religious language- the cataphatic way/aquinas symbol?

Question 1

univocal language and its problems?

Answer 1

Language which is used in the same way in different contexts

fails because God is beyond our understand as a transcendent being an so how we understand a word when applied to humans, we cannot understand it applied to God

Question 2

equivocal language and its problems

Answer 2

• words have different meanings depending on the context they are applied to
• ‘loving’ for God is not the same as for humans

fails because we do know God - He is transcendent due to the epistemic gap. SO how can we know how words like ‘loving’ apply to Him? Just meaningless fam

Question 3

aquinas’ middle ground

Answer 3

We are not the same nor are we entirely different to God (made in his likeness) - thus we are analogous to him

Question 4

analogy of attribition- CONCERNS DERIVATION

Answer 4

• there is a causal relationship between God and creation
• so we can use words to describe God as we do for humans
• our qualities (love & wisdom) are a reflection of God’s qualities, just to a lesser extent

Question 5

examples of analogies of attribution

Answer 5

if the bull’s urine is healthy is healthy, the bull that produced that urine is also healhy
- ‘if the urine is good, then the bull is good’

davies: the baker is good, the bread is good

Question 6

analogy of proportion

Answer 6

From a lesser object we can say that something else, such as God, has proportionately more of the same quality e.g a good car- fulfils what it means to be a car- a good god fulfils what it means to be good.

Question 7

how does analogy of proportion link to god and why is this a problem?

Answer 7

• when we speak about God, we speak about infinity
• when we speak about humans, we speak about finity
• the ‘goodness’ is in proportion to that

barth: - dangerous to rely on human reason to know anything of God, including God’s morality.
- “the finite has no capacity for the infinite”

Question 8

what is the problem with arguing from derivation

Answer 8

which analogies are proportional to god?
are all predicates of gods creation analogous to predicates of god? e.g ‘peter is evil’, ‘god is evil’

aquinas responds by sayimg since evil is provato boni, god cannot be seen in terms of what is not. especially before evil, (post lapsarian)

Question 9

strength: avoids anthropomorphism

weakeness: ferre

Answer 9

plato’s Cave, Paleys watchmaker: all make sense of divince concepts such as existence of God in a way that helps us understand
- words are not to be taken literally so do not apply human qualities to God

gods nature is unknown so we dont know what it means to be good, wise etc.
these two comparisons live in ontologically different realms