Religious Language: Analogy and Symbol

More Religious Language

Analogy

• Aquinas was the first to consider the idea that language can be used analogously to talk about God.
  
• He felt the only language we could use to talk about God was the language that we use every day, as that, really, is the only language we have. When we apply these meanings to God, however, we understand that God is perfect, so the words do not apply wholely, and therefore are analogous.
  
• A fair few philosophers do not like this, as, when talking in analogy, it is argued that you need a sort of common ground and understanding about the subject you’re talking about. God, however, is so far beyond human understanding that we cannot share any common ground on him, realistically.
  
• Aquinas replied with the idea that there is common grounds for using analogy in the fact that God has a relationship with the world and us, in that he made it and sustains it, and there is thus some kind of comparable point.
  
• He decided there are two forms of analogy to talk about God:
  
• Analogy of Proportion is where analogy is used to talk about the quality that something has in reference to some sort of reference point. We say that God is “all powerful” in relation to human power, in the same way that humans possess loyalty, but in a different way in which dogs possess it.
  
• Analogy of Attribution is where we talk about a quality that something has which is referenced to a previous quality which causes the quality we’re talking about at the start (…wah?). The example given is that if we say that someone looks “sickly” then it may be because his appearance is analogous to the appearance of someone who is ill.
  
• Ian Ramsey talks about “models” and “qualifiers”! To say that “God is Good” is a “model” of what God is (it might be nice to think of it as a scale model of a plane: it is obviously not quite the same as the plane it is modelled after [in size at least], but it is analogous to the full sized plane). In order to “qualify” the statement for God, we must add a sample of the real scale of it in terms of God. It is more accurate and proper to say that “God is infinitely good.”
  

Symbol

 

• Paul Tillich thought symbol was the way forward! He did not like the idea that religious language tries to “interpret” a religious experience, and called it “closer to poetry than prose” as a result of it.
  
• He argued for symbols as he claimed they “open up” new levels of reality, and “go beyond the external world” to their “internal reality”. Sounds batty. He felt they “unlock dimensions and elements of our soul”. Nutter.
  
• He says, to add, that symbols are not timeless, but alter through time and through various interpretation.
  
• Paul Edwards argues that symbols don’t convey factual knowledge!
  
• The symbols used, as a whole, are not adequate or appropriate! It is not possible for religious symbols to point beyond human experience, which makes good logical sense! There is, as a result, no way of seeing if the symbol gives the wrong impressions about those which are beyond our understanding.
  

Symbols, it is claimed, show us things about the real world. Because these symbols are not being applied to an objective reality there is no way of having two people say the same thing about them.

 

--

 

In other news: NOTHING EVER HAPPENS.