THIS morning I am going to cancel my 35 years' subscription to an academic journal. Wow, that must be one of the dullest sentences that even I have ever written! But when I give you my reasons, I hope you get a laugh or two. On the other hand, you might weep.

The journal in question is called Theology and, as you would expect from the title, it's full of articles about the Christian faith. Some of these articles over the years have been very good, though I have pondered more than once whether I ought to stop taking the mag. But no, I kept faith with it even when senior clergymen wrote articles telling me that the resurrection of Christ is only " a parable of liberation". I still didn't give up when university professors wrote pieces on exciting subjects such as "the visit of the wise men to the manger" in the sort of prose we were accustomed to read in 1950s communications from the gas board or the rate office.

What finally caused me to throw in the towel is an article by Professor John M Hull from the University of Birmingham. Professor Hull is blind and he complains about the use of the word "blind" in hymns. He says: "We must train ourselves to purify our language from unconscious traces of prejudice. The truth is that there is no such thing as spiritual blindness. There is spiritual insensitivity, stubbornness, ignorance and callousness, but when we refer to these qualities as being spiritual blindness we reinforce the prejudice, and collaborate in the continued marginalisation of disabled people."

Well, I hope Professor Hull doesn't mind my saying so, but I reckon he can't see the wood for the trees. No such thing as spiritual blindness? What if I persist in refusing to face the unpleasant fact of my nasty personal habits - surely I can be accused of being blind to my faults? This is not "the marginalisation of disabled people". It is a figure of speech which accurately describes my condition in just the same way that, when the preacher exhorts me to repentance and I refuse to respond, I might truthfully be said to be "deaf to all pleas". If I really persist in my sins despite the preacher's warnings, might I not even be said to be displaying "moral paralysis"?

Even quite young children can tell the difference between language used literally and language used in a figurative sense. Anyone who can't tell the difference simply hasn't learnt to read properly. The seven-year-old is thrilled when he hears for the first time that a camel is a ship of the desert - but he doesn't run away with the false idea that the camel actually has sails and a rudder.

Prof Hull says that the use of blindness as a negative spiritual metaphor "denigrates the world of blind people". No it doesn't. The fact is - and it is a fact of life as well as a fact of language - that blindness is a deficit and to try to pretend that it isn't is a failure to understand English. Blind people are not denigrated by the metaphorical use of the word which describes their physical condition. Sorry, Prof Hull, I just don't see it.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange