Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Religious language, negative, analogical or symbolic? - Coggle Diagram
Religious language, negative, analogical or symbolic?
Religious language
- truth claims
- language used to evoke or express feeling
- how can we talk about God meaningfully and respectfully through out human language
- as we are finite and imperfect it is debated if religious language is effective at communicating ideas about God
(how can we effectively talk about nature of God)
(can we talk about God respectfully using finite human language)
Positive and negative language
positive = applying terms to something, describing what it is
negative = saying what something is not
The apophatic way/ via negativa
- talking of God positively using our finite language misrepresents God
- we limit God and make him seem less perfect then he actually is
- bringing our own limited, finite human notions of these things to bear on God
- e.g saying God is good likens his goodness to our own which is deeply flawed, Gods goodness is much greater (disrespectful to God)
- Focus on what God is not to avoid disrespectful misrepresentation
- e.g (immortal, invisible, timeless) - not limiting him to our human concepts
- talking in statements of fact and saying something literally true which cant happen with positive statements
Pseudo-Dionysiuis the areopagite
- argued God is beyond all human understanding and imagination and only way to talk truthfully is through via negativa
- god is transcendent, humans can understand God best by denying and removing qualities from him (like carving a statue)
- cannot end up anthropomorphising God
- as would lead to inadequate understanding
- acknowledges this wont give full picture of God but knowing God fully is impossible and humans should accept their ignorance
Moses Maimonides
- supported via negativa
- analogy of a ship
- will come nearer to knowledge of God through negative attributes
challenges
- Brian davies, only saying what something is not gives no indication of what God actually is, (we gain no actual content) - not effective + ship analogy not effective because we couldnt narrow it down enough e.g cannot know what white is by saying the opposite of black
- God cannot be reached by a process of elimination
- via negative relies on there being a finite number of concepts that we can use, God may have qualities that we dont have concepts for so cannot use process of elimination
- anthony flew: little difference between definition of God and definiton of nothingness this way
- religious scriptures do make positive statements and attributes to God
- aquinas: God is alive says much more then God isn’t dead
support
- By talking in the negative we do not limit God or disrespect him so we can have some meaningful understanding
- william James and Rudolph otto: god is an ineffable mystery, which Via Negative can reflect
- Charles Stephen evens: it is fine to accept that our knowledge of God is limited, God is not of this world so we cannot come to know him from things in our world
- passages in bible which support apophatic way “his ways are unsearchable and unfathomable”
- it doesnt require interpretation, factual statements that say something literally true
The cataphatic way / via positiva
- using positive terms to convey meaning
(Aquinas analogical approach and Tillich’s symbolic approach)
Aquinas’ analogical approach
- we cannot say anything about God that is literally true using positive language as our concepts are flawed
- we can talk in positive terms about God as long as we understand that this language has an analogically rather than a literal use
- e.g ‘god spoke’ does not man he literally spoke but an analogy to help us
- so we can make positive statements without disrespecting him
-We need to use analogical language to talk about God
- even if we cannot understand “god is love” we can use our limited understanding of human love as an analogy
(God’s love is something like human love but not exactly the same)
two types of Analogy
1) analogy of attribution
- causal relationship between things being described e.g healthy colour on a baby, the colour is caused/attributed to health (or tired eyes)
- this is how we talk about God, saying God is loving meaning that god displays love and is the cause of all love
2) analogy of proportionality
- we use terms to talk of objects that differ in proportion
- when we talk of God’s love we must know that it is infinitely greater in proportion then our use of the world love
John Hick support for Aquinas
- comparing a dog’s faithfulness to a man’s faithfulness
- not equivocal but an immense difference in quality between a man and a dog’s
- not univocal due to this difference, but analogically to indicate the similarity!
Ian Ramsay support for Aquinas
- ordinary and religious language
- ordinary is straightforward public language
- religious terms are outside of public language
- need to understand religious language so we have a ‘suitable currency’ for religious and non-religious communication
- models and qualifiers
- (model is an attribution, qualifies ensure we dont limit him e.g everlasting and perfectly)
Support for effectiveness of aquinas:
- allows for analogical truths which give us some idea of what God is like, better then nothing in the best way
- ok to accept there will be some mystery
- Jesus used analogy
- interpreting bible analogically allows consistency with science
challenges
- analogical language is too vague to support genuine truth claims about God, if it is all analogical how can we know what we are really meaning?
- analogical language only useful when we have some idea of both the things we are comparing, when one of those is an infinite and unknowable God this means our language is like a distant shadow to what we are trying to talk about
- analogical needs interpretation which means subjectivity, and make it seem like no factual content
- Hume, cannot use analogy to compare dissimilar things like God and us, so different that analogies are useless
- Blackstone all analogy must be translated into univocal langue to be understood but if we do this we are misrepresenting God
- Karl Barth, impossible through language, need revelation
-
Paul Tillich - symbols
- a version of the cataphatic way
- we often use symbolic language in everyday life (im dying for a drink)
- when we talk about God we talk about him symbolically not literally
- people misinterpret the bible when they try to interpret religious language literally
Signs vs symbols
- symbols = special relationship between a symbol and the thing which it represents
- the symbol participates in the object it represents
- signs are chosen arbitrarily like traffic lights, no special connection
- e.g flag symbolises country and participates in country
- ‘language of faith is the language of symbols’
- religious symbols point towards the holy
Support for Tillich
- we know symbols can convey messages that evoke emotions e.g a wedding ring
- many religions do use symbolic meaning
- religious texts use symbolic language
- Christian’s use symbols in their sacraments
- symbols not open to interpretation
- symbols allow science and religion to co-exist
challenges to Tillich
- John Hick, too stripped back from genuine truth claims religion makes, Tillich suggests there is no factual basis to religious language at all
- Macquarrie criticisms the idea that religious language is symbolic as Tilllich is unclear in what participating in the reality means
- Hick agrees that Tillich is unclear, and says this is more appropriate for art than theology
- we all interpret symbols differently
- william Alston,doctine have to be taken as factual not symbolic