Religious language: via negativa, analogy and symbol

Overview

Recall questions on univocal and equivocal language, the apophatic and cataphatic ways, Aquinas' analogy of attribution and of proper proportion and whether it remains valuable, Tillich on sign and symbol, Being-Itself and ultimate concern, cognitive and non-cognitive language, and the strengths and criticisms of each approach.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Why is there a philosophical problem about talking meaningfully about God?

   Model answer

   Human language is developed to describe finite things encountered in space and time, and every word we have carries that history. God is claimed to be infinite, immaterial and beyond the categories language was built for. So either we use words about God in their ordinary sense, which seems to reduce God to a very large creature, or we use them in some other sense, in which case it is unclear that we know what we are saying.

2. 2

   What is the difference between univocal and equivocal language?

   Model answer

   Univocal language uses a word in exactly the same sense in both cases, as when a rope and a person are both called strong in the ordinary sense of resisting force. Equivocal language uses the same word in entirely unrelated senses, as with a river bank and a high street bank. The problem for religious language is that univocal talk about God seems to make God a creature, while equivocal talk means we have said nothing intelligible at all.

3. 3

   What does the apophatic way claim?

   Model answer

   It claims that God so far exceeds human categories that no positive description can be accurate, and that the only truthful things we can say about God are denials. We can say what God is not, stripping away every finite and limiting concept, and the residue of that stripping is closer to God than any affirmation. Positive statements are treated as inevitably misleading rather than merely incomplete.

4. 4

   What reasons are given for approaching theological language by negation?

   Model answer

   That God is not a member of any class and so cannot be captured by descriptions built out of created things. That positive descriptions inevitably import limitation, since to say what a thing is amounts to saying what it is not. That every positive term risks making an idol of a concept and treating a human construction as the divine. And that the practice matches the testimony of mystics, who consistently report that what they encountered could not be described.

5. 5

   Give examples of negative statements about God and explain what each achieves.

   Model answer

   Saying God is not a body denies that God occupies space or can be located, and so blocks the picture of an enormous person. Saying God is not finite denies any boundary to God's being. Saying God does not change denies that God improves, decays or is acted upon. Saying God is not one thing among others denies that God is an item in the universe to be found alongside stars and galaxies. Each removes a false picture rather than supplying a true one.

6. 6

   What are the strengths of the via negativa?

   Model answer

   It takes divine transcendence seriously and refuses to domesticate God. It protects against anthropomorphism and against the idolatry of mistaking a concept for the reality. It has deep roots in the practice of contemplative traditions and matches what mystics report. And it is honest about the limits of finite minds instead of overclaiming.

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