The Interplay of Cognitive and Historical Semantics
One of the Saturday afternoon activities I used to dread as a child and teenager was visiting artisan markets with the whole family, where various handmade goods, such as cereal bowls and espresso cups, were for sale. Because of this experience, my idea of pottery has particular connotations and is associated with cultural, free-spirited milieus. Similarly, I associate completely different images with the motif of pruning trees: I imagine large man-made cultural landscapes, such as the orchards of southern Germany or extensive apple plantations. Here too, though, an unpleasant childhood memory emerges, namely working in the family garden.
I naturally draw on these ideas to explain Paul’s use of pottery and pruning to explain the character of God in Romans 9–11: ‘God is a potter’ (Rom 9:19-23) and ‘God is a pruning arborist’ (Rom 11:16b–24). Informed by my prior experience, these metaphors evoke for me specific frames, connotations, and scripts. To ensure that Paul’s sophisticated argumentation in Rom 9–11 and the domestic economic metaphors used at key points in his discourse on God do not become a mere projection screen for processing my own childhood experiences, I must perform a responsible exegesis that scrutinizes the historical critical contextualization of the assertions. I cannot simply draw on my own pre-conceptions to determine which frames and scripts Paul and his intended or historically plausible addressees would invoke with the metaphors ‘God is a potter’ and ‘God is a pruning arborist’. The knowledge and understanding of how metaphors engage the intended recipients’ cognition provide us with tools for analyzing and describing the concepts invoked by Paul and the urban Roman congregation in the first place.
In the following entry I show how cognitive semantics allows us to understand what agency and audience competency Paul assumes his addressees to have by using these two concepts from the realm of domestic economy (pottery and pruning) to construct metaphors to explain the activity of God (pottery Rom 9–11. I will not repeat the pros and cons of mirror reading for an inclined readership, nor will I reiterate the different positions regarding the Pauline community’s knowledge of the Scriptures and Paul’s own annotation practice of the Bible. Instead, I will focus entirely on the contribution of cognitive semantics to an understanding of the selected examples.
Paul places a great amount of trust in his addressees, or more precisely, in their brain and body cognition. He uses open semantic forms of language to formulate an argument that requires his readers to autonomously fill in narrative and argumentative gaps and supplement contexts. (As a teaser for this thesis, at the moment I can only refer to my dissertation, which is currently under review). That is, Paul’s communication exploits the fact that the mapping process generating a metaphorical identification can emphasize completely different conceptual domains and that different similarity relations may exist between the source and target domains. According to conceptual metaphor theory, a cognitive domain (or mental space) is a representation of a state of affairs or a (world) experience that comes into view as pre-linguistic (and I would add: always language-dependent). In the cognitive mapping process, one structured knowledge domain (source domain) refers to the other (target domain). In the theory of cognitive metaphors, the idea of a so-called similarity relation must also be considered. The concept of similarity helps to understand more precisely how a generic space enables the identification of similar elements among the input spaces. In conceptual blending theory, the generic space helps to identify the corresponding counterparts in the blended concepts. However, similarity is not to be understood in the narrow, formal-semantic sense of the substitution theory of metaphors. Similarity cannot be translated into a single semantic content or – expressed in the classical way – as a specific tertium comparationis, third part of the comparison. Rather, I am building on the gestalt-psychological (and therefore cognitive) association relations: The association relations represent cognitive patterns that are relevant in the perception of whole figures (gestalts) and that help to describe the structure of cognitive concepts, for example in metonymies, metaphors, and blends. Our brain uses certain mental or cognitive operations to perceive the world. We group things together in larger contexts, break down complex facts into simpler units and combine similar and opposing elements. These basic cognitive processes of world perception and world construction leave their mark on language and psychological description. Associative relations are therefore cognitive or semantic relations that link concepts or meanings of a word in a certain way. Central associative principles or rules are similarity, contiguity and contrast (cf. Wertheimer 1925; Raible 1981, 4–5; Koch, 1996): Similarity then denotes the grouping together of like and similar things. Contiguity describes physical, temporal or any form of logical contact or neighborhood. The principle of contrast emphasizes likeness precisely by distinguishing it from one another and from others. These cognitive processes, the associative principles that shape them and cognitive concepts as a whole (also religious or theological concepts) are, of course, always described in language (cf. Katz 1992; Landmesser 1999, 100–107).
If Paul strategically communicates in this open semantic way by employing structures of cognition, then he aims to actualize different readings, subframes and sub-scripts ‘in the minds’ of his addressees. Paul thus manages to strategically produce ambiguity with distinct readings via metaphors without slipping into arbitrariness (cf. Wasow et al., 2005, 266).
God’s Unfathomable Sovereignty as Creator: The Two Readings of the Metaphor ‘God is a Domestic Economist’
In the course of his argument in Rom 9–11, Paul turns to the question of why the majority of his Jewish compatriots have not turned to faith in Christ. For Paul, this is a genuine question about God, a question about his power in history and his goodness in a concrete historical context: if most of the Jews do not turn to faith in Christ, there is a risk that God may become an inexplicable, almost incomprehensible force. The argumentative coup that Paul ultimately pulls off is that he does not even try to transform the incomprehensibility of God into a fully comprehensive presented image of God, but rather changes the very idea of God’s incomprehensibility itself. He moves from an incomprehensible God who is potentially harmful and condemning to an incomprehensible God who is determined in his salvific work and who therefore remains ineffable.
At two crucial points in this line of argument, Paul refers to this unfathomable God with two metaphors (‘God is a potter or Molder’; ‘God is a pruning arborist’) whose source domains are closely connected with each other and that originate from the domain of domestic economy, oikonomía (cf. Gemünden/Theissen, 2009, 269–271). Both metaphors presuppose a more general conceptual metaphor, namely: ‘God’s creative act is craftmanly action’. If the creator is conceived as a craftman, different subtaxonomic frames are invoked both in the source and in the target domain. The fact that the concrete linguistic metaphors at text level aim at the more general cognitive metaphor of the ‘creator is a craftsman’ is already shown by the fact that Paul offers a double metaphor of the molder and the potter in Rom 9:19–24. He then adds the pruning metaphor to this in Rom 11.
The interpretations that are culturally and historically plausible for the communication situation between Paul and the Roman congregation can be categorized both for the conception of ‘God as potter or molder’ and ‘as a pruning arborist’ with regard to the question of the unfathomability of God: On the one hand, the conceptual metaphor of ‘God as craftsman’ (as is to be shown) is associated with the notion of the creator’s absolute and potentially harmful power as manufacturer over his creation as finished item which must be incomprehensible to humans. On the other hand, the cognitive metaphor is associated with the idea that the creator as producer bears responsibility for his creation as product so that he preserves it and cares for it.
With his potter metaphor, Paul answers (or rather rejects) the question as to how the divine accusation of human transgressions can be reconciled with the categorical difference between God and humans. An artifact would not be able to complain to its maker about how it was made, and a potter would be able to decide with complete sovereignty over the clay mass for which purposes he would form his pottery. Finally, Paul starts a conditional sentence structure about vessels of wrath for destruction and vessels of mercy for glorification which he leaves unfinished (Rom 9:19–23). In this metaphor, the similarity relationship between the creator God and the potteror craftsman is always in the background. The semantic content of God’s unfathomability is derived from the reference to God the creator as a potter, which is widespread in Paul’s world (cf. Gen 2:7; Isa 29:16): Philo, for example, regards creating and procreation, pottery-making and molding as closely connected to the concept of divine fatherhood that depicts God as dedicated, benevolent, and providing (cf. Philo, De opificio mundi 137). By using the potter metaphor, the creative power can also refer to God’s act of judgment and condemnation (cf. Jer 18:1–10). The quality of the substance or materiality of the handcrafted product or creature indicates a categorical difference to the incorruptible, immortal creator (cf. 1QS 11:18–20). The ethical or soteriological status of a creature can be emphasized through the value and intended purpose of a handcrafted product (SapSal 15:7–17).
Paul strategically allows the possibility of invoking and combining different subframes and scripts, as there is no (quotation) introduction to the metaphor. The different concepts that Paul evokes among his addressees can be assigned to the two aforementioned understandings of God’s unfathomability. Not even the pragmatic argumentative context allows us to exclude some readings, because the very question of whether the sovereignty and freedom of God is to be understood as salvific unfathomability or as absolutely unrestricted (and therefore terrifying) incomprehensibility is the subject of the argument. In the closer context, there is a predominance of (implicit) indications that the pottery metaphor can be resolved as a statement about God’s incomprehensible authority. Finally, Paul will emphasize the other reading to be the correct one. It is only then that the propositional content of the ambiguous metaphor ‘God is a Potter’ is resolved in a salvific way, so that certain concepts that the text evokes in the readers are rejected and the addressees are encouraged to re-read Rom 9:19–23.
The second metaphor with an agricultural source domain is generally referred to in research as the ‘olive tree parable’. This is certainly not inaccurate, insofar as Rom 9–11 deals with the so-called ‘Israel question’ and God’s actions are primarily spoken of in passiva divina, divine passive, (Rom 11:17.19–20.22–24; but then again cf. Rom 11:21a.23b). Since the question about Israel for Paul is always at the same time a question about God, the term ‘pruning metaphor’ seems appropriate in parallel to the potter metaphor (it is not simply a gardener metaphor like that in 1 Cor 3:6–9a). In his metaphor of the olive tree pruning arborist (Rom 11:16b–24), similar observations can be made about semantic openness as in the potter metaphor. Ancient agricultural literature may also depict the grafting process in exactly the opposite way to that described by Paul: In Theophrastus, De causis plantarum 1.6.10 the noble branches are engrafted into a wild olive tree. Therefore, we cannot assume that the addressees update the same concepts in the source domain, but rather that several different readings are invoked. Different target domains are to be considered for the metaphorical elements of the root, its fatness and the olive tree itself. If the noble branches refer to the Jews who do not believe in Christ and the engrafted branches refer to the Gentiles who believe in Christ, the root and its fatness are in any case directly related to the salvific mode of faith into which God actively places them (cf. Philo, De praemiis et poenis 152). This remains the case regardless of whether the root is to be understood as Abraham (TestJud 24:5; 1 Enoch 93:5), Israel (1 Enoch 93:8) or as Christ with messianic (Isa 11:1.10LXX cit. Rom 15:12; Zech 4:3.11–14) or also high priestly (Sir 50:10) traditions. The possible subframes invoked in the target domain are quite similar to those in the potter metaphor: God sends a fire that consumes the branches of a noble olive tree that he has planted as a gardener and that is Israel, his covenant-breaking people (cf. Jer 11:16–17). In this case, the creator God comes into view as a gardener in the sense of a judge. Then again, God can also be seen as the benevolent gardener of the olive tree (Ps 52:10). He can even be the dew for Israel, which is depicted as a lily, an olive tree and a vine (Hos 14:6–8). Here, God appears in the agricultural metaphor as the blessing giver of life and growth. The metaphor even changes in Hos 14:9 so that the salvation is communicated via God as a juniper (‘God is a Plant’). In the multitude of different conceptualizations in the target domain and the subframes invoked, we can again categorize the metaphor ‘God is a pruning arborist’ into two readings, which portray God as the creator who brings salvation or as the judge who has power over the plant, even for condemnation.
In contrast to the potter metaphor, Paul already indicates his preferred reading in a disambiguating way within the pruning metaphor. This is entirely in line with the progression of the argumentation that is clearly more advanced and therefore there are some restraints to the semantic values. We find, for example, a correlation between the cutting out and the grafting in of branches in the metaphor and the temporal unbelief of a large part of Israel and the salvation of the Gentiles (cf. Rom 11:11–15). Paul has also explained the opposition of unbelief and faith in connection with the temporary hardening and its overcoming in the course of his argument (Rom 9:30–10:21). In addition, he has already introduced a conclusion a forteriori stating that the present salvation of the Gentiles already foreshadows the future salvation of Israel (Rom 11:12.15.24). Rom 11:24b states the certainty of God’s salvific action as an act of grafting in the noble branches again. Where Rom 9:23 breaks off, Rom 11:24b transfers the conditional sentence structures into an assertion of certainty (Hofius 1994, 188). With his work on the given nature, the pruning arborist through grafting is able to create growth and yields againstnature (Rom 11:21.24). God’s salvific action towards the Gentiles thus becomes a creatio contra naturam, creation against nature. Nonetheless the metaphor is dependent on the following context: Paul there elaborates on this divine salvific act.
The metaphors themselves cannot answer the question of whether God is incomprehensibly horrific or unfathomably salvific, precisely because of their openness and the multiple actualized cognitive concepts. To answer this question, they are entirely dependent on the disambiguation by their context. Neither can one simply postulate that the potter metaphor presupposes a despotic image of God which allegedly represents the weakest point of the entire argumentation in Romans (cf. Dodd 1949, 159), nor can one claim that potters and gardeners are more loving and affectionate than rulers and judges (cf. Gemünden/Theissen 2009, 275). We are therefore required first of all to take the semantic openness of the metaphors seriously and to use historical-critical thinking and cognitive-linguistic expertise to work out the different contexts invoked and the cognitive concepts that are actualized in the communication. Then those methods help us to discover, understand, and describe how some of those actualized cognitive concepts are rejected by a restriction of the semantic openness in a concrete perspective, namely with regard to salvation.
References
Dodd, Charles H., The Epistle of Paul to the Romans (MNTC), London 1949.
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Hofius, Otfried, Das Evangelium und Israel. Erwägungen zu Römer 9–11, in: Otfried Hofius (Ed.), Paulusstudien, Tübingen 21994, 175–202.
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Wertheimer, Max, Über Gestalttheorie. Vortrag, gehalten in der Kant‑Gesellschaft, Berlin, am 17. Dezember 1924 (Symposium [Berlin], Sonderdrucke 1), Erlangen 1925.
