true; call that an exemplar. And he suggests that the exemplar can usefully be taken as a
model of life, that considering such a person will reveal certain important features of life.
Metaphorical speech varies along a continuum from just throwing the exemplar up for
grabs and leaving the hearer to make of it what she will, and making a fairly definite
statement with it. The Macbeth quotation approximates the first extreme of the
continuum, while Churchill's famous statement “Russia has dropped an iron curtain
across the continent” approximates the second. A serious claim that all talk of God is
metaphorical would imply that much of it is making fairly determinate truth claims.
Literal speech is often confused with clearly distinct matters, for example factual claims
and precise speech. As for the former, we can use terms just as literally in requests,
questions, and expressions of attitudes as in factual statements. As for the latter, I can use
words literally and be speaking vaguely or otherwise indeterminately. The standard
meaning of many terms, for example “bald,” is vague. If I say “Jones is bald,” I will be
speaking with less than complete precision as to just how much hair he has. A confusion
typical of discussion of religious language is between literality and univocity. That they
are distinct is shown just by the fact that “univocal” is a relational predicate, having to do
with at least two different uses of a term, while “literal” can be applied to a single use. A
specially important difference for this discussion is that when, as I suggested earlier, we
alter human predicates to make them suitable for divine application, the result of this
transformation can be used literally even though not univocally with their human use.
Metaphoricism does promise a way of walking a fine line between univocity and a purely
negative theology. On the one hand, as just seen, it provides a way of making truth
claims, albeit less than ideally determinate ones. On the other hand, it stops short of
applying any of our concepts straightforwardly to God, instead exhibiting their literal
denotations as models for thinking about God's nature, attitudes, or actions. Metaphorical
statements suggest, hint at, what God is like without presuming to say it explicitly.
But in opposition to taking metaphor to be the whole story, it certainly seems that much
talk of God is not metaphorical at all and seems, for all the world, to be literal. First,
some trivial examples. Negative statements are clearly literal. There is no trace of
metaphor in saying “God is immaterial, atemporal, not restricted to one spatial location,
not dependent on anything else for his existence.” But, of course, the main issue concerns
positive attributions. And many of those also do not look metaphorical in the least.
Consider “God comforts us and strengthens us in adversity, forgives the sins of the truly
repentant, communicates to us how we
end p.238
should live.” If these are not literal applications of the concepts these terms express in the
language, then we must seek some alternative to straight literality other than metaphor.
The main case for taking them to be literal is that, for the most part, the attributions have
to do with results of divine action in the world, rather than seeking to give details about
the divine agency itself. Thus, “God comforted me in my distress” reports an effect on
my state of mind of something God did without seeking to go into more detail as to just
what it was that God did to bring this about. What seems to be literal speech about God is
not restricted to statements that fit this model; I mention them only as a particularly
plausible case of literality. My suggestion in section 7 that we can make literal