Mr. X struggles with metaphor, transubstantiation, and John 6.

f late, the anony­mous blog­ger, five-point­er, and crack the­olo­gian TurretinFan—known on this blog as Mr. X—has been strug­gling with the con­cept of metaphor as it applies to John 6. (And a very hard strug­gle it has been, too; see his two blog posts here and here.) He argues that the expres­sion “this cup is my blood” (Matt. 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25) should be a clear sign that the text is not meant to be tak­en lit­er­al­ly. For not even Roman Catholics will say that the cup itself is Christ’s blood. Obvi­ous­ly Christ is speak­ing metaphor­i­cal­ly here.

The poor man appar­ent­ly needs the help of an Eng­lish teacher. It is good for Mr. X that I am here. The assump­tion his argu­ment relies on is this: that, if one thing in a pas­sage is metaphor­i­cal (“this cup”), there­fore every­thing in the pas­sage is metaphor­i­cal (“my blood”). But no.

Now, the tech­ni­cal name for the fig­ure of speech Christ is using here is metonymy. In a metonymy, either a part is sub­sti­tut­ed for a whole, or the whole for a part. Thus, in “this cup is my blood,” the cup itself is sub­sti­tut­ed for its con­tents. (It would seem Mr. X would have no prob­lem with the Roman Catholic argu­ment, if only Christ had said, “This cup con­tains my blood.”)

Here are some oth­er metonymies:

• “Roma locu­ta est; causa fini­ta est” (St. Augus­tine). Here “Rome” is sub­sti­tut­ed for “the Church”; or, “the pope.”
• “Bell, book, and can­dle shall not dri­ve me back” (Shake­speare, King John, III.iii.12). Here, “bell, book, and can­dle” are sub­sti­tut­ed for “excom­mu­ni­ca­tion.” What the bas­tard son Philip (Philip II of France) means is that, even should he be excom­mu­ni­cat­ed, he will not be dri­ven from his pur­pose (the rebel­lion of Aquitaine against King John). He does not fear the Church, which means he does not fear God.
• “The pen is might­i­er than the sword.” Here “pen” is sub­sti­tut­ed for “lit­er­a­ture,” or “writ­ing”; and “sword” is sub­sti­tut­ed for “war.” Bul­w­er-Lyt­ton does not mean that pens lit­er­al­ly have more pow­er than swords do, but that writ­ing has a greater effect on the course of his­to­ry than war.

So far so good. All this is noth­ing more than a well-known fact of how peo­ple use words. But let us look at some oth­er metonymies, this time from Scrip­ture itself.

• “And the Lord said to her, Two nations are in thy womb” (Gen. 25:23). Of course, Rebekah was not lit­er­al­ly car­ry­ing two nations in her womb. That would have caused some pain. But she had asked God why her unborn twins—Jacob and Esau—“struggled togeth­er with­in her.” His answer was, in effect, that Jacob and Esau would each be the father of sep­a­rate nations (the Israelites and the Edomites) that would war with each oth­er.

We should be care­ful, here, though: Just because two nations were not lit­er­al­ly in Rebekah’s womb, that does not mean that the nations them­selves were metaphors. The Lord was not say­ing, “Jacob and Esau fight togeth­er as though they are two nations at war.” No. The two nations were very real, very lit­er­al nations—it is just that they were not phys­i­cal­ly locat­ed with­in Rebekah’s womb; only the fathers of those nations were. Not every­thing in this text is a metaphor.

• “At the mouth of two or three wit­ness­es, shall he that is wor­thy of death be put to death” (Deut. 17:6). Now, obvi­ous­ly God is not man­dat­ing here that two or three mouths be the lit­er­al instru­ment of exe­cu­tion. This is not the plot of Twain’s “Can­ni­bal­ism in the Cars.” Here, “mouth” is sub­sti­tut­ed for “tes­ti­mo­ny in court,” and the mean­ing is that two or three wit­ness­es’ tes­ti­mo­ny be suf­fi­cient to jus­ti­fy a sen­tence of death. But: Although “mouth” is used metaphor­i­cal­ly here, “death” is not. This is not a metaphor­i­cal exe­cu­tion God is speak­ing of here, but a lit­er­al one.

In a like way, just because Christ uses “cup” as metaphor does not imply that he uses “blood” that way too. We must not be slop­py. We must not, as stu­dents of lit­er­a­ture, get so excit­ed by hav­ing found a sym­bol, or a metaphor, that sud­den­ly every­thing becomes sym­bol or metaphor. Some­times a pen­cil is just a pen­cil, Mr. X.

But alas! Mr. X goes even more astray than that. For he attempts to find oth­er texts, else­where in the Bible, in which the word “blood” is used metaphor­i­cal­ly (such as 2 Sam. 23:13–17), and then claims that if it was metaphor­i­cal in 2 Samuel, it must also be metaphor­i­cal in John 6 and at the Last Sup­per.

That is mad. Why not go all the way, Mr. X, and tell us that “blood” is metaphor­i­cal at the cru­ci­fix­ion, too? Mr. X will protest that that is absurd. I agree. Just because it is a metaphor here does not mean it is a metaphor there.

Or per­haps the del­uge did­n’t con­sist of real water. No; mankind were just metaphor­i­cal­ly drowned. And the ark was just sym­bol­ic of the shel­ter from the con­se­quence of sin, enjoyed by the Elect. Right, Mr. X?

But you can’t say that, if some pas­sage in the Old Tes­ta­ment is metaphor­i­cal, this oth­er pas­sage in the New Tes­ta­ment must be as well. For tak­en to its log­i­cal con­se­quence, that would mean either that the Bible is entire­ly lit­er­al, or that it is entire­ly metaphor­i­cal. Both posi­tions are absurd. Rather, the only line of rea­son into the dis­cus­sion of John 6 must be to ask why we should take this pas­sage either lit­er­al­ly or metaphor­i­cal­ly. The exis­tence of metaphor else­where in the Bible is of no mean­ing at all.

That will be the ques­tion I take up in a future post.