Ditto to Karen (and N.T. Wright). I understand Christ to be the elements in a mystic sense, and I grew up a Baptist and have attended Presbyterian and Anglican churches as well. I know one of my old Presbyterian pastors deliberately jumps up and down on the fact that communion is not just a symbol.
Christ in addition to being bread and wine is also running water, a large wildcat, a road, the sun, a star, a herder of sheep, a vine, a root, a word/idea and so forth. For some reason these symbols/realities don't seem so controversial.
From what I know about the Hebrew language, it runs heavy on nouns but not so heavy on adjectives. Karen, do you think this characteristic could have fostered a culture full of unmere metaphors such as the above? Or did the culture foster the language perhaps?
