Religious Language Scholars

Question 1

John Hick

Answer 1

• Believed that no language used to describe God is without problems, but generally supported the idea of analogy
• “We are not using ‘faithful’ equivocally nor are we using faith univocally, we are using it analogically”

Question 2

Paul Tillich

Answer 2

• All religious language is a symbolic expression of a higher truth that is pointed to by the symbol but must be discovered through individual reflection
• “Man’s Ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically because symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate”

Question 3

Pseudo-Dionysus

Answer 3

• Believed that the only way in which we can approach God is through accepting that he cannot be known through human knowledge, but must be approached by contemplation and science
• “Unknowing, or agnosia, is not ignorance or absence of knowledge as ordinarily understood, but rather the realisation that no finite knowledge can fully know the infinite one”

Question 4

Anthony Flew

Answer 4

• argued that theists do not provide a clear set of conditions whereby their assertions regarding God would be incorrect- thus their claims are lacking in actual content
• What would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof of the love of, or existence of, God”

Question 5

AJ Ayer

Answer 5

-Argued that the metaphorical statements cannot be verified, and thus have no meaning outsude of a metaphorical understanding
“God talk is evidently nonsense”

Question 6

Wittgenstein

Answer 6

• Initially argued that humans cannot understand, and thus must not speak of, certain concepts
• Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent
• However, later argued that the validity of language centres around it’s use of context, which must be analysed as part of a ‘language game’
• “Here the term ‘language game’ is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language games is part of an activity, or a form of life (blik)”

Question 7

Explain Ramsey’s models and qualifiers

Answer 7

former bishop of Durham
-in his book Religious Language, he argues that words like ‘good’ and ‘wise’ are models which disclose something about God but these models have to be qualified by words like infinite or eternal when applied to God’s in this way the models are used in proportion to the reality of God rather than the reality of human beings- similar approach to Aquinas’ analogy of proportion

Question 8

Janet Martin Soskice on symbols

Answer 8

The reality of God is articulated in metaphors and which, while requiring revision over time, nonetheless, convey information about a reality that, being so totally transcendent, cannot be spoken in any other way