Speaking in Parables: A Study in Metaphor and Theology

This book is not only absorbingly readable but important. For its themes engage effectively with main dilemmas not only of formal theology but of current piety and witness. Amos N. Wilder, Andover Newton QuarterlyThis book is immensely valuable for its persuasive illustrations of the parabolic and metaphoric imagination. McFague attends both to the interpretive and the evaluative levels of hermeneutics. Her readings of specific parables, poems, stories, and autobiographies are insightful and relevant to her thesis that what religious language says is conceptually imperceivable and inexpressible. Mary Gerhart, Journal of the American Academy of ReligionIt is at the very least a fine guide to one important direction that theological hermeneutics might take, and more than that, it testifies confidently to the presence of still unplumbed resources of the biblical word and its secular counterpart that are there for the imaginations appropriation. Robert Detweiler, Religious Studies ReviewEveryone interested in theology will be stimulated by Sallie McFagues mediating theological position and the form of thinking and discourse she espouses. Those interested in the intercourse between theology and literature will be stimulated by the way she links the two and the perceptive way she handles her literary examples. Biblical scholars will undoubtedly note her primacy of the parables as the central corpus of the biblical records. Preachers of the church will be strengthened by the concern McFague has for the Christian community and the importance of the word through the words of the preachers. With this variety of concerns, Speaking in Parables will have a deservedly wide reading and, perhaps even more important, wide discussion. Ronald E. Sleeth, Perkins School of Theology Journal