What useful distinctions can be made in analysing religious discourse between literal, analogical and metaphorical senses of words?

In order for any assessment on religious discourse to be made, it is first imperative for us to lay out a rudimentary framework for theological language, having established which, any religious discussion can be entertaineda task which this essay sets out to accomplish. Central comparisons and distinctions which will be made in this undertaking include those between causation and metaphor, negation and analogy, and univocality and equivocality. I begin, then, in attempt to map out the key concepts of metaphor, analogy, causation and negation, before it can be discussed how each of these apply to God and religious discourse. Of causation we can say that sometimes, in trying to discuss 'causes' and their properties, we sometimes use the effects they occasion in our descriptions; for example, of something evil it may not be difficult for us to imagine an evil cause. In a similar vein, it has been proposed that God's effect on our world and our perceptions of it can only be of service to any qualification we endeavour to make of God. The problem with approaching religious discourse via causation is evident: causes often do not literally resemble their effects, and we run the risk of being reduced to absurdity in attempting to make sense of God-talk by describing him as we describe his effects. In this light, we see the need for a positive qualification of God that does not deny the difference between God and creatures in the way that denial of the theory of causation does. We come, then, to the instrument that is metaphor, by virtue of which one can seemingly speak confidently of God without coming to absurd consequences. Swinburne defends the use of metaphor in so far that it can be assessed for truth-value: the assignment of a metaphor to a religious qualification enables it to be assessed for its truth, or lack thereof, which, in some aspects, makes religious discourse less abstract than it has the tendency to be. And yet use of metaphor in the case of God is restrictive in a sense the traditional believer is not likely to see eye to eye with: we cannot claim all talk about God is metaphorical; the believer likes to claim, for example, that God is essentially good, without wanting to reduce talk of good simply to the metaphorical.

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One may then consider the use of negation in religious discourse, where an appeal to negation may be thought of as a possible tool to attempt to prevent people's misrepresentation of God. And yet, attempting to describe something only in terms of what it is not, for example, describing something as 'not evil', may give no indication that something is good. Religious discourse from negation is in this aspect fundamentally flawed, in that the negation of any number of descriptive properties brings one no closer to perceiving the nature of something than when she knew nothing of it at all. One cannot help but take the believer's default position on the issue: people who talk about God normally do not want to talk about Him only in negations, just as, to quote Davies' example, people would not like to engage in what are essentially riddles in order to decipher what a 'ship' is, purely from what it is not. Aquinas concurs, When people speak of the living God they do not simply want to say that he differs from a lifeless body. What most philosophers consent to as the most effective apparatus for religious discourse is the use of analogy, using which most agree that even a unique God can be spoken of significantly. We may consider here 'the theory of analogy', which Davies deems most promising, as it draws upon distinctions between the key terms univocal, equivocal, and analogical, which form the basis of Aquinas' discussion on religious language in Summa Theologiae. To apply a word univocally to two things is to say that they are exactly the same, or synonymous, in some respect; that the word means the same in both applications of this. Swinburne spells this out in a detailed discussion on analogy as follows: the word univocal can be used of two things insofar as it is used in the same sense both syntactically and semantically. To apply the same word equivocally to two things, on the other hand, is to use the word in completely different senses, so that the word differs significantly in semantic meaning. Aquinas, on the question of whether language possesses the power to discuss God at all, is of the view that God can be portrayed by use of analogous comparisons. This is to say that since human beings represent their first cause, i.e. God, if we always used words equivocally to differentiate between creatures and God, then we could never argue from statements about creatures to statements of God. What Aquinas means, essentially, is that successful analyses in religious discourse can only be made on acceptance of the basic premise that certain terms Maham Faisal KhanSt. John's College | 2

can be applied both to God and to creatures in accordance with some relation they share: a relation Aquinas believes to be causal. Goodness, for example, can be said to exist in God inasmuch as it exists in creatures, so long as properties in creatures are said to derive from God as the first cause of all things. Aquinas here draws another useful and significant distinction in order to drive home his theory of analogy, that is, that between the usage of the res significata and the modus significandi. The point Aquinas makes here is that when we apply ordinary (or 'mundane', in Swinburne's words) expression to 'extra-mundane' objects, such as God, we property signified by the predicate, the res significata, is the same, but the modus significandi, the way in which the predicate signifies the property, or better the way in which the property is present in the object of the type in question, differs. If we are to refer back to our 'goodness' example, we can now see how Aquinas claims that goodness in God and goodness in creatures is similar in its res significata, and yet different in its modus significandi, insofar as we are to elevate God to a status of absolute, timeless perfection, which humankind can only try to mirror and discuss 'imperfectly'. This is an echo of the distinction drawn in Genesis on the relationship between mankind and God: and God created mankind in his likeness. We can now analogically discuss whether God as a cause imposes his character on creatures and things he is said to have created. According to Wittgenstein, the use of analogy in some senses alleviates the danger that metaphor poses: at least one word can be used significantly in different but related senses without it being true that the word is being used figuratively. Analogy, we must note, is on most accounts a matter of degree: words can be said to be analogous in some senses to each other when they have the same syntactic criteria, which, in itself is a matter of degree. The same applies for semantic agreement between two words, if they can be said to be synonymous to a large extent, and if their 'contraries', too, can be said to be similar, two words may be said to be semantically analogous. And on this establishment of a spectrum we can then evaluate religious discourse as making use of weak or strong analogy, depending on semantic and syntactic consistency. The essence of what we have discussed thus far is epitomized in Aquinas' characterization: Maham Faisal KhanSt. John's College | 3

The word God signifies the divine nature: it is used to mean something that is above all that is, and that is the source of all things and is distinct from them all. Having expounded on the distinctions made, we do observe that they, in effect, do nothing to show that there is a God; but our discussion does suggest that in order to speak meaningfully about God, it is not necessary that one should understand exactly the import of one's statements about him. It may not be possible to define God; one may not be able fully to comprehend him. But this does not mean that one cannot talk significantly about him; nor does it prevent one from asking whether he is there in the first place. Bibliography: Davies, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, 13 Swinburne, Coherence of Theism Swinburne, Revelation Alston, Functionalism and Theological Language

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