Apopthatic/Cataphatic Way

Problem with religious language

We don’t know if we can accurately use words to describe God - ineffable in nature, while human minds are fallible and cannot conceive his divinity.
Can only use our language, which develops overtime

UNIVOCAL → Word used in same way in different contexts, ‘girl’ used in the same way in both sentences. We cannot be correct/incorrect.
PROBLEM: God is faithful like my dog is faithful? Limited, aspect of anthromorphosising God

EQUIVOCAL → A word that has different meanings in different contexts, ‘but’ has a different meaning in every sentence
PROBLEM: We can’t know what the word means when talking about God, God is a creator, designer of a car = creator: Doesn’t mean in the same way, we cannot know what a creator means when it comes to God

Two types of language

Cognitivist - Statement that is subject to being true/false, can check it out analytically or synthetically. Ie. all bachelors are single
Non-Cognitivist - A statement that is not subejct to being true/false

Apophatic way (via negativa)

Words are inadequate in describing God. Only negative statements can be made about God
(ie. “God is not…”)
God is beyond our ability to describe: goodness = we understand in terms of human goodness

Pseudo-Dionysis + Maimonides

Believed God was beyond assertion, platonic philosopher limited in our senses as well as language.
Talks about the risk of anthropomorphising God.
Does not incorporate Aristotellian epistemology, avoids Davies critique

Pseudo-Dionysius illustrates with Moses’ ascending of Mount Sinai to receive the ten commandments from God. He describes Moses as plunging into the ‘darkness of unknowing’, ‘renouncing all that the mind may conceive’.


Maimonides: Only positive statement that can be made about God is that he exists. Other statements are improper and disrespectful - we gain knowledge of God through unity
Negatives give us knowledge of God - shidanalogy

Maimonides acceptance of Aristotellian epistemology - knowledge needs grasping a thing’s essential form

Brian Davies

When we start a process of elimination, we need to know what the different possibilities are to know what we have left/alternatives: Simply unreasonable to believe we’ve almost arrived at correct notion of a ship - eventually, we’d be thinking about a wardrobe
ie. for a guman, negatung left handed/ambidexterous leaves left hand: w/o this God = no greater comprehension

Bible and apophatic way

Bibles is not consistent with the via negativa - Exodus “God is spirit” - holy spirit. Says what God IS, not what God ISNT

Strengths of Apopthatic way

Any language used to describe God inevitably weakened by human terms - stops anthromorphising God to our level.
More respectful approach, God is transcendant/wholly other than the human world
Approach fits with religious experience and how they’re perceived in language by those experiencing them - ineffable (William James)
God’s essence isn’t unknowable. AQUINAS recognised developing Aristotle with a metaphysical link between is/God necessary.
Human qualities principle in God = likeness of analogy
Unity with God = can get nearer to knowledge of God via negation and this unity
Dionysis - Effect of Gods action in the world, God called love/source of love in humans.

Exactly what Pseudo-Dionysius means by ‘unity’ is a matter of debate. He clearly at least thinks that following the Via Negativa method and giving up on trying to understand what God is actually helps you become closer to God in some way.

The idea that it is our desire to know God which stands in the way of our unity with God sounds very similar to the theme of the fall. Adam and Eve’s disobedience and subsequent separation from God was caused by their egocentric desire for knowledge. Saving humanity from pride which leads to sin is the goal of Christianity. Pseudo-Dionysius’ notion of ‘unity’ may be vague, but it deeply resonates with the central theme of Christianity.

Weakness of Apophatic way

• Yet this solution unwittingly opens the door to analogy. 

• Participation entails a metaphysical dependence on God, in virtue of which we have perfections.

• This implies some formal likeness, however minimal.

• Aquinas recognised that this entails formal likeness, however minimal. 

• Once predicates are grounded causally rather than arbitrarily, they cannot be purely equivocal.

• So, the participation necessary to explain biblical God language leads to analogy.
  

• Aquinas noted that negative language is not what people “want” when talking about God

• We can strengthen this beyond an appeal to popularity.

• Theories of religious language are ultimately about correctly capturing the nature of the relationship between God and humans, and the sort of linguistic connection which follows accordingly.

• This allows the phenomenology of religious language to support Aquinas’s claim that participation grounds analogy.

• The greater spiritual resonance of analogy is some further evidence that it discloses the degree of participation Dionysius thought impossible.

Aquinas and analogy

• Aquinas identifies the difficulty for standard positive religious language:

• Univocal language fails because we aren’t the same as God (so can’t use the same words).

• Equivocal language fails because it gives words different meanings when applied to God, making them meaningless to us (since God is unknowable).

• Aquinas proposes another option:

• We aren’t the same as God, but nor are we totally different.

• The middle ground is that we are like God (analogous to God), so our qualities are like God’s.

• Analogical positive language takes something understood (e.g., our qualities) and communicates meaning through its likeness to something less understood (e.g., God’s qualities).

• We understand our human qualities and can use them as analogies for God’s qualities.

• Genesis supports that we are created in God’s image and likeness.
  
  

• Analogy of attribution: we can meaningfully say that God has a quality of love analogous to human love.

• Aquinas illustrates this: seeing healthy urine from a bull allows us to say its source (the bull) has the quality of health.

• Human love is on a radically different scale to God’s omnibenevolence, but the difference is of degree, not kind.

• Analogy of proportion: a being has a quality in proportion to its nature.

• E.g., a virus has life, plants have life, humans have life, God has life.

• God is infinite and thus has qualities infinitely.

• So, we can say God has a quality of love analogous to ours, but proportionally greater.

• This allows us to speak meaningfully about God while respecting that God is beyond our understanding.

Brummer against analogy

• Brummer argues analogy only manages to express negative language.

• He rejects proportion as a vehicle for meaning, since God’s infinite being makes all qualities beyond our understanding.

• Attribution tries to resolve this. 

• If God’s love is analogous to human love, we can then meaningfully say that God has love proportional to his nature.

• Brummer continues his objection; attribution only tells us God is the source of our qualities, not how God has those qualities. 

• E.g.,: asserting that water is ‘like’ electricity only seems meaningful because we know the two things on each side of the analogy and thus in what ways they are alike (current, flow, etc). 

• Brummer would say we can’t do that for God because we can’t know God..

Defence of analogy

• However, Aquinas doesn’t ground analogy in empirical similarity, but in metaphysical relation.

• Humans possess perfections as limited participations in the unlimited perfection of God.

• The very perfection (e.g., of love) we know in ourselves on the human side of the analogy, is also in God on the other side, because God is its source and cause in us.

• The quality we know in ourselves is a derivative and limited form of God’s quality.

• So it’s not that God has a quality which has some unknowable likeness to ours.

• So, Brummer fails to appreciate how analogy allows us to affirm that the very perfection signified by a term is truly present in God, in an infinite and non-human mode.

• E.g., If love in humans means ‘willing the good’, Aquinas says God possesses this perfection infinitely.

• Even if Aquinas’ participation metaphysics failed, leaving only a bare assertion that God is “somehow” like humans, that amounts to saying something positive about God.

• This would still overcome Brummer’s critique.

• Either way, although analogy cannot allow us to say much, it does achieve more than the via negativa while managing to respect God’s transcendent unknowability.

Barth/Aquinas on natural theology

• Aquinas justifies natural theology by reason’s source in the ‘imago dei’.

• In Genesis, this distinguishes humans from animals.

• We retain moral responsibility, which comes from reason. 

• In fact, we can’t coherently be sinful without responsibility.

• So, we are still greater than animals, must retain God’s image, and with it something of reason’s essential integrity

• Aquinas concludes human reason can know God’s existence (his 5 ways), God’s natural moral law and God’s attributes through analogy.

Counter of Barth/Aquinas on natural theology

• Karl Barth critiqued natural theology as placing a dangerous overreliance on human reason.

• Sin might not totally destroy reason, but it makes reason unreliable.

• He said “The finite has no capacity for the infinite”.

• Our finite minds cannot grasp God’s infinite nature.

• It’s dangerous to use reason to know God. Mistakes will lead to a false view of God and worshipping the wrong thing, risking idolatry. 

• This can lead to the worship of human things like nations, fatherlands, which Barth argued contributed to Nazism.

• Barth concluded we should solely rely on faith in the Bible.

Defending analogy (eval)

• Barth is perceptive about reason’s downsides, but fails to balance this against the downsides of not using reason.

• E.g., blind faith and superstition, which also risk error and idolatry.

• Fallen humans have no risk-free approach.

• Adam and Eve warn against the arrogance of total self-reliance, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t rely on our abilities at all.

• Especially when they are the endurance of the divine image within us.

• Aquinas shows appropriate humility in what he claims reason discovers: 

• Not the existence of the Christian God, merely an ‘unmoved mover’.

• Not God’s eternal or divine moral law, just the natural law already within us. 

• Not God’s infinite nature, but some source of our qualities which holds them in an analogical and proportionally greater sense.

• So, Aquinas represents an appropriate middle-ground between the extremes of avoiding reason verses overrelying on it.

Religious language as symbolic

• Tillich claims that religious language is symbolic, not literal, so it does not try to say what God is.

• Symbolic language connects a person’s mind to something.

• Religious language connects a religious person’s mind to God, like a religious experience.

• So, when someone hears ‘God be with you’, their mind feels connected to God, and that is how it is meaningful.

• It is not a literal description of God, as that is impossible, but an emotional or spiritual connection.

• Think of a Christian looking at a crucifix. They feel connected to God because it symbolises Jesus’ sacrifice.

• Tillich says religious language works the same way. It connects the mind to God and creates a sense of closeness.

• The words are not meant to describe God, but to connect our soul to God. That is their meaning.

• Tillich’s theory of participation claims symbols point beyond themselves and participate in what they point to, creating a bridge for our soul to connect to that higher dimension of reality.

• God is a symbol for the ‘ground of being’, and religion symbolises our ‘ultimate concern’.

• As an existentialist, Tillich sees religion as about human experience, especially its most profound aspects.

• Religious language is symbolic. It connects us to the mystery of existence, the ground of being, which is our ultimate concern.

• Tillich’s insight is that we do not need to understand God to be connected to God.

Against symbolic language

• William Alston criticises Tillich for overlooking that religious language involves facts.

• Religion is concerned with objective matters such as our salvation and afterlife. 

• Important Christian doctrines like heaven and hell have to be taken as factual truth claims, not as merely symbolic.

• John Hick makes a similar point, that philosophical language about God (e.g., necessary being) is not symbolic.

• We can add that Christians tend to think that when using religious language, they express beliefs about God which can be true or false. Cognitivism is a key element of religious meaning for many Christians. Tillich fails for not adequately accounting for the cognitive element of religious language.

Defending symbolic language

• However, the strength of symbols compared to other approaches is their capture of the spiritual depth expressed by everyday religious language.

• Tillich’s existentialism prioritizes religious experience over abstract doctrine and philosophising, which can be disconnected from genuine spirituality.

• For a Christian looking at a crucifix, their spiritual feelings are often the most important thing to them.

• The strength of Tillich’s theory is that it captures the most important element of religious language: the spiritual feelings it evokes, not cold factual beliefs.

Evaluating symbolic language

• However, Tillich’s existentialism goes too far.

• It’s a rightful corrective to the way spiritual experience was traditionally marginalised, due to fear of the Church losing its authority as the mediator between humanity and God.

• However, like so many movements which are reactive, it goes too far in the other direction and fails to achieve a balanced synthesis.

• What Tillich captures is only one important element.

• Factual belief (e.g., in heaven and hell) is just as important to Christian believers.

• In fact these beliefs entwine with spiritual feelings and orient their experience of hope, gratitude and love. These are not formless pure experiences but have intentionality, related to belief in God’s acting in history and promise of salvation in an afterlife.

• Symbols thus fail to capture this cognitive element of religious language.

Issues around the subjectivity of symbols and ‘participation’ 

• Tillich claims symbols are beyond the cognitive/non-nognitive distinction, neither factual nor emotive.

• Though he also claims symbols open up levels of reality and participate in them.

• This is an ontological claim about how symbols relate to reality.

• To Hick this is incoherent, since ontological claims must be cognitive.

• Tillich refuses explanation because he insists the divine is beyond literal description.

• So Hick concludes participation is imprecise.

• E.g., it is unclear how a flag participates in a nation’s power and dignity, nor how religious symbols participate in God.

• Especially since if all beings participate in God, there is nothing special about religious symbols.

Counter of subjectivity of symbols

• Randall’s version avoids Hick’s critique by abandoning participation.

• For him, religious symbols do not connect us to a transcendent reality, but regulate culture and community by evoking shared emotions, moral guidance, and sustaining identity.

• By treating symbols as non cognitive, Randall avoids Hick’s demand for metaphysical explanation.

• He maintains religious language can be meaningful without any objective divine reality.

Against symbols (final)

• However, unanchoring symbols from reality collapses into theological anti realism.

• Without reference beyond human practice religion makes no truth claims, contradicting most theists’ intentions.

• Without transcendent reference, symbolic meaning becomes unstable, shifting with cultural changes, leaving no basis for distinguishing development from distortion.

• The long-term coherence and motivational force of religion becomes harder to explain if symbols are merely cultural expressions rather than engagement with a transcendent source (E.g., Conversion, moral seriousness, and sacrifice)

• Randall’s reductionism fails to capture the truth aiming, stability, and depth of religious language.

• Tillich attempts to preserve truth through participation, which Hick exposes as vague.

• Randall abandons truth, which only highlights how essential truth claims are to religious meaning.

• The theory explains religious psychology, but fails to account for religious meaning as a whole.

Gregory of Nyssa

Gregory of Nyssa argued that human language is a finite, human-invented tool insufficient to capture the infinite, incomprehensible essence of God. He championed an apophatic (negative) approach, where religious language functions not as literal description, but as a pointer towards divine mystery, often requiring correction to distinguish divine reality from worldly analogies.

Danny L. Bate +4

Key aspects of Gregory of Nyssa's view on religious language include:

• Incomprehensibility of God: Gregory maintained that God's essence surpasses all intellectual perception and linguistic description.

• Apophatic Approach: Because God is beyond language, religious language is most accurate when it denies or transcends finite concepts, rather than claiming to define God.

• Theology as "Grammar": Against Eunomius, Gregory argued that Trinitarian theology is not a discovery of new, technical names, but a correct understanding of the "grammar" of faith developed within the community.

• Language is Human Invention: He viewed human language as a human-controlled development, separate from God's nature, which can fail when applied to divine realities.

• Redefining Terms: Gregory often emphasized reinterpreting familiar terms to match divine context, such as explaining that divine "fire" or "worms" (in the context of judgment) are fundamentally different from their earthly counterparts.

• Relativity of Names: He developed a "theory of relativity" for names, suggesting that because no word can describe the essence of an object, all names used for God are inadequate approximations.

His work against Eunomius especially emphasized that reducing God to a name, such as "unbegotten" (agennetos), is a failure to understand the limits of religious language.