It designates only one kind of role or relationship God has to his universe, and makes no metaphysical comment about the ultimate nature and structure of all of reality. Further, I employ the term “metaphor” because many of the images and motifs to be mentioned cannot be literally true if God is conceived as immaterial as Christians and Jews traditionally have done. For God literally to function as these images suggest would require a body; hence, many of these images are metaphorical. That, however,