Irreducible Religious Metaphors

Abstract

A characteristic feature of religious discourse is its tendency to use expressions which are not only metaphorical but ‘irreducibly metaphorical’, that is to say, which have no literal equivalent. Sophisticated believers freely point out theology's tendency toward the ‘symbolical’, ‘analogical’, or ‘mysterious’; while equally sophisticated sceptics complain that faith is ‘anthropomorphic’ or ‘merely poetic’. When this discussion between believers and seeptics is confronted with what we may call the ‘reducibility thesis’, that metaphors should be reducible to literal statements, a philosophical puzzle results: religious metaphors should be reducible, but they are not.