|
 Introducing
the philosophy of religion
The
fifth in Roy Jackson's series looking at some of the classic problems
in the philosophy of religion.
No.
5 Religious Language
Roy Jackson
'What we cannot speak about we must
pass over in silence.'
Ludwig Wittgenstein
What Is Religious Language?
We often refer to 'everyday language'.
For example, having a conversation in a café about the weather
is nothing unusual; it is a topic directly related to everyday experience.
If, however, the conversation was to turn and I started to talk
about God, then the language drifts from the everyday to the 'mysterious',
the 'metaphysical'. If I were then to go on to make an assertion
about God - for example, 'God exists' - then the listener might
well begin to question the validity of the assertion.
To assert is to insist that something
is true. When we talk of the 'mysterious' then many doubt the truth
of such statements. For a variety of reasons, many of us question
the validity of such statements as 'God exists', 'God is timeless',
'God is love' and so on. We know such statements are made all the
time, and yet we wonder whether they have any real meaning.
That is, what does it mean to say 'God is timeless' and how is this
different from saying 'The sky is blue'?
Verification and Falsification
In order to be able to say whether
or not language is meaningful it might be helpful to have rules
by which words can be judged. The rules of language were debated
by the Vienna Circle: a group of philosophers - influenced by Wittgenstein's
early philosophy - and scientists who met periodically for discussions
in Vienna during the 1920s and 30s. The Circle rejected the need
for metaphysics (the 'transcendental science' that examines the
transition in philosophy from the physical world to a world beyond
sense perception). For them, a sentence could only be meaningful
if it could be related to experience: it had to be positive, and
it had to be logical; hence the term 'logical positivism'.
The same however, could not be said
of religious language. Here, it is not a case of whether a statement
is true or not, it is rather that they cannot be proven one way
or the other (i.e. they are not verifiable) and are, therefore,
meaningless. The statement 'God exists and He is good' is, for the
logical positivist, beyond sense experience, unverifiable and, therefore,
meaningless.
Of course, there are different degrees
of verification. For example, you might argue that the statement
'Julius Caesar led an expedition to Britain in 55 BC' is somewhat
difficult to verify in the sense that there are no living witnesses
to the event and, also, that documents relating to the event are
rather scanty. Nonetheless, pick up just about any encyclopaedia
and it would likely confirm the statement. Therefore, the evidence
- such as it is - is weighed in favour of the historical statement
being true; at least until evidence to the contrary is revealed.
This, in the words of A.J. Ayer, is a form of 'weak verification':
there is much evidence, but not conclusive evidence.
Ayer was later to state that his earlier
work was 'mostly false', and we can see why he came to that conclusion.
By weakening verification you are opening the back door to religious
language again. For example, in what respect does the statement
'there are atoms' differ from 'God watches over me'? Both are difficult
to verify in the strong sense (have you ever seen an atom?), but
could be verified in the weaker sense. In fact, if nothing else,
the existence of God could be verified when you die (what John Hick
called 'eschatological verification').
In the 1950s a debate - led by Anthony
Flew - on falsification ensued. It is one thing to say that a religious
statement cannot be true because it cannot be verified, but what
if we say that a statement is presumed to be true until falsified.
This way, science accepts that statements can be proven to be false
(i.e. the sun - in given circumstance - may not rise tomorrow) but
the statement is still meaningful because it admits it! In other
words, scientific statements make an assertion about the world and
then challenges us to prove it to be untrue.
In this sense we can at least say that
scientific statements are saying something positive and, therefore,
meaningful, whereas - the theory goes - religious statements assert
nothing! For example, if I were to say that 'God watches over me'
then I am making an assertion that cannot be falsified; especially
if I also state that God is invisible! Of course, if I then get
run over by a bus that might suggest that God was distracted momentarily,
but equally I could retort that it was part of God's plan that I
get flattened by a double-decker. The point is that I will not allow
for anything to count against my belief that He is watching over
me. Quite simply, the statement I am making is 'unscientific' because
I am not allowing for the possibility of falsification. The statement,
therefore, is really not asserting anything at all and must be meaningless.
There are, however, two major problems
with falsification. Firstly, it could be argued (and, indeed, has
by R.M. Hare) that religious language could still have meaning without
being factual. Here, it depends on what is meant by 'meaning'! Does
a statement that affects a person's life have meaning or not? For
the person affected it certainly does. Although not falsifiable,
they still have significance. Secondly, religious adherents often
admit - in a scientific way - that statements can be falsified
by conflicting evidence (for example, the evidence of evil conflicts
with the idea of a good God), but that faith in 'God's plan' is
of greater validity.
How Can We Talk About God?
As it is generally considered that
neither falsification nor verification provides an adequate criterion
for establishing meaning, other ways of talking about God have been
approached. One can use simile. For example, 'God is like a watchmaker':
One can picture a watchmaker, making his device and getting it to
tick away nicely and can extract from that an image of God creating
the world and getting it rolling. An extension of this is the use
of metaphor. A metaphor is frequently used in literature as it is
regarded as an imaginative way of trying to express something (for
example, 'his poetry is a metaphor for spiritual hunger.') Metaphor
is frequently used in religious language, such as 'heaven is a land
of milk and honey'. Note here that, unlike a simile, we are not
saying that heaven is like milk and honey; rather, the image
conjured up is an association of sweetness, warmth, security, plenty,
and so on.
There is a danger, however, about saying
that all talk of God is metaphorical. We know the remark 'I only
meant that metaphorically'; in other words, it has an element of
'untruth' about it. All very poetic and everything, but not real.
Alternatively, we can use negatives.
The Jewish philosopher Maimonides (1135-1204) argued that God is
unknowable and that the only way one can talk about God is by saying
what He is not. However, by saying He is not physical,
not finite, not knowable and so on, does that tell us any more about
what He is other than the opposite? In which case, why not
simply say that He is infinite, spiritual and unknowable? Sometimes
it seems more comprehensible to say 'God is good' or 'God
is the creator'.
The Dominican monk, St. Thomas Aquinas
(1225-1274) thought that it was indeed possible to talk about God
in a meaningful way: by using analogy. For example, the word 'good'
can be used in two different ways. It can be used univocally (meaning
exactly the same thing; for example, 'good' morally) or equivocally
(the same word, but having different meanings; for example, 'good'
morally and technically). However, Aquinas said there is a third
way of applying the same word to mean different things: analogy.
For example, when the believer says
'God is good' he or she doesn't mean it in the univocal sense (not
good in the sense little Johnny is good because he ate all his greens),
nor in the equivocal sense (having a completely different meaning
and, therefore, still not telling us anything about God). Rather,
by analogy, we can say there is some basis of comparison, because
we have an idea of what good is and our ideas derive ultimately
from God in the first place (it is worth bearing in mind that, for
Aquinas, causes and their effects are intimately connected). God's
world is a reflection of what God is; it contains his 'signature'.
So, when we use words like 'good', 'wise' and 'all-knowing', we
already have a reference point: our language ultimately stems from
an attempt to interpret the world and the world, in turn, reflects
God's nature. Language both frees us and restricts us; it is all
we have. Yet it takes us some of the way in understanding, in the
same way as using the analogy of the human heart as a mechanical
pump; it obviously isn't a mechanical pump, but it helps
us to understand its operation.
However, do statements such as 'God
is good' or 'God is wise' really tell you anything more about what
God is like? That is, do they have anything significant to
say? For example, to say that the attributes of Polly the Parrot
is that she has a pair of wings, a beak, a red tail and likes to
say 'Polly wants a cracker' repeatedly tells us quite a lot about
Polly. That is, we are presented with a series of predicates (wings,
beak, etc.) that tell us more about the subject (Polly). The question
you have to ask yourself is: does saying that God is 'wise by analogy'
tell us anything more about God?
Conclusion
Philosophers have shown that there
are different ways by which language is given meaning: through the
method of verification and falsification, or by determining meaning
through symbol and comparison. Ultimately, the debate rests on the
validity of statements that seem outside of experience, although
more recent work has argued that religious language is, in fact,
part of our experience. Influenced (and, perhaps, misinterpreting)
the later works of Wittgenstein, writers such as Don Cupitt and
D.Z. Phillips have argued that religious language is not about the
'metaphysical' at all, but is actually more directly related to
our experience. Those within a faith community have their own way
of using languages; their own 'religious language' that can only
really be understood by being a part of the 'language game'. In
this way, religious language can be seen as adapting to how our
view of the world alters.
This view, however, is not acceptable
for those religious believers who are realists. For them, God is
real and 'out there'. The existence of God is seen as a factual
claim and is, therefore, not subject to reinterpretation. The concern
for the realist is that the more that religious claims become a
matter of the environment and psychology, the less significant religious
assertions are seen to be.
Suggested reading
The Philosophy of Religion (I,
III, IV, & VIII), Ed. Basil Mitchell (OUP)
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Chaps. 1 &
2), Brian Davies (OUP)
Religious Language, Peter Donovan (Sheldon Press)
The Puzzle of God (Chaps. 1-7), Peter Vardy (Fount)
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Part
6 of Introducing the Philosophy of Religion will appear on May 1st
2001
Previous
articles in the series
1.
2.
3.
4.
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