Dr Greg Bahnsen - Philosophy of Christianity: Medieval Debate Over Religious Language (Part 11)

Lord, we pray that your presence would be felt among us this day, that we might be encouraged in our studies to know that this work is not for nothing, that all things that we do are for the sake of your kingdom, that you accomplish your ordained ends. We pray, Father, that we would be strengthened through the course of this class, that our faith would lay hold on Jesus Christ all the more firmly, that we might love him all the more and give him our lives and grant gratitude for the work of redemption that he's done. I pray, Father, that you would be with us throughout the class. We pray especially that you would be with our country this day in times of turmoil, times of distress, and times of crisis. We pray, Father, that in all things our Lord Jesus Christ might receive the glory, that his kingdom would indeed be advanced among men. We pray these things, asking that you would indeed hasten the day in which the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. For it's in his name we pray. Amen. We're talking about the problems of religious language. In this unit of our course. We've already taken some time to discuss the challenge to the meaningfulness of religious claims. And we turn toward the end of last class period to the medieval challenge and question of the meaningfulness of religious attribution, that is to say, the meaningfulness of attributing qualities to a transcendent God. Now, the difficulty in doing this, according to Maimonides, the Jewish scholar, was what.

Tribunal quality to God means composite being. And if God is a unity, then he can't be thought of as composing different things.

That's right. How did Maimonides resolve the difficulty then? What's that?

Giving attributes through negation?

Well, what he said is that all attributes had to be negative attributes. God is not this. God is not that. Okay, Thomas Aquinas found that inadequate. Why is that? He said that places in a comparative context. So you might as well be saying same thing as saying it. The positive. Again, that's right. To be fully accurate, you have to put your negative attributions in a comparative context. God is more not this than he is not that. And that's simply by way of double negation to say that he is something positive. And so we're right back into the same ball game of positive attribution to God. However, Aquinas found that if we were going to make attribution to God, we had to avoid four things. What are those four things?

We must not imply that God is.

Corporal, that he's corporeal that's right. We must not have implied that he is corporeal by attributing to him characteristics which are appropriate to corporeal bodies, temporal, spatial bodies. Secondly, we must avoid what couldn't imply.

That God was not incomprehensible.

Right. We wouldn't want to imply the comprehensibility of God. It perhaps will help you to remember that, though, we don't want to imply that he is not incomprehensible because the incomprehensibility of God is a standard theological dogma. And Aquinas didn't want to say that we were negating that. Okay, what else must we avoid in making attribution to God?

That when we spoke of God's love, that we couldn't speak of love in the same way that we knew it.

That we couldn't attach our understanding of.

Love to him, but to his love.

We did not want to speak in what fashion? What's the word for univocally? We didn't want to attribute things to God univocally, saying that what is true of us is exactly true of him, because if we did so, we'd obscure his transcendent perfection. God is much more than we are. God is beyond us. God is transcendent, and we have to keep that in mind when we make attribution to Him. But then, secondly, we must avoid. Or fourthly, actually, we must avoid equivocal predication, which is to say that when we use words or attributes of God, we aren't saying something completely different from what we say about ourselves, because then we wouldn't be able to learn anything about God or say anything about God on the basis of our knowledge of ordinary creatures. Now, Aquinas has a solution for this. How is it that he can avoid univocal predication and equivocal predication? What does he suggest to take the place of those two? See? Who can wait the longest? Anybody? Well, what's the. What's the other option? If things are not completely different, things are not completely alike, then they must be. What?

Analogous.

It must be analogous. Somewhat different, somewhat alike. Analogy means there are points of similarity as well as points of dissimilarity. If you turn to pages 283, 285 and 287 in your textbook, we'll follow the line of thought that Aquinas offers, or offered. Page 283 toward the top, about the fourth line down, Aquinas says, so when we say God is good, the meaning is not. God is the cause of Goodness or God is not evil. But the meaning is whatever good we attribute to creatures pre exists in God and in a higher way. When we attribute something to God, we must recognize that he possesses that attribute in a higher way, in some transcendent way, in some exalted way. In page 285, right in the middle, he says, I answer that these names spoken of God are not synonymous. And then down a little bit further, they have diverse meanings. For the idea signified by the Name is the conception in the intellect of the thing signified by the Name. But since our intellect knows God from creatures, in order to understand God, it forms conceptions proportioned to the perfections flowing from God to creatures. These perfections pre exist in God unitedly and simply, whereas in creatures they are received, divided, multiplied. That's a very crucial passage. What Aquinas is saying is that it's not synonymous, but diverse. When we attribute something to God that we also attribute to ourselves, we're not speaking synonymously, we're speaking in a diverse way. And then he explains that diversity in terms of the difference between God and man. Metaphysically, he says, in particular, these perfections pre exist in God unitedly. And simply, any perfection we attribute to God, we must remember he is a simple, not a composite being. And therefore he holds all these things in a pre existent and united way. There is some integration of these attributes that is not true of us because creatures receive these attributes in a divided and multiplied way. Okay, so I may be a generous man, I may be a loving man, I may be a just man. And all these things I hold in a multiplied, divided way. Whereas God is all those things wrapped up in one. And he holds these things pre existently, and I have them only derivatively. And Then finally, page 287, very first line on the page. In the same way as was said above, all perfections existing in creatures divided and multiplied pre exist in God unitedly. That's what we've just been talking about. Hence, when any name expressing perfection is applied to a creature, it signifies that perfection as distinct from the others according to the nature of its definition. As, for instance, by this term wise applied to a man, we signify some perfection distinct from a man's essence and distinct from his power and his being and from all similar things. But when we apply wise to God, we do not mean to signify anything distinct from his essence or power or being. And thus, when this term wise is applied to man in some degree, it circumscribes and comprehends the things signified, whereas this is not the case when it is applied to God. But it leaves the thing signified as uncomprehended and as exceeding the signification of the name. Hence, it is evident that this term wise is not applied in the same way to God and to man. The same applies to other terms. Hence, no name is predicated univocally of God and of creatures. Up to this point, Aquinas has been insisting on the grand theological difference between the creature and the Creator. He has been stressing over and over and over again we must not speak univocally of God. What do you think of the argument that he gives here? His argument seems to be based on this premise that when we say that a man is wise, we in some degree circumscribe and comprehend the thing signified. Whereas when you speak of God being wise, you are not circumscribing and comprehending God. He is much more than that. Go ahead. Man is much more than just his wisdom, too. Right. Okay. So on the very surface of this argument, we find what appears to be a flaw. It appears that Aquinas is saying, well, when you say God is wise, you're leaving out a lot of perspectives. He's also powerful, he's also loving, and all these things are united in one essence, in God. And so to say that he's wise is only one perspective on the whole. And so it's limiting and it's not exactly accurate. Whereas to say that a man is wise, you haven't necessarily left anything out of the picture. Well, but what if the man is loving and powerful as well? Not as powerful as God or as loving. Haven't you left something out of the picture with respect to man? And so Aquinas is saying it's always distortion of some sort to speak of God as wise, but it need not be a distortion to speak of man as wise, because we're not leaving something out of the picture. But the suggestion which I think on the surface is exactly right, is that, no, we are leaving something out of the picture. We may not talk about a lot of things relevant to the wisdom of the man just by saying that he's wise. But let's see if we can defend Aquinas. What is he getting at? I doubt that Aquinas would have overlooked this evident flaw. He could have, but we want to give him the benefit of the doubt. I tend to think what he's saying here is that wisdom is never the essence of a man. Wisdom is always, in some sense, an accidental attribute. Of a man, it's always something that you can add or subtract from the concept of the man himself. He might be a wise man, he might not be a wise man. And if he's a wise man and a loving man, his wisdom and his love can be distinguished. However, in the case of God, wisdom and love are not accidental attributes. They are his essence, they express his essence. And his wisdom and his love are not, as a matter of fact, different attributes. They amount to the same thing. I think that's what Aquinas is getting at here. All right? And for this reason, since there is this difference in the, if you will, metaphysical status of the creature and the Creator, the way in which they maintain their attributes or characteristics, we must be careful when we attribute something to God that we attribute to man, that we make it very clear that this is not being said in the same sense. And then he adds, and this is very important, this middle paragraph in 287. Neither, on the other hand, are names applied to God and creatures in a purely equivocal sense, as some have said. Because if that were so, it follows that from creatures nothing at all could be known or demonstrated about God. That would certainly be disruptive to Thomas Aquinas system of thought. After all, he is one of the leading, perhaps the classical historical example of a natural theologian. We surely must learn something about God from the creation. We should be able to reason from nature to God. And so if everything we say about God is said equivocally, then we couldn't really learn anything about him from what we learn about the world around us. Anything we say about nature that we then turn and apply to God has got to be applied in a different way. So we really don't know anything about God on the basis of what we've said about nature at the very end of that paragraph. Therefore, it must be said that these names are said of God and creatures in an analogous sense, that is, according to. To proportion. Okay, now in the middle of the next paragraph, for we can name God only from creatures. And then he says a couple sentences later, now this mode of community is a mean between pure equivocation and simple univocation. The name, which is thus used in a multiple sense, signifies various proportions to the sum one thing. We have an analogy of proportionality. Then the same thing, wisdom, love, power, is being said of God and man. But they hold them in different proportions according to their metaphysical difference, essence and attribute being united to God. And also in terms of degree, God is more loving than man is and so he wants to say it's the same thing, but it is said of God in a different way than it's said of man. Okay? And his example is the word healthy. He says that healthy applied to urine signifies the sign of animal health, but applied to medicine, it signifies the cause of the same health. Okay? So we may say of a prescription that the doctor gives you as well as of a urine sample that the doctor takes at the office, that both are healthy. Okay? We mean, we mean the word in a similar way. We're using a similar sense for the word healthy, but there's also diversity because in the one case, when we say the medicine is healthy, we mean it's health giving, it's the cause of health. And when we say that the urine is healthy, we mean it's the sign of good health. And he seems to think that this is a good way to envision the way we make attributions about God. We say of God that he is loving. We mean love in the same general sense as when we use it of ourselves. However, there's also a difference. We say God is loving in a way that in the same way that urine and medicine are healthy. Slightly different too. So it's analogous. There's some kind of proportionality involved. Now, my own feeling is that there's something dreadfully wrong and dreadfully right about what Aquinas is saying. And we're going to be looking at Ross's article in just a moment, and I think he has done an excellent job of pointing out what is right about Aquinas conception. But I would like to take a minute by way of criticism. Remember, we're talking here about language about God. Aquinas view, in summary is that no language applies to God and to creatures univocally. That is, it does not apply in the same sense. It does not apply. When we say that Socrates is a man and Plato is a man. The word man is being used in the same way univocally. And Aquinas says we can't speak univocally of God because univocal predication would place God and creatures on the same level. All right? But on the other hand, he doesn't want language to apply to God and to creatures in essentially different ways either. He doesn't want to be equivocal about it. For instance, if we say, if we use the word man to apply to Socrates and then turn around and use the word man to apply to a chess piece, you know, move your man over here, or I'm Going to move my man there. Obviously, the word man is being used equivocally. We're not using the word man in the same way. If we talk that way about God equivocally. Between God and creation, there are some likenesses and some relations. Excuse me, if we don't avoid equivocal predication, then we will not be able to preserve the fact that between God and creation there are some likenesses and some relationships, especially causal. We're going to cut God off completely from creation if we're equivocal in our discussion about Him. If we're univocal, we bring him back, we bring him down to our level. And if we're equivocal, we cut off all contact with Him. We can't say anything about God, how He is like creation in some ways, or how he relates to creation, because everything we said would be said in a different sense than the way we ordinarily understand it. And so language about God is best characterized as analogal, analogical. According to Aquinas, it's neither purely univocal nor purely equivocal. And we've already looked at his analogy of the word healthy or his illustration of the word healthy, how it's applied analogously both to urine and to medicine. And so his view is that some properties apply to God as they do to creatures, but in different degrees and in different ways. In different degrees and in different ways. Now, the first difficulty I have is that many scholars have debated long over the nature of analogical predication in Thomas Aquinas. Just what is he getting at when he says that analogy is being used here? For instance, when we say that God is holy, are we saying merely that God is the cause of holiness in creatures, or are we saying more than that? Aquinas seems to suggest that we might simply be saying he causes holiness in creatures. Thomas, it turns out, is highly agnostic about what God is in himself. And yet, okay, so one line of scholarship on A goes that direction and says, well, it's always God is the cause of holiness, or something like that, because we never know what God is in himself. On the other hand, there are places in his writings where Thomas claims to know, in fact, even to demonstrate for us definite information about God. And even to say that God is the cause of holiness is to say something very definite about God. And so we're left with something of an unstable mixture here. We're not sure whether he is telling us something definite or not, whether he says that God is holy only in A different way than man, or whether he actually is holy as man is holy. See, he's trying to straddle these two options. And what I'm suggesting is by just offering a word analogy and giving us illustrations of something applying in different ways or in different proportions, he hasn't yet answered the fundamental problem. Well, in any case, the distinctions that Aquinas wants to draw here, I think show the rationalism and the irrationalism in his approach. Building on the philosophical structure of Aristotle's natural reason, Thomas Aquinas must either be wholly agnostic about God, his equivocal approach, or reduce him to the creaturely level, his univocal approach, or adopt some unstable compromise between these, his analogical approach. And that's very similar to the dialectic we were talking about early on in our class between rationalism and irrationalism. On the one hand, Aquinas wants to say that we're equivocal when we speak of God. That is, we have no real knowledge of him. We have to be irrational about the ultimate because we can't speak of him the same way we speak of ourselves. Now on the other hand, he wants to say, oh yeah, we know God, and I can even demonstrate some things about God here. He wants to be very useful, univocal about it. Okay, obviously these two are in contrast with each other. How is he going to get this together? Well, he suggests that he can have analogy, he can have a little of both. But as in the unbelievers attempt to combine rationalism and irrationalism, what you end up with is just an unstable mixture of the two, A running back and forth, back and forth. And that hardly answers the question. You know, if you get yourself into problems by speaking univocally, then somebody points out the problems and you run over here to your equivocal approach, and then somebody says, oh, then you don't know anything or knowing, and you're back over here. I mean, this doesn't solve anything. To get some kind of unstable mixture of the two, what's the alternative?

Okay, the denial of natural theology.

Well, expand a little on that. How would that help us here?

Well, to say that we can know something about God apart from special revelations have to be denied first, and then take the.

Well, but do we want to say that can we not know something from God apart from special revelation?

Yes, we can.

Okay, explain yourself then.

Okay, his whole revelation has to be admitted first, and then conclusion is drawn from there about what God is.

Are you, are you saying that we must grant natural revelation. And then after that is granted, we can speak about God meaningfully. Okay, how does that help to grant natural revelation?

I'm not sure.

As a matter of fact, I'm not convinced that natural revelation will help us here.

Okay, I'm probably speaking of kind of what I'm speaking of. I think I need special revelation. If Aquinas was simply relying on natural revelation.

Okay.

He wasn't building his foundation on a wide enough faith.

Yeah, I think we're struggling towards something that's a good insight here and that's that Aquinas was attempting to find a rational way to speak of God. Autonomously. Way that is on his own, using natural reason, using philosophical concepts at his disposal that he held in common with the other philosophers in the world. How would we go about justifying our ability to speak of God without either drawing him down to our level univocally or making him totally unknowable equivocally? And as Aquinas was not relying upon God's revelation, but relying upon his own self sufficient reason to solve this problem. And I think that in a general sense can usually be said in these difficulties and certainly can be said here. You want to add more particular to.

That, Tom, in two places in this article he seems to cross himself. One is when he quotes scripture and he says that, and therefore he's relying on special relation.

Well, he's quoting Scripture there, as I recall, to show that there is a natural theology which we have to learn something about God from the world.

You wouldn't know that apart from social revelation though.

Oh yeah, and I think you'd admit that. But he says since special revelation tells us it's possible, we ought to get about the job doing it. I think he's misconceived what the job is. But that's why he quotes the Bible. It's because he thinks that Bahaull is telling us there's a way to prove God from the world.

The second thing, it seems that although I believe he generally tries to argue from, I can't say that word. Aristotle's method when he says that goodness pre exists in God. Isn't that very parallel to Plato's forms?

Not necessarily. I think that's simply a way of expressing the fact that the essence of God is good, that you don't have God as a particular individual. And then at some time he becomes good. He in his very nature is good. So there never was a time in which he may have been all good or the opposite of good, bad by his very nature as good. So he pre exists as good. His existence always has that essence to it, that quality to it. I want to suggest the difficulty with Aquinas is that God tells us in Scripture how to speak of Him. Okay, if I'm on my own and I'm trying to think now, what can I say of God? Well, I'm going to say he's a loving God. Somebody says to me, well, what do you mean by love? Do you mean that he's loving in the same way that you may be affectionate toward your wife? Do you mean he's loving in this or that way that applies to creatures? And I may be mystified at that. I may want to say, well, it's not exactly the same way, but on the other hand, it's not completely different. And get caught in this dialectic of Thomas Aquinas analogical approach. But we can say that the biblical alternative is that God shows us how to use language about Him. You see, that's the beauty of the Christian conception of God, that God can speak directly to us. God can instruct us how to use our words. He can even instruct us how to use our words about Him. So God gives us a language, a language which refers naturally to him while nevertheless distinguishing him from creatures. The problem in Thomas Aquinas came in trying to develop the knowledge of God purely out of extrapolation from his natural knowledge and not developing his basic structure of theological thought from God's self revelation. See, the problem is that Aquinas takes just the kind of natural reasoning and talk that we have in common with all unbelievers. This is the kind of ordinary talk you might have in the realm of science, or everyday talk about the fields and rabbits and your neighbors and so forth. And he says, now how can we extrapolate out of this ordinary talk that has to do with things as we know them, corporeal bodies, historical bodies, and all the rest. How do we extrapolate out of that natural knowledge and talk to a transcendent God? How can we speak of a transcendent God correctly? Well, since he thought of himself as beginning autonomously and then trying to move from that base to God, he naturally had to protect God's transcendence by saying there was some equivocal quality to our talk, and yet he had to protect our knowledge of God by saying there was some univocal quality to this talk. And he ended up in this attempt to balance the two out, which is not very convincing when you think about it. I think the alternative is to say that God, the transcendent God, has spoken to us, that God has given us language. And just because it's God's chosen language about Himself, it naturally applies to Him. He's the one who described Himself in this way. And he also shows us how to use this language in a way that does not violate the creator creature distinction. God gives us a language which distinguishes him from the creatures and yet allows us to speak of him quite naturally and accurately. That is to say, we must learn our conventions about attributing things to God from God Himself. We must learn to speak of him as he has spoken of Himself. We must pattern our theological discussions after his revelation. We must thank his thoughts after Him. And so, from a presuppositional basis, there's really no difficulty in this question of making attribution to God, you see. What problem are we trying to overcome here? Well, it turns out that if you're using a presuppositional philosophy, there's no problem to overcome. The problem only arises when you say, no, we're going to think autonomously and then try to refer to God. Then you run into all this rest, Maimonides and Aquinas. But if you're thinking presuppositionally, that is, God plots after him, then God is the one who tells us to speak of him as a loving father. And yet God makes it clear that he doesn't have a body, that he doesn't have a wife, that he doesn't, you know, do this or do that. God is the one who puts the curbs on our use of language and yet gives us the language which quite naturally and accurately describes Him. So the analogy by which we witness.

If we're that kind of a believer.

Is an analogy that affirms the distance between creative creature. But if you reason and analogically in this fashion, you are being analogous with a false state of affairs, namely, the univocal, equivocal dilemma of rationalistic thought.

Right?

So we both have analogies, but he is resolving it in a rationalistic way as opposed to a presuppositional way. Is that correct? If you mean by rationalistic that he is attempting to come up with an accurate way to speak of God on our own, using our own natural reason. And that is the difficulty. He's always going to have to run back and forth between univism and equivicism. Whereas if we're thinking God spots after him presuppositionally, then what we do is we simply take the language God gives us and say that naturally applies to Him. It shows there are differences between the man, between men and the Creator, and yet there are similarities. And God is the one who's delineated the similarities and the differences in the very system of language that he gives us in special revelation. And so the problem doesn't arise from us, for us. I would like to go back and look at Ross's article now because he does bring up something of the modern form of the challenge to religious language, the challenge to the idea that we can make attributions to God and ends up defending the concept of analogy. And here he is. I don't. I've already criticized Aquinas, okay? He has this unstable mixture here that isn't very helpful when all is said and done. However, the fact that a word is used of God that we use of man in a way that is similar and yet dissimilar, that is the fact that we use a word analogously of God and man is a feature of language that Ross points out that is so universal, so characteristic of natural languages, that nobody should have been all over Thomas Aquinas for suggesting analogy in the first place. And it's a very valuable article from that standpoint. Obviously, when we use our words, there's a sense in which they apply to God just in the same way they apply to men in a way in which they don't. What I've been pointing out is that we know that to be true and we have confidence in it because God gives us the system of language. Roth is simply going to add that this idea that there is similarity and dissimilarity in our language as we apply it to man and to God is no basis for criticism of religious language. He states the modern form of the challenge to religious attributions in this way, according to those who are critical. Linguistic discontinuity in meaning in the meaning of terms is seen from the indefiniteness as to the conditions of applying the terms when taken from normal empirical settings and then applied somehow to God. Okay, here's the difficulty. We know the conditions of applying the term brown to some natural object. When we're speaking in empirical normal settings, we know the conditions under which we would apply this term to some object. Okay, does anybody have any doubts about when you apply the word brown? How about when you apply the term difficult or apply the term powerful, or apply the term just apply the term fair. Now, in our normal empirical, historical day to day experience, we know the conditions under which we apply these terms. We know their limits, where we begin and where we end. To use that term. However, the suggestion of the critics is when we want to use terms about God, we don't know the conditions under which the term is applicable and not applicable. We have no idea of the range of proper use of this term. We don't know which terms can in the end really be applied to God correctly. And therefore there's a great indefiniteness as to the conditions of applying those terms. So we have a definite set of conditions under which we apply the term fair to men, but we have an indefinite set of conditions under which we apply the term fair to God, since there is a definite set for men and an indefinite set for God. The suggestion is that there's a linguistic discourse discontinuity in the meaning of the term fair from the one case to the other. There's discontinuity between what we mean by fair when we apply it to men, when we apply it to God. It's a very sophisticated way of arguing. The point is, the term doesn't have the same meaning because we don't know how to apply it when we talk about God, but we certainly know how to apply it when we talk about men. And the suggestion is therefore that when we say that God is this or that, that he's strong, fair or loving or kind, that we're really being non cognitive, that the meaning of the term is not there at all. So here's the challenge to the meaningfulness of religious attributions based on the fact that the conditions of application are definite with respect to natural, normal, empirical objects, but indefinite when applied to God. Now, Ross claims that the analogy resolution of this problem is still successful today, that it should have been seen as successful all along, and it certainly is successful in dealing with this particular modern problem. He says that this difficulty of applying terms under different conditions from one kind of object to another is a widespread phenomenon throughout all language. Now, if this is a difficulty that is widespread throughout all language, it cannot be seen as a peculiar infirmity for religious language. Okay, we take a term and we find that it's applied in slightly different ways to different objects. The suggestion has been, since the term applies to God and to man in slightly different ways, then maybe we aren't being meaningful. Maybe there's no cognitive meaning in what we have been saying about God when we use the term. Ross, however, points out that the fact that a term is applied differently to different objects is a pervasive phenomenon in human language. And since it's such a pervasive, widespread phenomenon, it cannot be a peculiar problem of religious language. If this situation that I have here up on the board, a term being variously applied to different kinds of objects is true throughout our language, then it certainly cannot be a fuzzy, peculiar problem of religious language that that happens when we talk about God and man using the same term. So we have on page 291 of our reading, right in the middle of the page, I pick up in the middle of the sentence at the end of that paragraph. Religious discourse has no infirmity peculiar to it that its semantic structure is fully incorporated within the general semantic regularity of natural language. What he's saying is religious language should not be quarantined. It should not be thought that it's over in a corner somewhere completely different. He says, it just is integrated into the semantic structure of regular natural languages. All natural languages function this way, and therefore religious language is not peculiar. Okay, he summarizes the analogy Hypothesis on pages 293 and 294 as saying these things. I'm going to cut down his summary a little bit. If you'd like to underline his own have. That may help you in your review of what he's saying. Skipping number one, number two speaks of the multiplicity of meaning. Then if you'll jump down to the next line, manifest meaning derivation that results from meaning differentiation in use. He says the reason we have multiple meanings, evidently in the case of a similar term applied to different things comes from this derives from meaning differentiation in use. Now, his second point is that this meaning differentiation in use exhibits certain regularities. Fourthly, he emphasizes these regularities are of a synchronic nature. That is, he's not saying there's necessarily a genetic connection between the use of a word this way and then a slightly different use of the word so forth and so on. A genetic connection between the use of a word this way and then a slightly different use of the word so forth and so on. It says that at the very same time a term can turn out because of the different kinds of objects to which it applies, to have slightly different meanings. And then on the next page, fifthly, when we have law like or rule like generalizations possible with the multiplicity of meanings having initial conditions and derivation conditions, we call the resulting rules analogy rules. Okay, that's the. The analogy hypothesis. And he then applies this to numerous illustrations. And if you did your reading, you'll find that he is, at least, I think, highly persuasive.

Could you give us just one illustration.

Of.

Discontinuity in language that's not particularly religious language?

Sure, sure. Let me take a few of his. He uses the word has. John has a comb with him. John has a home of his own. John has a wife. Already. John has a cold. Same word. And there is a similarity of meaning in each case. But in each case, the meaning is obviously different because of the object being referred to, too, the way in which he has or possesses these things. I mean, we don't have a home in the way that we have a cold, do we? And yet we don't have any trouble using the word have. He has a lot more colorful illustrations, too. Just give me a second. I'll pick a few out for you.

Is this point that the.

There is no umbrella that will embrace all of those hazards?

Is that his point?

His point is that there is a family resemblance between these words that you cannot say that there is just one unique central sense to each one. But nevertheless, they have this meaning differentiation and use. Each one is similar to each other. 1. You don't want to say they're completely different, but you don't want to say they're identical either.

But there's not one root meaning that will explain them all.

That's the point. Right? Okay, he uses another one here. Caught. Okay. John caught the ball. John caught the cold. John caught the idea. John caught the fear. John caught the implication. In every case, the word caught is being used slightly different, and yet we know how to use it. We have no difficulty with that analogous use of the word caught. The word made he offers is another illustration on this page where I am. We say that Sam made a chair. Sam made a million dollars. Sam made the world. Sam made the state. Sam made a decision. Okay? So obviously these words. And he. Throughout the article, there's plenty of these kinds of illustrations offered. He gives another one here on page 300. Take this sentence frame. His blank was unsound. Unsound. Okay? Now, his ship was unsound. His reasoning was unsound. His foundation was unsound. His melon was unsound. And it turns out once you start doing this, it becomes almost too easy. Children can come up with illustrations where clearly, if you use the exact sense of the word made or caught or unsound from one context and apply it to a context with a different kind of object altogether, from making a million dollars to making a mistake or catching a cold and catching a ball, I mean, it's just not going to make any sense at all. And yet we have no difficulty with this in our language at all. His point then, is that since this is a Semantic regularity in language. It may not be used as the basis for criticizing religious language that when we say of God that he loves his creatures or that he is a father, that we mean that analogously, that in some ways he is like, like a human father, in some ways he is not. That's just like catching a cold is in some ways like catching a ball, but in other senses it is not. Okay, Now Brody applies his hypothesis, his analogy hypothesis, to the problem of religious language. On a few pages here, I'd like to look at them. 300 and 301. At the very bottom of 300. Number two, the analogy hypothesis is that meaning differentiation for same terms follows semantic regularities and that such derivation is cognitivity preserving. Okay? He's saying when we use the word analogously of God, that's rule regulated. It's not arbitrary. People just don't say, you know, God is a snark or, you know, gobbly gook, green dreams are God. I mean, you just can't start making up language. There are in fact regularity rules that govern the way we speak of God and the way we speak of man and how these two are brought into combination. And that if it's cognitively meaningful to speak of man as fair, loving, powerful, wise, so forth, then it's cognitively meaningful to apply the word to God too, as long as it's rule regulated. Okay? And now on page 301 at the bottom of the first paragraph, it says, it helps us to notice that there is nothing about the meaning extension of terms in religious discourse that does not have exact and regularity conforming parallels and kinds of discourse whose meaningfulness is beyond sensible dispute. My suggestion to you is that you mark that so well in your book that if nothing else makes sense in the article, you master that thought. That really is the heart of helps to notice that there is nothing about the meaning extension of terms in religious discourse. What is the meaning extension of terms, I say of a professor. He is a fair man. Now, I extend that meaning to God, okay? And I say God is a fair God, okay? He says there's nothing about the meaning extension of terms in religious discourse that does not have exact and regularity conforming parallels in kinds of discourse whose meaningfulness is beyond sensible dispute. He says the very thing that we're doing in religious discourse and extending a term from man to God, we do a ordinary discourse and extending a term from, say, baseballs to a flu in the cold, we extend the use of terms to different objects. And since it is perfectly sensible to do that in regular discourse. Nobody can fault it when we do it in religious discourse. Okay, and then on page 303, it might be helpful for you to note a sentence that's about three quarters of the way down in the middle paragraph, just below the middle of the page. It turns out then where he says, but equivocation of same predicates in simple affirmative categorical statements results for any pair of subjects that are categorically in contrast, okay, equivocation, the fact that there is some measure of equivocation when we use a word of man and then use it of God. Equivocation of same predicates in simple affirmative categorical statements results anytime you use the same term of categorically different subjects. Okay, he made the ship, he made a million dollars. We used the term made for categorically different things. A million dollars and a ship. There is a slight equivocation on the word made. Then he says, that happens anytime you use the same predicate for something that is categorically different for two things that are categorically different. And then finally, one more way of putting his thesis, the summary on page 306. 6. It says the main points in the analogy resolution of the dislocation challenge to the cognitive meaningfulness of religious discourse are one that there is a demonstrable continuity, conforming to general semantical regularities for English between the way terms function in religious discourse and the way the same terms function in other kinds of discourse. We've already pointed that out. What we're doing in religious language is just congruous with what we do elsewhere in our language too. The derived meaning for same terms is the rule rather than the exception in natural language, he says, it's usually the case that a term will have multiplicity of meaning from derivation. It's not often that there's a term that has only one meaning in all contexts three that the kinds of derivation that relate religious discourse to non religious discourse, particularly the adjustment of subject and predicate meanings to the contrasting categories of their complements, are found practically everywhere in extended discourse. Or those meaning derivations cannot represent linguistic discontinuity any more than a series of physical events known as to occur according to the same general principles which govern nature as a whole, can be said to be discontinuous physically with the rest of nature and 5. That there is some defect in religious that if there is some defect in religious discourse because of the categorical adjustment of the meaning of predicates, then this defect will pervade human discourse in general and particularly the discourse of the empirical scientist. Now, you know the thing there. He's the scientists that are trying to ridicule the religionists by saying, you're using your language in a different way every time. And he says, listen, you do that in science all the time. And he gives some choice examples of that in the article. Now, there's one more. There is one more aspect to what Ross says here that I think is important. He says that what happens when we use the same term in slightly different ways or analogous ways for categorically different subjects or objects, that we can understand each other. We learn how to use the term properly and what is an improper use of the term when applied to this subject and then alternatively when applied to the other subject. And he makes a very important observation when he says the intelligibility of this analogous discourse arises from life in a community. Life in a community. There are no rules for doing this sort of thing apart from a common form of life. Page 102, very top. One can convince oneself that unspecifiability of truth conditions indefinitely of what is implied. Fuzziness in evidential conditions and vagueness of associated attitudinal commitments is neither peculiar to religious discourse nor associated with deficiencies in cognitive content. By he says, you can be convinced that religious discourse doesn't have all these problems. The modern distractors are saying by just considering the conversation of person skilled in some art or craft, for instance, type designing, cloth dyeing, weaving, farming or cello playing, for example, two musicians may be quite able to describe some sound sequence as having one element that is flat when the deviation is not apparent to the untutored observer, and the conditions they have in mind for specifying some sound are unstated? How is it that when two musicians who have worked long and hard, say, working with some instrument, hear the same sequence you do, they both will say, it's flat and you won't notice it at all. Well, because that's part of their way of life. They've learned to listen to sequences and evaluate them in a way which you're untrained to do. He goes on to speak of life of a community is what gives, you see, linguistic continuity to our discussion. Language is a community affair is another way of putting it. Page 306. He reiterates this at the bottom when he says, we manifest our grasp of the significance of what is stated, not in some formal analysis, formal meaning. Stand back, just give some universal formal principle that's going to apply. He says, we don't grasp the significance of what is stated in some formal analysis. We grasp it in our ability to support, reject, criticize, question, object, to rephrase, translate, paraphrase, alter, amend, correct, and so forth, such utterances in ways that are intelligible within the discoursing community. And analysis is tested by its coherence with those manifestations. It's the discourse community that gives life to the language, sets its boundaries, its rules, its regularities and patterns for applying the same term to different objects. So that somebody who has grown up in an English culture, an American culture, using the natural language of English, will have no difficulty if he is a confident speaker of the language, saying that a man culture caught a cold and also caught a baseball, and they won't start speaking of baseballs as though they had the same conditions of colds or colds as though they were baseballs. That was not a confusing sort of thing. But it's conceivable that another discoursing community, the word caught or something similar to it, is not applied to diverse objects in the same way. And that person wouldn't know the boundary rules, the, the regularities, conventions, patterns for this term. And so what Ross is pointing out is that the significance and meaningfulness of religious language is tied to what a religious community, and obviously an unbeliever is going to have difficulty applying the language of believers. An unbeliever is not going to know how to speak of the God who is all powerful, all knowing, loving, just, and so forth. Because, and this gets us back to what I was getting at before. God is the one who shows the community, the church, if you will, how to use language about him, how to praise him, how to speak of him, how to evangelize about him, how to defend his name. And it's God showing us the regularities and patterns by giving us the model of language about him in the Scriptures. So the solution to the difficulty of religious attribution is that God reveals. This is summary now of the unit we've been looking at. God reveals to us in Scripture how to speak properly of Him. He supplies language which naturally applies to him, while all the while distinguishing him from the creatures. And it's the believing community that masters and understands the use of, of this language. What Ross adds to my simple analysis from a few minutes ago, before we got into it, is simply that this is a regular pattern of language. And we're not claiming any special logic or arbitrary, special pleading for the sake of religion to save its intelligibility, that the intelligibility of science the intelligibility of musician talk, the intelligibility of. Of seamstress talk, all has the same features. There are analogous use of terms, and you use. You learn the rules and conditions of these analogous uses of terms by life in the community, by participation in the craft of being a seamstress or a cello player or a Christian. Okay, do you have any questions now about either the modern challenge to the meaningfulness of religious language that comes with the claim that it's unfalsifiable and therefore not saying anything at all, or the medieval challenge that since we have to attribute things to a transcendent God, we really don't know what we're saying, the meaning of our terms is somehow goofed up and we don't have any real knowledge of God. Then.

How does this.

How do you see it affecting what flu has, you say about pulses? Why? Those are two different issues. Yeah.

Do you see this, what Ross is saying, affecting them? That's two huge questions.

They are two different questions. I don't think that what Ross is saying directly applies to flu, although there's a modern form of attack on the cognitive meaningfulness of religious language that says because we don't know the conditions under which the language is used with respect to God, but we do know when the language is applied to natural objects, that therefore there's some linguistic discontinuity to that. Ross says, but that linguistic discontinuity applies across the board, that terms that are applied to diverse objects in science and music wherever, has the same kind of discontinuity. Discontinuity is not in and of itself a problem since it's perfectly sensible to speak of a person making a boat and making a million dollars and we know how to use the word make. We oughtn't to get upset when we speak of God and man both being loving, but in slightly different ways.

Ross seems to be speaking in favor of. Of a presuppositional position.

I would rather say that Ross says, can be expropriated by a presuppositionalist and put to good use. I doubt very seriously that he would be agreeing that we have to start with God's revelation, the special revelation of God.

Next question. What was his worldview?

He is a modern Thomist, as I understand, and I couldn't say much more than that, I'm afraid. I have a few of his books and have read in them, but don't know much more. Okay, well, we've come to our end, to the end of our unit on a religious language we have accomplished three things in our course thus far. We have talked about a Christian approach to philosophy, and I hope that that is being illustrated more and more as we go through. Secondly, we've talked about the existence of God in the traditional arguments for it. Now. Thirdly, the meaningfulness of religious language. And these are three of the heaviest, most important issues that have ever arisen in the history of Christian apologetics. The first week, in essence, talked about the relationship of faith and reason. The second week, the existence of God and whether it's provable, not week, but the second unit. And then the third unit, how it's possible to speak meaningfully of God, either by way of attribution or making general religious claims. Now, what we're going to be taking up are particular questions. These are rather foundational issues. We've been looking at Christian philosophy, existence of God, how we reason about that, and how we speak about God. Now we're going to take up a particular issue, and that is, what does it mean? How can we understand two of the attributes of God in particular? First of all, his omnipotence, and secondly, his omniscience. If God is omnipotent, then it would appear that he should be able to do anything at all. And yet Christians don't want to say that he can make a rock that is so heavy that he cannot live. So apparently he can't do anything at all. And Christians want to say that he can't sin, he can't lie, therefore it doesn't appear that he is able to do anything at all. How can we reconcile these things? Do we not have a paradoxical doctrine on our hands? And then the second challenge is to the omniscience of God. If God knows all things, then he knows in advance what men will do. If he knows in advance what men will do, then they are not free to do as they wish. And that, you may recognize, is not simply a question that arises in secular texts or outsiders discussions of the philosophy of religion. But that is a long enduring theological question within the Christian church. And I'll look forward to trying to engage you in what I hope will be a profitable resolution, at least of some of the main problems involved in both of those paradoxes.