Forms of religious language - Via Negative Flashcards
What did Pseudo-Dionysius say about God?
God is unknowable because he is so far out of this world. He was a mystic.
What did Pseudo-Dionysius say about the soul?
Believed that the soul needed to be unified with God and go beyond senses and reason and when it did this it would then be in a “cloud of unknowing”. Felt that the senses held back the soul search for God.
What did Pseudo-Dionysius say about the Via Positive?
It is not productive - it is not productive to speak of God through our sense and reason. Humans are limited.
What did Pseudo-Dionysius say about talking of God?
The only way you can talk of God is to talk of what God is not e.g. timeless, spaceless, immutable.
What did Maimonides say about the Via Negative?
If you don’t use negatives then you will lose faith in God. Through using 10 easy negative you can arrive at what you are talking about - ship example
What does Kierkegaard say?
‘If this turns wine into water’ - thinking you can know God and speak positively of him, takes away the mystery of God.
What do you need in order to use the Via Negative?
Need to have a concept of what God is in order to be able to talk about what God isn’t.
What equivocal problem does the via negative still face?
Doesn’t necessarily lead to the same outcome.
What does Davies say about the Via Negative?
It is unreasonable to say that someone who has all the negations mentioned in it “has almost arrived at the correct notion of a ‘ship’”. He could equally well be thinking of a wardrobe or a coffin.
What does Flew say about the Via Negative?
If we try to explain God by saying that he is invisible soundless incorporeal, etc. There is very little difference between our definition of God and our definition of nothingness.
Why does Maimonides argue God is different to everything, there is no relationship between God and his creations?
God has a necessary existence, while that which is other than He has a possible or contingent existence. There accordingly can be no correlation between them. The exclusive and absolute distinction between God and what is not God logically rules out of Maimonides even any analogical predication.
Give Maimonides quote about our knowledge of God.
“our knowledge [of Him] consists in our knowledge that we are unable to apprehend Him”
Give Aquinas’ quote about the via negative.
“Since we cannot know what god is, but rather that he is not, we cannot consider how He is but how He is not”
What does Aquinas say about the via negative maintaining the mystery of God (Quote)?
“Through negations, when we have a proper knowledge of a thing, we know that it is distinct from other things, yet what it is remains unknown”
How does George Englebretsen criticise the via negative?
“If all we ever know of a subject is that certain attributes are denied of it…we will never know anything about that subject.”
