Religious language

• Via negativa/apophetic way

  • ‘Apophatic’ comes from the Greek term ‘to deny’.
  • The via negativa is based on the fundamental belief that ‘God’ is beyond human understanding and description.
  • ‘He’ is completely ineffable, which means he cannot put into words the nature of God.
• Analogical, not literal language

  • Aquinas argues that the language applied to God is not literal but analogical.
  • He understands this as happening in two ways – through the analogy of attribution and through the analogy of proportion.
• Univocal

  same words always mean the same thing
• equivocal

  words are similar but mean different things depending on context
• Cataphatic

  via positvia, what God is
• Cognitive language

  expresses facts
• non-cognitive language

  subjective claims e.g thoughts and feelings
• Psuedo-Dionyisus - via negativa *The Celestial...*


  • God is beyond our understanding and "beyond every assertion" = can't be described in positive terms
  • Not a privation, just beyond human distinctions
  • "there is no speaking of it, nor name or knowledge of it. Darkness and light, error and truth - it is none of these. It is beyond every assertion and denial"
  • Trying to understand God separates us from him
  • Alludes to Moses climbing Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments - believes he was plunging into "darkness which is beyond intellect"
  • "language will turn silent completely, since we will be near to One which is indescribable"
• Strengths of Psuedo-Dionysius' via negativa approach

  • Maintains God's otherness
  • Allows room for human ignorance as God is "indescribable"
  • Greggory of Nyssa - maintains ineffability of God
  • Moses Maimonides - human knowledge isn't complex enough as it could be used equivocally
  • Augustine - whatever we can comprehend is not God
• Weaknesses of Psuedo-Dionysius' via negativa approach

  • can't criticise something you don't empirically know
  • reductionist: seems like an easy way, you're avoiding what God actually is
  • Not a privation but still depicts God negatively, positive aspects overlooked
  • Moses Maimonides ship analogy - can't compare a material object to a divine deity
• Gregory of Nyssa *On the Making of Man* - via negativa


  • spiritual life is a "mysticism of darkness"
  • apophatic way presents God's ineffable, transcendent reality
• Moses Maimonides *The Guide for the Perplexed* - via negativa


  • humans are different from God and human language can be used equivocally
  • God is transcendent and beyond human comprehension
  • Ship analogy - if you describe a ship by what it's not, you'll arrive at what a ship is
  • 'he who affirms attributes to god...unconsciously loses faith in god'
• God describes himself via positiva in the Gospel of John

  - "God is love"

  • "God is spirit"
  • "I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God" (Exodus 20:5)
• Aquinas *Summa Theologica* - apophatic SCEPTIC


  • agrees with apophatic way, but "not what people want to say when they talk about God" so preferred the cataphatic way
  • God even describes himself via the cataphatic way in the Gospel of John "God is love" I...am a jealous God"
  • wrong to define God to the human definition of love - univocal terms risk anthropomorphising God
  • 2 analogies = Attribution: know something by looking at what it causes. Used the illustration of seeing healthy urine from a bull thus the bull has an analogous quality of health.
  • Proportion: A being has a quality in a degree relative to its being. God is the greatest being, has qualities to a greater degree than us. God's love is like ours, but greater. Baron Von Hugel uses example of dog's faithfulness - Dog, human and God = faithful in different ways. still proportional
• Brian Davies - Maimonides CRITIC (apophatic sceptic) *An Introduction...*


  • negative language only works in "special cases"
  • "If the baker is good, the bread will be good"
  • Analogy of the room: reject every suggestion of what is in a room, "you will get no idea at all"
  • Rejects the ship analogy as it is "simply wrong" - "could equally be thinking of a wardrobe or a coffin"
• Evaluation of Aquinas' cataphatic analogy

  • + partial but meaningful, reflects the epistemic distance
  • -evidence of evil would attribute that to God
  • + Provides alternative to subjectivity of equivocal (same word, context dependent) and risk of anthropomorphising God with univocal language. Bible supports it: Genesis = we are "like" God
  • -Too subjective. Attributes of God are non-empirical. We can only infer, so illustration of the healthy bull doesn't align with the fact that we can't prove transcendence. Vincent Brummer: we don't know God's nature, we don't know how he loves (proportion fails) and attribution fails - God can be the source of human qualities, but doesn't say how he has them. "The analogy of proportionality thus takes us no further than negative theology"
• Karl Barth - Aquinas CRITIC *Nien!*


  • influenced by Augustine
  • dangerous to rely on flawed human reason
  • "the finite has no capacity for the infinite"
  • Our minds are finite are whatever we discover through reason is not the divine - to think it's divine is idolatry.
• Strengths of analogous language

  • Presents God in ways we understand
  • Empirically verifiable: we can see God as evidence of analogy (e.g general revelation)
  • We are imagio dei, describing God as making us within his "image and likeness" is biblically proven. Accuracy of analogy increased when we're comparing them to human aspects
• Weaknesses of analogous thought

  • Analogy of Attribution, Brummer argues, tells us that God is the source of qualities but how his qualities are similar
  • Can't observe God's nature so comparing it to humanistic terms reduces God's omnipotence. Thus, cataphatic analogies are reductionist
  • Risk anthropomorphising God
  • Bible is open to interpretation so divine revelation is subjective
• Ludwig Wittgenstein *On Certainty*- Language Games

  • logical positivist - concerned with relationship between language and knowledge
  • "whereof we cannot know, thereof we cannot speak"
  • meaningful language can be provided by our senses
  • the meaning of words is determined by the language game that the words are part of. Thus, the context of the word used is more important than any attempt to falsify it
  • Rules of Language: those in the game, know the rules / those outside the game, don't.

  Chess analogy: the use of language was like partaking in a game. To use a word, you must understand how it works.

  • You might be told that a piece is called a 'king', but without understanding the rules of chess, you could never use the piece.
  • He also stated that to argue about how language is used is meaningless. If you want to play the game, you must accept the rules. You cannot play chess if your opponent is trying to play checkers.
• A.J Ayer *Language, Truth and Logic*


  • verification principle "a statement which cannot be conclusively verified ... is simply devoid of meaning"
  • Verificationists: believe in truth if demonstrated
  • Non-cognitive arguments are meaningless as they can't be known

  argued that:

  1. analytic propositions = true by definition. a) required by definition b) mathematical
  2. synthetic propositions = true by confirmation by senses
• Paul Tillich *Dynamics of Faith*- symbolic language


  • Religious symbols = religious language
  • Symbolic language reflects literal beliefs
  • symbols "open up levels of reality which were otherwise closed to us"
  • Human language is inadequate to convey the ultimate truths about God - as Aquinas did
  • Erika Dinkler-von Schubert: " a pattern or object which points to an invisible metaphysical reality and participate within it
• Examples of symbolism

  • Jesus spoke in symbols in the Gospel of John: "I am the bread of life", "I am the good shepherd", "I am the light of the world"
  • indicates symbolic language is an integral part of religion
  • Genesis creation narrative: order and purpose, creation is a result of God's command and His planned process
  • Presents that truths can be portrayed in a non-literal sense
• Paul Tillich *Dynamics of Faith* = examples of symbols


  • National Flag: seeing a flag mentally connects a citizen to their country.
  • Signs merely point, but a symbol participates in what they point to
  • Religious symbols and language are the same - point to something bigger than themselves e.g crucifix = Jesus suffered along side the individual
  • Symbolic participation and spiritual connection to God inspires through symbolic participation in the being of God
  • argued that God is a symbol for the "ground of being" or for "being itself" - uses non-symbolic statements to suggest truths about God.
• Paul Tillich *Dynamics of Faith* = Theory of Participation


  Four elements to symbolic meaning:

  1. Points to something beyond itself e.g religious language points to God
  2. Participation: symbolic language participates in what it points to. Religious language participates in the being of God, or in the being itself
  3. Reality: Symbolism must reveal a deeper meaning, they open up spiritual levels of reality that are otherwise closed to us
  4. Soul: Symbols open dimensions of the soul that correspond to those levels of reality
• Strengths of Tillich's symbolic language approach

  • avoids anthropomorphism - symbolic language allows us to participate in a deeper reality
  • allows us to talk about God's characteristics, unlike the apophatic way.
  • Religious language seems cognitive - expressed something about truth and reality
• Weaknesses of Tillich's approach

  • Doesn't precisely explain what he means by 'participation'. John Hick gives direction ("participates to that in which it points"), Tillich doesn't tell us the nature of the participation
  • Too subjective and too non-cognitive = limits God-talk
  • J.H Randall: Symbols are non-cognitive and have no objective reality. Religion performs a valuable cultural function but is only a human endeavour
• Anthony Flew *A New Approach* Falsification Symposium

  • Falsification principle = attempt to falsify
  • Karl Popper: "Science is more concerned with the falsification of a hypothesis than the verification"
  • Religious statements are non-sensical and have little significance
  • Used J.Wisdom's Parable of the Gardener: 2 people return to a kempt garden, argument over gardener's existence as its never seen, sceptic argues how an invisible gardener is different from an imaginary one, believer doesn't abandon beliefs and allows their definition of God to "die a death of a thousand qualifications"

  The statements of religious people are meaningless as they won't allow anybody to falsify it

  • "to assert that such and such is the case is necessarily equivalent to denying that such and such is not the case"
• Anthony Flew *A New Approach* Falsification Symposium - White Swan analogy

  • The statement ‘all swans are white’ is often used to show how a proposition can be false. We may see hundreds of white swans but this does not prove the statement. However, when we see one black swan, we know that the proposition is false.
  • Statements such as 'all swans are white' are meaningful because they can be shown to be false. This statement is synthetic and empirically testable.
• R.M Hare *Freedom and Reason* Falsification Symposium


  • Bliks = "a mode of cognition that is neither verifiable nor falsifiable"
  • effects how someone lives so can't be meaningless
  • we all have fundamental beliefs or principles on which we base our actions and which we will never give up.

  Blik - paranoid student explained

  • The paranoid student cannot imagine being wrong; his statement ‘all dons want to murder him’ is unfalsifiable.
  • And yet, Hare argues that this belief remains very meaningful.
  • So a ‘blik’ is a particular view about the world that may not be based upon reason or fact and that cannot be verified or falsified; it just is and we don’t need to explain why we hold our ‘blik’.
• R.M Hare's car example - Blik

  • Hare talked about trusting in the metal of a car. This ‘blik’ about the car meant that we would quite happily drive or be driven in a car because we have the ‘blik’ that the metal is strong and that it is safe to drive at high speed in the car.
  • Hare said that people either have the right or sane ‘blik’ or the wrong or insane ‘blik’; the 'lunatic' in Hare's quotation has the wrong ‘blik’ about dons, whereas his friends have the right ‘blik’.
• Basil Mitchell *The Philosophy of Religion* - Falsification symposium

  • religious belief, and therefore religious language, is based upon fact, although they are not straightforwardly verifiable or falsifiable.
  • He used the 'Parable of the Partisan Stranger' - represents God's meaningful relationship with humanity
  • Fight against Nazis, meets stranger, convinced stranger is part of partisan as he had a lot of faith, stranger convinced partisan to have faith in him even though their interests diverge, and the partisan's friends think he's a fool
  • claimed that Flew missed the point that believers have a prior commitment to trust in God based on faith. For this reason, they do not allow evidence to undermine their faith.