The Problem Of Religious Language

The term “religious language” refers to statements or claims made about God or gods. The problem of religious language is that if God is infinite, then words used to describe finite beings, may not sufficiently describe God. For example, is God good in the same sense as Pope Francis is good, or Greta Thunberg is good? This problem makes it challenging to communicate the extent that qualities used for finite beings, are used to also describe God. The vagueness in meaning regarding the terms addressed of God, is the problem of religious language.

As humans, we speak to one another utilizing the language we were raised in and taught by our parents. Aside from utilizing it to talk with other humans, we have additionally utilized it to speak with or about God. Therefore, there is a distinct difference between ‘human language’ and ‘religious language’. Most people feel confident that our ‘human language’ is reliable when used to explain the activities within the scope of our finite existence. The question arises though, after we use it to explain or communicate with God. How reliable is our ‘human language’ when applied to the realm of infinite existence? One answer is that ‘human language’ is incapable of sufficiently describing and explaining the realm beyond our finite universe, therefore implying that we need to depend another language, ‘religious language’, to help us explain the infinite universe.

The sole purpose of religious language is to attempt to explain the divine world. When we attempt to describe God, we are confronted by a dilemma: how do we describe God and explain who He is? For example, can we say that ‘God is good’ the same way we say, ‘Pope Francis is good’? This leads us to the question of how we differentiate between the two statements that contain a characteristic that express the same meaning. Since God is believed to be incorporeal, infinite, and timeless, the premise we apply to corporeal, finite, temporal creatures wouldn't apply to God. When we describe God as good and Pope Francis as good, the meanings are not exactly the same because when referring to Pope Francis, it is referring to someone who is finite and imperfect, and when referring to God we are referring to someone who is infinite and perfect.

Philosophers throughout history have produced different solutions to the problem of religious language, athough no single solution has been widely accepted. One argument is that some philosophers consider statements about God have no truth-values, a suggestion that only has only two possible values (true or false), rendering them meaningless. This theory is derived from the views of the Vienna Circle, who developed a test for the truth-value of statements known as Verificationism. Rudolf Carnap, a German-language philosopher, argued that the only way to be certain of a statement’s truth or falsity is to verify those statements through perceptions, observations, or experience. He offers the following example of the process by which a statement could be verified:

Let us take the statement P1: “This key is made of iron.” There are many ways of verifying this statement: for example,: I place the key near a magnet; then I perceive that the key is attracted. Here the deduction is made in this way: Premises:

• P1: “This key is made of iron”; The statement to be examined.
• P2: “If an iron thing is placed near a magnet, it is attracted;” this is a physical law, already verified.
• P3: “This object – a bar – is a magnet;” statement already verified.
• P4: “The key is placed near the bar;” this is now directly verified by our observation.

From these four premises we can deduce the conclusion: P5: “The key will now be attracted by the bar.”

This statement is a prediction which can be examined by observation. If we look, we either observe the attraction or we do not. In the first case we have found a positive instance, an instance of verification of the statement P1 under consideration; in the second case we have a negative instance, an instance of disproof of P1. (Carnap, 208)

After establishing this principle, Carnap then argues that metaphysical assertions cannot be verified, rendering them meaningless (Carnap, 210). A.J. Ayer, and English philosopher, agreed with Carnap and concluded that since all statements about God cannot be verified, they too are meaningless, “But the notion of a person whose essential attributes are non-empirical is not an intelligible notion at all. We may have a word which is used as if it names this ‘person,’ [God] but, unless the sentences in which it occurs express propositions which are empirically verifiable, it cannot be said to symbolize anything.” (Ayer, 144).

Based on the concept of Verificationism, statements about God do not have truth-values that can be verified, making them meaningless. So at least one solution to the problem of religious language is to claim that statements about God are unintelligible. But Verificationism was challenged by philosophers such as Alonzo Church and Richard Swinburne and largely abandoned in the twentieth century, rejected as an an inadequate methodology.

Another theory argues that when terms are used to describe God and his qualities, those terms are equivocal regarding what they mean in reference to God and what they mean in reference to a finite being. This solution argues that God is not good in the same sense that Pope Francis is good. God’s goodness is different from the goodness of a finite being. Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, commonly known as Maimonides, argues that despite the difference in being, God can be spoken of by finite beings through negations. He argues his position in his work The Guide for the Perplexed. For example, to acknowledge God as eternal, we must say ‘God is not dead’. As claimed by Maimonide, qualities with regards to God should be denied in order to recognize that God is in no way comparable to anything else. According to Maimonides:

There is no oneness at all except in believing that there is one simple essence in which there is no complexity or multiplicity of notions, but one notion only; so that from whatever angle you regard it and from whatever point of view you consider it, you will find that it is one, not divided in any way and by any cause into two notions … (8)

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If Maimonides is correct, then we can only say what God is not. Attributes are to be interpreted as indicating that those attributes are not appropriately said of God, even in a negative sense. Another example to support Maimonides solution, is a statement such as ‘God is powerful’ is nonsense, instead it should be stated as ‘God is not lacking power’. To state that God does not lack power or possess it in a way comparable to other things, is the same as saying that God’s power is beyond our comprehension. Therefore, most of the terms used to describe God are ambiguous between God and finite beings.

Another solution argues that when words are used to describe God and his qualities, those words are univocal regarding what they mean in reference to God and what they mean in reference to finite beings. This approach would argue that God is good in the same sense in which Pope Francis is good. A supporter of this view is William Alston, an American philosopher of language, epistemology, and Christian philosophy, although he does not defend univocity completely (Alston, 65).

Alston does argue through, that two different things could possess the same abstract feature in different ways. For example, a new computer and a new acquaintance can both be “intriguing” in a single sense of the term, even though what makes the one intriguing is very different from what makes the other intriguing (Alston, 66-67). In relation to religious language, Alston argues that God and finite beings can possess the same abstract feature in different ways. For example, when a finite being says ‘God is good’, the exact same meaning of ‘goodness’ is applied when we say ‘man is good’. But how God is good or the way God is good is different from the way that a finite being is good. According to Alston:

We can say of a human being that she will tend to do what she can to bring about what she recognizes to be best in a given situation, and we can take this tendency to be partly constitutive of the concept of recognizing something to be best. We can then formulate the divine regularities in tendency terms also. Thus it will be true of God also that if He recognizes that it is good that p He will tend to bring about p insofar as He can unless He recognizes something incompatible with p to be a greater good. (Alston, 79).

Alston claims shared meaning between finite beings and God is to be found in the concept of “recognizing something to be best”. Since God and finite beings perform the same function, although in a different way, the concept “recognizing something to be best” can be applied to both entities with a shared meaning. So, it would be true to say of God that he recognizes something to be best and that this concept can be applied to him and to finite beings in the same sense, identifying this position as partial univocity.

A third solution to religious language claims that when words are used to describe God and his qualities, those words are used analogously. This solution claims that God is good in an analogous sense to Pope Francis’ goodness. The term ‘good’ applied to both God and Pope Francis would mean the same thing, but in different ways. That is, when ‘good’ is applied to Pope Francis it picks out a property of Pope Francis, but when ‘good’ is applied to God, it refers to God’s essence and not to an individual property. Since words used analogously are not entirely equivocal or entirely univocal, this approach proves a middle stance between the two. This solution is credited to St. Thomas Aquinas, who defends his position in his work, Summa Theologiae.

Aquinas noticed that certain words, for example ‘good’, are problematic when used to describe God since they humanize Him, even though God is everything that humans are not. Therefore, Aquinas argued analogy as the simplest way of understanding religious language claiming that what we speak and know of God is partial. For example, our goodness is flawed and partial while God’s goodness is the prime example of goodness.

In Aquinas' work Summa Theologica, he rejects both univocal and equivocal language as the simplest way of talking about God, and argues for a middle ground, that being analogical language. Aquinas rejects the use of univocal language because this type of language humanizes God and undermines His divine being since it suggests that God and humans are equal. Aquinas also rejects equivocal language because it would make faith and claims that God has made himself known to humans impossible.

Instead, he states religious language is analogical, meaning there's a comparison between the 2 things, where the simpler thing is employed to clarify the more complex thing, which is similar, but not identical. For example, to explain 'strawberry ice-cream' to someone who has never tasted it before, but has tasted vanilla ice-cream, we would say it tastes like vanilla ice-cream, but with strawberries.

Aquinas uses analogy in two different ways. The first way is analogy of attribution, implying that the attributes denoted to one another or other things are reflections of God’s attributes (Idziak, 75-79). For example, if we say that the bread is sweet, this must, as consequence, mean the baker is additionally good because the bread is a product of the baker, the baker’s goodness ‘spreads’ to the bread. This shows that the characteristics such as goodness, reflects those of God.

The second way Aquinas uses analogy is the analogy of proposition. Analogy of proposition refers to the idea that qualities of something or someone are proportionate to their nature (Idziak, 75-79). For instance, if I said that my younger sister is a good drummer for her age, and I went to see a professional drummer who played to the same standard as my sister, I would be disappointed. Similarly, qualities of God are proportionate to His nature, showing that when speaking of God, we are speaking of an infinite being, but once we are speaking of others, we are describing finite beings, so the meaning cannot be the same.

Multiple solutions have been presented regarding the problem to religious language. The first solution suggests that all statements about God are meaningless, this this solution has been discredited. The second solution suggests that all qualities regarding God are to be understood equivocally. The third solution suggests that the qualities regarding God are to be understood univocally. The fourth solution suggests that the qualities regarding God are to be interpreted analogously. These approaches all offer a way in which statements about God might be understand, although no single solution is accepted universally.

References

1. Alston, William P. “Functionalism and Theological Language.” In Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Theology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989
2. Ayer, A. J. Language, Truth and Logic. 2nd ed. New York: Dover Publications: 1946.
3. Carnap, Rudolf. “Philosophy and Logical Syntax: Part I.” In 20th-Century Philosophy: The Analytic Tradition. Ed. Morris Weitz. New York: The Free Press, 1966. pp. 207-219.
4. Idziak, Janine. “Roger M. White, Talking about God: The Concept of Analogy and the Problem of Religious Language (Transcending Boundaries in Philosophy and Theology).” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, vol. 71, no. 1, Feb. 2012, pp. 75–79. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s11153-010-9264-3.
5. Maimonides, Moses. The Guide of the Perplexed. 2 vols. Trans. Shlomo Pines. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.