DLS MoM II

From Dorothy L. Sayers' The Mind of the Maker, “II. The Image of God”

The fact is, all language about everything is analogical; we think in a series of metaphors. We can explain nothing in terms of itself, but only in terms of other things. . . . It may quite well be perilous, as it must be inadequate, to interpret the mind of our pet dog by analogy with ourselves; we can by no means enter directly into the nature of a dog; behind the appealing eyes and the wagging tail lies a mystery as inscrutable as the mystery of the Trinity. . . . To complain that man measures God by his own experience is a waste of time; man measures everything by his own experience; he has no other yardstick. . . .

[The] experience of the creative imagination in the common man or woman and in the artist is the only thing we have to go upon in entertaining and formulating the concept of creation. Outside our own experience of procreation and creation we can form no notion of how anything comes into being. The expressions “God the Father” and “God the Creator” are thus seen to belong to the same category—that is, of analogies base on human experience, and limited or extended by a similar mental process in either case. . . .