The problem and the via negativa

If God is beyond human categories, ordinary words may distort God. One traditional response is the via negativa (the apophatic way, associated with Pseudo-Dionysius): describe God only by what God is not.

• We say God is not finite, not mortal, not limited — protecting God's transcendence.
• Strength: it avoids reducing God to a creature.
• Weakness: a purely negative account is thin — it never tells us what God positively is, and believers clearly do want to say positive things (God is good, loving).

The negative way

Aquinas: analogy

Aquinas argues our words apply to God neither univocally (with exactly the same meaning as for creatures) nor equivocally (with a totally different meaning) but by analogy.

• Analogy of attribution: qualities in creatures derive from and reflect their source in God, as healthy urine reflects a healthy animal. God is 'good' as the cause of goodness.
• Analogy of proportion: God has qualities in a way proportionate to God's nature — God's 'wisdom' is to God's being as human wisdom is to ours.

Analogy lets us say something meaningful and positive about God without claiming our words capture God exactly.

Neither the same nor different

Tillich: religious language as symbol

Paul Tillich argues religious language is symbolic. A symbol is not a mere sign; it participates in the reality it points to and opens up levels of reality (and of our souls) that would otherwise stay closed — as a national flag participates in the power it represents.

• To call God 'the ground of being' or 'father' is symbolic, pointing beyond itself to being-itself.
• Criticism (John Hick): it is unclear how a symbol 'participates' in God, and how we could tell a true symbol from a false one.

Traditional or twentieth-century?

Tap an approach, then which family it belongs to.

Verification: Ayer

The logical positivists and A. J. Ayer proposed the verification principle: a statement is only meaningful if it is either (1) analytic (true by definition) or (2) empirically verifiable in principle.

• 'God exists' is neither analytic nor testable by sense experience, so on this view it is not false but meaningless — it makes no factual claim.
• Weak verification (some observations count for it) was needed because strong verification (conclusive proof) even ruled out scientific laws and history.

Criticism: the verification principle is self-refuting — it is itself neither analytic nor empirically verifiable.

The verification principle

Falsification, bliks and language games

Antony Flew uses the parable of the invisible gardener: believers keep qualifying their claim until nothing could count against it, so it 'dies the death of a thousand qualifications' and asserts nothing.

• R. M. Hare replies with bliks — unfalsifiable but meaningful ways of seeing the world that deeply affect how we live.
• Basil Mitchell (the partisan and the stranger) argues believers do let evidence count, yet reasonably keep trusting God despite it.
• Wittgenstein: religious language is a language game with meaning within its form of life. 'Meaning is use' — it is not failed science but a different, valid use of language.

Who and what?

Tap a thinker, then their idea.

Wittgenstein

The big ideas to take into the exam

This closes Component 01 Philosophy of religion. Press Finish for your score.