Religious Language: Symbol, Analogy and Via Negativa Flashcards
Tillich’s theory of symbolic language
Paul Tillichthought that religious language could be meaningful by being symbolic and that most religious language was symbolic.
Religious language does not have literal meaning. Literal meaning is when words refer to objects or things. Religious language cannot directly refer to God, since God is beyond our understanding. So,
The meaning of religious language is simply the emotional connection to God that it inspires through being symbolic.
Explain the example of a crucifix as a symbol
To understand symbolic meaning, consider what happens when a Christian looks at a crucifix. It means something to them. A crucifix is not a word, but it still inspires meaning in the mind of a person who sees it. Tillich thinks religious language functions like that. When a person hears religious language, e.g. “God be with you”, the effect on their mind is just like the effect of seeing a crucifix. The meaning they feel is a result of the words functioning symbolically.
How does symbolic meaning work according to Tillich
To explain symbols, Tillich explains how they do more than mere signs. A sign attaches a label, but a symbol participates in it what it points to (e.g. the cross is a powerful symbol because it points to Jesus’ sacrifice).
Tillich quotes on God and being
God is not a being, but “ being itself”
As in he is the symbol of being and beyond our comprehension.
Strengths of symbolic language as capturing the meaningfulness of symbols to theists.
successfully captures the feature of religious meaning most important to religious believers – spiritual experience. When a Christian looks at a crucifix or prays, there are deep spiritual feelings and experiences which can be the most significant and meaningful thing to them. Tillich’s theory is successful then in understanding that religious language is about that sort of meaning, rather than simply reporting cold hard factual/literal content.
Strength of Symbolic Language symbolic elements of the bible support this theory.
The Bible contains symbolic and metaphorical elements. Tillich thinks the creation story and fall can be understood as symbolizing the fragile and finite nature of human life.
Weakness of symbolic language, as diminishing the factualness of the bible.
Creationists would argue that the bible is entirely factual and cognitive.
Weakness from logical positivists to Symbolic lang
Logical positivists would point out that this so-called connection of our souls to higher divine levels of reality is unverifiable/unfalsifiable. So language here still literally meaningless and non cognitive.
Weakness: Symbols are too subjective.
However, this attempt to argue that symbols have more than merely subjective significance faces difficulties. For example, how could Tillich possibly know that symbols have a meaning beyond our subjectivity? Couldn’t his experience of the ‘ultimate’ and ‘unconditioned’ just be part of his subjective mind, rather than something which somehow goes beyond the subjective/objective distinction, as he tries to argue it does? Taking his own example, though, a cross is a symbol of hopeand salvationto some it represents fear and discrimination to others.
Aquinas’ theory of Analogy
Aquinas agreed with the Via Negativa to an extent since he thought humans were fundamentally unable to know God in his essential nature.
However, he thought we could go a bit further than only talking about God negatively – he argued we can talk about God meaningfully in positive terms (cataphatic way) if we speak analogically. An analogy is an attempt to explain the meaning of something which is difficult to understand by using a comparison with something familiar and easier to understand.
Define univocal
words have one meaning. E.g. when I say God is loving, the word ‘loving’ means the same as when I say humans are loving. Uni = one
Define equivocal
Equivocal: words have different meanings. E.g. when I say God is loving, the word ‘loving’ has a different meaning to when I say humans are loving.
Analogy of Attribution.
We can attribute qualities to the creator of a thing that are analogous to those of its creation. Aquinas used the example of seeing that the urine of a Bull is healthy, from which we can conclude (and therefore meaningfully say) that the Bull is has an analogous quality of health, even if we can’t see the Bull. Similarly, we humans have qualities like power, love and knowledge, so we can conclude (and therefore meaningfully say) that our creator also has qualities of power, love and knowledge that are analogous to our own. We cannot say what these qualities of God actually are, but we can know and therefore meaningfully say this minimal statement; that they are ‘like’ – analogous to – our own.
Analogy of Proportion.
A being has a quality in a degree relative to its being. Consider this example: A virus has life, plants have life, humans have life, God has life. This illustrates that different being have a quality like life to different degrees of proportion depending on their being. God is the greatest being and thus has qualities to a greater degree of proportion than humans. Thus we can now add to our statement that God has qualities analogous to ours that he has them in greater proportion. So God’s love/knowledge/power is like ours but proportionally greater.
What did Hick use as example for the analogy of proportion
A dog feels faithfulness but not the same way a human does.
