"It is befitting Holy Writ to put forward divine and spiritual truths by means of comparisons with material things. For God provides for everything according to the capacity of its nature. Now it is natural to man to attain to intellectual truths through sensible objects, because all our knowledge originates from sense. Hence in Holy Writ, spiritual truths are fittingly taught under the likeness of material things."It is appropriate and necessary for God to reveal spiritual truths (those things revealed by God that cannot be seen with the human eye or fully understood by the human mind) in the Bible through physical images (those things that can be seen with the human eye and understood by the human mind). For example, the Bible often speaks anthropomorphically of God, that is, it describes him using human characteristics. It says God has an "arm" that is strong to save and an "eye" that looks upon humanity. God, as pure spirit, does not have any physical characteristics; but the Bible applies these physical traits to God to help us understand the One whom we cannot see. God has a "strong arm" because he is almighty and has an "eye" because he is everywhere and knows what everybody is thinking and doing. (It is my opinion that God loves us and wants to be known by us; otherwise, he would not have described himself metaphorically in the Bible.)
(It is my opinion that the challenge for today's Bible scholars is for them to ascertain correctly when the Bible is speaking metaphorically and when it is recounting a literal historical event.)
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