Religious language Flashcards
religious language: negative, analogical or symbolic
Apophatic way/ Via Negativa
-involves speaking of God in negative terms, emphasising the difference between God and humanity
-example, God is immortal
-statements of fact
-any description that gives God positive attributes are misleading
-even saying ‘God is love’ makes people think of human love which is limited
-it is better to accept the mysteries of God than to try to pin God down using flawed concepts
Pseudo-Dionysius
-was a mystic and Christian
-argued that Via Negativa is the only way to speak truthfully about God as God is beyond all understanding and imagination
-wrote about need of the soul to become unified with God (religious experience) and how physical body and spiritual soul are divided, soul is held back by body (Plato)
-counterproductive to speak of God as though God can be perceived by the senses or reached by reason, go beyond these and enter ‘cloud of unknowing’
-people who seek God should put away their need to have the answers to everything, allows God to speak of them, accepting that God will remain a mystery
supporters of Via Negative
-Moses Maimonides – the best way to convey an accurate understanding of the nature of God is to explain what God is not
-can move closer to what God is, without limiting God in their limited human thoughts
-Buddhists texts, convey central beliefs, the nature of nirvana and the nature of Buddha
-use via negative to convey the essence of ultimate reality, cannot be described except as the negation of things we know from the physical world
Moses Maimonides
-‘the Guide for the Perplexed’
-uses the example of a ship
-the best way to convey an accurate understanding of the nature of God is to explain what God is not
-can move closer to what God is, without limiting God in their limited human thoughts
Brian Davies
-‘An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion’
-criticises Maimonides and his ‘ship’ example
-“only saying what something is not gives no indication of what it actually is, and if one can only say what God is not, one cannot understand him at all”
-imagine there is something in my room and suppose i reject every suggestion you make as to what is actually there = you will get no idea at all about what is in my room
-says that it is “unreasonable” to assume that the person arrives at the notion of a ship when equally they could “be thinking of a wardrobe”
-concludes that Maimonides method of arriving at the ‘right answer’ is unlikely to lead people in the right direction at all
further problems of Via Negativa
-against Maimonides: someone will gain understanding via elimination, because we need to know before hand what the different possibilities are, can know what we have left when alternatives have been crossed off
-Via Negativa might not work for someone who begins by knowing nothing about God
Cataphatic way/ Via Positiva: analogy
-analogy – form of reasoning or explanation in which a comparison is made between two different things based on their similarities
analogy - Freud quote
-“Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home”
-while analogies don’t provide definitive proof or conclusions, they help people understand complex ideas by making them feel more familiar and relatable
Aquinas
-cannot say anything positive that is literally true of God because ordinary human language automatically limits God, placing his attributes only within our experience and understanding
-via eminentiae (the way of eminence), show that what we say and know of God is limited, God’s love is ‘eminent’, God’s love is the prime example of love
-only way to make positive claims about God is by recognising they are analogical, not literal
-if people speak about God ‘listening’ to them this isn’t literally true
analogical language
-univocal language – uses words in the same way exactly, meaning is the same
-equivocal language – the same word is used but in two completely different ways
-Aquinas rejected both univocal and equivocal language in favour of analogy, believed was a middle ground
-analogical language - same term is used in similar or related way
-Brian Davies: “The bread is good; the baker is good”
two types of analogies
Analogy of Attribution:
-causal relationship between two things being describes
-example, jumper = ‘warm’ and ‘cosy’ because of the effect it has on the person
-Aquinas, bull urine is healthy because it is caused by and can be attributed to the health of the bull
-made distinction between God being good and loving in is essence, whereas everything else if good or loving because it participates in the essence of God (Plato)
Analogy of Proportion:
-words relate to objects that are different in proportion
-example, a fast car and fast cat, the words are used in proportion to the object it relates to, compare to similar things
-describe God with terms such as ‘loving’ and ‘faithful’ but must recognise that God is these in a vaster scale
Ian Ramsey: Models and Qualifiers
-‘Religious Language’
-talks of how we can use ‘models’ when we speak of God such as ‘righteous’ and ‘loving’, understood because of reference point in human experience
-ensure God isn’t limited and to recognise that God’s attributes are unlike our own, we also need ‘qualifiers’, which are adverbs or adjectives such as ‘perfectly’
-anchor idea within our own experiences, then show that God is different proportionally by using qualifiers to point us beyond own experience
strengths of analogical language
-clarification of complex ideas – help simplify difficult concepts by relating them to familiar experiences
-engagement and memorability – make language more vivid and interesting
-encourages deeper understanding – draws connections between different domains, stimulate critical thinking
-emotional and persuasive impact – can be powerful rhetorical tools in persuasion
weaknesses of analogical language
-Potential for Misinterpretation -– If the analogy is imperfect or misleading, it can distort the meaning rather than clarify it.
-Oversimplification –- Some analogies may ignore key complexities, leading to an inaccurate understanding of the subject.
-Limits of Comparison –- Every analogy breaks down at some point because no two things are exactly alike; overextending an analogy can lead to faulty conclusions.
-Cultural and Contextual Bias –- Some analogies rely on specific cultural knowledge and may not be universally understood.
-Can Be Manipulative – In arguments or debates, analogies can be used to mislead by drawing false equivalences (e.g., slippery slope fallacies).
Further criticism
-speaking of God using analogy is unhelpful because we have to translate the analogies into univocal language before they mean anything
-example, we have to know how God’s love relates to human love before we understand anything
-method of speaking about God still leaves us with an unclear picture
Cataphatic/ via positiva: symbol
-“i certainly would absolutely never do what some of my American colleagues do and object to religious symbols being used, putting crosses up in the public square and things like that. I don’t fret about that at all; i’m quite happy about that.” -Dawkins
-symbols = representations that point beyond themselves to deeper meanings or realities
Tillich
-‘theology of correlation’ – correlation between the questions raised within the arts, history, psychology etc and the answers provide by theology, aims to show the correlation between faith and culture
-important ideas, concerns, feeling and experiences are expressed through symbol
-only work within a particular time, place, culture - lose power and significance when society changes
-ordinary human language is inadequate to convey the ultimate truths about God, gives false impression of nature of God
-all religious language is symbolic rather than literal, cannot be subjected to tests to assess its meaningfulness
Tillich continued
-symbols ‘open up levels of reality which were otherwise closed to us’
-symbols: take up beyond the world available to senses, understandable and accessible to all, point beyond themselves towards an ultimate reality = God, include visual images, rituals, saints, stories, ideas
-made distinction between signs and symbols:
-signs = randomly stand for something else, doesn’t really matter what form the signs takes as long as people know what it means
-symbols = ‘participate’ in the object they represent, example, national flag which represents national pride, evokes feelings of loyalty and patriotism and is part of that national pride
strengths of symbolic language
-provide precision and clarity – remove ambiguity found in natural language
-efficient – complex ideas can be conveyed with minimal elements
-universality – transcend spoken language barriers
-compactness – symbolic language allows for concise expression of complex relationships
-logical structure – enforces consistency and structured reasoning
-abstraction – helps simplify complex concepts by representing them with symbols
weaknesses of symbolic language
-requires prior knowledge and training to understand
-lack of expressiveness – lacks emotion or subjective meaning
-context dependency – same symbol may have different meanings in different fields
-misinterpretation – without proper context/ explanation, symbols can be misread
-limited application in everyday use – not well suited for forms of human interaction that require emotional depth
-exclusivity – create barriers in communication between experts and non-experts, leads to misunderstandings
