Religious language (2) Flashcards
What are the main aspects?
- Negativa
- Analogical
- Symbolic
Via negativa
- Apophatic way.
- Speaking of God in negative terms.
- God is not human, God does not die.
- Statements of fact, Cognitive.
- Any descriptions with positive attributes are misleading. Eg, saying God cured the blind suggests he existed with these people.
- Saying ‘God is all- loving’ is comparing it to our concept of love, which is limited.
What key philosophers developed the via negativa?
- Psuedo- Dionysius
- Moses Maimonides.
Pseudo- Dionysius:
- Don’t know who he is.
- Said via negativa is the only way to talk about God because he is completely beyond all sense experience.
- Physical body and spiritual soul are divided so counter-productive to talk of a God that can be perceived by the senses.
- We need to enter a ‘cloud of unknowing’.
Moses Maimonides:
- Best way to understand God is by explaining what he is not.
- ‘Guess who’ game, there are still limited options. But unlimited for God.
Strength:
- Buddhists, despite not believing in God, use the via negativa to describe an ultimate reality.
Moses Maimonides example:
Ship example, describe constantly what it is not, we eventually get to a ship.
BAD:
- Difficult to guess. Unilimted options.
Criticism to the ship:
Brian Davies critiques ship analogy.
Saying what God is not does not bring us any closer to God.
Telling someone to think of what is in their room, saying what it is not gets you no closer to what it is if you have never seen their room.
Unreasonable to say someone should have thought of a ship when they could have been thinking of ‘a wardrobe or a coffin’.
Disadvantage to the via negativa:
Need some form of understanding, won’t work for people who begin with absolutely no understanding of God.
Via positiva:
- Cataphatic way.
- Analogy and Symbolism.
Critique to analogy:
‘Analogies it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home’.
Sigmund Freud.
Aquinas- analogy:
- We cannot say anything positive that is literally true of God, this would be limiting his power.
- Uses ‘The Way of Eminence’ to describe this.
- God’s love is eminent, whilst human love is flawed. Platonic ultimate form of the good.
- Only way to make positive terms about God is in a way that is anological.
Analogical language:
- Univocal and Equivocal language.
- Univocal- mat in bathroom and mat in kitchen (both the same).
- Equivocal- computer mouse and animal mouse. Different.
Aquinas rejects both kinds of language, favours analogy. Comparison between similar things.
What are Aquinas’ types of analogy?
- Analogy of attribution.
- Analogy of proportionality.
Attribution:
Similarity between human love and God love.
Proportionality:
Need to explain this love as one that is infinitely greater than the human love.
Who adds to Aquinas’ analogy?
Ian Ramsey:
‘Models and Qualifiers’.
In book ‘religious language’.
Models- ‘loving’, can be associated with God.
To recognise that we are limited and God is not, we need qualifiers. Like ‘omnis’.
Symbol:
- Paul Tillich, existentialist that fled Nazi Germany.
- All of our most important feelings are expressed through symbol. But only work in particular time, place, culture. Lose power and significance when these change.
- Ordinary human language inadequate to convey ultimate truths of God. So all religious language is symbolic.
