Evaluation

Question 1

Strength of Apophatic way (respectful)

Answer 1

Apophatic way is more respectful approach as it recognises that God is transcendent and wholly other to a human realm.

Question 2

Strength of Apophatic way (prevent)

Answer 2

Any language used by humans reduces God to a human level. Apophatic way prevents anthropomorphic representations of God.

Question 3

Strength of Apophatic way (Experience)

Answer 3

Fits with religious experience and mysticism. William James observes that religious experiences are ineffable; they cannot be described in ordinary language.

Question 4

Weakness of Apophatic (W.R Inge) Dean of St Paul’s

Answer 4

Apophatic leads to an “annihilation of God” where we lose connection between God and world. Backed up by Flew on falsification.

Question 5

Weakness of Apophatic (bible)

Answer 5

Not a true reflection of how religious believers speak or think about God. Scriptures of all major faiths describe God in positive terms. e.g Psalms - The lord is my Shepard.

Question 6

Weakness of Apophatic (Gospel)

Answer 6

Believer has no means of communicating with the non believer about the subject of God - cannot spread Gospel

Question 7

Limitation of Maimonides

Answer 7

Limited knowledge - not clear that a ship can be described in the way he maintains e.g could be a coffin or something

Question 8

Strength of Cataphatic way (avoids errors)

Answer 8

Not univocal so avoids anthropmorphically of God

Not equivocal so avoids agnosticism

Question 9

Strength of cataphatic way (positive)

Answer 9

Religious believers are more inclined to take positively about God.

Question 10

Strength of cataphatic way (Jesus)

Answer 10

Jesus used analogy to help us describe God, E.g he began with the phrase “the Kingdom of God is like”

Question 11

Weakness of cataphatic way (subjective)

Answer 11

Theory of analogy does allow some picturing in a way that the via negativa does not but danger comes on individual level. “God is my Shepard” may be imagined and understood differently by different people

Question 12

Strength of symbols (preserving)

Answer 12

Preserves transcendence and mystery of God in a way that analogical does not

Question 13

Strength of symbols (risk)

Answer 13

To say that God is good having a similar use to ours reduces him to our level - symbols avoids this

Question 14

Strengths of symbols (change)

Answer 14

Symbols can change with time may be a strength as it ensures that the message remains relevant to its changing cultural context

Question 15

Strength of symbols (Tillich and communication)

Answer 15

Tillich’s insight that symbols are able to communicate deeply in a way that ordinary language cannot (ineffable) beyond words

Question 16

Weakness of Symbol (Randall)

Answer 16

JH Randall argues that symbols are non cognitive and provide no information about God

Question 17

Weakness of symbol (change)

Answer 17

As symbols are culturally dependent and change overtime may mean that our ideas of God will change over time or be misinterpreted - Hijacked

Question 18

Weakness of symbol (Hick)

Answer 18

John Hick has accused Tillich’s notion that a symbol ‘participates in that to which it points’ as Tillich doesn’t explain precisely what he means by ‘participation’. What precisely is the participating symbol in the sentence ‘God is Love’? Is it the entire proposition or is it the underlying concept of the loving nature of God? How can we participate in this way is we do not know what we’re participating with? This makes Symbol wholly inadequate.