Some Possible Non-Propositional Accounts of the Role of Sentences of the Form: ‘ God is F’

Abstract

I have so far argued that ‘God’, as an item of Christian language, exhibits different and incompatible logics and hence, I have contended, not only is it not possible to present a single account of the form of proposition expressed by sentences of the ‘God is F’ form, but also it is not possible to offer several different accounts and yet meet with the requirement that the same term is being introduced into the discourse or the same entity being spoken of. In this chapter I shall investigate a possible rejoinder to these difficulties — namely that it is quite misguided to think that sentences instancing the above form actually have the role of expressing propositions or indeed have the role of making any ‘first order’ remarks in the Christian system of discourse; rather, they have the function of determining what is possible within such a system of discourse.