Scales.me.uk

Topics comprise

Analogy
Language games
Myth and symbol
Verification and falsification

 

Introduction

Religious language has some substantial problems regarding its use and comprehension:

• Difficulties of extending language from one context to an entirely different use
• Some people claim it is meaningless
• The difficulty of objectivity

 

The language of proof and evidence tends not to be much use when talking about God.

Poetry or myth or symbol might be better.

“The only thing we can understand about God is that he can’t be understood. If you can grasp it, it is not God.” ST John of Damascus

“He is always totally beyond what we can know” St Gregory of Nyssa

God does not name himself when asked by Moses – he replies, “I am who I am” i.e. I’m not telling, I can’t be named.

Thomas Aquinas 1225-1274

Maintained that it is possible to speak about God in a meaningful way by analogy.

He understood language as having 3 different uses:

• Univocal – where a word has only one meaning e.g. zinc, nutmeg
• Equivoval – where a word has more than one meaning e.g. set, table, well…
• Analogical – here e.g. approximations about God, like but not the same: Judge, shepherd, light of the world.

 

Ian Ramsey 1915-1972

Suggests that we use many models about God and each is modified by a qualifier:

God is not just a judge he is the supreme judge; the true vine; the good shepherd; the wise ruler….

Hence he is like but not!

“We speak about God not because we know anything about him but because the alternative is to say nothing.” St Augustine

Some groups have taken this to its logical conclusion and worship God in silence: e.g. some monastic orders and the Quakers.

A Zen story tells how a teacher specified two things for the search for God:

• To realise that all efforts to find God are useless
• To act as if you didn’t know that!

 

Apophatic Theology

Suggests that God is not any of the things he is called therefore even traditional theology tends to negative descriptions:

 

This is known as the Via Negativa.

Inadequacy of language and symbols

 

Jewish, Muslim and Puritan traditions forbid the representation of God in images, statues or art. Muslim philosophy developed the double negative:

God is not a being –but he is also not a non-being!!

Hindus’ experience of images is such that worshippers know that the statue is not God, so they keep them – it gives a concrete focus for prayer or worship.

Roman Catholics use a rosary or statue of the saints, Buddhists use a mandala…

Conclusion: we only talk about God at one remove – our symbols, images, metaphors are just that and no more! They point to God, put us in touch with God, lead to God… (but we cannot speak from sure knowledge!)

The sceptic would ask – if our language can only say what God is not then are these statements true?

What is truth? It isn’t something which can be broken down into little chunks and verified in this case: A believer says, “I believe,” not a list of facts or truths.

So what a person believe in is just as good as what the next believes in if it can’t be checked; however if you want your belief to be taken seriously you have to be able to explain it in some way to a non-believer. You have to use language – however inadequate.

 

Kierkegaard

Said that truth is subjective; really important truths are personal – true for me – 2+2 = 4 is true, certain, and verifiable but not relevant. If you fall into deep water you are not concerned with whether you can drown but if you will live or die!

He believes that there’s a fundamental difference between the philosophical debate over whether God exists and the individual’s take on the same question – the first is objective and irrelevant, the second is subjective and all important.

Reality therefore is not confined to what is subject to reason – there are other non-rational realities like values and imperatives. (What principles we live our lives by and what motivates and drives us.)

 

Feuerbach

Asserted that God was only a projection of our desires –

However while it might be true that God can only be experienced as a projection it does not follow that there is no reality behind the experience.