Metaphoric Christianity

I have been nursing this term (Metaphoric Christianity) for some time now, but am only now writing about it. The impetus for this post is that I am currently listening to Aeon Byte program # 147, entitled Atheist Christianity (this "web radio" program can be found at http://www.thegodabovegod.com/ ), and it is immediately clear to me that what Abraxas (radio host Miguel Conner) has termed "Atheist Christianity" is exactly the same thing as that which I identify as "Metaphoric Christianity". Miguel's guest for program #147 is  Christian author Jeanette Blonigen Clancy, whose book "God is not three guys in the sky" is the main topic of discussion. The conversation between Miguel and Ms. Clancy is illustrative of my own views as to what is important within the Christian message...and what is not.

Now, you may wonder why I think that "my terminology is better". It's because what we are really talking about here is not a Christianity without "God"...but rather a Christianity without beliefs...a Christianity without facts. A Christianity that celebrates the Christian Myth "as myth" and recognizes that the Truth that Christianity holds for us is far greater than mere historical facts.  Too much import has been misplaced on the claimed factuality of the Christian story, and not nearly enough import has been ascribed to the wisdom the insights and the grace that the Christian story brings us to.

More later on this topic.

The Allegory Of The Cave

The Allegory of the Cave

from Plato's Republic, Book 7:

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Now then, I proceeded to say, go on to compare our natural condition, so far as education and ignorance are concerned, to the state of things like the following. Imagine a number of men living in an underground chamber, with an entrance open to the light, extending along the entire length of the chamber, in which they have been confined, from their childhood, with their legs and necks so shackled, that they are obliged to sit still and look straight forwards, because their chains render it impossible for them to turn their heads round: and imagine a bright fire burning some way off, above and behind them, and an elevated roadway passing between the fire and the prisoners, with a low wall built along it, like the screens which conjurors put up in front of their audience, and above which they exhibit their wonders.

I have it, he replied.

Also figure to yourself a number of persons walking behind this wall, and carrying with them statues of men, and images of other animals, wrought in wood and stone and all kinds of materials, together with various other articles, which overtop the wall; and, as you might expect, let some of the passers-by be talking, and others silent.

You are describing a strange scene, and strange prisoners.

They resemble us, I replied. For let me ask you, in the first place, whether persons so confined could have seen anything of themselves or of each other, beyond the shadows thrown by the fire upon the part of the chamber facing them? Certainly not, if you suppose them to have been compelled all their lifetime to keep their heads unmoved.

And is not their knowledge of the things carried past them equally limited?

Unquestionably it is.

And if they were able to converse with one another, do you not think that they would be in the habit of giving names to the objects they saw before them?

Doubtless they would.

Again: if their prison-house returned an echo from the part facing them, whenever one of the passers-by opened his lips, to what, let me ask you, could they refer the voice, if not to the shadow which was passing?

Unquestionably they would refer it to that.

Then surely such persons would hold the shadows of those manufactured articles to be the only realities.

Without a doubt they would.