Philo -Religious Language

• Aquinas Analogy 


  • Rejects use of equivocal and univocal lang. to describe God
  • Can use what we understand to help describe what we don't know fully - we have experience of the world's beauty, God is assumed to be the creator, the beauty of the world replicates part of Gods character -> indirect description of God
  • E.g. can determine part of the bulls health through its urine, not fully

  -> ISSUE of evil and suffering in the world, does that relate to God's character too?
• Equivocal Language


  Same word used in different way depending on circumstances

  e.g. What a racket Pass me that racket

  -> Aquinas says we can't use this as it prevents a person from making any meaningful statements about God
• Univocal Language


  Using the word to mean exactly the same thing

  -> Aquinas rejects this as God can't be a 'warrior' the same way that a human can
• Tillich - Symbolic Language


  • Symbols aren't signs as they participate in what they point to
  • Christian cross -> reminder of Jesus' sacrifice; prompt from prayer + worship - take an active approach in the cross
  • Features:

  1. point to something beyond themselves;
  2. participate in that to which they point to;
  3. open up levels of reality which are otherwise closed to us;
  4. open dimensions of the soul which correspond to those aspects of reality
• Wittgenstein - Language Games


  • Meaning of language only comes from contexts; you have to be part of the 'language game' to understand the language within its context
  • Only those who are part of the 'language game' of faith can fully understand its terminology -> reason why non=religious people struggle to understand religious language
• Phillips - Language Games

  • What God is, is defined by the language game of faith