oh, okay. So what he's saying is, no, actually, we can't describe most things in the world if it's not for metaphor. So what's actually happening in the metaphor? He says that it's the tenor, so the word that you're trying to describe better, and the vehicle, the metaphorical word, they have an interaction. And there's this middle space between the tenor and the vehicle that something new emerges. There's an intersection, there's an interaction. He doesn't go much further than that. He basically just states it as that and says it's very mysterious, but it's the basis of philosophical thought is metaphorical. Basically, the thought at all is metaphorical. Then we move on to Max Black, who in the 19, I think, 60s wrote a book on metaphor, where he said uh he basically he articulated it in a bit more elaborate way as to actually, so what is actually being compared then? Like what is the correspondence? And he considered, I think of the term he used is subsidiary correspondences between the tenor and the vehicle. And he he kind of he's not he's not defining it too much and saying it's only these five things or these ten things that metaphors are used for, but what he says is actually a metaphor. He uses a metaphor to describe a metaphor. And he says a metaphor in an interaction theory perspective is that the metaphor is like a screen over something. It's like uh it's like if I'm looking at you, Graham, and I place a like a an opaque screen, like with opa opacity, and I can kind of see through the screen, I place it over in front of you. I'm looking at you still, but I'm looking at you through something else.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

So is the metaphor um so is that sort of saying it's a community um vehicle uh something that something you can travel on or travel into. Uh traveling travel is like so I can interact with that. Because the idea of these two uh you know, as you said, the um those two entities, what was it? The Oh the tenor and the vehicle. The tenor and the vehicle. And then you see there's space between. Yeah. What's going on in between? What's the betweenness? Yeah, that what is the betweenness? Yes. So the vehicle, the metaphor here Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it? Because what I was I guess what I was sort of thinking about was the the the the the vehicle actually is what helps me understand what that vehicle is applied to. Well, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It it helps helps it's a way in otherwise I couldn't get in. No, you couldn't get in. So what I'm saying is traveling to the air, I require that vehicle to do there.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

Exactly. So it's a metaphor to explain the metaphor, right? So you need the vehicle to get to the place that you want to go, which is the destination is the tenant. Yeah. Right. And so what that's what Max Black does is he he articulates further that there's subsidiary um interactions that are going on, commonality.

SPEAKER_01 14:35

So what's the what's this piece in the middle?

SPEAKER_00 14:37

So this is what we're going to get to. So I just finished reading um Paul Recurr on the rule of metaphor. At first you start reading Paul Recur and you're just like, oh my goodness, this is some difficult stuff. Because he goes from Aristotle all the way to Tom uh all the way through to the post-Enlightenment thinkers on metaphor and some of the Thomas Aquinas, too. Yeah, and then he goes back to Thomas Aquinas, and he basically says that actually you should stop focusing on the words. You need to look at the whole semantic unit. And this is rev this is pretty revolutionary. And I know that we're getting technical here, but we're going to get to church and Christian stuff in a second, alright? This is pretty revolutionary because what he basically says is that language is actually constitutive of reality that you actually need an imagination through articulation to actually discern what reality is.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

So is that saying I mean for not not to the reality is that this building is what it is, and we're sitting in so that's a reality. But I but to be in the building I I I need I need language to this is the key thing.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Like the build this is a good example. So the building is a thing, it's a real thing. No one's dismissing that it's a real or not real thing. Why do we think it's real? Because our experience bears witness to it. But the building means nothing to us. Unless we what? We actually interact with the building. Yes, so there's there's the interaction. It's the interaction or the participation that makes the building meaningful to us. The relationship. Or the relationship to it. And so then how do I understand the building? How do I articulate the building and what the building is? Well, in my relationship to the building, I begin to articulate things, and it's actually with an interaction, and I would argue, metaphorical interaction, that we actually begin to understand the meaning of the building for us. And so what Recur does is he he, I think, he opens up uh the philosophical the philosophical place for metaphor and why it's so important. And he doesn't try and narrow it down and reduce it down to hard materialism, and I'll get to that with with Lake Off and Johnson a little bit. But what he does is he opened things up and he says, actually, from a phenomenological perspective, from us experiencing the world, uh metaphor is actually the locus of meaning for us. Like we need metaphor to actually be able to live in the world on an articulated, semantic, um, languaged way. And so what he's arguing is actually, so when uh in the last chapter I'm reading now, and I haven't finished it yet, he's saying that when it comes to philosophical and metaphysical arguments and uh understanding what reality actually is, for whatever reason, poetry has been removed from the discussion. And now he's saying actually it's the poetic that's the foundation of language itself through metaphor. Well, I don't it's actually it's actually really simple. Okay. So the m the poem is don't just think like uh an illustrative way of describing something. What the poem does is it tries to get to what's actually going on on a meaning basis level through language. Like poems are written for meaning. They're written of us interacting with the world.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

So they're not it it it's not to say poem doesn't have logic to it. Yeah. But it actually is not it's n it can be a logic it can appear on the surface to be totally illogical. It doesn't make sense. Well no, it it But it but it may move the emotions.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Yeah. Well exactly. Yeah. And so but at the basis what the poem does is it does a it does numerous stylistic tools within language, and the chief of these is metaphor, seeing one thing through another. Yeah. And so in doing that, it actually begins to describe what reality is for meaning. But then when you look at he does has a whole chapter on metaphorical models, when you actually look at the scientific method and they have models for understanding the universe and the world, those models are actually metaphors. So for example, um tectonic plates. Well, what's the earth's crust? What's what's what's below us? Oh, tectonic plates. Well, that's a metaphor. It's uh the plates, tectonic, even crust. Uh okay, well, what's the universe? Uh well, it's um time and space and matter. It's like, well, what you can't like you need to actually begin to in evoke more poetic language to be able to describe the thing that's incredibly abstract.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

You have to have exhuman experience and to identify with the thing beyond.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Yeah, exactly. So that what he does is he opens things up on a hermeneutic, basically an interpretive level and on a semantic level. And I haven't finished reading Recur. I he I've ordered numerous books, and he goes to the places of imagination and philosophical anthropology that I'm really excited to read into. But then Lakoff and Johnson come around, and this is where I started the whole PhD process is with Lakoff and Johnson. And what they do is they continue on the work of Max Black, not Paul Recurr. They continue on Max Black's work, and what they are trying to do is figure out okay, so what actually constitutes a metaphor that makes sense to us? Because not all metaphors do make sense. So what metaphors do? And what they come up with is this conceptual metaphor theory. Conceptual metaphor theory is basically saying that there's these cognitive metaphors that are at the base of our understanding of the world and how we orient ourselves in the world, that are embodied, are physical in the sense of us interacting with the world. So what give me an example? So an example would be, I have written them down. Um we'll just go with this. Um they have orientational metaphors. So the fact that we live in a spatial world or spatial metaphors, there's up, down, under, over, beneath, beside, all these orientational aspects that we are just intuitively living in, we actually metaphorize in the world. Like I'm feeling really high right now. Not high as in like smoking weed necessarily, but high as in like Jolly. Yeah. Or um uh I wrote another one down, my spirit is high. Well, it's like that means you're happy, but what does high mean? Well, high is a good place when you go up, you you look to the heavens, you look upward, it's ascent, it's increase. And so they're saying, oh, there's actually correspondences with our physical reality based upon metaphors. And one of the things they do note is that there's these things called cognitive metaphors, where we have this foundational metaphorical correspondence that has numerous entailments. So a really good example they use is that arguing is warfare is a metaphor that people, not everybody, but most people believe. Why? Because when we engage in an argument, if we believe that metaphor is true, then we begin to what? We begin to map on warfare in a languaged argument. So when we talk about um an argument with somebody, we say, Well, I really I took ground in on their position. Or I um I defended that argument well, or I advanced. In this area of this point. And then because and we also feel that it's an it's an embodied thing. So when we believe that an argument is warfare, we actually begin to feel the emotions as if we're not going to be able to do that. Yes. And so all the entailments are all the metaphors that make sense within that basic metaphor.

SPEAKER_01 22:22

It's what he called a cognitive.

SPEAKER_00 22:23

It's sort of like a wider wider basket. Yeah, it's like the playing field, it's like the this is the foundation. Argument is warfare. And that means that your language will reveal the metaphor that you actually believe in. So that's what they come across as actually there's these experiential metaphors that we live, live in.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Well of course, I might be jumping to you, but of course the metaphors we have we're actually using actually also create the story, which then invites us, which well not invites us, but actually we play to the story. Yeah. So we within that cognate basket, there is a selection of metaphors that we might use that predispose us to a certain way of being.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

Yeah, I I think so. And I think I think they are mostly right. And so they would then juxtapose arguing as warfare metaphor with what if a society or what if you, Graham, believe that arguing is a dance.

SPEAKER_01 23:16

Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 23:19

What's the end goal of a par of a dance of an argument then? Is it to win? Well, if it's a dance, if it's a dance, it's not to win.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

If it's a da if it's a dance, it's a thing of beauty. Yeah. It can be a thing of beauty. And so then it's a much more, you know, a dance and co and sort of imagines um well, you think of a dance, then you think of kind of it's it's romantic.

SPEAKER_00 23:43

Yeah, it it's participatory.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

It can be ero uh erotic in the sense of the truest sense of the word. You know, it's uh that I don't mean sort of No, no. But but but it it's it's exploding with with beauty. With passion, yeah. Yeah. And uh it means highly invitational.

SPEAKER_00 23:58

Because we look at it and go, wow. You need to read the room, you need to there's given.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

As opposed to sort of if you were thinking about a metaphor that was much more sort of about taking ground, there's winners and losers.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

It's not winners and losers in that dance.

SPEAKER_00 24:11

No, exactly. So if you like I would argue that they would argue that actually the dance metaphor is more appropriate for arguing if you are wanting to actually learn. Because it means you actually have to listen to the other person.

SPEAKER_01 24:23

But again, that's interesting because we because the metaphors that we use, it predisposes us to a way of seeing the world. Yeah. Which may c create a certain action. Uh we see the opponent, we don't see the the that the person taking the ground, we don't see it as a dart, we see them as a an opposition. As an adversary, an adversary.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

So that's actually a good distinction. So w I think Lake Hoff and Johnson are correct with the conceptual metaphor theory. It's it's a it's a kind of a Is that what they're all about? Yeah, it's based upon interaction theory of metaphor, but they take it more I think they take it more in almost like a deterministic materialistic route, as if like this is who like these metaphors only make sense because of your embodiment in the world. Where I would lean more towards Recurr, where he's more of a poet. And he would say with his interaction theory that actually metaphor is more novel and can be more revelatory than that. There can be metaphors that pop into existence that you could never come across. And I think he's a bit more theological.

SPEAKER_01 25:25

So yeah, I guess that sort of notion that that Lake Hoffman Johnson the world is flat.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

A bit more flat.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:31

Because it what it is is what what you see is what you get.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

Yeah, yeah. So what we're what what I hear you're saying Ricord's saying is that actually it's now it's actually more there's more mystery into the play here.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

Yeah. Because he he he's having a theological conversation. He's French Catholic. And so he's having more of a theological conversation with metaphor.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

But what what Josh is the more Marxist, aren't they?

SPEAKER_00 25:55

A little bit more. Like you read their last chapter of their book, and you're like, this sounds like some social constructionist theory of metaphor and that we can rewrite, we can uh we can tailor society however we want based on the metaphors we use. Um I yeah, I wouldn't necessarily go go that far. But they do a really good job in helping to explain how all these metaphors on a foundational level are connected to the everyday language that we use. And their big are their big, big argument within their work is actually the dead metaphors that we have, so the metaphors we don't see as metaphorical anymore, are actually the most alive metaphors we have.

SPEAKER_01 26:33

Well, I mean that's interesting as I've thought about the coaching and supervision space because people will use language and I mean can get interesting when you ask them, can you just unpack that phrase you've used? What do you mean? Um which is then because it's a dead metaphor, they've just used it, you know, like I it's fire in my bones. I'm feeling so what does that look like for you? So you so that that's the dead metaphor, I suppose, isn't it? Yeah. And what you're doing is you're trying to actually get them to to bring that forward.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

Yeah. Exactly. So that that's a really good thing that they do. Um I think they're too reductionistic, uh like I've already said. I like recurrent because he goes into the symbolic world a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

So tell me about that. That's interesting, the symbolic world. Because I I know that we've talked about with Jonathan about this that so in the if I just say this, in the Protestant space, um, and we've talked about communion before, you know, this is where I kind of get a little bit kind of I'm I'm a bit vexed because in the sort of very sort of evangelical world, I'm not doing Pentecostal world, but it you take the elements and then just simply say the elements, they're symbolic. Yeah. And it's like, uh So unpack that for me.

SPEAKER_00 27:51

Yeah, so first we need to actually, for the first time in this conversation, define what we mean what we mean by metaphor. Because between Lake Hoff and Johnson and Recur, they have two different metaphor definitions. Uh Lakehoff and Johnson would say that a metaphor is ex this is the key word, experiencing one thing and through another. So if we're going with the tenor and the vehicle, you're experiencing the tenor is being experienced through the vehicle. Experience is the key modality here. Right. And because they think that all these metaphors are embodied within ourselves. Whereas Recurr is more uh Wichtensteinian uh in his approach, and what I mean by that is it's more of a seeing as. I'm not gonna get into the distinction between Wittgenstein, that's a complicated argument. But basically he's saying that no metaphor is seeing one thing through another, not just experiencing one thing through another. Like a pair of binoculars.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

It's like a pair of binoculars. Yeah. I mean using the metaphor here. I'm looking through that I can't see that, but when I look through binoculars, I see actually it's not a different thing. I just see it in another way. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's been amplified. It's been it's been like now it's nuanced.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 29:11

It's not it's not just the outlines, it's the hills now just gray. Yeah. I can see the ravines.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

And so what I see, the key difference between the two of them is the experience bit for Lake Hoffman Johnson's a bit more rigid because we can only know things through our purely through our experience in the world. Um where Recur is like, yeah, he's a phenomenologist, he does believe that to a certain extent, but he actually holds a lot more almost revelatory I would say revelatory, almost capital R, revelatory capacity within the human imagination through metaphor.

SPEAKER_01 29:45

You know, it really strikes me when you start talking about this, and I don't want to flick off into this, but um you've heard me mention uh Rod Loader's uh not Rod um James Loader, yeah. Louder's book. And he talks about those two categories of socialization and transformation. And so learning, he says, learning can you know I I I guess in one sense where um Westhop uh was it what is it? Uh what are the names of them? Uh the book? Uh no, the names of the authors. Lakehoff and um Johnson. Just see it as socialization.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

I think so.

SPEAKER_01 30:23

And whereas whereas uh rec r recur is seeing that actually because in that sort of um how would you schema of Loder, he has these like four dimensions. So socialization, within socialization is the self and the world, it's interaction. Yeah. But he says actually there's these other dimensions, which which is the kind of the mystery part. Yeah. We talks about the void and the holy. Mm-hmm. I I I actually really like this. But that's where we in one sense the you know, it's the transcendent. Yeah. It's the mystery. Yeah. It's like I I guess if I was to think about it and and and people might be able to relate to this, it's the the road to Emmaus in Luke 24. I like you know, we're walking the road, we don't know who Jesus is, yeah. We walk for a while, he asks questions, like it's dark, it's all gone to custard, yeah, no hope, blah blah. But then when we finally got to the place and he broke the bread, we our hearts were strangely warmed. We woke, we awakened. Yeah. How do you explain that? Yes, it's not a socialization. No. It's an encounter.

SPEAKER_00 31:28

It's an encounter. And so that's the difference. I think that's a key difference. Yeah. And so Charles Taylor, the book on the bottom, and this will be answered to the first question you had about symbols.

SPEAKER_02 31:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

Uh he relies within the language animal a lot on recurs uh so is that's what Taylor's doing with in his two categories of so he does two categories. There's the inframing theory of language.

SPEAKER_01 31:50

So the inframing is the sort of like I call this a microphone stand, it's only a microstone stand.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

It is what it is. That there's a one-for-one correspondence with the name to the thing.

SPEAKER_01 31:58

It's very flat.

SPEAKER_00 31:59

It's it's an inframing means that language is only used to describe reality, is what an inframing theory believes. Right. Where he would say, no, a constitutive theory of language actually argues that yes, language does describe, but it's at its fundamental basis, language actually is constitutive of reality on the on the basis of meaning itself. So language articulates the meaning that we have and that we feel in the world. And actually the language itself actually changes what we even think and feel and believe about the things in the world.

SPEAKER_01 32:36

Because it constitutes something. Yeah. Whereas the other yeah, you put that quite well actually, because I've always kind of described those two categories as like I guess the the the um constitutive is like it's it's it's it's the description is not actually what it is. We can only describe what it is. Yeah. So it's it's open-ended. Whereas the inframing, it's very That's what it is.

SPEAKER_00 32:58

That's what it is.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

Punctilia.

SPEAKER_00 33:00

Is that is that the kind of kind of. It's a post-Enlightenment uh way of looking at the world that the language is all literal and philosophy and understanding of the world should be best understood through literal language only. And Charles Taylor through Recurrent and others um basically break that open and say, no, language is much more mysterious than we realize. It's not just a one-for-one. So then what is symbol? So symbol, uh Charles Taylor would say, is yes, seeing one thing through another, that's metaphor, but it's actually the radical edge of metaphor. So it's that thing being another thing. Right. So it's still seeing one thing through another, but it's actually that thing being the thing, symbolizing the thing.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

Here's a here's a here's here's a illustration, um, or not illustration, but a question, um, which is really practical. Um so I could put it in the chaplaincy column or I could put it in in the supervision column, and I've used this too. But say I'm a chaplain, I'm at a hospital, and um and so I'm talking with somebody and person is needing comfort. So there's a conversation, but then I offer them an artifact. It's a wooden cross, and this this goes on.

SPEAKER_02 34:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:20

So it's a symbol. But what that symbol does make can be the very essence of feeling comforted. Ongoing. Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_00 34:30

So that's well clizz a cross is a great example.

SPEAKER_01 34:32

So that's the what he's saying, is that?

SPEAKER_00 34:34

No, he's saying something more radical than that. Okay, to unpack that then. So I think at a very face level, what most people believe by the word symbol is oh, it this just represents this other thing that's out there on this in this physical domain. So the cross is symbolically representing what? The death of Jesus. Yeah, but what's saying that you're not sure. But it's it's obviously much more than that. It's a symbol that is infused with so many things. But the difference I would say between that and what Jonathan said a few uh episodes ago is between sacrament and symbol, and I would guess I would agree with him, is sacrament is a symbol, but it's a symbol on its most radical edge, meaning actually the way you get access to the thing that the physical thing represents is through the physical thing. Yes. So here's an example. Yeah. We'll go to the transubstantiation view. Yeah. Well, what is communion? What is the body and the blood of Christ? Is it just, you know, I don't even know what people mean by this anymore. Is it just a symbol? I'm like, well, don't what do you mean just a symbol? Like, do you actually do you believe that it is just bread and wine and that's it? Or do you believe that there's actually access to what the bread and the wine are symbolizing? So there's that. Then we get to the sacramental conversation. Okay, it's still all within the conversation of metaphor, and this is where it gets really mysterious. But if the world is sacramental, meaning that we commune and participate with God in the physical created order, which is the truest truism I can possibly state, because there's no other world in which we interact with God in, because it's only the world we live in. So it's just true in and of itself. But if we believe that is true, then the sa then the world itself isn't just a flat symbol in the sense of pointing somewhere else, but has nothing of that somewhere else in it. Oh, it means that the created order itself is actually revelatory and communicative of God Himself. Not to say that the creation God is creation, no. They're distinct. God creates the world, orders the world, he's beyond the world, but for whatever reason, which I think is pretty obvious because we're humans living in the world, that God communicates to his creatures through the created order. So is creation a symbol pointing to like God's communication to us or even God Himself? This is this is where it gets really, really mysterious, and you need some so it's like a in one sense a conjugate.

SPEAKER_01 37:19

So I was gonna go back to the cross again, so the wooden cross, and I just I'm interested to explore this. So the person takes that cross and yes, okay, on one hand it's symbolic, okay, Christ died for me. Da da da da. But what happens is the person puts that cross in their hand and then they occasionally pick it up through their sickness. Yeah. And they hold it. And something strange is going on here because somehow Christ is present here.

SPEAKER_02 37:50

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 37:50

Well, they they experience it's like I felt at peace. I held that so there's nothing in that actual object that's infused with power, but there's something going on because you're saying here this it's the symbol the metaphor, the symbol is at the sharp end of Yeah.

unknown 38:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

Because I th I mean that happens. You're basically making the argument for bringing icons back in church. Yeah, well, uh yeah, I know. You know, that's basically what you're saying.

SPEAKER_02 38:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:22

And so the Protestant uh uh the an end of the Protestant Reformation through the what iconoclast is got rid of icons because they're like, oh, these are idols that are kind of hindering our worship of God, but they completely misunderstood the symbolic world of no, they're obviously not.

SPEAKER_01 38:35

Well, that was always when I was doing my study, is that the senses were completely because what you've got with the not to go down this road to it, but what you've got with the print world is only the optic sense dialing up. Yeah. And and actually suppressing the other senses. Yeah. So it's the eyes. Yeah. So the eyes are always like our and and with our eyes, we don't see everything. No. We only see what's in front of us. Yeah. So so the other senses are playing in here too. Yeah. Are they sort of you know, touch? I felt something. I smelled something. There's a s sort of so you know that's interesting, isn't it? The metaphor is so I I guess what I'm pushing here is the metaphor is not just eye sort of visionary. Yeah. Visionary in the very sort of optical sense. It's visionary or or illuminating and all the sensory capacity that we have. Entirely. And beyond that because the Catholics talk about the um inward inner senses. Yeah. So the faith, hope, and love. So there's a kind of inner kind of sense sense sense uh sensibilities. Yeah. Which I guess that's immersing yourself in scripture and stuff like that. Isn't that fascinating? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

Isn't the senses a really well I know that I'm not doing the best job articulating this. It is complicated. Uh maybe in like two more years we'll have the same conversation again and it'll be much more thorough because I would have written a few chapters by the R.

SPEAKER_01 40:01

So where are you up to with you know, you think about this metaphors and you're like it's pretty technical stuff we're talking about. So people might might be struggling to follow us. Yeah. Um Although they might get the sort of actual object that you're holding an object, yes, a symbol. But you're feeling that object.

SPEAKER_00 40:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

Or particularly, you know, it's you put something in your hand, you feel it.

SPEAKER_00 40:19

So this is actually this is important. So I need to make this one distinction before we go to where I think you're going to go, which is okay, what does this mean for Christians, you know, us living now? So Charles Taylor, uh basically in his book Cosmic Connections, uh, this is late. This is his latest book. I don't go as far as him, but he basically argues that the intersection, if you will, between the the thing you're trying to describe and the metaphorical term, so the tenor in the vehicle, the the intersection is creates this interspace. It's the interspace of meaning.

SPEAKER_01 40:55

Right.

SPEAKER_00 40:55

So the reason why metaphor matters is because we would not be able to un perceive meaning in the world if it wasn't for the metaphorical. And so when it comes to Christian life and Christian living, what does the meta what does metaphor have to do with it? Well, it means that if you want to meaningfully live into the world, you really need to lean into possibly new metaphors that you never even imagined. Because the dead metaphors have turned into what we see as literal language that have have lost its potency, its poetic unction, and we need the new novel metaphors to actually show us something true about the world and ourselves that invite participation. Because we don't live, I'm gonna this is a bit philosophical, we don't live in the subjective world. We don't live in the objective world in the sense of things that are abstract and beyond our our our kind of like phenomenal experience. And we don't live purely in the subjective world, which means everything is contingent upon us. We live in the in-between. We live in this intersection between the obje subject and the object. Okay, well, how do you actually get access to that, which we all do in every moment of every day? That's what it means to live, right? Is to live in the in-between. It's it's articulated through metaphorical language, which is where meaning is found. And and if I can actually extrapolate this further, which is where my PhD goes, it's actually in story. It's in mythos. Yeah, mythos. It's that's the like it's in the story of the world, of the Christian faith, that is the intersection of meaning in the world. And you need to live a storied life to live a meaningful life. Some people just have really reduced down reductionistic stories that are flat and don't make any sense of the world as it is, but there may be hardline scientists or scientism. Or there's a Christian story, among others, but we'll say what's the Christian one for now. There's a Christian story that kind of elevates things on a much grander scale metaphysically that's inviting you into it. But how do you actually gain access into that when it comes to articulating it and describing it? It's only through the metaphor. So this is the problem within churches. We are inviting people into a story, and this is a complex story. It's complicated. It's centered on Jesus and placed within the Bible, but how do we actually experientially, emotively, and meaningfully distill that story down to something that invites people into it intuitively and the way we do that, I'm arguing, is actually through metaphor. So can I tell you a bit of a story? I know I'm I'm on a little bit of a rant now. Yeah, yeah. I preached two Sundays ago on um on being sent, because we're We're going through a ch a series right now on rhythms of life, basic rhythms of the Christian life, which is for our church, is pray daily, uh, gather weekly, and live sent. And so my job was to preach on the live senteness. And I realized, well, well, like to live sent to where? To live sent to what? Right? That I need we actually need to fill that out a bit. And then I was like, oh, we need a metaphor. We we it's not a new metaphor, but we need a metaphor that maybe hasn't been used in a while. So I said, like the Christian life is an adventure. It's an adventure in like the purest sense of the storied adventure where there's a call to action that's not from within you, that's from outside of you, that's drawing you in. There's uh the the goal is bigger than yourself, that uh there's on the journey, there's a point of no return, that this is all or nothing. Uh there's a ment there's mentors and mentees along the way to guide you because you don't have everything yourself. You need help along the way. Um there are obstacles, little moments of inflection that are important and character-defining that will hopefully and ultimately bring you to the end goal. And then there's the end goal and the victory in the adventure of getting to your destination, but there's the last step, which is the coming home, which every great adventure adventurer comes home. Why? Because they've have new knowledge for the community. Sounds like the hero's journey, doesn't it? It's a hero's journey story, right? And so I'm I'm using this metaphor and mapping this onto the Christian life. Why? Because when I tell you, Graham, the Christian life is a metaphor, or following Jesus sorry, that following Jesus is an adventure. Your life is an adventure in Christ. Does what does that do to you?

SPEAKER_01 45:49

Oh, well, as soon as you use the word adventure, when you were saying that, what my mind would go to is um is and I think actually a lot of people do the same. It goes to stories that we um we might think of are adventure stories. So immediately when you went to the Lord of the Rings, that's probably the one that I That's where I went to immediately. And you guys, so what what's going on there? Well, because there are stories that are actually deeply embedded into um into our culture, yeah, they're the ones that come forward. I mean I mean one of the one of the famous ones, it's not so much now, but it was sort of thirty years ago growing up was um Charles Dickens' The Christmas Story. Yeah. You know, so it um y the Good Samaritan story is another one because that's picked up again and something.

SPEAKER_00 46:39

But but when you say adventure It popped you immediately went there, didn't you?

SPEAKER_01 46:43

Yeah, I did. I did. And then I'm going and then I'm going, Oh. Oh, so there's all sorts of things about that, adventures.

SPEAKER_00 46:50

You know, I didn't have to explain it, did I? I could have said the following adventure now.

SPEAKER_01 46:54

Doesn't it depend on what is in the imagination?

SPEAKER_00 46:57

It does, a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 46:58

So I don't think my my parents would think of that.

SPEAKER_00 47:02

No.

SPEAKER_01 47:02

No. My father's passed away now. But no, they just didn't think of that. No, that's why. They adventure might be, I don't know how they would have thought of it. I should have asked my mother that actually. But adventure could be very personal in a sense, like we used to go out in caravan, it was a bit of an adventure. Yeah. You know. Um but I was saying there are there are arc archetypal stories in the culture that we um that that are kind of they give imagination to what we to that metaphor.

SPEAKER_00 47:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:30

But but it does open up the space.

SPEAKER_00 47:32

I mean it's hugely It hugely opens it up and it Because you were playing on that.

SPEAKER_01 47:36

You were saying, well, you you come home. Oh, yeah, that's right, you know, wrote a game home. And you're not the same as when you you we were changed. You're a different person.

SPEAKER_00 47:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:45

Because all these trials along the way.

SPEAKER_00 47:47

Well, then you get to play into it, right? Because what I love about Tolkien, and I we're getting a little bit off track here because I just finished watching Lord of the Rings all the way through the movies, not the books, just the movies. And um and what Tolkien does uh what he hated was allegory, he hated it. He said, No, Lord of the Rings is not an allegory for the for the Christian life. Yeah, that's not what he's trying to do. But what he loved was applicability. That was the term he liked.

SPEAKER_02 48:10

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 48:10

So people can see a lot of different things in the Lord of the Rings that speak deeply to them. And I think that's the place of metaphor. And so when it comes to the Shire, like our are who are humans in the story? Oh, we are obviously humans because there's humans in the story, but then we're also the hobbits too. We're also the elves as well. Yeah. We're also we're all of them, right? Yeah. And so when it comes to the the hobbits in the shire, well, when you look, at least when you watch the movies, it comes through really clear. You don't you don't go on an adventure. Actually, if you go somewhere and do something exciting or adventurous, everyone's gonna stick their noses up you or just talk about you behind your back. Like, who does this person think they are? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who do Frodo and Sam think they are? They're gonna save the world? Yeah. We're just from the Shire. Yeah. They're just hobbits. Yeah. Did you do that in the sermon? Uh a little bit. Yeah. Um but that's so you can you can draw it out. So you can actually spark the imagination within that. But where does it begin? It begins with the metaphor.

SPEAKER_02 49:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:06

Here's a little something to throw in here.

SPEAKER_02 49:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:08

Um it is technical, but McLuhan talks about, you know, the ground, what we don't see, the figure that we do see. He talks then between spaces the resonant inter interval.

SPEAKER_00 49:20

Resonant interval.

SPEAKER_01 49:21

That's what he calls it.

SPEAKER_00 49:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:25

Yeah. It's the same.

SPEAKER_00 49:26

It's all the same.

SPEAKER_01 49:27

It's uh is the resonant because I like the word, you know, the resonant interval is that the resonant is an acoustic metaphor. Yeah. So I can't see it. I'm feeling it. Yeah. I'm hearing it. It's you know, hearing it and feeling it. Because you know, if you play a bass note really deep, you'll feel it. Yeah. I'm feeling it, I'm hearing it. Um but I can't see it.

SPEAKER_00 49:46

Well, that's what Hurtmont Rosa does in the resonance. Yeah. No, these all these guys are speaking of the same stuff because basically the philosophical conversation has been dominated by what is objectively true, like true independent of ourselves. And what is subjective truth. Well, all these people are like, I'm sick of these conversations.

SPEAKER_01 50:08

Well, they don't exist. Well, because they're not. No, I wouldn't say they don't exist. Well, it's it's a it's a metaphor that doesn't help. No, it is a metaphor.

SPEAKER_00 50:16

The subject and the object is a metaphor. And it's at that point.

SPEAKER_01 50:19

It's locked us into a say way of seeing in a very sort of binary way. It is. Yeah. And we're not and I guess if the subject-object has been has has failed to see the resident interval, the in-between space between you called it the vehicle and the tenor. Yeah. It's it's like there is an in-between space. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:38

And there's a tension. Because you in the metaphor, you want to be able to the intuition is like, oh, I know what the correspondence is between A and B. Yeah. I I know what the correspondence is between the tenor and the vehicle within the metaphor. I know what you're trying to say. I'm just like, do you? There's a lot of things this metaphor can actually point to. Then you're asking the cop, well, what is true? Like what is what are you actually trying to say? It's like that's the tension. That's the mystery. Language is actually not codified exactness.

SPEAKER_01 51:04

Well, you know, in when they developed the the phone and some of those technologies, the theory, the communication theory they do it is like like I think it's like I get it because it's but it's basically a line between two points. Yeah. And you you know, it's it's the back of they don't really see anything, it's very flat. Yeah. Really flat. I mean, that in one sense, that the theory provides us with a way in which we the telephone developed and probably how the internet developed. Yeah. Zeros and ones.

SPEAKER_00 51:34

Zeros and ones.

SPEAKER_01 51:35

Yeah. Yeah. But but you can see if you push that, uh where does AI sit in there and stuff like that?

SPEAKER_00 51:42

Well, I think you don't want to I'm sure we're you could get into a bit of a fallacy logically, but if we start at zeros and ones and left and right and binaries, there's a flatness to binaries and dichotomies. And so I I think there's a flatness to the fullest extent of what that is through AI, but whatever. Yeah, that's just me. It's just like you're not really looking like there's nothing meaningful in it.

SPEAKER_01 52:06

Take this this this conversation. Where where are you at? You think about churches.

SPEAKER_00 52:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:11

Where are you at with that?

SPEAKER_00 52:13

Yeah, so I don't not very far. Not very far. But what I do know, the avenue I'm gonna go down, I think, is because what what I'm hoping to do is is lead a congregation or a church leadership team or whatever that looks like through a process that helps them discover their foundational metaphors or metaphor from which everything else emerges. And so you could say, well, if you found the metaphor, boom, people are gonna live into it, great. That's actually not enough. No. No, because a language is I I don't think metaphorical language is is purely a cognitive exercise. You actually need to live into it to make it make it real to you.

SPEAKER_01 53:00

It's always moving. Always moving. Well, so that so it's it's dynamic. There's a di there's a dynamism in here. Yeah. Whereas our tendency is toward lock to you know, because actually, I mean that's what well does the screen doesn't do that. Well it does to an extent, but it doesn't really do your print does though.

SPEAKER_02 53:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:17

It locks it. Because we haven't got it. Yeah. We're saying actually Well it's it's it's it it it it's awful helpful to get a picture of uh a snapshot of something.

SPEAKER_00 53:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:30

But it's not the end-and-e-d or something.

SPEAKER_00 53:32

No, but you're saying but yeah, kind of, but also it's way more complicated. So it's great that you've just articulated a new metaphor about yourself. So maybe we could say that um let's just use some really I I know there's churches named this. Let's just say your church is now a new church plant and you're calling yourselves adventure church. Yeah. All right, let's just go off the adventure metaphor. And your your metaphor metaphorical vision is um to be a place set on adventure for Christ or something, or that's your mission, right? Let's just say that. Um well just because you've articulated it doesn't mean people actually believe it.

SPEAKER_01 54:10

No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 54:11

Right? Those are not the same thing. So how do you actually uh invite people to believe the metaphor which you're articulating? They want to live into it, but you've got to actually set things up in such a way that invite people into living in such a way. So an example, so this is where James K. Smith comes in.

SPEAKER_01 54:28

Oh, so this is the pro this is the liturgical liturgical anthropology.

SPEAKER_00 54:32

This is where you actually need to set up lit not liturgical as in like rigid and old church or high church tradition. I mean liturgical is in practices. You need to set up invitational practices, whether it's in your Sunday liturgy or weekly liturgy or ministry liturgy of the week. You need to set up practices that actually speak to that metaphor because there's probably practices that you're doing as a congregation that are speaking to different metaphors that are playing at an on a subconscious level. And so the classic one with an evangelical uh church would be um uh chur uh Christian as consumer. You know, like I I remember I walked into a church, a rather large church in Atlanta, Canada, and they had changed their seating to make them really comfortable and the auditorium is like 2,000 people auditorium, and they are theater seats. Like straight up, they are theater seats, and you're sunken down really low, and the next seat is like right here, and the stage is super high, and you're just sunk in it. You don't you don't want to get up from these seats, they're too comfortable. And so you're just you're a spectator, you're just here consuming entertainment. And that was actually what was the practice of just the physical seat itself, was communicating a metaphor.

SPEAKER_01 55:45

So yeah, and that's the the point, isn't it? Everything is communicating. Yeah. Everything, the space is communicating. That's where McLaren comes in. Yeah, yeah, because it's all forming. Yeah. It's all shaping.

SPEAKER_00 55:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 55:57

So if you So which which then kind of opens up in a more positive way for examination of to find alignment between the metaphors values of theology and practice. Yeah. It's an integration. You need it and actually whether we like it or not, is actually integrated, but we just haven't been able to unpack unpack it.

SPEAKER_00 56:19

You just need thoughtful integration. And so uh so for adventure church, like let's just say the adventure side of things that you're really wanting to to emphasize in this season of the church's life is the sentences of evangelism, let's just say. Well, maybe on a Sunday morning, one of your dominant which I've seen done in churches, you're the first thing in the call to worship, you invite people up to up to the front as before like a pre-service altar call almost, and you say, Lord, I want you to have your way, not only with me in the service, but me this week. And then in that moment, they I saw this church do this where they actually had somebody come up to the front from the congregation, light a candle, and in 30 seconds or less just share about them sharing Jesus with somebody in the community. And then that candle was a was a liturgical signifier for everybody to say, we're on an adventure for Jesus. We're actually we're we're called to live sent.

SPEAKER_01 57:14

This is this is this whole notion that all that's playing into it. It's all playing into playing into a into a narrative. And I think narrative is a really good word. It's not sort of a kind of mechanism to um you know to get some sort of outcome. It's it's this is the environment, the ecology is doing something.

SPEAKER_00 57:30

Exactly. And so one of the a really popular sermon series in the US, I think it is dying slowly, but it was super popular a decade ago, was in the summer in the US is called At the Movies, where you take a popular movie and then you kind of sermonize it a little bit. And some of the large churches create like incredible productions around that movie, say Toy Story or something. You take the kernel of biblical truth out of it, and it's meant to be invitational to help bring people in. But it's clearly playing it at an entertainment level. Why? Because you're you're taking the liturgical practice of entertainment in the form of movie and mapping it onto church practice. And then what you're actually doing as a result of that is actually you're training the imaginations of people to believe that the church is there for my entertainment.

SPEAKER_01 58:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Because actually the it's not just the the the themes in the toy story, it's actually the imagery and the whole wider picture that toys are amusement.

SPEAKER_00 58:30

Well, no, not just toys are amusement, the theater itself is being brought into the church. And then what is the theater? It's an it's an amusement entertainment projection.

SPEAKER_01 58:37

Yeah. Anyway, so we're kind of we're nearly there, aren't we?

SPEAKER_00 58:39

Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_01 58:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:41

So metaphors, I know we went through a lot of theory for the first thirty minutes, but the meaningful interspace of living in the world is articulated through metaphor. And metaphor is not just a description of the world, it's an invitation into the world. It's simultaneously both. And uh it actually begins to constitute what the world is through language. And you start to get at what the world really is like through metaphor.

SPEAKER_01 59:11

I mean uh we won't we haven't got time here, but it's really interesting when we start thinking about this with scripture.

SPEAKER_00 59:17

We have anchoring there. Paul uses tons of metaphors.

SPEAKER_01 59:20

Oh, yeah. And and how we could actually be better using and encouraging engagement with scripture, and I think people would be more uh lit up about scripture if we thought about that. Yeah. Uh it's not new ways, actually, it's more ancient. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Thanks, Joey. It's really interesting. Great.

SPEAKER_00 59:46

Thank you so much for listening to Lunch on the Way. And if you've enjoyed this episode or any past episodes that we've published, please hit the subscribe button and like button on YouTube and the follow button on whatever podcasting platform you are using. It goes a long way. Jonathan Graham and I back in 2022 started this podcast because we wanted to have open-ended conversations that were exploratory and a little bit risky and allowed us to venture into uncharted territory, not only theologically, biblically, philosophically, culturally, but also anthropologically as well, to help us follow Jesus better and to think better about the Christian faith and our discipleship to him. And so we are so glad that you've been joining us since 2022. And if you haven't, we have a whole back catalog of conversations and episodes that I still think are very relevant for today.