OCR
Philosophy

This page contains A*/A grade level summary revision notes for the Religious language 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.

Via negativa claims the relationship is asymmetrical, so language must negate in order to purify.
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: Via Negativa (apophatic)

The Via Negaiva theory says we need to give up on saying what God is.
All we can meaningfully say is what God is not.
Negative language is meant to show us that God is beyond anything we could ever say.
By saying God is not darkness, we aren’t saying that God is light, since we can’t say or even imply anything about what God is.
We are saying that God is beyond the dark/light distinction completely.
Pseudo-Dionysius illustrates by imagining Moses’ ascending of Mount Sinai to receive the ten commandments from God.
The clouds at the top of the mountain illustrate how drawing closer to God through via negativa involves entering into the ‘cloud of unknowing’.
Accepting the Via Negativa view helps us to break free from our grasping for knowledge of God.
This causes an “inactivity of all knowledge” which leads one to be “supremely united to the completely unknown”.
By this, one “knows beyond the mind by knowing nothing”.
This is not knowledge in the sense of the mind understanding God; that is impossible.
It is knowledge gained through “unity” with God.

So for Dionysius, apophatic language is meaningful because it purifies and trains the soul into the right stance toward God.

AO2: Maimonides vs Brian Davies

Maimonides argues via negativa is superior to analogy.
He illustrates with two people being told what a ship is.
One hears positive analogies about what a ship is “like.”
But likeness cannot capture a thing’s distinctive form, risks anthropomorphic error, and does not bring them nearer to knowing what a ship essentially is.
The other hears negative descriptions; a ship is not mineral, plant, or spherical.
Such form-related negations progressively eliminate false essential possibilities and thus cumulatively advance understanding towards what a ship is.
Maimonides concludes accurate predicates of God function as negations.
We can progressively “come nearer” to the “knowledge and comprehension of God”.

Counter

Brian Davies objects that negative language only yields knowledge when possibilities are known.
E.g., for a human, negating left-handed and ambidextrous, leaves right-handed.
But, negating everything in the universe as predicates of God leaves no greater understanding.
The issue follows from Maimonides’ acceptance of Aristotelian epistemology, that knowledge requires grasping a thing’s essential form.
Negations can’t advance knowledge unless we know the possible options, yet God’s essence is unknowable.
Aquinas recognised developing Aristotle with a metaphysical link between us and God was needed.
Human qualities participate in God, granting the likeness required for analogy.
This gives indirect epistemic access to God, without claiming to grasp God’s essence.

Evaluation

However, Pseudo-Dionysius’ version of Via negativa is non-aristotelian and so avoids Davies’ critique.
He rejects conceptual knowledge altogether.
Negative language strips away our intellect’s arrogant and futile conceptualisations.
What remains is ‘unity’ with God.
We could call this mystical knowledge, involving direct but non-representational awareness.
In this sense, we can get ‘nearer’ to knowledge of God through negation.

AO2: Via Negativa vs the bible & Aquinas

The Bible is not consistent with Via Negativa.
E.g., the Bible says “God is love” and “God is spirit”. In Exodus God even describes himself in positive terms, saying “I … am a jealous God.”
The Aphophatic way seems unbiblical.

Counter

Pseudo-Dionysius argues that scripture just refers to the effect of God’s actions in the world, not God’s essence.
God is called love because he is the cause and source of love in humans and spirit because he gives life.
Dionysius understands causation in a neoplatonist way, where it implies participation.
So humans have perfections like love due to causal participation in what flows from God.
Each affirmation must then be “unsaid,” since God transcends human mode of being.

Evaluation

Yet this solution unwittingly opens the door to analogy.
Participation entails a metaphysical dependence on God, in virtue of which we have perfections.
This implies some formal likeness, however minimal.
Aquinas recognised that this entails formal likeness, however minimal.
Once predicates are grounded causally rather than arbitrarily, they cannot be purely equivocal.
So, the participation necessary to explain biblical God language leads to analogy.
Aquinas noted that negative language is not what people “want” when talking about God
We can strengthen this beyond an appeal to popularity.
Theories of religious language are ultimately about correctly capturing the nature of the relationship between God and humans, and the sort of linguistic connection which follows accordingly.
This allows the phenomenology of religious language to support Aquinas’s claim that participation grounds analogy.
The greater spiritual resonance of analogy is some further evidence that it discloses the degree of participation Dionysius thought impossible.

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.

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.

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.

Question preparation

Key paragraphs:

Via Negativa (Apophatic) – Pseudo-Dionysius (AO1)
Maimodenies vs Brian Davis (AO2)
Aquinas’ critique and the biblical critique of the via negativa (AO2)
Analogy (Cataphatic) (AO1)
Karl Barth’s critique of Aquinas (AO2)
Brummer’s critique of Analogy (AO2)
Symbol – Tillich (AO1)
Alston’s critique of symbol (AO2)
Hick’s critique of symbol (AO2)

Question types:

I can’t see how questions could be particularly complicated or unexpected for this topic!

Assess one of the three theories in particular
Critically compare two of the theories
whether or not the apophatic (via negativa) way enables effective understanding of theological discussion
whether or not Aquinas’ analogical approaches support effective expression of
language about God
whether or not religious discourse is comprehensible if religious language is understood as symbolic

Just remember if using one theory to attack another which is the focus of the question – it’s important to make sure your evaluation of the attacking theory is related to the theory in the question.

E.g., if using symbol to evaluate Analogy – Alston & Hick’s critiques show the importance of objective standardly cognitive language about God, which Tillich (they argue) fails to incorporate, yet Aquinas would not have that problem because he isn’t trying to reduce religious meaning to purely symbols.