1.5 Religious Laanguage: Negative, Analogical or Symbolic QUOTES

Question 1

30 words, Moses Maimonides

Answer 1

“I do not merely declare that he who affirms attributes of God has not sufficient knowledge concerning the Creator … but I say that he unconciously loses his belief in God.”

Question 2

36 words, St Thomas Aquinas

Answer 2

“In regard to what they express, these words apply literally to God … But as regards their manner of expressing it, they don’t apply literally to God; for their manner of expression is appropriate only to creatures.”

Question 3

15 words, St Thomas Aquinas

Answer 3

“When we say “God is alive” we mean more than “God is not mortally dead”.”

Question 4

33 words, Teresa of Avila

Answer 4

“I went at once to my confessor, to tell him about it. He asked me in what form I had seen him. I told him that I had not seen him at all.”

Question 5

26 words, John MacQuarrie

Answer 5

“The conventional symbol has no connection with what it symbolises … The intrinsic symbol on the other hand, has in itself a kinship with what it symbolises.”

Question 6

35 words, Pseudo-Dionysius

Answer 6

“God is beyond assertion since he is ‘the perfect and unique cause of all things’. He is beyond denial by virtue of his ‘preeminently simple and absolute nature, free from every limitation, beyond every limitation.’”