Coming to Terms with Metaphor

The theme of the church as the 'body of Christ' has more than any other in Paul stimulated critical reflection on the question of his use offigurative language. Yet, while considerable exegetical and literary-historical attention has been directed towards the problem of whether the identification of the church with the body of Christ is to be understood as simply metaphorical or in some more mysterious, perhaps mystical sense as literal, few commentators have given much thought to the peculiar character of metaphor and its bearing on the general debate. 1 The aim of this article is, first, to collate some--by no means all--of the disjointed and incomplete notions that have been expressed in relation to the church/body motif and to attempt to sort out the major rhetorical assumptions that underlie them; and, secondly, to set up a few signposts towards a more adequate appreciation of Paul's rhetoric of metaphor. The dependence of this critique on the numerous theoretical discussions of figurative language that have been carried on in recent decades2 must