As I introduce this concept I want to first register two oddities about the TIS movement. The first is that, despite the fact that Fowl’s founding document was a reader and therefore entirely immersive, outlining only in the briefest of terms what the approach consists of, there has been a never-failing stream of prolegomena ever since. There seem to be at least as many books about TIS as there are books that seek to exemplify it as a practice. The other oddity that the newcomer will notice is that many publications that are coming out under the auspices of TIS are written by scholars who are not in any very obvious way practicing TIS and do not seem to have even fully understood it. The main reason many such publications are not really TIS gives me a reason now to introduce what, in my view, is the greatest strength and most distinguishing feature of the movement and the thing that marks it out as a clear development on the older discipline of biblical theology: it is theology done in and for the church. One avowedly TIS book I read mentioned the church right at the very end, as an after-thought, like most theology books do. By contrast, what you will find in Pictures of Atonement is academic research with some of the features of a devotional. It will have reflections at the end of each chapter borne out of my own daily meditations on these atonement themes.
A second strength of TIS is that, unlike biblical theology, which was always at odds with systematic theology and wary of its confessional biases, TIS tries to be a genuine rapprochement between theology and biblical studies. Laudably, Brazos are in the middle of producing a series of commentaries that are written not by biblical scholars but by people who, in various ways, would normally be classed as theologians: Stanley Hauerwas and Robert Jenson, for instance. This is where TIS is truly ground-breaking. However, TIS is clearly not new. All of its leading proponents are unanimous on this point. The church has always instinctively read the Bible theologically, seeking to receive it as God’s Word spoken to faith for the formation of Christian character and action.
There is, according to one article, a form of TIS called “interested” TIS (I-TIS).3 It is this kind of TIS that I will mainly be practicing as I will be bringing to the biblical texts the interests generated by my first two volumes on the atonement. As mentioned, these gave me two motifs: the Incarnation Criterion (in Atonement Theories) and the Participation Imperative (in Old Rugged Cross). I will be bringing both of these to the light of Scripture.
The Role of Metaphor
I will be especially interested in the role of metaphor, which I identified in The Old Rugged Cross as being crucial in re-presenting the cross in ever fresh ways to the faithful, rescuing it from sliding into a mere sign or logo for Christianity. This was a major plank in my Participation Imperative thesis. The re-metaphorization of the cross via the arts allowed a renewed sacramental participation in the cross. McGilchrist, in his study of the importance of right hemisphere thinking in the appreciation of metaphor, is correct in saying that “the gap across which metaphor carries us is one that language itself creates. Metaphor is language’s cure for the ills entailed on us by language.”4 Metaphor, it is claimed, “was the first word in spoken language, and only after losing its original colour could it become a literal sign.”5 If this is the case then our never-ending words about the cross might actually be placing it further and further away from us. In this study, I will be examining the New Testament metaphors with a view to recovering their spiritual immediacy, their embodied logic, their sacramental power.
Metaphor is of interest to any biblical study of atonement since the way the earliest church understood the death and resurrection of Christ was expressed almost entirely in pictorial language. Indeed, one is hard pressed to find any New Testament interpretations of the work of Christ that are not in metaphorical language. Even the renderings of Christ dying or suffering “for us” and “for our sins”: ostensibly non-metaphorical language, almost certainly make some filtered reference to the Levitical sacrifices or qualify some commonly known trope from the Greek stage about heroic deaths for others.
Metaphor is variously defined as: “the application of an alien name by transference”;6 “An affair between a predicate with a past and an object that yields while protesting”;7 “a calculated error,” which, “discloses a relationship of meaning hitherto unnoticed”;8 and “understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.”9 Metaphors always involve two things: one familiar and the other unfamiliar and they are always characterized as much by dissimilarity as they are by similarity between the familiar and unfamiliar components. They exist in an “is” and “is not” tension, with the “is” highlighted by the new relationship and the “is not” aspects left behind. The power of the new relationship that is forged between the “predicate with a past” and the object is positively revelatory. It brings out the “hitherto unnoticed” element that Ricoeur highlights as the fruit of the new and often startling relationship. It is this too that gives metaphors their explanatory power. Because of these things metaphors are absolutely ubiquitous to language and totally central to the way we learn about new and unfamiliar or abstract things. Negatively, in just the same way as a metaphor will only use some aspects of the familiar thing: called the source, or vehicle, so a metaphor will only highlight certain aspects of the unfamiliar thing: called the target or tenor. Everything else disappears from view. It must be acknowledged, for instance, that the horrible realities of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus somewhat disappear from view in Paul’s atonement theology, which could explain perhaps the post-Pauline Synoptic Gospel tradition, which sought to be more attentive to the passion narrative itself. Then, by the time we arrive at the Johannine corpus, we see a marvelous synthesis between the narrative and the theology, which became definitive of the later patristic traditions.10 But the point is that the reason for the omissions in Paul’s theology is that he is only giving us a series of pictures, none of which claim completeness.
In one very important sense the considerable use of metaphor in New Testament atonement theology was because there was no other way of expressing the otherwise inexpressible. Metaphor, far from being a frilly, aesthetic superfluity, is in fact the way we always grasp new truths, even scientific ones. Metaphor is therefore reality-depicting, perhaps even supremely so, and not a lesser category. Metaphor speaks a language that conveys deep meanings and emotions not accessible through “naked abstract formulations.”11 The first Christians had stumbled upon an unforeseen yet long foretold new thing: the tragic execution of the wholly innocent Jesus of Nazareth turned out to be a death-defeating, life-transforming event. It turned out to be a promised divine intervention, the power of which could be appropriated simply by receiving the Spirit. The result would be an in-rush of overwhelming experiences of God’s presence, grace, and power. There was no other way to communicate this new thing than to use familiar concepts as vehicles for the unfamiliar. The main difficulty for us, of course, is that, in many cases, the familiar component is no longer familiar to us. This, needless to say, will be one of the problems I will try to rectify in this book.
Metaphors are structured in different ways by different linguists. Perhaps the most helpful way of viewing the structure for our purposes is to see a metaphor as occupying the liminal and affective space between the source or vehicle being commandeered for a new usage, and the target or tenor: the new idea needing new language. With each atonement metaphor I will be clarifying the source of a metaphor so as to re-describe, with the newly clarified metaphor, the target. Though I agree with Gunton,12 who, like Ricoeur, elevated the role of metaphor to take its rightful place alongside other expressions of realist epistemologies, I am also an artist. This being the case, I also agree with David Brown in his enthusiasm for the non-cognitive, sacramental power of a metaphor. He points out that God is a real presence within God-ordained metaphors. In other words, God is able to inhabit well-chosen words in just the same way that he is understood in some traditions to inhabit bread and wine, and we see this in concentrated form in poetry (especially theistic poetry) where metaphors occupy such a central place. Brown then applies the same appreciation for the metaphors found in poetry to the metaphors of the Bible. He uses John 1:1 as a case study, pointing out that efforts to paraphrase John’s use of “Word” to describe the incarnation, using terms such as “expression” end up introducing a whole new set of associations not native to John’s original “Word” metaphor.13