Eduqas Analogy, symbol & via-negativa A*-A summary notes

Eduqas
Philosophy

This page contains A*/A grade level summary revision notes for the Analogy, symbol & via-negativa topic.

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Intro:

Talking meaningfully about something seems to require understanding it at least to some degree.
The problem of religious language is that most Christians agree that God is totally beyond our understanding.
In that case, how can Christians meaningfully talk about God?
The three theories in this topic each attempt to explain how it’s possible to meaningfully talk about God, despite God being beyond our understanding.
This topic is really about different views on the nature of the relationship between God and humans, and what follows from that about what we could know and say about God.

Analogy claims the relationship includes participation/imago dei, so analogical language can refer imperfectly but accurately.
Symbol claims the relationship is existential/affective, so language functions to connect and transform.

AO1: Aquinas’ theory of analogy (cataphatic)

Aquinas argues that although we cannot say what God is, we can say what God is like. We can use analogical language about God. E.g. instead of saying ‘God is loving’, we can say ‘God has a quality of love that is like human love, but greater’.
Aquinas first rejects standard versions of the cataphatic way (via positiva)
Univocal language fails because we aren’t the same as God (so can’t just use the same word)
Equivocal language results in meaningless language because we aren’t totally different to God.
Aquinas’ solution is to point out that there is a middle ground between these options. We aren’t the same as God, nor are we totally different – we are like God. We are analogous to God.
We can’t say what God’s qualities actually are – but we can say that, whatever they are, they are like our qualities.
Genesis: we are created in God’s image and likeness
Analogy of attribution: So, we can meaningfully say that e.g. God has a quality of love that is like/analogous to our human quality of love.
Analogy of proportion: God’s qualities are infinite – greater than ours.
So, we can say God has a quality of love that is analogous to our quality of love, but proportionally greater.
This is managing to meaningfully say something about God while respecting the fact that God is beyond our understanding.
Analogy is communicating the meaning of something by comparing it to something else.
Aquinas used the illustration 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.
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.

AO1: Ian Ramsey’s theory of analogy

Disclosure is where something is made known where previously it was hidden or unknown.
A ‘model’ is something we understand which can be used to help understand something else.
We often help people understand things through comparisons to other things that they have a better understanding of.
For example, if I wanted to help someone understand politics I might say that it is like chess. Chess would be a model used to help them understand what politics is like.
The model is like a thing we understand in an analogy, which is used to explain something else we have less understanding of.
A ‘qualifier’ is a word or phrase used to give a deeper meaning to a model.
The qualifier is stated before the model.
Applying models and qualifiers to religious language.
When trying to talk about God, we can use a model.
When applying a model to God, we have to draw on something we understand about the world
For example, we understand human goodness. We can therefore use our idea of ‘human goodness’ as a model for God, helping us understand God.
In the sentence ‘God is good’, ‘good’ is a model for ‘God’.
However, to appropriately compare human goodness to God’s goodness, our model needs qualifying with adjectives and adverbs. For example, the qualifier that God is “infinitely” good would need to be added.
While we cannot really understand what infinite goodness actually is, nonetheless this helps us talk about God without limiting our conception of God.
So we can say ‘God is infinitely good’ – where ‘good’ is a model and ‘infinitely’ is a qualifier.
When we use qualified models to think about God, it points you to the realisation that God is ultimately beyond our understanding.
This is what provides disclosure, resulting in religious commitment.
Ramsey’s approach is accepting that language about God involves models that help us understand something beyond us, and qualifiers which show us why we can’t understand God.
If we accept and use this approach we will fully appreciate and realise our relationship to God and this is what Ramsey calls ‘disclosure’.
We are coming to greater understanding/appreciation of God’s transcendent nature – how God is beyond our understanding.

AO2: Brummer’s critique of analogy

Brummer argues analogy only manages to express negative language.
He rejects proportion as a vehicle for meaning, since God’s infinite being makes all qualities beyond our understanding.
Attribution tries to resolve this.
If God’s love is analogous to human love, we can then meaningfully say that God has love proportional to his nature.
Brummer continues his objection; attribution only tells us God is the source of our qualities, not how God has those qualities.
E.g.,: asserting that water is ‘like’ electricity only seems meaningful because we know the two things on each side of the analogy and thus in what ways they are alike (current, flow, etc).
Brummer would say we can’t do that for God because we can’t know God..

Counter

However, Aquinas doesn’t ground analogy in empirical similarity, but in metaphysical relation.
Humans possess perfections as limited participations in the unlimited perfection of God.
The very perfection (e.g., of love) we know in ourselves on the human side of the analogy, is also in God on the other side, because God is its source and cause in us.
The quality we know in ourselves is a derivative and limited form of God’s quality.
So it’s not that God has a quality which has some unknowable likeness to ours.

Evaluation

So, Brummer fails to appreciate how analogy allows us to affirm that the very perfection signified by a term is truly present in God, in an infinite and non-human mode.
E.g., If love in humans means ‘willing the good’, Aquinas says God possesses this perfection infinitely.
Even if Aquinas’ participation metaphysics failed, leaving only a bare assertion that God is “somehow” like humans, that amounts to saying something positive about God.
This would still overcome Brummer’s critique.
Either way, although analogy cannot allow us to say much, it does achieve more than the via negativa while managing to respect God’s transcendent unknowability.

AO2: Barth vs Aquinas on natural theology

Aquinas justifies natural theology by reason’s source in the ‘imago dei’.
In Genesis, this distinguishes humans from animals.
We retain moral responsibility, which comes from reason.
In fact, we can’t coherently be sinful without responsibility.
So, we are still greater than animals, must retain God’s image, and with it something of reason’s essential integrity
Aquinas concludes human reason can know God’s existence (his 5 ways), God’s natural moral law and God’s attributes through analogy.

Counter:

Karl Barth critiqued natural theology as placing a dangerous overreliance on human reason.
Sin might not totally destroy reason, but it makes reason unreliable.
He said “The finite has no capacity for the infinite”.
Our finite minds cannot grasp God’s infinite nature.
It’s dangerous to use reason to know God. Mistakes will lead to a false view of God and worshipping the wrong thing, risking idolatry.
This can lead to the worship of human things like nations, fatherlands, which Barth argued contributed to Nazism.
Barth concluded we should solely rely on faith in the Bible.

Evaluation:

Barth is perceptive about reason’s downsides, but fails to balance this against the downsides of not using reason.
E.g., blind faith and superstition, which also risk error and idolatry.
Fallen humans have no risk-free approach.
Adam and Eve warn against the arrogance of total self-reliance, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t rely on our abilities at all.
Especially when they are the endurance of the divine image within us.
Aquinas shows appropriate humility in what he claims reason discovers:
Not the existence of the Christian God, merely an ‘unmoved mover’.
Not God’s eternal or divine moral law, just the natural law already within us.
Not God’s infinite nature, but some source of our qualities which holds them in an analogical and proportionally greater sense.
So, Aquinas represents an appropriate middle-ground between the extremes of avoiding reason verses overrelying on it.

AO1: Tillich’s theory of religious language as symbolic

Tillich claims that religious language is not literal – it doesn’t try to actually say what God is. Instead, it is symbolic.
Symbolic language tries to connect a person’s mind to a thing.
Religious language tries to connect a religious person’s mind to God – sort of like a religious experience.
So, when a religious person speaks or hears religious language like ‘God be with you’, their mind feels connected to God in that moment – and that’s how it is meaningful.
It’s not a literal description of what God is – that is impossible – it is more of an emotional/spiritual feeling.
Think about a Christian looking at at crucifix – they will feel connected to God in that moment – this is because a crucifix is a symbol for Jesus’ sacrifice. It has symbolic meaning – it connects a Christian’s mind to God.
Tillich is saying that hearing or speaking religious language is just like looking at a crucifix. It works by connecting your mind to God and feeling close to God.
The words of religious language are not meant to describe God – they are meant to connect our soul to God – that’s how they are meaningful.
Tillich’s theory of participation claims that symbols function by pointing to something beyond themselves which they participate in and thereby create a bridge for our soul to connect to that thing, e.g., to a higher spiritual reality.
Tillich says that God is a symbol – a symbol for the ‘ground of being’.
Religion is a symbol for our ‘ultimate concern’.
Tillich is an existentialist, meaning he thinks philosophical questions relate to our psychological experience.
Existentialist Christians think that religion is ultimately about and a way of navigating human experience, especially its most profound and meaningful aspects.
Religious language is not literal – it’s symbolic – it involves symbols which helps us to spiritually connect to the mystery of existence – the ground of being – which is our ultimate concern – the thing which matters most to humans.
Tillich’s insight is that we don’t need to understand God to be connected to God, which is what religious symbols do. If that’s how religious language works, it can be meaningful insofar as it participates in being-itself, i.e, in God.

AO1: Randall’s theory of symbolic religious language

Randall developed his own theory of symbolic language which was explicitly non-cognitive. Tillich’s theory had at least some seemingly cognitive elements to it, e.g. the participation of symbols in ‘being itself’ and the connecting of our souls to spiritual levels of reality.
Randall views symbols as completely subjective in our mind and thus non-cognitive.
Tillich is stuck with the perhaps impossible difficulty of explaining how he could possibly know that symbolic language has the spiritual power he thinks it does.
Randall thinks his theory is more convincing than Tillich’s because he just accepts that symbols involve feelings inside our mind.
Randall’s theory is more successful while still retaining the strengths of Tillich’s, that it accurately captures most religious meaning in the lives and experiences of Christians.
Randall makes an analogy between the power of music, art and poetry to affect us, arguing that religious language functions similarly. It doesn’t connect us to God or anything like that.
For Randall, symbols should not be understood as symbolising some external thing, they should be understood by what they do; by their “function”. Randall argues that symbols do four things:
1. Arouse emotions and motivate action
2. Stimulate cooperative action, bind community together
3. Communicate aspects of experience that cannot be expressed with literal language.
4. Evoke, foster and clarify human experience of the divine.

AO2: How successfully symbols capture religious meaning (Alston)

William Alston criticises Tillich for overlooking that religious language involves facts.
Religion is concerned with objective matters such as our salvation and afterlife.
Important Christian doctrines like heaven and hell have to be taken as factual truth claims, not as merely symbolic.
John Hick makes a similar point, that philosophical language about God (e.g., necessary being) is not symbolic.
We can add that Christians tend to think that when using religious language, they express beliefs about God which can be true or false. Cognitivism is a key element of religious meaning for many Christians. Tillich fails for not adequately accounting for the cognitive element of religious language.

Counter

However, the strength of symbols compared to other approaches is their capture of the spiritual depth expressed by everyday religious language.
Tillich’s existentialism prioritizes religious experience over abstract doctrine and philosophising, which can be disconnected from genuine spirituality.
For a Christian looking at a crucifix, their spiritual feelings are often the most important thing to them.
The strength of Tillich’s theory is that it captures the most important element of religious language: the spiritual feelings it evokes, not cold factual beliefs.

Evaluation

However, Tillich’s existentialism goes too far.
It’s a rightful corrective to the way spiritual experience was traditionally marginalised, due to fear of the Church losing its authority as the mediator between humanity and God.
However, like so many movements which are reactive, it goes too far in the other direction and fails to achieve a balanced synthesis.
What Tillich captures is only one important element.
Factual belief (e.g., in heaven and hell) is just as important to Christian believers.
In fact these beliefs entwine with spiritual feelings and orient their experience of hope, gratitude and love. These are not formless pure experiences but have intentionality, related to belief in God’s acting in history and promise of salvation in an afterlife.
Symbols thus fail to capture this cognitive element of religious language.

AO2: Issues around the subjectivity of symbols and ‘participation’ (Hick)

Tillich argues symbols are beyond the cognitive/non-cognitive distinction, neither factual nor emotive.
However, he goes on to claim symbols open up levels of reality and participate in them.
This is an ontological claim about how symbols relate to reality.
To Hick, this is incoherent. Ontological claims which must be cognitive.
Tillich refuses explanation because he insists the divine is beyond literal description.
So Hick concludes participation is an imprecise idea.
E.g., it’s not clearly explained exactly how a flag participates in the power and dignity of a nation, nor then religious symbols in God.
Furthermore, if all beings participates in God (the ground of being) as Tillich suggests, then there’s nothing special about religious symbols
So Tillich fails to explain how religious symbols could have special revelatory power and why they give access to the divine in a way other things do not.

Counter

Randall’s version of symbol avoids Hick’s critique because it abandons the idea of participation altogether.
For him, religious symbols do not connect us to a transcendent reality, but regulate culture and community by evoking shared emotions, moral guidance, and sustaining religious identity.
By treating symbols as purely non-cognitive, Randall avoids Hick’s demand for a metaphysical explanation.
He maintains that religious language can be meaningful and important without participating in any objective divine reality.

Evaluation

However, unanchoring symbols from reality causes other problems.
It collapses into theological anti-realism.
Without reference to anything beyond human practices, religion makes no truth claims and cannot amount to knowledge of God.
This radically contradicts most theist’s intended expression.
Without any transcendent reference point, symbols become unanchored and unstable.
Their meaning can shift arbitrarily with cultural changes, leaving no basis for distinguishing authentic development from distortion.
This fails to account for the long-term coherence of religious traditions.
Then, Randall cannot explain the authority and motivational force of religion.
Life-altering conversion, moral seriousness, and sacrificial commitment seem hard to ground if religious symbols are merely expressive cultural devices rather than engagements with a real transcendent source.
So, although Randall avoids Tillich’s ambiguities, he does so only by adopting a reductionism that fails to capture the truth-aiming, stability and spiritual depth of religious language.
Symbol thus manages to capture something about religious psychology and expression, but not its crucial truth-claim components.

AO1: Religious language as Myth

Jung – argued that religious myths often contain similar themes (e.g. creation stories, hero stories, good vs evil stories) – making them archetypal – meaning they tap into themes regarding human life – and are ways of helping us to make sense of our lives.
The true meaning of religious stories is an ancient method of helping people figure out how to live.
Integration of the shadow
Bultmann invented a theological approach to understanding the Bible called demythologisation.
The Gospel stories are mythic because they contain supernatural elements, such as the resurrection of Jesus, which Bultmann thinks are ‘impossible’ for modern scientifically-minded audiences to believe.
However, he thought literal belief in the Gospels was ‘pointless’ anyway, because the true meaning of Christianity could be found by figuring out what deeper truth the stories were attempting to convey.
The Gospel writers had experiences which they captured in mythological language popular in ancient civilisation.
What really matters is understanding those experiences so that Christians in the modern time can also be faced with the call to faith and an ethical way of life that the early Christians also faced.
So the Gospel stories need to be ‘demythologised’, their supernatural language replaced with an account of the deeper truths they were trying to convey.
For example:
The demythologisation of the creation story could be that God cares about us and has ethical standards for our lives.
The demythologisation of the good against evil; e.g. Jesus being tempted by satan – the real meaning of such stories is to emphasise the importance of not giving into the temptation to do immoral or evil actions.
The demythologisation of heroic myths: Jesus was a heroic like figure in his self-sacrifice on the cross and resurrection. The real meaning of the resurrection, however, is to symbolise the resurrection that takes place in the hearts of everyone who heard the kerygma – the first initial oral preaching that first spread Jesus’ life and teachings.
Myths like these are found in other religions too. E.g. the heroic myth robin hood, or even modern heroes like batman.
The purpose of myths is to express moral truths but also help people overcome fears of the unknown, by featuring difficult situations people may not have experienced in their life.

AO2: N. T. Wright’s criticism of Bultmann’s ‘demythologisation’

Wright argues that historical documents like the Gospels, do not merely and simply tell us something about the gospel writers and their experiences.
Wright insists that through their writing we can actually learn something about historical events.
So, Wright claims Bultmann goes too far when he reduces the meaning of the Gospels to mere expressions of deeper truths about how the writers felt.
Wright acknowledges there is some truth to that but claims that the Gospels actually do also tell us something about what happened in the past.

“Of course, in principle, writers who intend to write about other things than themselves will give you quite a lot of themselves en route, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t telling you about things that actually happened. Yes, you have to read them critically, but you have to be a realist as well. So critical realism.”
Critical means people always tell you something from their perspective
Realism means there is an objective reality we can learn about.
So the Bible stories are meant to convey deeper truths from the author’s perspective.
But, we can also learn about facts from history from the Bible – it’s not valid to reduce it all to myth.

Counter:

We can defend Bultmann by pointing out that Wright ignores Bultmann’s point about the historical unbelievability of supernatural miracle stories.
That is the problem with reading the gospels as historical documents.
Bultmann isn’t against the possibility of learning about real events from historical documents.
His point is that the gospels are not suitable for that because of their mythological elements.

Evaluation

This debate turns on the question of whether miracle stories could ever credibly be read as historical data.
Wright’s point is that Christianity is a historical religion because it’s about the incarnation which was supposed to be an event within history – not just a myth. God sent Jesus, 2000 years ago.
However, faith doesn’t need facts to justify it. So it shouldn’t matter whether Christianity has historical facts to back it up.
So Bultmann is wrong to think we shouldn’t believe in the resurrection, but Wright is wrong to think that we should use history to back it up.
This means the resurrection is not historically reliable, but Christians should still have faith that it was an event that happened in history.
So, we should not view the bible stories as just myths – Christians should have faith that they actually happened.
If Christian lacks a sense of the historical Jesus, then they are in danger of just believing in a fantasy, fooling themselves or having wishful thinking.
The Jesus of whom Christians are aware of in their prayer, who they meet when working with the poorest of the poor, who they recognize in the breaking of the bread is recognizably the Jesus who walked and talked and lived and died and rose again in the 1st century.

AO2: Bultmann vs subjectivity

Wright criticises Bultmann’s attempt to uproot Jesus from history.
Without a sense of the historical Jesus, Christians risk believing in a wishful fantasy.
Worse, they could be influenced by the politics of the time. Wright illustrates with the Nazis spreading their own version of Jesus, emphasizing his non-Jewishness.
So, which ‘deep truth’ Myths convey seems subjective.
Bultmann claims the resurrection demythologised refers to the rising of the early church and the moral and spiritual resurrection of all those who heard the kerygma it preached.
But that could just be his interpretation.
Anchoring in the historical Jesus protects against such subjectivity.
Wright concludes a historical approach enables the Jesus of whom Christians are aware of in prayer, who they meet when working with the poor, who they recognize in the eucharist, is recognizably the Jesus who walked and talked and lived and died and rose again in the 1st century.

Counter

Firstly, Bultmann’s interpretation of Jesus was clearly more convincing than the Nazi ‘theology’, which violated many biblical themes.
The resurrection connects to saving us from sin. So, it makes sense to demythologise it as referring to the resurrection in the moral lives of all those who heard and accepted kerygma.
That is true to the biblical themes involved in the resurrection. It’s not just Bultmann’s subjective opinion.

Evaluation

Furthermore, Bultmann’s use of existentialism frees his view from total subjectivity.
Bultmann’s approach is a valid reaction to the bible once modern scientific methods of analysis had emerged which casted doubt on its general validity.
One option is denying science and becoming literalists, but that is is anti-intellectual and ultimately blind faith.
The other extreme is the liberal approach of the subjective view of inspiration, but that leads to the relativism of infinite interpretations of Jesus.
Schliermacher was one of the first to reduce religion to the safer ground of religious experience in the face of enlightenment critique.
Bultmann adds Christian existentialism to this approach. There is a way for the spiritual experiences that inspired the bible authors to be encountered today and renewed in each generation.
This middle-ground has the advantage of not ignoring the past like the liberal approach, nor clinginging onto it as an absolute truth in a blind-faith anti-intellectual way.
Objectivity is impossible, total subjectivity is useless. Bultmann’s existentialist approach is inter-subjective, representing a balanced middle way.
One might still think Wright and Dodd’s historical approach could also be valid, but regardless they do fail in this critique of Bultmann’s approach as overly subjective.