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 identifies a problem for positive religious language.
- Univocal language fails because we are not the same as God, so words cannot have exactly the same meaning.
- Equivocal language fails because it gives words completely different meanings, making them meaningless when applied to God.
- Aquinas proposes analogy as a middle way.
- We are not identical to God, but nor are we totally different.
- We are like God, so our qualities are analogous to God’s.
- Analogical language takes something understood (human qualities) and uses it to speak about something less understood (God).
- We understand human goodness or love and can use these as analogies for God’s qualities.
- Genesis supports this by claiming humans are made in God’s image and likeness.
- Aquinas develops two types of analogy.
- Analogy of attribution: we can infer qualities in a source from its effects.
- For example, healthy urine indicates a healthy body.
- Similarly, human goodness and love reflect God as their ultimate source.
- Analogy of proportion: a being has qualities in proportion to its nature.
- A virus has life, plants have life, humans have life, and God has life in an infinite way.
- So, God’s qualities are like ours but proportionally greater.
- This allows meaningful language about God while recognising that God is beyond full human understanding.
- Ian Ramsey develops analogy further.
- He introduces the idea of disclosure, where something previously hidden is made known.
- A model is something familiar used to understand something less familiar.
- For example, human goodness can be used as a model for understanding God.
- A qualifier adds depth and prevents misunderstanding.
- In “God is infinitely good”, “good” is the model and “infinitely” is the qualifier.
- The qualifier avoids reducing God to human standards.
- Using models and qualifiers allows meaningful language while preserving divine transcendence.
- This leads to disclosure, where we gain a deeper appreciation of God’s nature.
AO2: Brummer’s critique of analogy
- Brummer argues analogy fails to express meaningful positive language about God.
- He claims proportion does not work, since God’s infinite nature places divine qualities beyond our understanding.
- Attribution tries to fix this by saying God is the source of qualities like love.
- However, Brummer argues this only shows where qualities come from, not how God possesses them.
- Analogies only work when we understand both sides, but we cannot know God in that way.
Counter
- Aquinas argues analogy is grounded in a real metaphysical relation, not surface similarity.
- Human qualities are limited participations in God’s unlimited perfection.
- So when we speak of love, the same perfection exists in both God and humans.
- Human love is a limited form of divine love.
- This allows us to speak meaningfully about God without claiming full understanding.
Evaluation
- Brummer underestimates how analogy secures genuine meaning.
- If human qualities come from God, then talking about our qualities really is talking about God’s qualities, it’s just that God has those qualities infinitely.
- E.g., If love in humans means ‘willing the good’, Aquinas says God possesses this perfection infinitely.
- Aquinas’ account allows us to say something positive, even if imperfectly.
- For example, if love means willing the good, then God possesses this perfectly.
- So analogy does more than via negativa, which removes content entirely.
- It preserves meaning while recognising God’s transcendence, making it the stronger approach.
AO2: Barth vs Aquinas on natural theology
- Aquinas justifies natural theology through the idea that human reason reflects the imago dei.
- Humans retain moral responsibility, which depends on reason.
- If we can be held responsible for sin, our reason must still function.
- So, we retain something of God’s image.
- Aquinas concludes that reason can know God’s existence, moral law, and attributes through analogy.
Counter
- Barth criticises this as overconfidence in human reason.
- Sin may not destroy reason, but it makes it unreliable.
- Finite human minds cannot grasp an infinite God.
- Using reason risks forming false ideas of God and committing idolatry.
- Barth links this danger to history, arguing misuse of reason contributed to ideologies like Nazism.
- He concludes we should rely on revelation in scripture instead.
Evaluation
- Barth rightly highlights the dangers of relying on reason, but his solution goes too far.
- Rejecting reason entirely creates its own risks, such as blind faith and superstition.
- Humans cannot avoid error, so the issue is how to use reason carefully, not abandon it.
- Aquinas offers a more balanced approach.
- He limits what reason can achieve, arguing it only shows a basic first cause, not the full Christian God.
- He also restricts knowledge of God’s nature to analogy.
- This shows humility about reason’s limits while still using it responsibly.
- So Aquinas provides a more convincing middle ground than Barth’s rejection of natural theology.
AO1: Religious language as symbolic
- Alston criticises Tillich for ignoring the factual element of religious language.
- Religion involves objective claims about salvation and the afterlife.
- Doctrines like heaven and hell are treated as truth claims, not just symbols.
- Hick makes a similar point, noting that philosophical language about God is not symbolic.
- Christians generally treat religious statements as beliefs that can be true or false.
- So, Tillich fails to account for this cognitive dimension of religious language.
Counter
- However, symbols capture the spiritual depth of religious language.
- Tillich’s existentialism prioritises lived experience over abstract doctrine.
- For many believers, the emotional and spiritual response is central.
- For example, a Christian viewing a crucifix may feel a deep connection to God.
- This shows religious language functions to evoke meaning, not just describe facts.
- Tillich’s theory captures this important experiential aspect.
Evaluation
- However, Tillich’s account is one-sided.
- While he rightly restores the importance of spiritual experience, he neglects the role of belief.
- For many Christians, doctrines like heaven, hell, and salvation are central and treated as factual.
- These beliefs shape and direct religious experience, rather than being separate from it.
- Spiritual feelings are not empty but are about something, namely God’s actions and promises.
- So, reducing religious language to symbols strips away this cognitive content.
- A more convincing view must include both experience and belief.
- Therefore, Tillich’s theory fails to fully capture religious meaning.
AO2: How successfully symbols capture religious meaning
- Alston criticises Tillich for ignoring the factual element of religious language.
- Religion involves objective claims about salvation and the afterlife.
- Doctrines like heaven and hell are treated as truth claims, not just symbols.
- Hick makes a similar point, noting that philosophical language about God is not symbolic.
- Christians generally treat religious statements as beliefs that can be true or false.
- So, Tillich fails to account for this cognitive dimension of religious language.
Counter
- However, symbols capture the spiritual depth of religious language.
- Tillich’s existentialism prioritises lived experience over abstract doctrine.
- For many believers, the emotional and spiritual response is central.
- For example, a Christian viewing a crucifix may feel a deep connection to God.
- This shows religious language functions to evoke meaning, not just describe facts.
- Tillich’s theory captures this important experiential aspect.
Evaluation
- However, Tillich’s account is one-sided.
- While he rightly restores the importance of spiritual experience, he neglects the role of belief.
- For many Christians, doctrines like heaven, hell, and salvation are central and treated as factual.
- These beliefs shape and direct religious experience, rather than being separate from it.
- Spiritual feelings are not empty but are about something, namely God’s actions and promises.
- So, reducing religious language to symbols strips away this cognitive content.
- A more convincing view must include both experience and belief.
- Therefore, Tillich’s theory fails to fully capture religious meaning.
AO2: Issues around the subjectivity of symbols and ‘participation’
- Tillich claims symbols are beyond the cognitive/non-cognitive distinction, yet also says they participate in reality.
- This implies an ontological claim about how symbols relate to God.
- Hick argues this is incoherent, since ontological claims must be cognitive.
- Tillich refuses to explain participation because God is beyond literal description.
- So Hick concludes the idea is vague and unclear.
- It is not obvious how symbols participate in reality, especially if everything already participates in God.
Counter
- Randall avoids this problem by rejecting participation altogether.
- He argues symbols do not connect us to a transcendent reality.
- Instead, they function within human culture by shaping emotions, moral behaviour, and social identity.
- By treating symbols as non-cognitive, Randall avoids the need for metaphysical explanation.
- Religious language can still be meaningful as a cultural practice.
Evaluation
- However, this solution comes at too high a cost.
- By removing any reference to reality beyond human culture, Randall collapses religion into anti-realism.
- Religious claims are no longer truth-apt, which conflicts with how most believers understand their faith.
- It also makes religious meaning unstable, since symbols can shift with cultural change.
- There is then no clear way to distinguish genuine development from distortion.
- This weakens religion’s explanatory power, especially regarding commitment, sacrifice, and conversion.
- Tillich at least attempts to preserve truth through participation, even if imperfectly.
- So while Hick is right that participation is unclear, Randall’s alternative fails more seriously by abandoning truth altogether.
AO1: Religious language as Myth
- Religious language can be understood as myth: a non-cognitive form of expression that does not aim to describe factual reality, but to communicate values, meanings, and insights into the purpose of existence.
- Myths are not simply false stories, but meaningful narratives that shape how humans understand themselves and their place in the world.
- Different forms of myth convey meaning in distinct ways.
- Creation myths explain the origin and purpose of the world, giving humans a sense of place within a wider order.
- Myths of good versus evil frame moral conflict and guide ethical behaviour.
- Heroic myths model virtues such as courage and sacrifice.
- In this way, myths transmit religious and ethical values across generations and help people make sense of suffering and uncertainty.
- Jung argued that religious myths are archetypal, sharing recurring themes such as creation, fall, and redemption.
- These reflect universal features of human life and the human psyche.
- Myths therefore help individuals make sense of their existence and integrate aspects of the self, such as the shadow.
- Bultmann developed a theological account of myth through demythologisation.
- He argued that the New Testament uses mythological language, such as miracles and the resurrection, which modern audiences struggle to accept literally.
- However, these myths are not intended as historical reports, but express the impact of the kerygma, the original proclamation of the apostles.
- Early Christians experienced this as a call to repentance and transformation.
- The Gospel writers expressed this through mythological narratives.
- For example, the resurrection symbolises inner renewal and a transformed life.
- Influenced by existentialism, Bultmann argued that myths communicate truths about human existence, including our finitude and openness to transcendence.
- Demythologisation seeks to uncover these meanings so modern believers can encounter the same existential call.
AO2: Historicism vs Bultmann on inspiration
- Wright and Dodd aim for a middle ground between blind faith and Bultmann’s mythological view.
- They accept human influence on scripture but maintain it still gives access to divine reality.
- Wright’s critical realism holds that knowledge is mediated yet still refers to reality.
- His historical methods aim to identify reliable elements within the text.
- Dodd appeals to early tradition to support this.
- Together, they argue scripture can provide partial knowledge of God.
Counter
- However, this approach can be challenged.
- If historical methods support Christianity, they must also support other religions with historical figures like the Buddha or Muhammad.
- Yet these traditions make conflicting truth claims.
- So historical methods seem unable to distinguish which religion is true.
- At best, they show that people believed certain things, not that those beliefs are correct.
- This supports Bultmann’s view that scripture reflects human experience rather than divine reality.
Evaluation
- This shows a key weakness in Wright and Dodd’s approach.
- Historical methods can establish that early Christians believed in events like the resurrection, but not that these events actually occurred.
- The same applies to other religions, which weakens their ability to support Christian truth claims specifically.
- So historicism is underdetermined for its purpose.
- It explains how beliefs arise and spread, but not whether they are true.
- This makes scripture better understood as expressing theological meaning rather than reporting divine action.
- Bultmann’s demythologising approach therefore provides a more consistent and philosophically defensible account.
AO2: Bultmann vs subjectivity
- Wright criticises Bultmann for removing Jesus from history.
- Without a historical basis, faith risks becoming wishful thinking.
- It may also be shaped by contemporary agendas, such as Nazi reinterpretations of Jesus.
- If myths express ‘deep truths’, it becomes unclear which interpretations are correct.
- Wright argues grounding faith in history avoids this.
- It ensures the Jesus encountered in worship is the same Jesus who lived in the 1st century.
Counter
- However, Bultmann’s approach is not simply more subjective.
- The Enlightenment created a dilemma between blind literalism and pure subjectivism.
- Both Wright and Bultmann attempt a middle ground.
- Wright leans toward objectivity through history, while Bultmann focuses on shared religious experience.
- For Bultmann, meaning is shaped by the kerygma and communal interpretation.
- This provides some structure and avoids complete relativism.
Evaluation
- Wright’s criticism is overstated.
- Bultmann’s approach is not arbitrary, since interpretation is guided by core New Testament themes.
- For example, the resurrection is consistently linked to transformation and salvation.
- So interpreting it as moral and spiritual renewal is coherent.
- Bultmann avoids both extremes of ignoring the resurrection or accepting it uncritically.
- His approach preserves its religious significance without relying on uncertain historical claims.
- Wright’s insistence on historical grounding risks tying faith to evidence that can be challenged.
- This makes belief vulnerable to doubt, whereas Bultmann preserves its core meaning.
- So Bultmann offers a more stable and philosophically defensible account.