The Role of Conceptual Integration in Christian Language on the Basis of the Use of THE LOST SHEEP IS HUMANITY Blend in Patristic Writings

Abstract The article investigates the role of conceptual integration in generating new theological meanings in early Christian texts. Its basic assumption is that metaphoricity and novelty of language of Christian doctrine and teaching in early Christian period should be regarded as a well attested case of linguistic creativity whose mechanisms are explained by Conceptual Blending Theory as proposed by Fauconnier and Turner. After a brief presentation of selected theological studies utilizing cognitive linguistic perspective and a brief discussion of basic notions of Conceptual Blending Theory, the article examines variants of the THE LOST SHEEP IS HUMANITY blend in selected patristic texts by Origen, Cyril of Alexandria, Pseudo-Macarius, Augustine and Gregory of Nyssa. The analysis of these variants shows that conceptual integration allowed these authors to create and develop a wide range of theological ideas representing many important aspects of Christian doctrine from soteriology, through ecclesiology to Christology. This in turn proves that cognitive linguistics may provide theologians with instruments of linguistic analysis that shed new light on many aspects of theological language and reasoning.

visual perspective in describing things2 that are similar to some extent to Langacker's notion of a "vantage point," the key element of a "scene construal".3 More recently, one could also find many interesting parallels between Janet M. Soskice's observations on metaphoricity of religious language4 and the role of conceptual metaphors in representing abstract ideas in language in general, posited by cognitive linguistics.
These and other affinities suggest that cognitive linguists may offer important insights to theologians, first of all because the former are interested in those aspects of language use that are central to theological inquiry. Two research areas of cognitive linguistics seem to be especially promising to theologians. The first is the way humans conceptualize abstract ideas through conceptual metaphors, which is the object of interest of Conceptual Metaphor Theory. The other is the way meanings are created or ideas developed in language through conceptual integration and its theoretical account is Conceptual Blending or Conceptual Integration Theory. Conceptual Metaphor Theory has been developed primarily by Lakoff and Johnson,5 Lakoff,6 Johnson,7 and Sweetser8 who have demonstrated how our embodiment affects the way we conceptualize and verbalize various aspects of our experience, from concept of time through politics to morality. The Conceptual Blending Theory has been developed, among others, by Fauconnier and Turner9 and by Coulson10, who have examined the role of conceptual integration as the basic cognitive-linguistic mechanism that allows us to create new ideas and concepts, including religious ones.
Cognitive linguistic perspective has become already present in theological research, both in systematic theology and -to a much greater degree -in biblical scholarship. For example, Robert Masson has proposed an exhaustive rethinking of God-talk in this perspective, arguing that without metaphor there is no saving God, in other words, that without incorporating findings of cognitive linguistics and neural sciences into God-talk, Christian theology is not able to go beyond insufficient standards and solutions it has inherited from the past.11 Most recently John Sanders -relying on Conceptual Metaphor Theory -has demonstrated how our embodiment affects the way we conceive such key theological notions like truth, morality and God reminding us that "the way we understand theology depends upon our everyday conceptual apparatus employing conceptual metaphors, metonymies, blending and the like."12 While Masson and Sanders have turned to Conceptual Metaphor Theory, many biblical scholars have employed recently Conceptual Blending Theory in their research. For example, Bonnie Howe has examined conceptual metaphors and conceptual integration in 1 Peter with respect to its moral teaching,13Mary Therese DesCamp has demonstrated how conceptual integration was responsible for the reinterpretation and reshaping of biblical stories in Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum14, while Hugo Lundhaug has analyzed the role of conceptual blending in Gospel of Philip and Exegesis of the Soul.15 All three researchers show how conceptual integration allowed the authors of the texts in question to develop their ideas. Conceptual Blending Theory has been also informing socio-rhetorical studies of the earliest Christian texts initiated by Vernon K Robbins.16 Other scholars have examined the role of conceptual integration in biblical texts (Jewish and Christian alike) and in biblical translation.17 Interestingly, also cognitive linguists themselves addressed occasionally some theological issues, such as metaphors for God and the concept of Trinity, elements of the biblical narrative, Jesus' teaching in the gospels, the life-as-a-journey metaphor in the Judeo-Christian tradition or selected examples of typological exegesis.18 As mentioned above, Conceptual Blending Theory, posits that new concepts and meanings in language are created by means of conceptual integration -a universal cognitive-linguistic process underlying creativity and novelty of language in all spheres of human experience, including religion. Following this line of thought, I shall argue in this paper that conceptual integration also played an essential role in shaping early Christian doctrine. More specifically, I shall demonstrate how one specific conceptual network, namely the The lost sheep is humanity blend, was employed by patristic authors as a highly effective conceptual tool in developing a wide array of theological concepts and arguments. The paper proceeds as follows. First, I briefly discuss the basic tenets of conceptual blending theory, types of conceptual networks or blends and basic mechanisms underlying conceptual integration. In the next section I investigate how the blend in question was employed in developing early Christian soteriology (by Origen, Cyril of Alexandria and Pseudo-Macarius), in the Donatist controversy (by Augustine) and in theological argumentation defending Nicene Christology (by Gregory of Nyssa). The aim of my investigation is to show how conceptual integration allowed these patristic authors to create and develop new theological ideas that became the building blocks of the Christian doctrine, some of which are still its integral part.

How blending works
Blending is a complex process involving a series of unconscious mental operations. Below I demonstrate how it works, following Fauconnier and Turner19 but using, as an example, a different blend from those discussed in their book, namely the metaphor "the Lord is my shepherd" that opens Psalm 23 (Table 1). The Lord who is my shepherd takes care of me. He "lets melie down in green pastures" and protects me "with his rod and his staff" Conceptual blending theory assumes existence of mental spaces or "domains that we set up as we talk or listen, and that we structure with elements, roles, strategies and relations."20 Such mental spaces in our working memory are "conceptual packets"21 constructed continuously and providing cognitive structure as we think or use language. An essential feature of human cognition is our ability to create cognitive connections between different mental spaces, and this ability underpins all conceptual integration processes.22 For blending to work there must be at least two mental spaces, called input spaces. In my example one input space contains God ("the Lord") and "me" and its organizing frame is the relationship between these two elements; the other input space contains "the shepherd" and "a sheep" and its organizing frame is the relationship between "the shepherd" and "a sheep." These two input spaces will always share some structure in the blend, a sort of lowest common (structural) denominator that is represented by a generic space. In the case of the blend in question, the generic space of the blend contains two elements that are in close relation to one another, with one dependent on the other. Conceptual integration presupposes cross-space mapping between input spaces, or in other words matching elements from both input spaces and creating counterpart connections between them. In our example there are counterpart connections between "the Lord" and "the shepherd" and between "me" and "a sheep" respectively. Then the organizing frames (or some aspect of the frame) either from one or from both input spaces are projected onto a new space called the blend space. This process is always selective and knowing how the "the Lord is my shepherd" metaphor is used in the religious context, we can see that many elements from the "shepherd-sheep" frame are not projected onto the blend space, for instance the fact that shepherds in reality sooner or later sell or kill their sheep. Since the aim of the "the Lord is my shepherd" metaphor is to evoke the positive image of God, what actually is projected is the shepherd's care for a sheep and the sheep's trust in the shepherd.23 More importantly, the structure of the blend space, or emergent structure, is different from the structures in the input spaces and brings with it a novel meaning: in our example God, who was not a shepherd in the first input space, becomes "the shepherd" while "the sheep" from the other input space ceases to be a sheep and becomes a human being. Depending on which organizing frame is projected onto the blend space from the input space(s), we can distinguish several types of blends or networks (see below).
The novel meaning that arises in the emergent structure is the result of a three-stage process of composition, pattern completion, and elaboration. Composition is related to cross-space mapping and through this process counterpart elements from the input spaces may become one element in the blend; in our case "God" becomes "the shepherd." But composition alone cannot account for the conceptual richness of blends; this is first of all the result of pattern completion, wherein elements and structures are introduced to the blend that are derived from the background knowledge of those who construct it. Completion plays a key role in conceptual integration, transforming blends into flexible conceptual tools in our reasoning. In the "the Lord is my shepherd blend" the background/cultural knowledge of the prototypical relationship between the shepherd and his sheep that is represented by the folk model of shepherding that allows "me" to conceptualize God as someone who first of all protects and takes care of "me" and to perceive "me" as someone who trusts in God like a sheep trusts in its shepherd.24 This means that this blend, (as well as blends in general), is not a predicative, truth-conditional statement (like "God is omnipotent"). On the contrary, it activates the rich, evocative pattern of the shepherd-sheep relationship in the minds of believers.
The final stage of conceptual integration is elaboration, or "running the blend"25 when language users elaborate a blend using their imagination, in accordance with its organizing frame. The author of Psalm 23 elaborates the "the Lord is my shepherd" blend in verses 2 through 4 writing that God makes him "lie down in green pastures," leads him "beside quiet waters," and guides and protects "with his rod and his staff."26 Elaboration explains the conceptual power of blends since "there are always many different possible lines of elaboration and (…) we can run the blend in as many alternative directions as we choose." 27 We have to keep in mind that blends are mental structures that manifest themselves through language. In other words, all quotations from Psalm 23 presented above are -precisely speaking -linguistic manifestations or realizations of one specific blend, not blends themselves. Additionally, many blends that represent novel meanings become in time entrenched conceptual structures that are shared and taken for granted by a whole community of language users.28

Vital relations
Another feature of blends is the compression of "vital relations" or conceptual relations that exist in an "outer space" or the space between the inputs into "inner space" relations within a blend.29 Most common vital relations that get compressed in blends are Representation, Time, Space, and Part-Whole. When compressed, they are easier to grasp mentally and in this way blends achieve what is called "a human scale."30 For example, there is an "outer space" vital relation of representation between an actor and a character from a play (an actor is a representation of a character, and are not themselves in reality the character), yet when the "actor" input space and "the character" input space are blended, i.e. when we see the actor on the stage, this relation is compressed into what Fauconnier and Turner call uniqueness31 and we can say of the actor: "Hamlet is dying."32 In Christianity compression of vital relation of representation is most evident in Catholic sacramentology or in veneration of icons in the Orthodox Christianity. Perceiving icons as something more than visual representations of God or saints in the Eastern Church (especially before iconoclasm era) or Catholic understanding of Eucharist are examples of fusion or "the strongest possible form of compression."33 Similarly, in many blends in Christian doctrine, especially in "typological" blends, i.e. typological interpretations of the Hebrew Bible by New Testament authors or later patristic writers "outer space" vital relation of time is compressed and temporal distance, for example between Adam and Christ or Moses and Christ disappears. The same concerns the concept of "history of salvation" itself where "the number of centuries does not matter, since God is in charge."34

Conceptual networks
Depending on what organizing frames or related elements get projected into the blend space and which of them becomes the dominant one, one may distinguish four types of blends or networks of an increasing level of complexity: simplex networks, mirror networks, single-scope networks, and double-scope networks.35 Since the first category of blends is not taken into account in my analysis in this paper, I will not discuss it here and concentrate instead on the three other categories.

Mirror networks
Mirror networks are blends with two input spaces that share the same organizing frame and this is also the organizing frame of the blend. An example of a mirror network discussed by Fauconnier and Turner is the regatta blend, where two sailing ships covering the same distance (from San Francisco to Boston) in different times (one in 1853, the other in 1993) are presented in the blend as racing with one another through 28 Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 49, Fauconnier and Turner, "Conceptual Integration Networks," 161. This is one of the reasons why Lakoffian "conceptual metaphors" are regarded by proponents of Conceptual Blending Theory as stable, culturally grounded blends; Fauconnier and Turner, The Way We Think, 127-32.  (Table 2).36 The generic space of the blend contains two ships sailing from one port to another. The organizing frames of both input spaces are identical and have a ship sailing from San Francisco to Boston, thus resulting in a very close cross-space mapping in the composition of the blend (in other words, the mapping is not as selective as in the two other types of networks to be discussed below). Note that to this moment both ships are seen as sailing independently of one another and it is pattern completion or the notion of a race introduced to the blend, that changes the perspective and now they are racing with one another. This new perspective, achievable only through conceptual integration, allows us to say that "Great American II is four and a half days ahead of Northern Lights."37 Mirror networks played a key role as conceptualization tools in early Christian typological exegesis, allowing Christian authors to juxtapose characters and episodes from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament and to interpret them as types and antitypes respectively.38

Single-scope networks
Single-scope networks are blends with different organizing frames in each input space where only one frame is projected onto the blend space and becomes its organizing frame. One such single-scope network -the the lord is my shepherd blend39 -we have seen above. Another example of a single-scope blend, provided by Turner, is that of a cartoon showing presidential candidates in the USA as gunslingers at a shoot-out40 where the organizing frame of the presidential campaign is replaced in the blend by the organizing frame of a duel. Although different, the frames from each input space must have something in common. This shared element(s) or -to use a term from classical rhetoric -tertium comparationis -may already be present in both frames but it is possible for it to be arbitrarily introduced into the blend, thus resulting in an unexpected comparison. The organizing frames in the shoot-out blend, though different, exhibit a number of similarities: both candidates, like real gunslingers, are determined to eliminate the opponent; only one of them will prove to be the winner; often, although not necessarily, they are men, and so forth. Note also the cultural background presupposed in the blend: the candidates are gunslingers from the Wild West and are not, for example, presented as sumo wrestlers. On the other hand, consider John Donne's blend from his famous Meditation XVII where he conceptualizes death as an act of translation and heaven as a library.41 Donne's single-scope network actually forces upon us a specific blending of two domains that we have previously" regarded as unrelated and his tertium comparationis is highly arbitrary. An important ramification of the "clashing"42 of organizing frames in a single-scope network is that the projection of elements from the dominant organizing frame onto the blend space is much more selective 36 Ibid., 63-5. 37 Ibid., 63. 38 For more on typological blends, see Gomola, "Conceptual Blending with moral accounting Metaphors in Christian Exegesis." 39 Here and henceforth I denote blends with small caps. 40 Turner, " Frame Blending,"15. 41 "God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another," Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, 69. By the way, Turner's identification of the Grim Reaper with Christ "harvesting" souls (Mark Turner, Reading Minds, 222) is also highly arbitrary and does not seem to be confirmed by standard Christian imagery. 42 Fauconnier and Turner,The Way We Think, than in the case of mirror networks. As a result, certain elements of the folk model of shepherding that is the organizing frame of all of the blends discussed in this study are never mapped onto the church input space; thus we never find them in the blends.
Single-scope networks illustrate arguably the most fascinating aspect of blending, namely the possibility of creating source-target metaphors or in other words the possibility of depicting one thing in terms of another thing.43 In this way language users may develop new ideas, doctrines and religious systems. Most of the blends discussed in this study are single-scope networks and they illustrate how patristic authors employed them not only to define the roles of the clergy and the laity but to conceptualize abstract elements of Christian doctrine from baptism to soteriology and Christology.

Double-scope networks
Turner notes that "single-scope networks sit atop a very slippery slope and slide easily into double-scope structure"44, by which he means that in many if not most cases, when the organizing frames of the input spaces clash, it is difficult to speak of pure single-scope networks, as elements of all of the organizing frames may be projected onto the blend, even if one of these organizing frames dominates.
An example of a double-scope network is a blend conceptualizing frozen human embryos as "snowflake kids," a conceptual tool used by Christian organizations in pro-life rhetoric.45 Unlike the blends discussed earlier, it has three input spaces: the snowflake space, the past space, and the present space. The clashing organizing frameworks are the snowflake space framework where two features of snowflakes are brought to the foreground: frozenness and uniqueness; the past space framework that has a frozen embryo as a unique organism; and the present space framework that has a kid conceptualized as a unique person. Elements of the frameworks from these input spaces are projected onto the blend: uniqueness from each input space; frozenness from the snowflake space and past space, and being a person from the present space; an emergent blend contains "a snowflake kid" that is frozen, unique and -most importantly -is a person (Table 3).46 Thus, as a result of blending, frozen embryos cease to be merely clusters of cells and potential objects of scientific research and may be referred to as "tiny humans" or "siblings" kept in "frozen orphanages."47 We must emphasize again that blends, in order to be plausible, must achieve a human scale; that is, they must present situations with familiar frames that are easily comprehended by humans.48

The The lost sheep is humanity blend
The the lost sheep is humanity (LSIH) blend is related to the the church is a Christ's flock network that depicts Christians as sheep constituting the flock of Christ. This metaphor for the church occurs already in the New Testament (Acts 20:28-29, 1 Peter 5: 2-4, John 10:1-21, 21: 15-17) and in Apostolic Fathers50 and was by far the most popular conceptualization of a Christian community in patristic literature. The LSIH also utilizes shepherding imagery, yet it differs significantly from the church is a Christ's flock blend. The latter is a single scope network with two input spaces: in one input space there are sheep and the shepherd and in the other input space there are Christians and Christ. The organizing frame of the blend is the shepherding experience from the first input space and as a result, Christ is conceptualized as the shepherd and Christians as sheep ( Table 4). The former also has two input spaces, yet in one input space there are the lost sheep and the shepherd from the parable of the lost sheep (Matthew 18:12-14; Luke 15:3-7) while in the other, humanity and Christ (Table 5). In addition, each input space has its own organizing frame or narrative: the scenario of the parable of the lost sheep and the account of Christ's salvation of humanity, respectively. As we will see below, these frames clash in the blend space and thus the LSIH is a double-scope network.  The LSIH is a fine example of the role of conceptual integration in early Christian thought because it utilizes the parable of the lost sheep to attribute an entirely new meaning. The original meaning of the parable as a story of God who seeks and saves a sinner has been changed and the lost sheep represents in the blend the whole of humanity lost through Adam's sin and rescued by Christ through his incarnation, death, and resurrection.51 As such, the blend becomes a conceptualization -in a narrative form -of the constitutive idea of Christianity that Jesus Christ, God incarnated, descended from heaven to bring back to God humanity separated from him through sin. The pivotal role of the LSIH blend in early Christian doctrine is emphasized, among others, by De Lubac, who points out that "for Irenaeus, as indeed for Origen, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, for Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus, Hilary and others, the lost sheep of Gospel that the Good Shepherd brings back to the fold is no other than the whole of human nature; its sorry state so moves the Word of God that he leaves the great flock of the angels, as it were to their own devices, in order to go to its help."52 Through a selective projection of elements of both narratives into the blended space and through a series of compressions, patristic authors activate a conceptualization that allows them to convey a number of abstract and complex ideas concerning humanity, its ontological and moral condition, its relation to God, and so forth, by means of shepherding imagery so natural in early church discourse. As such, the blend illustrates the "come up with a story" principle proposed by Fauconnier and Turner, since fundamental notions of the Christian message are conveyed to believers through a simple story.53 If so, it may be classified as a "pastoral" version of the same double-scope narrative of Christ dying for the sins of humanity, as discussed by Turner.54 Moreover, the idea of the "lost" humanity/sheep that was "found" by Christ may also be perceived as an alternative to Paul's depiction of the redemption of humankind in financial terms by means of moral accounting metaphor.55 Paul's indebted humanity is presented in the LSIH blend as "lost" and the act of its redemption or ransom payment, is conceptualized as being "found" by Christ and "brought back" to the fold. Since the scenario of the parable of the lost sheep is rather uncomplicated, one might expect that the blends based on it should also be simple narratives. On the contrary -as I will demonstrate below -they are often rich in doctrinally significant details introduced by patristic authors who elaborate them and adapt to their needs.

The LSIH blend in Origen
The blend was created most probably by Origen, who uses it several times, seeing in it biblical evidence for the doctrine of apokatastasis.56 In Origen's conceptualization the biblical lost sheep is identified with humanity, the shepherd with Christ and "the sheepfold" or "the ninety-nine" with the angelic world: "The good shepherd had, necessarily, the ninety and nine having been left on the heights, to descend to the lands and seek the one sheep which was lost and when it was found and carried back on his shoulders, to recall it to the sheepfold of perfection on high."57 In another homily he equates the number of sheep with the symbol of perfection of all rational creation: "Now the number one hundred is shown to be full and perfect in everything and to contain the mystery of the whole of rational creation, as we read in the Gospels where it says that «a certain man having a hundred sheep, when he lost one of them, left the ninety-nine in the mountains and descended to seek that one which he had lost and when it was found he carried it back on his shoulders and placed it with those ninety-nine which had not been lost»."58 52 de Lubac, Catholicism, 3. For a more detailed list of authors that refer to humanity as "lost sheep" with the exact locations of this conceptualization in their works, see, Meredith, Gregory of Nyssa, 148, n. 53. Needless to say that in the parable of the lost sheep, as it is presented in the New Testament, there is "no Christological interest, no interest in Jesus," Gerhardsson, "The Earthly Jesus in the Synoptic Parables," 55. 53 Fauconnier and Turner,The Way We Think,312,323,346. 54 Turner, "Double-Scope Stories," 129ff. 55 Apolýtrōsis and lýtron -two Greek terms for redemption in the New Testament, denote financial transactions in nonbiblical Greek: "ransom payment" and "money paid to ransom prisoners of war, to release slaves, to redeem a bond" respectively, Buchsel and Procksch, "Lyo*," 340. For more on moral accounting metaphor, see, Johnson, Moral Imagination, Sanders, Theology in the Flesh, 141-46. 56 Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis, 218, 410. 57 Origen, Homily on Genesis 9, Origen, Homilies on Genesis and Exodus, 155. 58 Origen, Homily on Genesis 2, Ibid., 82. Augustine repeats Origen's reasoning in his exegesis of Ps 8: "For as we understand Adam to be the one lost sheep (because Eve, of course, was made from his side), we are left with the conclusion that the ninetynine left on the mountains must not be human but angelic spirits," Exposition of Psalm 8, 12, Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 1-32, 136. For more on the symbolic meaning of "one hundred" in the parable as referring to the number of heavenly elect citizens, including humans and angels, from Origen to Gregory the Great, see, Novotny,Cur Homo?, In Origen's blend the parable of the lost sheep has been transformed into a cosmic drama involving all creation, "things visible and invisible" -to quote the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. Note also that by reading this specific meaning into the parable, it could be used as a biblical argument supporting a particular doctrine of soteriology, according to which salvation is a restoration of original harmony and unity between the Creator and creation rather than "making all things new" (cf. Rev 21: 5). In this way the blend could pave the way for Neoplatonic ideas in early Christian thought.

The LSIH blend in Cyril of Alexandria
Another Alexandrian, Cyril, writes in his Commentary on John: "The human race had wandered off from love for God and inclined toward sin. They were therefore banished from the sacred divine sheep pen, I mean the precincts of paradise. Falling ill because of the calamity wrought by the devil (who tricked them into sin) and death (which sprouted from sin), they fell prey to wolves that were truly bitter and implacable. But when Christ was shown to be the good shepherd of all, he laid down his life for us in the struggle against this pair of wild beasts."59 Like many patristic authors Cyril was educated in rhetoric and this passage proves his rhetorical skill. Yet at the same time we can recognize in it the same blend we saw in Origen, albeit in a much more elaborate form, because Cyril added another input space that contains elements of the biblical account of the Fall mapped onto elements of the parable of the lost sheep and made the parable itself more dramatic by introducing wolves into it (Table 6). The blend allows Cyril to conceptualize a number of crucial theological ideas that would have been much less comprehensible to his audience had they been presented in an abstract form. He evokes the scenario of the parable of the lost sheep in the very first sentence informing us that humanity wandered off from God and as a result was banished from paradise, pictured as the "divine sheep pen." Being the lost sheep outside the sheep pen, it not only found itself in the wilderness but fell prey to two wolves: sin and death. From this follows that Christ's task as the good shepherd was not merely to find the lost sheep/humanity; in order to rescue it and bring it back he had to kill the wolves. He managed to do so at the price of his life. Cyril's network is a fine example of the abovementioned elaboration of a blend, that is expanding and developing it in accordance with its organizing frame(s). By elaborating the LSIH blend patristic authors were able to add to it novel theological elements turning it often into a brief, doctrinally-rich, mini-treatise. Other examples of the LSIH blend discussed below are also elaborations of its basic version created by Origen.

The LSIH blend in Pseudo-Macarius
In Pseudo-Macarius' elaboration of the LSIH blend occurring in one of his homilies humanity is both "the lost sheep" and "a sick sheep": "As a shepherd is able to heal the scabby sheep and to protect it from wolves, so the real Shepherd, Christ, came and alone was able to heal and to convert the lost and scabby sheep, namely, humanity, from the scab and leprosy of sin."60 In Pseudo-Macarius' passage the parable of the lost sheep is embedded into real shepherding experience that was a part of cultural experience of his audience. As a result, the sinful state of humanity is mapped simultaneously onto two separate elements in the other input space: illness and being lost (Table 7). In addition, Pseudo-Macarius emphasizes the dramatic condition of the sheep by identifying humanity's sin with leprosy. This allows him to introduce the image of the lepers healed by Christ in the gospels (Luke 17:11-19) into his homily. "The intellectual sheep, humanity," healed in a similar way by Christ, may join other rational creatures and "enter into the heavenly Church of the Lord."61

The LSIH blend in Augustine
While previous authors used the LSIH blend as a conceptual framework of their soteriological ideas, Augustine modifies the network in yet another way by introducing the concept of "partly found" sheep: "For the sake of this one sheep the shepherd left the ninety-nine in the mountains and was torn by Jewish thorns as he looked for it. But it is still being sought; even though partly found, let it be sought still. (…) Through the work of those who choose God's commandments, weigh them mentally, and love them, the sheep is still being sought; and through the blood of its shepherd, poured out and spread abroad, the sheep is being found among all nations."62 Augustine substantially modifies the scenario of the parable, presenting the sheep -rather illogically -as "partly found" and "still being sought." This allows him to present Christians (most probably the Donatists) as both belonging to Christ and at the same time still outside his church. He also equates Jesus' crown of thorns from one input space with the thorns that sometimes do injure the real shepherd who might be looking for a lost sheep in thorny bushes from the other input space, undoubtedly making his blend more suggestive to his audience (Table 8). Note furthermore the anti-Semitic tone of Augustine's argument, when he presents the thorns as "Jewish," thus making the Jews responsible for Christ's passion part of the blend. Finally, he separates seeking the sheep from finding it at the end of the passage: while Christians, whenever they "choose God's commandments, weigh them mentally, and love them" participate in seeking the lost sheep, only Christ through his blood is able to find it. This separation, although also illogical, serves him to depict a crucial theological truth, thus corroborating the essential role of blending as a conceptual instrument in theological reasoning.

The LSIH blend in Gregory of Nyssa
Yet the most prominent example of the importance of blending in theological argumentation of early Church seems to be Gregory of Nyssa's Antirrheticus where he employs the LSIH blend several times to defend key elements of Catholic doctrine, including Christology and anthropology.63 Note the theological density and depth of Gregory's blend that is for him the biblically-grounded conceptual framework for complex theological reasoning in his polemic with Apolinarius: "Who does not know that divine mystery that the «pioneer of our salvation» goes after the lost sheep as a shepherd. We human beings are that sheep, we who have strayed through sin from the one hundred rational sheep. Christ lays the whole sheep on his own shoulders. The sheep did not stray just in one of its parts; since it went away as a whole, it is brought back as a whole. This passage has deserved to be quoted at length not only to show that conceptual integration is a natural element in theological ideas, but also to demonstrate how intricate concepts may be created in this way. Gregory's elaboration of the LSIH blend allows him to convey through it significant aspects of the Nicene orthodoxy. By stressing that the shepherd takes up "the whole sheep" on his shoulders, not the skin without entrails, Gregory maps this seemingly trivial detail onto incarnation as an element of the Christian soteriological framework, thus creating an important theological argument: Christ came to save the entire human nature, that is, body and soul.65 Gregory's further elaboration of the blend is even more conceptually interesting because the shepherd finding the sheep and taking it upon his shoulders is mapped simultaneously onto an assumption of human nature by the divine nature of the Second Person of the Trinity. In this way Gregory defends, in the context of the Eunomian controversy, the necessity of the two natures of Christ.66 But that is not all, since he immediately activates a blend within a blend, equating the shepherd with the sheep and arguing that "when the shepherd takes his sheep upon himself, he becomes one with it." To make his argument even stronger, he reads John 10:27 in a rather peculiar way, making the shepherd speak in a sheep-like way or "ovinely"! Finally, note how "taking up" a lost sheep is used by Gregory to express the crucial Christian notion of incarnation and how -still within the same blend -he uses the difference between a sheep and a shepherd as the conceptual basis for the difference between the two natures of Christ: "So the shepherd who has taken the sheep upon himself and speaks to us through it is both sheep and a shepherd. He is the sheep in that he has been taken up and a shepherd in that it is he who has done the taking up."67 Gregory's conceptualization is not accidental because he utilizes the same blend in Contra Eunomium: "It was therefore because the chief feature of our calamity was that humanity had lost its kinship with the good Father and come to be outside the divine supervision and care, that the Shepherd of the whole rational creation, leaving on the heights the unerring and supernal flock, for love of humanity pursued the lost sheep, I mean, our race; for the human race is the last and least fraction, the race which in the figure of the parable was the only one of the rational hundred that went astray through evil."68 It is evident that without the LSIH blend Gregory wouldn't have been able to create and develop his Christological concepts, which notices, among others, Brian E. Daley remarking that the parable of the lost sheep with humanity "as the strayed sheep «taken up» by the word" is one of the texts Gregory "repeatedly uses (…) to construct his theory of the continuing identity of the Word within the saving transformation of the human being he assumed."69

Conclusions
This brief analysis of selected patristic writings through the lens of cognitive linguistics leads to several conclusions. First of all, we could see that theological language is to a large extent a metaphorical language, yet not in the classic (Aristotelian) sense of the term, according to which a metaphor is a form of literary ornament possible to be reduced to non-metaphorical, literal representations of specific ideas. Examples of theological concepts examined above and the way they were developed by patristic authors show clearly that shepherding imagery used by those authors is not a literary convention but the indispensable conceptual vehicle that allowed them to express these ideas in the first place. In other words, all elements of shepherding imagery discussed above represent conceptual metaphors that are -according to cognitive linguistics -the only way in which humans as embodied beings to whom only their human experience is available, are able to conceive of, to grasp and to linguistically express abstract concepts. Much more importantly, our analysis confirmed the essential role of conceptual integration in patristic literature. We could see how conceptual integration of the parable of the lost sheep scenario and the Christian community conceptualized as the Christ's flock allowed patristic authors to create and re-create a wide range of theological ideas representing such important and varied aspects of Christian doctrine like Christology, soteriology and ecclesiology. What is equally important, by adopting cognitive linguistic perspective we could also see that all these varied meanings were derived from one basic conceptual blend, that is the lost sheep is humanity network. This proves that cognitive linguistic perspective may help theologians to identify the same conceptual elements and processes underlying such disparate theological constructions and argumentations and may provide them with instruments of linguistic analysis that shed new light on many aspects of theological language and reasoning.