Hmmm. Thank you. You’ve basically conceded the point on Aquinas’ inversion of Aristotle’s categories by issuing nothing but a “no he didn’t” denial. In other words, your response didn’t address the “substance” of the charge, so the charge stands until evidence to the contrary is offered.
As for literalness, it is inconsistent to freely accept the abundance of metaphor found on virtually every page of Scripture, only to deny it in this one instance without cause. You have no doubt heard this before, but I am interested to see your response. You know Christ is variously called a door, a vine, manna, the way, the rock, the light of the world, the morning star, etc. etc. etc. So you know by precedent there is nothing unusual or wrong in finding metaphors in Scripture that describe Christ in all His perfections.
But here you have presented a statement that seems to say, or at least imply, that no metaphor is valid. If I am incorrect in this, please correct me. But this is what I hear you saying, and I cannot reconcile it with Scripture, which clearly abounds in metaphor.
Furthermore, those metaphors describe not only Christ, but our relationship to Him. Consider baptism. The water is real enough, but it is not transubstantiated into the washing of our soul from all guilt of sin. Nor is our being lifted out of the baptismal waters an actual resurrection of our body unto eternal glory. But it is a figure, which to apply your radical literalism would result in an absurd heresy, or a whole family of nonsensical untruths.
As if that were not enough, we also know God intended the wilfully unbelieving to remain confused by spiritual truth as He taught it, because Jesus specifically said that was why He taught publicly in parables. And what are parables? Long metaphors!
So,the default setting has to be to expect metaphor. If you tell me to read only for literal meaning, you are effectively telling me to ignore most of Holy Writ. I’m not in a position to comply with that. Man must live, not by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Even when He uses metaphor.
Peace,
SR
“.. default setting has to be a metaphor...”
The bible is often metaphor, and no one denies this, other than my perhaps wrong understanding that bible alone Christians take all of scripture literally, except John 6.
However, certain instructions are NOT metaphor or symbol; the ten commandments and the beatitudes are clear instruction; as well as John 6.
Basically our positions are mirrors of each others. Interesting; whose mirror is correct? That is the basic question to be hashed out, actually.