An ontologically transcendent being is somehow distinct, separate, and different
from everything else. “God is more distant from any creature than any two
creatures are from each other.”23Rudolf Otto’s “wholly other” is a phrase associated
with this idea.24 Something with epistemological transcendence is beyond our
knowledge and understanding. Evidently this could be a matter of degree. Believers
might hold that their God’s epistemological transcendence was temporary, and
would vanish in an afterlife. On the other hand, epistemological transcendence
might be deemed a matter of principle, being an inevitable consequence of ontological
transcendence.

God’s transcendence implies that even those divine properties that other things
can share, such as personhood, differ radically from their mundane counterparts. For
example, in “God is a person,” personhood differs from all human exemplifications.
However, “person” is not subject to lexical ambiguity here. Attributing personhood
to God relates human personhood to God’s in some profound way. In contrast,
lexical ambiguity afflicts “bank” in “She went to the bank,” which might involve a
trip to a financial institution or to the edge of a river. Riverbanks and financial banks
have no affinities.

Does an appeal to metaphor elucidate the resemblances and differences between
human and divine personhood? We are being given to understand that “God
is a person” is related to “Jones is a person” in a way that is somehow comparable
to how “The question is hard” is related to “The chair is hard.” Now, claiming a
metaphorical status for “God is a rock” concedes that He is not, literally speaking,
a rock — of granite constitution, perhaps. So does awarding metaphorical status to
“God is a person” mean that God is not really a person? That implication would alarm
many religious believers. Is the metaphorical gambit a poor one?

Compare this example with a number of nonreligious cases, including instances
of “irreducible metaphor” noted by Alston.25 Alston cites mental state descriptions
such as “the stabbing pain” and “she feels depressed.” These are, as he puts it “in the
position of metaphors that cannot die.”26 Searle offers instances of spatial language
used about time, including “time flies,” “the hours crawled by,” and “I don’t want
to cut my stay short.”27

Again, a denial that time flies, on the grounds that we are
speaking metaphorically, seems inappropriate. Time really does fly sometimes,
despite the fact that denying this might appear, quite sensibly, to exclude the
possibility that time can literally travel through the air. I conclude that awarding
“God is a person” metaphorical status places it in good company, and that crediting
some transcendence language with metaphorical status is still worthy of consideration.
If some transcendence language is irreducibly metaphorical then there can be
no literal translation, any more than there is for “stabbing pain” and “time flies.”
Paraphrases would merely introduce new sets of metaphors. Hence, literal comparisons
cannot be made across religions. Literally incompatible phrases may sometimes
be reconciled when understood metaphorically. For instance: “He spoke
bluntly;” “he made some penetrating comments;” “as the light grew he could see her
brow darkening;” and “time grows short.” So in some cases, at least, if metaphor
features in characterisations of and claims about God, the appearance of tensions
between different religions may be deceptive. I am not, of course, claiming that
metaphors about the divine never conflict — a modest religious pluralism concedes
this possibility too.

source: Andrew Davis Philosophy of Education 2010 page 139