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Analogy and the Apophatic Way: Approaches to the Problem of Religious Language.
A2 Philosophy of Religion
Analogy and the Apophatic Way:
Approaches to the Problem of Religious Language.
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Analogy and the Apophatic Way: Approaches to the Problem of Religious Language.
Introduction: the Question of Religious Language.
The Philosophy of Religion is primarily concerned with the examination and analysis
of religious beliefs and concepts.
Philosophers of religion are thus interested in what religious beliefs mean, in the issue
of whether religious beliefs are true and of whether and how religious beliefs are
meaningful. A philosopher of religion might be interested in how religious beliefs fit
in with other beliefs. In particular, a philosopher of religion might be very interested
in how religious knowledge so-called is like – or unlike – the knowledge we have (or
think we have) in history, biology or mathematics, and so, in all kinds of ways a
philosopher of religion is pretty likely to focus on the nature, purpose, meaning and
value of religious language – hence this topic and all the hundreds of books and
articles written about it!
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Let’s explain a bit…
In Philosophy – especially since the early part of the twentieth century – a key
interest is with language and meaning; with how it is that language can express sense
and communicate meaning.
So how does it?
We have briefly looked at verbal definition, ostensive definition, sense and reference,
(Frege), Logical Positivism (Ayer et al) and the notion of ‘meaning relative to
use’ (Wittgenstein).
We should note that a number of theories of meaning operate on the view that
language works by giving truth through correspondence and description. Thus the
truth of a statement is determined by the correspondence between the terms in the
statement and reality. This assumes that ‘words’ are conventions that stand for
distinct things. ‘Chair’ stands for chair(s), etc. All this implies a kind of priority for
literal meaning…
Thus we have, as we know, ostensive definition; truth functions as in analytic
propositions; truths with contingent or particular meanings as in synthetic
propositions.
This approach is common in science and it makes up for what in some quarters passes
for common-sense realism!
In contrast we have the traditions in Theology – theos/logos: Theology has to do with
the means by which humans express and communicate their sense of the divine…
Theology involves reasoning about the human understanding of the ultimate and
religious language – the language of religious devotion and commitment, is
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Analogy and the Apophatic Way: Approaches to the Problem of Religious Language.
expressive of the hope, vision and faith, the belief and understanding that flows from
a given religious tradition. Within Theology there is a strong sense that there is much
paradox in using human language to talk of the divine – so some religious language is,
in varying ways, analogical, metaphorical, parabolic and/or symbolic… There are
also – as in Christianity – beliefs which impinge on history – e.g. ‘Jesus died to save
sinners’.1
Thus in Philosophy of Religion these areas of activity have a focus in the so-called
problem of religious language.
A common question within philosophy of religion is that of how or by what means is
religious language significant? In what sense – or in what sense that is legitimate – is
religious language true?
•
How are religious truth claims validated?
•
How are any truth claims validated?
As such, the problem of religious language is sometimes seen as a kind of sub-set of
the issue of the existence of God. Thus, if God’s existence can’t be proven, what
sense is there in religious language….?
A2 examiners, with the issues we will be reviewing in mind, frame questions such as
the following:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
‘The only way in which meaningful statements can be made about God is the via negativa.’
Discuss.
To what extent is myth an effective way of conveying religious truth?
How fair is the claim that religious language is meaningless?
To what extent is the doctrine of analogy able to counter the charge that religious language is
meaningless because it is non-verifiable?
‘The principle of falsification shows that religious language is not cognitively significant.’
Discuss.
‘The language of religion is the language of symbols.’ Discuss.
In what follows we are going to review two traditional and still relevant responses to
the problem of religious language: the via negativia or the ‘apophatic way’, and the
doctrine of analogy from the thought of Aquinas; but as a guide to much of what we
consider, the following remark of Augustine’s is handy:
‘Human language labours altogether under a great poverty of speech.’ 2
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1
See also such texts as the Grace; the Lord’s Prayer; Hymn 115; Ps23
2 Augustine,
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De Trinitate V 9 from On the Trinity bk 13 ch 4 p16.
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Analogy and the Apophatic Way: Approaches to the Problem of Religious Language.
Aquinas Revisted: the Doctrine of Analogy.
Aquinas makes a very significant contribution to the areas around religious language
examined by philosophy of religion – in particular he contributes a key idea through
his doctrine of analogy.
We must appreciate that the modern interest in religious language manifest in
philosophy of religion has a long history.
As we should appreciate, for centuries scholars in the Christian tradition have
concerned themselves with the general question of how language worked when used
in relation to the divine and as a medium for the expression of faith.
We might think, in our post-modern world, that language develops in and for human
communities within finite constraints, and so the question as to how such language
might function when used in reference to the infinite is a difficult and fundamental
one.
For the medieval world the same concern was set against the rather different
assumption of an accepted relation of dependence, of a far more organic association,
between the finite and infinite worlds.
This meant that the matter - the question of religious language - was fundamental, but
it wasn't quite so difficult from the point of view of the credibility of the discourse, as
it has become in the modern era.
The working assumption of the scholastic age involved a view of man as a being set
within a world that was a means to an end. The end was the Kingdom of God, where
the partial truths and realities fleetingly present within finite experience would be
disclosed to the faithful as they ascended upwards through the heavens towards the
presence of the divine. The will and nature of the divine was disclosed via faith and
through reason, it was thought, and the whole of reality was a testimony to the
purpose and character of the gracious Creator God. Art, literature, the political and
social spheres, were all relative to this hierarchical view of human destiny.
Thus is God is the creator and sustainer of reality there is in reality the impress of the
creator and thus via language some sort of comparison can be made – the creature can
in some sense speak of the creator.
In the scholastic period the most influential doctrine on the matter of the workings of
religious language was the doctrine of analogy as developed by Thomas Aquinas,
(1224/5-74), according to whom, ‘whatever is said of God and creatures’ is said ‘in an
analogous sense.’ (Summa Theologia, Pt 1, Q 13, Art 5).
Aquinas' teaching on analogy involves an important distinction we need to keep in
mind:
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Analogy and the Apophatic Way: Approaches to the Problem of Religious Language.
1. Analogy of Proportion: this is when we use a word to refer to an attribute of thing
but to indicate in due proportion the degree of reality that the thing in question has.
Aquinas has in mind he common observation from general experience which shows
that language is often used in an analogical way to express similarities between things
that enjoy rather different modes of being.
A common example is the use of the term faithfulness in respect of a dog and a friend.
This is a case of analogy ‘downwards’, from the level of humanity to the realm of
(other) animals. It seems obvious that if we speak of a friend and of our dog as being
faithful, we are not using the term in the same sense in relation to both - our use is not
univocal. Our dog isn't faithful in the same way as our friend.
However, it certainly isn't the case that we are using the term ‘faithful’ in an equivocal
manner, i.e. with a quite different sense or meaning in relation to each referent.
What we are doing is to use the term in an analogical fashion: there is a similarity
between the attitudes of the dog and of our friend such that the term is appropriate in
relation to both.
However, we are, and we remain aware of the difference between the two that is such
that there can be no question of putting the two on the same level via the use of the
term. Our friend possesses, shall we say, a far more definite sense of responsibility,
consciousness, moral intent, e.t.c. It is his faithfulness that is determinative in relation
to the faithfulness we see reflected in the relationship we have with our dog. In the
attitude of the dog we see something which corresponds in relative terms to the
attitude we fully understand at the interpersonal level. Nevertheless, the analogy
permits the claim that it is true that the dog is faithful, i.e. that the claim is understood
to convey meaning and knowledge concerning experience.
2. Analogy of Attribution: the workings of analogy from humanity is complimented
by its use in talk of God, in which use, as Aquinas understands it, it is the divine that
is determinative in relation to the predicate, quality, relation, or whatever, not man.
Thus human wisdom, goodness, benevolence, grace, e.t.c., are derived from the nature
and will of the divine. This is a truth known in and through the experience of faith. It
means that the information or knowledge that is conveyed via analogy comes via a
negation of the common, human meaning of the term, with the various constraints that
surround it in the finite domain within which it is habitually employed, so that the
pure and intrinsic form and meaning can be made clear. Aquinas thinks that we see
that the attributes we sometimes show – of sickness on the one hand, or of devotion
on the other, are attributes analogically expressed of disease in the first case, and of
God’s devotion, in the other.
Unequivocal use is inappropriate in ‘God-talk’, and equivocal use is of no value in the
communication of meaning. Thus analogical use rules!
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Analogy and the Apophatic Way: Approaches to the Problem of Religious Language.
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Analogy and the Apophatic Way: Approaches to the Problem of Religious Language.
Some problems with analogy.
1. One problem philosophers and linguists see with analogy is that if an analogy
works it is usually because there is a shared understanding between the two
areas of experience. If I suggest that John has ‘played with a straight bat’ in
making a deal with me to buy a house, the analogy between a correct
technique in cricket and fairness in making a deal works if we who use it share
understanding about a) cricket and b) deals. But we might, on Kantian
grounds, argue that we don’t ‘know’ God; ‘God’ is defined as being beyond
the confines of the space-time phenomenal world within which we can know
things, so we can’t use language analogically.
2. This problem is illustrated in the novel Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. (See Jones
et al p216.).
3. From the religious perspective we might recall Kant’s view that he denies
‘knowledge’ (of God) to ‘make room for faith’ (in God).
4. It might be handy to keep in mind this: Paul writes as follows to the
Corinthians: ‘For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face;
now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.’1
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1
1 Corinthians 13:12
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Analogy and the Apophatic Way: Approaches to the Problem of Religious Language.
The Via Negativa or the ‘Apophatic Way’
Remember Anselm’s prayerful approach in Proslogion:
‘Surely you dwell in light inaccessible – where is it? And how can I have access to light which is
inaccessible?1
and,
‘...Lord, I am not trying to make my way to your height, for my understanding is in no way equal to
that, but I do desire to understand a little of your truth which my heart already believes and loves. I do
not seek to understand so that I may believe, but I believe so that I may understand; and what is more, I
believe that unless I do believe I shall not understand.’ 2
Anselm’s approach here involves an acceptance of the limits of human understanding
and, by implication, of the human language that we use to express our insights.
And Anselm’s definition of God as ‘that thing than which nothing greater can be
thought’ is consistent with this acceptance; the definition is of what God is via what
he is not. To affirm via negation is to operate apophatically and the apophatic
tradition, the via negativa, is a very significant idea in the material we study for this
topic.
The ‘via negativa’ or the ‘apophatic way’ amounts to the theological view that the
language we have means that we can say nothing about God as such; our options are
to be silent or to see that our talk of God is always equivocal; we can make
affirmations of what God is via saying what He is not! This we operate via negations
of ordinary meaning.
This approach is often associated with mystical traditions in theology – St John of the
Cross (1542-1591) is often attached to this view. The mystic view is that through a
certain pattern of reflection and experience a mystical contemplation of or union with
the ineffable divine is possible. But such experience or insight cannot be rendered in
human terms. What we can follow is the apophatic approach of affirming through
negation; God is not finite, not evil, not partial, not limited, not impure, and so on. A
key point to convey is that it is not possible for man to say what God is in any sense
that is definitive.
The Jewish theologian Moses Maimonides (1136-1204) is a key player in the tradition
of the via negativa.
Psalm 62:1 gives us the core sense of the points he wants to make about talk of God;
‘For God alone my soul waits in silence’
1
Proslogion 1 21f
2
Proslogion 1 150ff
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Analogy and the Apophatic Way: Approaches to the Problem of Religious Language.
And we can cite this passage from Isaiah:
‘Truly, you are a God who hides himself.’ 1
Maimonides’ view was that any statement declaring a specific quality or attribute of
God could not not be a limitation of what God as such was. What God as such was
something we might encounter, but it was not, he thought, something we could
express.
In The Guide for the Perplexed Maimonides writes as follows:
‘There is no necessity at all for you to use positive attributes of God with the view of magnifying Him
in your thought… some illustrations in order that you may better understand the propriety of forming
as many negative attributes as possible, and the impropriety of ascribing to God any positive attributes.
A person may know for certain that a “ship” is in existence, but he may not know to what object that
name is applied, whether to a substance or to an accident; a second person then learns that a ship is not
an accident; a third person that it is not a mineral; a fourth that it is not a plant growing in the earth; a
fifth that it is not a body whose parts are joined together by nature; a sixth, that not a flat object like
boards or doors; a seventh, that is not a sphere; an eighth, that it is not pointed; a ninth, that it is not
round shaped; not equilateral; a tenth, that it is not solid. It is clear that this tenth person has almost
arrived at the correct notion of a “ship” by the foregoing negative attributes… In the same manner you
will come nearer to the knowledge and comprehension of God by the negative attributes… I do not
merely declare that he who affirms attributes of God has not sufficient knowledge concerning the
Creator… but I say that he unconsciously loses his belief in God…’ 2
How did Maimonides come to this view?
1. He was steeped in the Jewish tradition and regarded God as a) One and b) as
sovereign.
2. He was influenced by Aristotelian views of causation to see that God should
be regarded as the prior cause of all and thus outside the pattern of cause and
effect.
3. Thus God should be seen as outside of and prior to time and space.
4. All this implies – as in the wisdom tradition in Judaism – that God is unique,
sacred, Holy and pure.
5. This then means that any expression of description of God that is
anthropocentric must not be understood literally but metaphorically.
6. This includes Biblical accounts such as Moses experiencing God through a
burning bush or getting the Ten Commandments from God on Mount Sinai.
(Exodus 3 & 20).
Maimonides is thus arguing for a metaphorical approach to biblical interpretation, for
a wholly non-literal reading of scripture.
Intellectually one important matter Maimonides is expressing is that human language
is used to distinguish, to define, to explain – and it does this well in respect of things
within the domain of finite experience which can be dismantled and explained
1
Isaiah 45:13
2
Moses Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed etr 1936
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Analogy and the Apophatic Way: Approaches to the Problem of Religious Language.
linguistically. But ‘God’ would not be ‘God’ if He were available to be spoken of in
this way.
A problem with Maimonides’s example of the ship is identified by Brain Davies. 1 He
argues that there is not sense in claiming that the person who has all the negative
attributes that re mentioned is all but at the correct notion of a ship. He could just as
easily be adjacent to a understanding something like a Wardrobe
A common criticism we shall see made in various ways is that religious language is
contradictory, or incoherent, or meaningless. But a strong tradition of apophatic
thought – in all religious tradition, suggests that apparently contradictory langue-use
is legitimate when it is employed to indicate a sense of what lies beyond what can be
expressed in normal human concepts.
The philosopher Bernard Williams
(1929-2003) suggests that a
key feature of theological language is that it has ‘a sort of inherent and necessary
incomprehensibility,’2
Williams is, like Maimonides, clear that the reason for this is that such language tries
to express a relation between what we might popularly term the natural and the
supernatural. And Williams thinks the problem can be pressed. If we use human
terms in talking of God, to say that
‘religious language requires merely an extrapolation from the human context, is not to solve the
problem, but to pose it again. For the extrapolation is to infinity, and in even trying to give a sense to
this we encounter the incomprehensibility.’ 3
Williams does not think an apophatic solution is helpful. He thinks that the upshot is
that theological insight is claimed for something that by definition cannot be
understood; this results in the person of faith being asked to believe on trust
something they cannot know to be true, nor to be distinct from something that might
be false.4
1
In his An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion OUP 1986
2
B Williams, ‘Turtullian’s Paradox’, in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. Flew & MacIntyre,
1955, p187
3
Williams, Op cit, p204
4
See Williams. Op cit, p208ff
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Analogy and the Apophatic Way: Approaches to the Problem of Religious Language.
In contrast, W H Austin defends the apophatic view that the negation or contradiction
of regular concepts is consistent with the view that theological insight cannot be
described but rather shown or indicated:
‘The affirmation-negation paradox is of fundamental importance in theology, giving expression to the
principle that the religious ultimate is beyond all human concepts, so that what is affirmed of it must
also be denied.’ 1
TR Miles has a similar point that is worth noting, with the suggestion of ‘a more
thorough application of the via negativa’ and the way of silence’ is to be encouraged
as a way of pressing home the point that to speak of God as ‘transcendent’ is to
‘emphasise the non-applicability of any concept whatever…’2
The philosopher John Wisdom (1904-1993) makes some interesting and relevant
remarks on this general issue. Commenting on the role of paradoxes in general he
says that ‘I wish to represent them as… symptoms of linguistic penetration.’ 3
Wisdom continues to argue that there is philosophical usefulness about paradoxes, the
key point being that ‘their philosophical usefulness depends upon their
paradoxicalness and thus upon their falsehood. They are false because they are
needed where ordinary language fails...’4
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Problems for the via negativa
It is easy to see what the via negativa is trying to do; it tries to protect the status and
distinctiveness of the concept of God. The ultimate of religious experience is
inexpressible; the infinite is not and cannot be expressed as that which is finite.
But there is still something of a logical problem:
We can still ask,
‘What is it that is expressed via the silence of the apophatic way?’
•
If we say ‘God is in expressible’ we are still expressing something about
‘God’:
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We mean that ‘God’ is inexpressible, so we are saying something about ‘God’,
we are giving a description of some kind.
1
W H Austin, Waves, Particles and Paradox, p49
2
T R Miles in Religious Studies 1.2, p150
3
J Wisdom, ‘Philosophical Perplexity, in Philosophy & Psychoanalysis, Oxford 1953, p41
4
Op cit, p50
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Analogy and the Apophatic Way: Approaches to the Problem of Religious Language.
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But the meaning of the description is that it isn’t one! Nothing is described!
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This can be seen as a paradox…..
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Or as a contradiction!
Further: it is commonly held in religions that faith in ‘God’ and experience of ‘God’
are what make the difference to one’s life. The idea is that through faith commitment
and via religious experience ‘God’ enters into some form of relationship with
humanity, and if such experience is possible, it must be distinguishable. We must be
able to notice it as distinct from other experiences and other forms of commitment.
(c.f. Otto on the numinous experience – see AS notes). If this is so then it must a form
of experience of or commitment to a ‘something’ that we can in some way express.
Here we hit on perhaps the key role of religious language, the language that is
employed to point to a mode of experience and to a pattern of life within and as the
religious response to reality.
Perhaps one key to understanding the nature and role of religious language is to see
that the absolute or ultimate – the Holy as Otto has it, is, in religious traditions ancient
and modern commonly seen to be transcending that which is found in and though
religious experience.
Ninian Smart (1927-2001) makes the point well:
‘Concepts apply to God’s manifested activity… not to his unmanifested essence… It is not just that
God transcends the world: he transcends himself as known to us.’ 1
This point is a valuable corrective to the view of some in the apophatic strand of
thought who want to argue that God is wholly other:
‘The rigid doctrine of the wholly other would seem… to mean that no predicate which can truly be
predicated of anything in the world can be predicated truly of God’
The problem with this is as follows:
‘…the concept of the religious ultimate in practice is the concept of something which, though it may lie
beyond its manifestations, nevertheless manifests itself in the world here and there and somehow. But
if the rigid doctrine of the wholly other were correct, no predicate by which we describe a
manifestation of the religious ultimate could be truly predicated of the religious ultimate. We could
not, for example, use the term “Holy” of God. By a paradox there would no resemblance between God
and his manifestations.’ 2
Smart’s points hint at an approach to religious language where myth, metaphor and
symbol all have a significant role to play!
1
N Smart Philosophy of Religion, London 1970, p50
2
Op cit p63-64
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