Religious Language and Experience
The study of how language about God functions, whether it is meaningful, and how human words can apply to a transcendent being.
Definition
The branch of philosophy of religion concerned with the semantics and intelligibility of statements about God and with whether the concept of God is internally coherent.
Scope
This area covers the meaningfulness of religious discourse under the verificationist challenge, the doctrines of analogy, equivocation, and metaphor used to explain how terms apply to God, and the coherence of the divine attributes such as omnipotence, omniscience, and eternity. It does not cover the argument from religious experience to God's existence, which is treated under arguments for the existence of God.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- Are statements about God factually meaningful or merely expressive?
- How can human predicates like 'wise' or 'good' apply to a transcendent God?
- Is talk of God univocal, equivocal, analogical, or metaphorical?
- Are the traditional divine attributes mutually consistent and individually coherent?
Key theories
- Doctrine of analogy
- Aquinas argues that terms applied to God and creatures are neither purely univocal nor purely equivocal but analogical, so that calling God good means God's goodness is proportionally related to, yet exceeds, creaturely goodness, preserving meaningful God-talk.
- Literal predication and the coherence of theism
- Swinburne and Alston argue that many predicates can apply literally to God once analyzed carefully, and Swinburne defends the joint coherence of the divine attributes as describing a logically possible being.
History
Reflection on God-talk runs from negative theology and Aquinas's medieval doctrine of analogy. In the twentieth century, logical positivism's verification principle, voiced by Ayer, challenged the meaningfulness of religious statements, prompting the influential university debate among Flew, Hare, and Mitchell. Later writers such as Alston and Swinburne defended the literal applicability of predicates and the coherence of the divine attributes.
Debates
- Whether religious statements are factually meaningful
- Verificationists held that unfalsifiable God-talk is cognitively meaningless; defenders responded that religious claims are assertions with truth conditions, and the demise of the verification principle reopened the question.
- Whether the divine attributes are coherent
- Critics press puzzles such as the stone paradox of omnipotence and tensions between omniscience and human freedom; Swinburne argues that, suitably defined, the attributes form a coherent concept of God.
Key figures
- Thomas Aquinas
- A. J. Ayer
- Antony Flew
- R. M. Hare
- William Alston
- Richard Swinburne
Related topics
Seminal works
- flew1955
- swinburne1977
- alston1989
Frequently asked questions
- Why is religious language philosophically problematic?
- Because God is held to be transcendent and infinite, it is unclear how finite human words drawn from ordinary experience can apply to God, and twentieth-century verificationism questioned whether such statements are even meaningful.
- What is the doctrine of analogy?
- Developed by Aquinas, it holds that words applied to God are used neither in exactly the same sense as for creatures nor in a wholly different sense, but analogically, so that God-talk is meaningful without implying that God is just a larger creature.