1.5A- Religious Language- Negative, Analogical and Symbolic Flashcards
The agnostic view on religious language
-Many agnostic thinkers argue that God is something we can neither know nor speak about. Their view is that God is not available to reason, not accessible to experiment and testing, and that none of the words in the human vocabulary can communicate anything about God, as God is beyond it all.
-Therefore, they argue, there is no point in discussing God or in making statements claiming that God is like this or like that, as we cannot possibly know if what we are saying is true.
-Some atheist thinkers go further and claim that talk of God or of anything supernatural is just plain nonsense.
The theistic view
Theists, however, have always tried to communicate their understanding of God through language. They give God different titles in order to try and communicate something about his nature. In Islam, for example, there is 99 names for Allah, in Hinduism, written in the Bhagavad Gita, the god Krishna is described as ‘the goal of all knowledge’, in Judaism, describe God as ‘the creator’.
They also try to communicate other aspects of belief that are outside everyday experience, for example, beliefs about the afterlife.
The philosophical view
-One of the issues for philosophers or religion is whether religious language can communicate ideas effectively, even when these are ideas that go way beyond our normal experiences in everyday life.
-Perhaps the language of our human, finite, limited world is totally inadequate for conveying ideas about a divine perfect and infinite being, or perhaps there are ways in which at least some understanding of God can be communicated. (such as describing a sunrise as ‘beautiful’ when it goes beyond that).
What is ‘religious language’?
-‘Religious language’ does not refer only to specialist vocabulary used in the context of religion. There are, of course, many specialist terms that religious people use, such as ‘Messiah’, ‘Eucharist’, ‘dharma’, etc.
-Some people think of ‘religious language’ in terms of old-fashioned words from traditional acts of worship, such as ‘thou art’ and ‘go forth’. However, religious language is a much broader concept than this. It refers to any kind of language used in the context of religious discussion, behaviour and worship- this could be specialist vocabulary or archaic liturgy, but it could also include ordinary every words used in a religious context.
-Sometimes religious language is used in the context of truth-claims. In other words, religious people use language to make statements about what is, or is not, the case. When they say ‘There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet’ or, ‘Jesus is alive today’, they are asserting that their religious beliefs are true (and, by implication, that the opposite is false). Much of the debate about religious language in the philosophy of religion is concerned with this kind of use of language.
-When religious believers meet for worship, they may use some religious language to evoke these feelings, to express their personal feelings, to praise God, and to solemnise occasions by saying, ‘I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit’, or to pray, for example.
What is the Via Negativa?
-The Via Negativa had it’s roots in the Neo-Platonism of 2nd Century BCE. Movements using Neo-Platonism included Gnosticism. Gnosticism claimed that all physical material was evil and only the spiritual was good and accessible to only a few who had secret knowledge. The Via Negativa (or apophatic way) is found in the mystic traditions of different religions from the second century through to the Middle Ages.
-Religious thinkers adopted these ideas, emphasising that God was beyond finite human capability to understand. Talking about God in human terms is disrespectful because it brings God down to a human level (anthropomorphism).
Scholarly views on the Via Negativa
-Eunomius (d.393) treated God as directly knowable.
-Evagrius Ponticus argued that the highest understanding is ‘pure prayer’ - a union with God without words or images, a bare awareness of something beyond anything created.
-Pseudo-Dionysius argued that God’s qualities and characteristics are of a much superior level to those of humans and this can only lead to misunderstanding of the nature of God.
-Maimonides argues that talking about God using the negative, gets you closer to understanding God.
Aquinas and the Via Negativa
-Aquinas had a deep knowledge of Maimonides’ work, frequently citing his sayings and ideas. However, Aquinas was not an advocate of the Via Negativa but was very sympathetic to it’s proponents and the significance of their insights.
-To him, the essence of God was infinitely far beyond human understanding or human language. But he did not draw the inference that therefore nothing at all could be done about it. For Aquinas, the Via Negativa was a prelude to understanding God.
-He took the view that to say God is not ignorant or not limited by time surely tells us something about God even if we cannot know what that something may be.
-In several of his writings, Aquinas uses negative terms to describe God.
-Aquinas, then, denies that God has being or existence like a creature.
Criticisms of the Via Negativa
-Critics of the Via Negativa have argued that any understanding that can be gleaned through this approach is actually negligible (for example, to say that God is not a bicycle gives us no deep insight into the nature of God), though proponents would argue that even to make a negative statement implies some awareness of what is being denied.
-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin argues that if we can talk significantly about God’s relationship with material things, then we are inevitably saying something positive, however limited, about him.
-W.R. Inge was concerned that to deny God his descriptions was to lead to an ‘annihilation’ of both God and humanity. If we strip God of his descriptions, simply because our descriptions are limited and based on finite, human experience, we are in danger of loosing the essential link between God and the world.
-Anthony Flew argued that using negative terms for God actually gives the impression that there is little difference between a theist’s definition of God and the definition of nothingness. To explain this, he uses John Wisdom’s ‘parable of the Gardener’.
What is the Via Positiva?
-Those who endorse the via positiva (the cataphatic way) believe that it is possible to say something positive about God.
-Adherents include Aquinas, Augustine, Anselm and others.
-It should be noticed that at once that is does not follow that we are therefore able to be precise in our language about God. What is claimed is that even though what we say is limited, it might be positively indicative.
-If we are made to worship God, and the customary made of human expression is in speech, then it would seem possible to say something more significant than humming aimlessly.
-The ‘negative’ use of language to understand the nature of God did not persuade most Christians to follow it.
-The way the cataphatic way has manifested itself in subsequent practice and discussion of religious language is though the idea that religious language may best be understood by thinking of it an analogy.
Via Positivia: Analogy
-An analogy is a comparison between two objects or systems that highlights ways in which they are thought to be similar or different.
-An analogical argument is one where accepted analogies are used to argue towards a further similarity.
-The use of analogies is very common throughout the world and analogical reasoning has been very important in a wide range of contexts.
-It has been used in scientific, philosophical and legal reasoning.
Aristotle’s take on the Via Positiva
-Aristotle developed interesting arguments based on the theory of likeness (homoites).
-Aristotle’s idea is that if two things share some sort of attribute, then what will be true of the should be true of the other.
-A question Aristotle leaves unanswered is precisely how much we may assume when making an analogy.
-From Aristotle’s writings, we might deduce four ways of making judgements about analogical arguments:
1. the strength of any analogy depends on the number of similarities in the two things being compared
2. similarities exist only in identical relations and properties
3. Good analogies are based on underlying common causes or some general principles
4. Good analogical arguments do not need to assume acquaintance with the underlying generalisation.
Aquinas’ take on the Via Positiva
-Aquinas did not completely follow the via negative in claiming that we should never use positive terms for God. He suggested in ‘Summa Theologica’ that there could be a way of making positive claims about God and conveying positive ideas, as long as we understand that the words we use have an analogical, rather than a literal, application.
-Aquinas was not suggesting that analogy could be a good way of communicating about God, but was saying that we should remember that this is what we are already doing whenever we make positive claims about God.
-Aquinas distinguishes between the type of language used to talk about God. Univocal language uses a word in the same way- for example, if we say God and Queen Elizabeth II are ‘rulers’, we are using ‘ruler’ in the same way. (However, this risks reducing God to a human-like figure, anthropomorphism). Equivocal language uses the same word in different ways- for example, ‘God’s love’ is something completely different to human love (just as ‘bat’ can be a small mammal or a piece of sports kit), But how would we know what ‘love’ means for God? We would be left with silence, as in the apophatic way.
-Aquinas rejects univocal language by making the statement that “Nothing can be said univocally of God and creatures.”
-For Aquinas, religious language is not equivocal. If any sentence about God had a wholly different meaning from any other usage, then we would not have religious language that could be understood, but silence.
-However, he argues, that when we speak religiously, we do mean something if we say, ‘God is love’ or ‘God is perfectly just’. There is something to be said because there is enough in human behaviour (the love people have for each other, for example) to transfer some of the meaning to God without either emptying the human concept entirely or saying that to speak of God as loving has no meaning.
-Aquinas is associated with two types of analogy: attribution and proportion. There is some debate whether the division is attributed to Aquinas or Thomas Cajetan, but most commonly attributed with Aquinas.
-The first, attribution, is based on the Christian belief that God is creator of the universe and everything ultimately comes from him, that creation is not accidental, but based on God’s will -it was an intended and deliberate, conscious action. If the world is the product of God as a thinking being, then there is something common between that which is made and the maker -thus apparently satisfying the third of Aristotle’s criteria for good use of analogy. How much is common may be disputed, but there is a shared element at least. Aquinas gives a different and rather graphic example. From the appearance of a bull’s urine, an expert can tell whether the bull is healthy- but it does not follow that the bull is a puddle of urine. Nevertheless, the inference of health is justifiable.
-If the earths is God’s handiwork, then we can attribute certain characteristics to him. If there is beauty in nature, then too there is reason to argue that God is in a sense truly beautiful. Aquinas say when we talk about God being good, it means more than human goodness. God’s goodness is proportionally much greater than our goodness. It is like comparing the violin playing of your sister, who is good for a seven year old, with that of a professional who is proportionally much better.
-The problem, is that attribution of proportion doesn’t apply to God. If you are just, we can say that God is proportionately more just than you are. God is infinitely more just than you are: we cannot conceive of the extent of that justice, nor can we calculate it as a strict proportion. By using both analogy of attribution and analogy of proper proportion, Aquinas hopes to avoid the pitfalls of univocal and equivocal language and to counter the apophatic way.
-He claims it is possible to say something positive about God while recognising that words are limited, because God is beyond human comprehension.
-He hopes to retain the mystery of God and avoid bringing God down to the level of humans.
Criticisms of Aquinas’ analogy
- A problem with the analogy of proportion is, how do we know how much greater God is? There is no point of reference to judge the appropriateness of the analogy.
- By attributing similar ideas to God, we may still limit God. How do we know anything about God if he is beyond our understanding?
- J. Don Scotus argues that analogy is too vague and leaves us unable to understand God or his actions.
- A problem with analogy is that it assumes a similarity between God and humans. If God is completely different to humans, there is nothing to compare him to. Perhaps there is nothing we can say (this brings us back to the apophatic way).
Ian Ramsey: Religious language, models and qualifiers
-Ian Ramsey speculated that there must be something in language that we might use to make sense of God.
-He developed two key notions: the disclosure situation and qualified model. These are very useful tools in thinking about analogy- Ramsey’s approach is ultimately an analogical one.
-Ramsey observes that there are two kinds of language: ‘ordinary language’ and ‘religious language’. The first kind of language is straightforward public language that everyone uses all the time. ‘Religious language’ is what he calls “logically odd” because the theological terms it uses, such as ‘God’, are outside public language.
-While religious language may look and sound grammatically simple, its logical structure is not straightforward. Ramsey claims that the challenge for religious language is how to make it into what he calls a ‘suitable currency’ so that religious believers and nonbelievers can communicate meaningfully with each other.
-A ‘model’ is a form of analogy that creates an image to help believers understand what they have experienced and to explain it coherently. For example, religious believers often describe God as ‘eternal father’. For Ramsey, ‘father’ is the model of a concept that is widely known and understood in ordinary language and human experience.
-The term ‘eternal’ is what he calls the ‘qualifier’ . The qualifier moved the model on from being simply a human understanding of a ‘father’ and gives it an extra meaning so that it is clear that it refers to a quality possessed only by God.
Karl Barth: criticisms of Ramsey and analogy
-Karl Barth argues that Ramsey’s approach, and indeed, analogy in general, is mistaken because we cannot approach God by means of language based on our existing experience: we need revelation.
-If Barth is right, analogy fails, but so too does any other attempt to give meaning to talk about God.
-If God’s revelations, on which Barth relies, can be expressed, then surely these are expressed in human theological language as it is all we can understand.
-If we cannot understand God in our language, then it may be asked how God can communicate with his creatures, as, surely, he would need our language to express himself to us.
-The Book of Genesis shows God as Creator of all, the cause of all that there is. If we capture that idea by calling God the First Cause, then there is something that phrase tells us. This, however, takes us back full circle to what the words mean in human language. If they are not literal, then what are they, and how can we interpret them?
Vincent Brummer and analogy
-Brummer’s point is that analogy gives the appearance of saying something significant about God, but that we remain as ignorant as we were before we began our search for something positive to say.
What are symbols in terms of religious language?
-Religious people often use language symbolically when they are talking about their relationship with God.
-They might say that God ‘listened to their prayers, although they believe that God has no body and , therefore, no ears. They might say that God ‘walks with them’, even though they believe that God is always everywhere and is beyond space.
-The figurative, symbolic use of language helps to create short cuts, but it can also cause problems if it is not clear whether a phrase is meant as a symbolic metaphor or whether it is meant literally.
Tillich and religious language
-Tillich believed that the problems associated with religious language stemmed from the incorrect idea that such language concerned literal assertions about the world.
-He denied that this was the case and proposed instead that religious statements were symbolic statements.
-He was very influential in attempting to make links between traditional Christian belief and secular modern culture, and making this belief intelligible to non-religious people while preserving its authentic and unique substance.
-By his use of correlation and symbols, he tried to show that the essential content of Christian revelation contained in the Bible arose from a particular culture that was far removed from his own.
-Each age had to use its own thought-forms to understand the nature of God, and different ages and societies look for the problems faced in their society.
-Tillich believed that, through participation in God, people could learn to have courage to thrive even in the face of danger and anxiety.
Tillich and signs and symbols
-Tillich distinguished between a sign and a symbol.
-A sign points to something outside of itself- for example, a road sign may point our there is a bend in the road, or to look out for ducks.
-A symbol, though, participates in that to which it points. For example, a cross or a national flag are more than a sign of Christianity or a country, these symbols participate in the religious belief or in the life of a country.
-So, to be told you cannot wear a cross or to burn a national flag would be deeply insulting because of the symbolic meaning of the object.
-According to Tillich, religious language has the characteristics of symbol. Tillich adds that the term is both ‘affirmed and negated’ by the reality of God. It is affirmed because God really is love, but negated because the human term is so utterly inadequate as a description of God.
-Tillich argued that metaphors and symbols help us to a better understanding of God and of religious experience.
-He argued that symbols can take us beyond the world available to our senses into the ‘internal reality’ of the symbol; a symbol ‘unlocks dimensions and elements of our soul’.
-The language used is intelligible and accessible to us, but it points beyond itself towards an ultimate reality, which is God.
-He defined symbols very broadly, including visual images, rituals, saints, stories and even ideas.
-According to Tillich’s thinking, we use religious symbolic language as a means of coming to terms with the meaning of human existence. For example, we use the symbol of God the creator to help us come to terms with our place in the universe, our ambivalent relationship with the natural world and our understanding of our purpose in being here. We use the symbol of Jesus the Christ to unlock some of the mystery of the relation between the physical and the spiritual, our tendency to sin, and our desire for freedom in a deterministic world.
-Tillich argued that people rarely used language that is not symbolic, except when they are talking about trivial things. All of our most important ideas, concerns, feelings and experiences are expressed through symbol.
-He also pointed out that symbols only work within particular times and places and cultures, and can lose their power or significance when society changes.
Tillich and Aquinas
-Tillich followed Aquinas in asserting that ordinary human language is inadequate to convey ultimate truth and, loke those who support the via negativa, Tillich claimed that to use literal language of God is unhelpful and conveys a false impression of the nature of God.
Tillich: God’s characteristics
-Tillich was critical of the traditional ways of understanding and describing God as being with characteristics such as omnipotence, omnibenevolence and omniscience.
-For Tillich, these descriptions of God suggest that God is ‘a being’, something at the top of the list of all the beings in the universe.
-But, Tillich argued, this still places God in the same kind of category as created things. If God is ‘a being’, then it begs the question of who created God and brought him into being. As God cannot be the ultimate source of all being if he is a being too.
-Tillich understood God to be Being-Itself, sometimes expressed as ‘the ground of all being’.
-God does not just exist; he is existence itself, the ground of all existence, the reason why anything and everything else exists.
Tillich: The existence of God
-Tillich has no place for arguments for the existence of God because they are arguments that try to settle the question of whether God does or does not exist, whereas in Tillich’s view (rather like Anselm’s) God is Being- itself, not some ‘thing’ that might or might not have existence.
-God is that very existence.
-He argued that if we think of God as an existent being instead of realising that such thinking is symbolic, then God does not give us an adequate answer to existential doubt (wondering whether we have any purpose in the universe).
-We end up, as is symbolised by Christ on the cross, with human anxiety and fear of our own morality, feeling that God has forsaken us and gone away.
-It is only when we understand that God is the ground of all being, and that to speak of the ‘existence’ of God is symbolic, that we have a solid response to the ultimate existential question.
Hick: criticism of Tillich’s theory
-Hick agrees with Macquarrie’s criticism of Tillich’s use of the term ‘participation’ in connection with symbols.
-Hick says that Tillich’s ideas concerning symbols may feasibly have some relevance in some areas of knowledge and discourse, but they do not work for every example of religious language.
-Most people would Tillich’s use of symbols to be cognitive, and he always appears to use them in that way- it is theoretically possible to ask whether they are true or false.
-Tillich believed in God as the ‘Ground of Being’, that is, the bases of all reality, on which all else rests.
-Hence, however problematic they might be for others, for Tillich, religious symbols represent truths.
-As a result, we may properly ask whether what is offered as true is actually true. To do this is to engage in cognitive discourse.
