Metaphor, Literalism, and The Da Vinci Code, Part II
Words matter.
The Hebrews writer defines faith like this: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (NAS) or as the NIV has it, "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see."
This definition of faith is at odds with Robert Langdon's definition. Let me repeat the quote from yesterday's blog:
"Sophie, every faith in the world is based on fabrication. That is the definition of faith--acceptance off that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove....Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessible. The problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors."
"Fabrication" is a word that suggests "made up." Now Dan Brown may have Langdon thinking the first definition of "fabrication" which is simply to make or create, but it strikes my ear that the notion of "false" in terms of reality is what's really behind the suggestion. So faith proceeds from fabrication, what we make up in our heads, albeit with good intention. Not only can we not prove that which we have "faith" in, but it's really just a simple matter of us trying to process the unprocessible, which again, I concur with, because human beings contemplating God are stuck in just that dilemma.
And without the revealed word of God found in scripture, that would be precisely where human beings would be left. With the wandering ideas--some quite brilliant--about the nature of things cultures have been coming up with for centuries.
Back to Hebrews 11: notions like "assurance", "conviction", and "being certain" fly in the face of today's thinking concerning the notion of faith. Assurance and conviction is the very position you are not allowed to take if you are to honor everyone else's faith. Today, the word "faith" is used to suggest something in opposition to real knowledge, though that something is not without its practical uses.
Again, metaphor ends up looking like a useful falsehood. And for the people who approach the Bible as if it actually says a true thing, well, this "useful falsehood" business smacks of deceit, so again, out goes metaphor into the street, and the artists right along side.
There are events in my own history that I know took place...I was there. But in the retelling of these events, both in my own heart, and in the retelling to others, some of those events take on symbolic and metaphoric properties. I suspect that's the reason these kinds of events linger in our minds so powerfully. Just now, I won't give you a list of those moments in my history that serve as metaphors for the totality of my life, but I suspect you know what I'm talking about. There are memories of childhood, of school, of certain friendships and relationships, certain events with my wife and children that speak to me of the deep movements of life and my various successes and failures, loaded now with symbolic content.
This relationship between events as they occurred vs. the way we infuse these events with symbolic content is one of the things in question in the James Frey A Million Little Pieces affair. I haven't read the book, but apparently for the sake of embellishment, Frey "fabricated" some things. Yet, the book struck a deep chord with many people--meaning that they set the stories of the book against their own lives in some fashion, making a metaphoric move, and resonated with something of its experience--but frankly, these same people were offended that they'd been duped by a reporting of events that hadn't happened.
Why then, should we feel good about texts that claim to report historical events (which is different that saying they were writing histories for history's sake) which are in fact false just because we can get some pragmatic metaphors out of them?
Human beings must make metaphoric moves as we think about things, events, and relationships. As Dorothy Sayers and so many others have pointed out, all language is analogical.
Here's the point: metaphor and literalism are not in opposition. They exist side by side. So Robert Langdon's point in The Da Vinci Code is a tricky one, one that we have to reject in its pitting of metaphor against the belief that Jesus was just who the gospel writers say He was. If not, then we are just people who have been duped by historical writers no better than Jim Frey. Good books maybe, these gospels, but if they're not "true to the events", then as Paul puts it, we are fools.
As for me and my house...
8:08:26 AM
