How does one describe God who is utterly "other"? The words the Bible uses to describe God spring from the mysteries of the human condition: figurative language, relationship language, even the language of imagination and mythology. Pierre Grelot examines the language of symbolism in the Bible, categorizing, explaining, and illuminating the Scriptural use of language to reveal God.

The symbolic language used in the Bible can suggest supernatural realities without having to define them. And the Bible is soaked in the supernatural: from the parting of the Red Sea and the guidance of God’s people through the wilderness, to the virgin birth and resurrection of Jesus Christ. To understand the Bible, it is not enough to understand dates, places, authors, and literary genre; we must understand its language.

The Bible’s symbolic language is theological, but it is very distinctive from the theological language of Greco-Roman, medieval, or modern culture. Nevertheless, it is the Bible’s symbolic language that is most expressive and best able to engage the cultures where the Christian faith is growing most rapidly today. Such symbolic language may now also be well-suited to engaging Western societies, where a rationalist culture has dulled religious sensibilities.

In proposing a way to classify the Bible’s symbols, Grelot shows how its language works to make perceptible that which, in the purpose of God, cannot otherwise be explained.