Metaphora Scriptura ([met-uh-fawr’ uh] [skriptər’ uh])

[metaphor:1530s, from M.Fr. metaphore, from L. metaphora, from Gk. metaphora “a transfer,” especially of the sense of one word to a different word, lit. “a carrying over,” from metapherein “transfer, carry over,” from meta- “over, across” (see meta-) + pherein “to carry, bear.” (Related: Metaphoric; metaphorical; metaphorically.)] [Scriptura: 1250–1300; Middle English and Latin scrīptūra writing. See script, -ure]

1. The Word of God as allegory, metaphor and narrative with abstract, potential, subjective, esoteric and variable meanings.
2. The teaching that in Scripture all things are not plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all, nor the fixed absolute truths of God, but that Scripture is a record of people’s experiences or encounters with God.
3. The Bible as a story about God and man, the creation and the cosmos, that provides a master narrative one may employ to contextualize and shape one’s own spiritual experiences.
4. The doctrine that superior spiritual insight may be found by viewing Scripture as a complex mixture of individual narratives that build upon the semantic variability of a larger linguistic framework.
5. The Word of God as a semantic abstraction with no one meaning; the language of the Bible as a symbolical narrative based on metaphor, chronicle, tale, recital, history of an event or events, dialogue or imagery.
6. The Bible as a story of God’s missional purpose for mankind to restore the fallen creation, bringing redemptive blessing to the nations by recovering culture and discovering a new worldview, thus serving as a new imaginative framing story by which the planet may be pristinely restored.
7. The Word of God divorced from the literal written text and deconstructed into audio, visual, oral, poetic and/or theatrical images.
8. The transference or shifting from the Word of God to a different world and worldview.