other views on religious lang Flashcards
religious language as analogical - aquinas
- aquinas’ doctrine of analogy follows his rejection of both univocal and equivocal language to describe God
- univocal -> if it means exactly same thing each time, example : if describing a coat and lump of coal as black the word black is being used univocally - equivocal - if it means diff when used in diff situations, example : use word bat to describe thing used to hit a cricket ball and a flying mammal
issues on using words like ‘good, loving and merciful’ to talk about humans and God
- univocal language will limit God as makes him too much like ordinary things
-if we use word equivocally nothing will be conveyed - example : if you claim univocally that God is loving in same way people are loving then you run into issue that God has no means of expressing love
analogy of attribution
God is completely different from universe but there is a causal relationship between universe and God
HEALTHY BULL :
- health of bull’s urine relates to colour, smells and taste the health of bull is completely different though but the two are linked as bull produces urine
VANESSA & GOD :
- God created Vanessa so God casually responsible for goodness, wisdom and love in her
- similarly, God is good, wise and loving and Vanessa also is
- doesn’t mean that God’s goodness, wisdom and love are magnified versions of vanessa’s but God has what it takes to produce these qualities in her
conclusions from analogy of attribution
- though we have no clue what it means for God to be good, the assertion god is good is meaningful
- aquinas’ analogy of attribution seems to solve the problem. to say God is love, judge or king it means god has what it takes to produce these attributes in someone
how does hick use the analogy of faithfulness between a human and a dog
- analogy is downwards in sense that there’s a big difference between canine faithfulness & faithfulness in humans as later is based on self-conscious deliberation a quality dogs don’t have
- can also make it upwards to faithfulness of God, but this time the analogy is reversed, faithfulness in humans is at best a remote approximation to faithfulness or any other quality in God
ramsey’s view on analogy
- a ‘model’ is a word that has a straightforward meaning when applied to ordinary things we experience but can be used to describe God
-> example : we know what it means to be a ‘creator’ by analogy so we can use this word as a model for describing god - shouldn’t be misunderstood & used univocally of God so a qualifer is needed
-> example : we may speak of an ‘infinite’ creator so ‘creator’ is model and ‘infinite’ a qualifier - a corresponding commitment comes from god in form of a disclosure where everyday empirical experiences take on a new depth/meaning for believers
strength
- a literal, univocal language is going to be inadequate to talk about God since it doesn’t take into account God’s transcendence but tends to reduce him to status of one thing among many. analogy avoids this
- religious experiences often takes a person beyond words but in seeking to describe what they have experienced they need to use words but recognise that they need to push beyond their ordinary, limited meaning and analogy does this very well
weakness
- others disagree with whole idea of analogy on grounds that in order for both analogy of attribution/proportionality to work effectively you have to have prior knowledge of god. you can only show a proportional relationship if you know both things are to be compared and hick’s account of proportionality analogy isnt really proportional at all
- some object that the analogy of attribution can be used to prove that God is evil because is we say ‘god has what it takes to produce goodness in humans’ we can also say that he has what it takes to produce evil in humans. COUNTER : aquinas said evil isn’t a thing itself but an absence of good so god cannot be accused of bringing evil
