What's a meta for?

How do you find language to capture that which is beyond words? That which creates through word? That which became Word? How can you grasp that which is not graspable, beyond reach and comprehension? As one who tends to sway toward the apophatic side of the continuum, I am well aware of the impossibility of language to captured God. As Gabriel Vahanian, the pioneering Death of God theologian, once said, "Language has only one thing to say, and that's 'God.' And there's just one thing that language can't say, and that's 'God.'"

As Vahanian astutely observes, even though we stumble and stammer to find the language accurately to say "God," but it falls so short. Yet, we continue to try. That's what a meta's for! Metaphor gives us some way to try to grasp the infinite, to comprehend that which is beyond comprehension. It is how those of the kataphatic bent continue the quest for words to make sense of God.

I've been revisiting the beauty of metaphors lately as I've been teaching Genesis this term at Rochester College. As soon as you open the first page, you are bombarded with images and adjectives that try to make sense of this God: creative artist; author-poet who speaks a creative word, potter whose creative hand molds a masterpiece, nervous, sufferer, sovereign over chaos evaluator, name-giver, delegator, power-sharer, farmer-gardener, risk-taker. All of these attempt to introduce us to this God. (And as Brueggemann rightly suggests, if we're going to embrace this faith, the God described in the Scriptures is the only God we've got!) It is here that we learn about this mysterious God with whom we have to do, as LT Johnson asserts.

This list of metaphors and adjectival descriptors by no means exhausts the list of possible images of God, both ancient and contemporary, both biblical and extra-biblical. Consider, for example, just a few others that are either directly mentioned or hinted at in Scripture: shepherd, king, father, mother, warrior, lion, peacemaker....

What is your favorite metaphor for God? With which metaphors do you struggle? When you pray, what images of God tend to come to mind? When you think about relating to God, what images are most important to you? What images are a barrier to your relating to God?