Religious Language

Religious Language

1. Plato

   • spoken words correspond to ther forms, written language is even further away from 'reality'.

2. Aristotle: use language to gain knowledge of whats around you and to categorize things, literal language is superior to symbol/myth/metaphor.

   • Univocally--------- Analogically--------- Equivocally
     • One meaning, Coals are hot, Cake is hot, I am hot.
     • Different sense of meaning; Cricket bat, Nocturnal bat.
     • Comparison made: Rock is unchanging, God is a rock/
       • Aquinas, Analogy of attribution and Analogy of proportionality.
         • Attribution: medicine is 'healthy' because is causes 'health', Similarly, God is 'love' because he is the cause of 'love'. You can attribute worlds to God because he causes them.
           • As God is the cause of everything, he is the cause of evil. Therefore as you can attribute words to God as he is the cause of them, God is evil, is allowed. But Aquinas believed nothing to be evil, 'bad' things are just a privation of the good - 'privatio boni', but this then suggests God is a privation of the good, which in other words means he is not perfect, not all good, which goes against Aquinas's (and most deifintions) of God.
           • Furthermore, God created Humans/ Lion, is God therefore a Human/ Lion, arguably he has all the attributions he gave Humans/ Lions, but is he really cuddly, soft, hairy, or more strong and powerful as a Lion?!
             • Due to this criticism, Aquinas altered his argument, he states that terms capable of infinite expansion are superior to those constrained to finitude. God is infinite.
         • Proportionality: God is 'good' in proportion to God's nature, Man is 'good' in proportion to man's nature.
           • Metaphor: Referring to God without the use of description. Janet Sockice: 3 Theories of metaphors: Substitution theory, the metaphor adds colour and interest to the theory. Emotive theory, the metaphor is intended to have an emotional impact on the reader. Incremental theory, the metaphor is the only way to refer to the unique object of God. Cognitive but not univocal, to create and impression.
           • Relies on the fundamental recognition of God's ontological difference
             • Dan Stiver: Aquinas places too much trust in the 'wider analogy of being' between God and people.

3. Via Negativa/ Apophatic way- emphasises the difference between God and humanity.

   • Cannot say God is the Father/Shepard, because it gives people the wrong idea and could convey the wrong meaning. God is invisible, timeless, and inaccessable.
     • Anthony Flew: by describing God as invisible, timeless etc there's not much difference between this description of God and the description of nothingness.
       • Can only speak in negative terms if we have a prior knowledge, otherwise it means nothing, 'White is not black'- what is black?! If God is outside our experience, he cannot be reached by process of elimination.
   • Cannot say 'God is love' because we think of human love, with all its flaws and inconsistencies. Better to accept the mysteries of God than having flawed concepts.
   • Pseudo- Dionysius the Aeropagite
     • God is beyond all understanding and imagination. The need for the soul to become unified with God by going beyond the Realms of sensory experience. (God is beyond knowledge- Aquinas).
     • It's counter-productive to speak of God as though he could be encountered by our senses or through reason. Only through the recognition of limits of humanity that spiritual progress can be made. He claims we have to stop trying to find logically answers to everything, and allow God to speak to us through our stillness- otherwise you end up with an idea of God which is too small.
   • Moses Maimonides
     • If you move from what God is not, you will have a better understanding of what God is.
       • Ship example: Ship is: not a plant, not a human, not natural, not flat, not spherical, not pointed.......... It's a ship. In the same manner, it is possible to come to a better understanding of what God is by the negative attributes.
         • Davies: He could also be thinking of a wardrobe. By this process of elimination, we need to know what we have before we start, in order to know what we have when everything else has been crossed off. So it will not work for someone who has begun with knowing nothing of God.
   • in Bhuddism: conveys central beliefs that are difficult to describe otherwise. eg Nirvana.

4. Myth: may not be historically accurate, but they convey truth claims that are difficult to express otherwise.

   • Myths can convey the power of God and his purpose within Creation. 'aetiological' myths: explain the origins of puzzling features of the world. Can understand that important truths are being communicated, but not necessarily historically true. Others believe them to be historically true.
     • Evolution: advances in science are producing evidence that contradicts the Bible. Perhaps the stories we never intended to be taken literally.
       • Rudolf Bultmann: New Testament writers were never trying to make accurate accounts of history, they expressed their beliefs through myths. Bultmann emphasises the need for individuals to made personal decision about the direction they wanted in relation to God.
         • the modern, inteligent person can not take seriously the supernatural events of Myths, this not mean Christianity must be rejected. Bultmann advocated 'demythologising'; this enables Christianity to hold its place in a fast-changing world.
         • Christianity: Some central beliefs should be taken seriously. For example; the virgin birth, the physical resurrection of Jesus. Otherwise religion is no more than advice to be nice to people, the scientific way is not always the best/ only way of understanding truths.
     • Genesis: intelligent/ rational people see them to be myths so can continue their faith while accepting scientific discoveries.

5. Symbol

   • Paul Tillich: Signs: are chosen by the people to stand for something else, as long as we agree on the meaning it does not matter what form they take. Eg: mathematical signs, +-= etc. Symbol: it participates in the object it is representing. Eg: National Flag; evokes feelings of loyalty whilst symbolizing the country.
     • All religious ideas/language are symbolic, they point beyond themselves to the 'Being'.
   • John Macquarrie: A symbol is anything thatis presented to the mind as standing for something else. He distinguishes between two types of symbols, Conventional and Intrinsic. Conventional is one that we have assigned a meaning to, eg +-=. Intrinsic is one that has a 'kinship' with what it symbolises.
     • These are not distinct categories: they provoke existential response and an understanding in terms of similarity of relation.
       • Different symbols compliment each other, not a case of only one of them being true, they can show different aspects of the truth.
         • It could be suggested that symbols can only be understood within restricted communities (Wittgenstein's language games). People need to have the same presuppositions/beliefs. However, some are similar of all religions, eg- Light=God
     • Existential Response: the symbol reminds us of feelings, we recognise that we should have the same feelings to God. eg, Water- cleansing, baptism.
     • Similarity of relation: symbol works similarly to analogies, The sheep is to the Shepard, as we are to God.

6. The Verification Principle

   • Auguste Comte: There was an era where God was the answer to everything/anythings, then followed the era where philosophical concepts replaced God is filling the gaps of science, and now, is the era where the only useful evidence comes from our senses.
     • Empirical evidence is the key to understanding what is/is not meaningful.
   • A.J.Ayer. Language, Truth and Logic
     • Statements are only meaningful if they are analytically true or synthetically verifiable.
       • Analytical statements: analytically true by definition, a bachelor is an unmarried man, a triangle has three sides. Tautologies: the same thing is said twice; ice is icy, 3x4=12.
         • Doesn't allow you to speak meaningfully of your emotions. 'I am scared for my exam tomorrow', means nothing as it cannot be synthetically verified and it is not analytically true.
           • Ayer's emotivism, expressions of emotions are not meaningful, they are simply approving or disapproving of a situation. 'I like cake'- simply expressing positive feeling towards cake, eg, Cake, Hoorah!
       • Synthetically statements: synthetically verifiable through use of our senses.
         • Scientific discoveries are not always synthetically verifiable, Black holes cannot be verified through use of our senses.
       • DOES NOT PASS ITS OWN TEST: Repudiation.
         • cannot be defined through sense experience, not analytically true. It gives a new meaning to the word 'meaningful' which is not necessarily true.
       • Hick: religious truth claims are eschatalogically verifiable, after death we will see.
   • Waismann
     • We have to know the meaning of statements to know under which conditions it is true/false, otherwise it is meaningless.

7. The Falsification Principle

   • Flew: statements should be falsifiable. John Wisdom: Gardener: why is an invisible gardener different to an imaginary gardener or no gardener at all?! God is never present, how is he different to an imaginary God or no God at all.
     • The believer modifies God so much that eventually there is nothing left of the original assertion; in the end the believers say nothing meaningful at all.
     • Flew: for a statement to any meaning, it has to assert something and at the same time deny the opposite of the assertion. eg, x is y... x is not not y. e2, i am standing on a mountain... I am not sitting on a beach.
   • Capitulation
     • R.M. Hare; bliks. A blik is an unfalsifiable conviction that we are all born with. We all have our own bliks which we approach the world and make judgements with. Religious language is meaningful because it shapes the way someone lives.
       • C. Stephan Evans; not coherent, Hare talks of bliks being right/wrong or sane/insane, how do we know how to judge them if they are unfalsifiable.
     • Braithwaite: religious statements are not cognitive assertions, but can still be meaningful.
     • Stevenson: when you say 'I disapprove' you are really saying 'I disapprove so you should too'. Applies this to religion 'I think God created the world, so you should too'. Non-cognitive meaning.
   • Accomodation
     • Basil Mitchell: problem of evil acts as a falsification of God. But faith makes people still believe. Parable of the partisan stranger: He will not put the stranger to the test, everything he does is 'out of love' as 'he knows best'. The partisan has based his beliefs on a personal encounter and evaluation.
     • Hick: future veification, celestial city. Christianity is verifiable if true, but not falsifiable if false.

8. Wittgenstein, Language Games

   • "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent."
   • Influenced Logical Positivist and Vienna Circle in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, but later though that he was wrong about the limitations of the meaningfulness of language, and his criteria for determining meaningfulness has been too narrow.
     • D.Z. Phillips:religious language is just a way of defining the rules of the game of religion. 'God is love' is a way of showing how the word God is to be used. Religious Language is meaningful to those who genuinely use it, does not need to be justified to those within that game.
       • Peter Donovan: the more people that participate, the more developed the language becomes.
       • Philips: there must be a link between religious language and other areas of human experience, otherwise religious language becomes esoteric (only understood by a small amount of people with specific knowledge) and is therefore no more useful than an invented private language.
     • Diesn't provide any firm grounds for deciding between meanings, or truth claims, since oncec can always claim that they are playing a different language game.
       • But if other people (within the game) understand and what they are saying carries meaning to them, then they are within a different language game.
       • As nothing is objectively meaningful, then why does it matter?.. If someone says 'murder isn't wrong', thats fine, within that language game they believe murder not to be wrong, but as it has no objective truth it doesn't matter.
         • Young children making up languages, within that game the words carry meaning to the members, however means nothing to anyone else.
     • "Don't ask for the meaning, ask for the use"
     • 'Jesus sacrifced his life for our sins'- within a religious community, this is meaningful, but to a non-believer, this is meaningless as they are not in the language game of religion.
       • Religious language is a 'self-contained language game'.
   • Pictures-------------------------------------------------------- Tools. Words represent reality --- words have different tasks. Concerned with meaning -- Concerned with usage. Cognitive-------- Non-cognitive