Religious language

• The apophatic way (via negativa)

  claims that because words are unable to adequately describe God, the only possible statements that can be made are negative statements; statements about God is not
• pros of the apophatic way

  • prevents anthropomorphic representations of God, describing God using human characteristics
  • respectful, it recognises that God is transcendent
• cons of the apophatic way

  • knowledge of God provided is limited
  • not a true reflection of how religious believers speak or think about God
  • W.R. Inge - by denying any description to God leads to an annihilation of God where we potentially lose the connection to God and the world
• Aquinas on analogy

  The analogy of attribution - we reflect the divine attributes of God, eg. God is good, he produced us, thus we are good (creature's urine analogy)

  The analogy of proper proportion - attributes have different meaning depending on the subject, eg. humans are good but not to the same degree that God is good
• The cataphatic way (via positiva)

  a way of speaking about God using positive statements
• pros of the cataphatic way

  • it is not univocal, it avoids speaking of God andromorphically (using human characteristics)
  • it is not equivocal, it avoids agnosticism (the idea that God's nature and existence cannot be known)
• cons of the cataphatic way

  • it is dangerous as allows for 'picturing', some may interpret/understand/picture God differently to others
  • the meaning of some language is stretched
  • it is not easy to know how far the meaning is stretched, thus analogy may only provide limited knowledge of God, eg. analogy tells us that 'God is love' is not the same as human love, but is not completely different
• Tillich

  religious statements are not literally true, ideas about God are to be understood symbolically
• Tillich - signs vs symbols

  sign = points to something, eg. a road sign

  symbol = participates in that to which it points
• Tillich on symbols

  • may have a limited lifespan, the Hindu symbol of the swastika has lost its meaning due to Nazi use, the words we may use to describe God change over time
  • they unlock 'hidden depths of our own being' - like art, symbols enable us to grasp deep truths about the world and about ourselves
• pros of symbolic language

  • using symbolic language to describe God preserves his transcendence, eg. labelling God as 'good' reduces him to human level, labelling 'good' as symbolic avoids this
  • the idea that symbolic language can change ensures its relevance
• cons of symbolic language

  • J.H. Randall - symbols provide no information about God
  • the idea that symbols can change could cause misinterpretations of God