Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the metaphorical moves that the Christian anthropologist, committed to a phenomenological approach that ‘takes seriously’ lived experience of transcendent realities, needs to make in terms of translating experience from one domain into another.

Paper long abstract:

Lakoff and Johnson (1980) argue that metaphor - the capacity to understand and experience one kind of thing in terms of another - is central to the ways in which we organize our lives. Our conceptual systems - which govern our thoughts, actions and perceptions - are fundamentally metaphorical in nature. For Fernandez (1972), metaphor works by connecting two distinct domains of experience, a process that involves relating inchoate experiences to more concrete, observable realms. "Thus," writes Fernandez (1974:122), "in 'mercy… droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven,' the 'gentle rain' gives to the abstract and vaguely conceived 'mercy' a concreteness that literal definition is hopeless to achieve." Stories about Jesus present him as a master of metaphor, continually connecting his experience of the inchoate ('heaven') to the more concrete ('earth'). Like Jesus, many Christians claim to live in worlds of 'heavenly' sensory experience that transcend more observable realms. For them, communication involves making metaphorical connections that move one domain of experience into another, a process that often involves appealing to metaphors available within the Christian tradition. For the Christian anthropologist, there is a different set of challenges. Situated within a social scientific milieu, such a person is compelled to utilize a different metaphorical toolset to that available within the Christian domain. This paper explores these processes, and argues that such work can be fruitful in generating new theory, whilst also challenging the Christian researcher to reflexively explore, in a new light, the existential groundings of his or her own faith.