Religious Language

what is religious language

refers to the written and spoken language typically used by religious believers when they talk about God, their beliefs and their religious experiences

what is univocal language

the word has the same meaning at all times

what is equivocal language

the same word is used with 2 completely different meanings

what is cognitive language

factual statements, proved true or false by empirical evidence

what is non-cognitive language

statements that cannot be proved true or false - things we could never know for sure often feelings and values

what is the via negativa/apophatic way

explaining the nature of God by focusing on what is not in order to avoid bringing God down to a human level

what does Dionysius suggest

God is ‘beyond assertion’ or any description

believers should move into the ‘divine darkness’, beyond positive language and into a communion with God that cannot be put into words

Moses Maimondies thoughts (apophatic way)

we cannot know what our human words mean when describing God because God is transcendent and beyond human understanding

the only positive statement we can say about God is that God exists

Maimondies ship example

Argued using the example of a ship that by saying what it is not (eg it is not a mineral or a plant) within 10 steps you would arrive at what a ship is

In the same way by describing what God is not you get closer to what God is

What is the via positva/cataphatic way

saying what God is

positive language

Gregory of Nyssa’s thoughts (apophatic way)

there comes a point at which a believer enters an outer darkness and into the apophatic way of Gods ineffable, transcendent reality

there are no words to describe the understanding of God - God is completely beyond words and images

Analogy of attribution - aquinas

aquinas suggests there is soem connection between creatures and their creator

analogy of attribution - davies example

baker and bread analogy

while bread is not good in the same sense as the baker (baker is not light, crusty and well-baked) the goodness of the bread is attributed to the baker

in the same way we can attribute goodness to God because we see something like ‘goodness’ in his creation

analogy of proportion - aquinas

when we talk about God being good, it means more than human goodness

analogy of proportion - baron von hugels example

the faithfulness of a human would be proportionally more than that of a dog

similarly when we use a word such as love it applies to God in a much greater proportion because God is infinite

aquinas and the cataphatic way (via postiva)

uses positive language to describe the qualities and nature of god

he stated we could not speak of god ‘univocally’ but nor could we speak of him ‘equivocally’

instead he argued that religious language should be understood as analogy

aquinas’ bull analogy - attribution

we can tell the health of a bull by studying its urine

however the health of a bull is only complete in the bull itself so what the urine tells us is indirect and incomplete

applying this to god: what th eworld tells us of his goodness is meaningful but also limited

ian ramsey - analogy

models and qualifiers

models: an analogy that can be used from everyday experience to give us a better understanding of god

qualifiers: our models require adaptation with ‘qualifiers’. we recognise god cannot be ‘good’ in a human sense so we must add a qualifier such as ‘indefinitely’ so ‘god is indefinitely good’