Theological metaphors

I love Twitter, and at the moment am having conversations about theology with various young people. I make lists of metaphors from various areas (nautical: veer, a different tack etc.), but I've never done theology. Do we wonder why we say "It was providential!" or (100 years ago) "You little perisher!"? When you look up the Christian theology, it turns out to be pretty complicated, not to say weird. "Providence" is something about God intervening in the world (and I thought he couldn't?). Perisher? 

We are as the beasts that perish, says Psalm 49, more or less.

I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. (Ecclesiastes 3:18)

And dualism (the idea that the world consists of matter and spirit) is baked into the language. Scroll down...


acolyte
angel: You’re an angel!
anointed (people often just mean “appointed”)
atone for your misdeeds

blessed (used in the place of “damned”). Every blessed thing is going wrong today!
canon: the canon of Western literature
catechism: Subjected him to a catechism
commune with...

Depravity is a word used to describe the corruption of human beings by sin. When Adam rebelled against God in the Garden of Eden, sin affected every area of his life - his body, mind, emotions and heart. Adam’s descendants have inherited a sinful nature from him, so that we too are corrupted in every way from the day we are born (Psalm 51:3-5, Romans 5:12). This is not to say that we are ‘as sinful as we can be’, but rather that as sin has infected every area of our lives, we are totally unable to please God by any apparently ‘good’ actions we might do (Titus 1:15-16, Romans 8:8). This depravity also limits human beings in their ability to know God or understand the truth about Him (Romans 1:28). It is because we are so depraved that we are in such great need of a Saviour, a second ‘Adam’ - Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:22) - through whom we can know God, be cleansed from sin and given new life. Wordatwork.org.uk

destiny
devil
disciple
doctrine
dogma

epistle (I hope, when you have perused my epistle, you will understand the tangled web of circumstances that etc etc)

evangelise, proselytise 
fortune

glory
Gods: the powers that be
Gospels: It’s the gospel truth!

heathen
Hell
heresy hunting (A lot of it about in 2026.)
hymns: singing from the same hymn sheet

iconic
inspiration
justification

manifestation
martyr: He was a martyr to the cause/to heartburn etc.
mediation
miracle
mission statement

orthodox, unorthodox
pantheon
parable
perishing: You little perisher!
propitiation
providence: providentially
Purgatory

redeem, redemption
repent, repentance: He repented of his decision.
resurrection: Shall we resurrect the old plan?
Revelation: It was a revelation!

sacrifice: She was sacrificed on the altar of her mother's ambition.
salvation: It was the saving of him.
soul: heart and soul, She was the soul of kindness.

transcend, transcendent, transcendental
visionary
wisdom: It's better than knowledge.
worship


Dualism, or “unexamined vitalism”, as somebody put it. It’s built into the language.

animation, animated, inanimate: “Anima” is Latin for soul.
better half, other half
biological essentialism: ignoring the soul, spirit etc.
calling, vocation: Who called?

consciousness: mind, spirit, psyche, soul, energy
élan vital: spirit, psyche, soul, energy, mind
emergent property: more than the sum of its parts
energy: psyche, soul, spirit, mind, essence
essence: energy, mind, spirit, soul, psyche

ghost in the machine: There’s a book with that title, it must refer to something real. (The author was Arthur Koestler.)

holism, holistic: including the spirit (rather than “including the social context” or “taking into account the economic and political situation”)

inspiration: breathing in the spirit that gives you the idea for a novel or painting

insight: What therapy is supposed to evoke as the all-knowing subconscious sends your conscious mind messages, sometimes in code. (How could such a system evolve?)

intuition, insight

It must have been meant: Who meant it?

life-force

mind: spirit, psyche, soul, consciousness, self. Separate from the brain.

new paradigm: worldview that includes the spirit, which isn’t subject to the laws of physics (In the 70s, it was going to take over from the scientific paradigm any day now.)

reductionist, reductive: no spirit (The opposite is “complex”.)
self: mind, spirit, psyche, soul, consciousness
soul mate: boyfriend, girlfriend
spiritual home
subconscious: self, energy, soul, psyche, spirit, mind

the collective unconscious: energy, spirit, soul
the spirit of the law
the unconscious: mind, spirit, psyche, soul, energy, self
the universe: God
vision: not the kind you need glasses for

We had to: Who told you to? (People often mean "force of circumstances", but didn't you have a choice?)

More in my book Boo & Hooray: Dysphemisms and Euphemisms.

 

Misunderstandings: Visions of England

About 20 years ago, Jeremy Paxman published a book called The English. Reviewers reached for summaries of Englishness from George Orwell and John Major, getting them somewhat garbled in the process. 

The clatter of clogs in the Lancashire mill towns, the to-and-fro of the lorries on the Great North Road, the queues outside the Labour Exchanges, the rattle of pin-tables in the Soho pubs, the old maids biking to Holy Communion through the mists of the autumn morning... somehow bound up with solid breakfasts and gloomy Sundays, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillar-boxes. (George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, 1941)

Fifty years from now Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and – as George Orwell said – ‘old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist’ and if we get our way – Shakespeare still read even in school. Britain will survive unamendable in all essentials. (John Major. Often misprinted as “pool fillers”. "The Pools" were a form of betting on the outcome of football matches that involved filling in forms. But perhaps the many who make it "pool fillers" are referring to the football pools.) 

@Grok comments: Major lifted the most picturesque fragment and used it, 52 years later, as an image of unchanging Britishness that the European Union would not touch.That is why the two versions feel different even though they share the same misty bicycle. 

Former Labour MP and V&A director Tristram Hunt detested Jeremy Paxman's book and explained why in the Guardian on 7 Jan 2002. Major and Orwell's pictures of England were a lie, he ranted. The English are rebellious and critical and rather nasty, just look at their history: Paxman's book lovingly pokes fun at every cherished aspect of our "national character" - rural nostalgia, laughing at foreigners, obsessional wordplay.

Hunt belittles the "cloying vision of Englishness which Stanley Baldwin, George Orwell and John Major revelled in. The land of anvils, cycling maids and long shadows, pigeon fanciers and red telephone boxes."

English history is brutal, concludes Hunt. "And for my money, I would rather Cromwell than ... bicycling maids."

I don't see a mention of anvils or pigeon-fanciers in Orwell or Major. And post Hunt's diatribe, Orwell's "old maids" became "maids" and "an England of cycling maids" was downgraded as nostalgia. I picture a parlour maid on a bicycle, her apron strings fluttering in the wind.

Politicians understand the power of nostalgia - remember John Major's Evensong-bound old cycling maids? (The Press 2004)  

Cycling maids and long shadows, pigeon fanciers and red telephone boxes. (salaam.co.uk, 2004)

Maids cycling through the morning mist. (oxfordjournals.org)

John Major's vision of warm beer, cricket on the village green and a redoubtable maiden aunt bicycling to morning communion through the mist was borrowed from Orwell. (Jonathan Bate, arlindo-correia.com)

John Major's dream of England as a "country of long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pool fillers and - as George Orwell said - 'old maids cycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist'". (Alexander Chancellor in the Guardian, 2006 leaves out "county", makes it "pool fillers" and shortens the "morning mist".)

This is England: the nation of warm beer, dog lovers and pool fillers watching old maids bicycling. (codalmighty.com, 2020)


Perhaps 20 years ago it wasn't so easy to check quotes.

The plot thickens: Stanley Baldwin’s (1924) ‘long shadows on country grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pool fillers’. George Orwell’s ‘Lion and the Unicorn’ (1941) of ‘old maids cycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist’", quotes culturematters.org.uk. (County grounds have become "country", a common typo.) 

Was Major merely quoting Baldwin? No. Here's what Baldwin said in 1924:

To me, England is the country, and the country is England. And when I ask myself what I mean by England when I am abroad, England comes to me through my various senses — through the ear, through the eye and through certain imperishable scents … The sounds of England, the tinkle of the hammer on the anvil in the country smithy, the corncrake on a dewy morning, the sound of the scythe against the whetstone, and the sight of a plough team coming over the brow of a hill, the sight that has been seen in England since England was a land … the one eternal sight of England. The wild anemones in the woods in April, the last load at night of hay being drawn down a lane as the twilight comes on … and above all, most subtle, most penetrating and most moving, the smell of wood smoke coming up in an autumn evening … 
 

Others have summed up Englishness:

Culture includes all the characteristic activities and interests of a people: Derby Day, Henley Regatta, Cowes, the twelfth of August, a Cup final, the dog races, the pin table, the dart board, Wensleydale cheese, boiled cabbage cut into sections, beetroot in vinegar, 19th-century Gothic churches and the music of Elgar. (TS Eliot)

I love England... The true England of nature. The trees, hedges, grass and lie of the land... But also the transitory England with its railways, towns and lighted streets. And above all, the lit pavements shimmering with rain. (Former Prime Minister Clement Attlee)

This is the England of arterial and by-pass roads, of filling stations and factories that look like exhibition buildings, of giant cinemas and dance-halls and cafes, bungalows with tiny garages, cocktail bars, Woolworths, motor-coaches, wireless, hiking, factory girls looking like actresses, greyhound racing and dirt tracks, swimming pools, and everything given away for cigarette coupons*. (JB Priestley, English Journey, 1934. *A scheme invented by Dorothy Sayers, but given to Lord Peter Wimsey in Murder Must Advertise)

Eat more Oats. Take Care of your Complexion. No More War. Shine your Shoes with Shino. Ask your Grocer. Children Love Laxamalt. Prepare to meet thy God. Bung’s Beer is Better. Try Dogsbody’s Sausages. Whoosh the Dust Away. Give them Crunchlets. Snagsbury’s Soups are Best for the Troops. Morning Star, best Paper by Far. Vote for Punkin and Protect your Profits. Popp's Pills Pep you Up. Whiffle your Way to Fortune… Advertise, or go under. (Dorothy Sayers, Murder Must Advertise)

Gray suits, gray filing cabinets, gray skies, gray food, gray childhoods, gray marriages. (lareviwofbooks.org on John Le Carré)

Green Line bus stops. Factory sports fields lined with poplars. Boarding kennels, down-at-heel riding schools, damp bungalows in wizened orchards. I was so happy. Is it still unloved, that landscape? I loved it. (Alan Bennett, The Old Country)

Tina Brown vividly conjures "the fading walk-up flats in far-flung London postal codes of former courtiers and retainers": their tables crowded with "tasteful knickknacks," their stair carpets reeking of "downward mobility and pointless, genteel sacrifice." (NYT on Tina Brown’s The Palace Papers)

Orwell further commented on English people's "mild knobby faces, their bad teeth and gentle manners... We are a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans." So that's where the pigeon-fanciers came from. 

@Grok adds: Orwell’s point is the privateness of it all — the back-garden, fireside, slightly rum world that exists independently of official culture. 

@Grok is useful for finding full verbatim quotes from published books (in seconds). And I suspect him of having been programmed with a sense of humour.

Update: Labour minister Jenny Riddell-Carpenter claims that visions of Britain based on warm ale, pubs and black Labradors are a "far-right fantasy" that "never really existed". (@GBPolitcs, Sept 28 2026. What she said was: It'll be that warm ale, a black labrador by your feet in a pub that doesn't exist, and with symbolism of fox hunting all around them, it'll be a very far-Right nostalgic vision of Britain that we don't want to have, and never really existed.)

I have been thinking about the "warm ale, pubs, and black Labradors" business and am finding it hard not to think of it all as a bucolic, quintessentially English paradise. Add in village cricket, strawberries and scones at teatime and a pavilion cat and we are talking "heaven". (@QcWynter)


Yes, as of 2026 all these visions are either – or both – imaginary and right-wing.


More here, and links to the rest.