Abstract
With the rise of analytic philosophy in the early part of the twentieth century and its emphasis upon linguistic analysis, it should not be surprising that a significant crisis developed by midcentury among both philosophers and theologians concerning religious language. That there was such a crisis is evidenced both by the explicit recognition of the challenge in the writings of several leading figures in both the philosophy of religion and in theology and by the plethora of books and articles that appeared in print in the period from approximately midcentury until ten years or so afterward.1 There was much disagreement among different analytic philosophers; however, the one underlying, common tenet upon which nearly all of them would have agreed is that language is the one continuous thread from which the entire fabric of religion and religious belief is woven. Some of the problems with religious language are illustrated by the more extreme positions, for example, A. J. Ayer’s claim that the language of theology is meaningless and nonsense and Paul van Buren’s claim that “the word ‘God’ is dead.”2 Other concerns were prompted by the repercussions of attention to language by the more moderate analytic philosophers and the elevation of the importance of the analysis of language for philosophical or theological pursuits.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
A casual inspection of the copyright dates of the references in this chapter will indicate how concentrated the interest in religious language was from the late 1940s through 1960. Although the publication of some additional original material continued beyond that date for some thinkers, the 1960s, for the most part, saw the appearance of secondary source material in the way of books, anthologies, and articles responding to earlier works.
See A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), Chapter 6, and Paul van Buren, The Secular Meaning of the Gospel (New York: Macmillan, 1965), p. 103.
See, for example, William T. Blackstone, The Problem of Religious Knowledge: The Impact of Contemporary Philosophical Analysis on the Question of Religious Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), and Religious Language and the Problem of Religious Knowledge,edited by Ronald E. Santoni (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968).
For Popper’ s treatment of the problem of demarcation, see Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (New York: Basic Books, 1959), pp. 34ff.
See Carl Hempel, “Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning,” in Semantics and the Philosophy of Language, edited by Leonard Linsky (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1952).
Flew’s paper prompted the “Discussion,” which took place between Flew, R. M. Hare, and Basil Mitchell.
“Theology and Falsification,” in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, edited by Antony Flew and Alasdair Maclntyre (London: SCM Press, 1955), p. 96. Cited by Flew as originally appearing in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1944–45. Also in Logic and Language, edited by A. G. N. Flew (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963), pp. 187–206.
Ibid.,p. 97.
Ibid.
Ibid.,p. 98.
Ibid.
See Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967), pp. 157ff.
Ibid., pp. 158–59.
Keith Yandell, Basic Issues in the Philosophy of Religion (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1971), p. 13.
Ibid.
Ibid.
“This appears to be the case if, in fact, the only thing that can falsify the original assertion is an observation statement(s). See Plantinga, God and Other Minds, p. 162.
Plantinga, God and Other Minds, p. 168.
This classification is inspired by several different sources, including William T. Blackstone, The Problem of Religious Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963); William Rowe, Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1978); and Ronald E. Santoni, Religious Language and the Problem of Religious Knowledge.
In addition, see J. J. C. Smart, “Metaphysics, Logic, and Theology,” in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, edited by Antony Flew and Alasdair Maclntyre, pp. 12–27; R. F. Holland, “Religious Discourse and Theological Discourse,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 34, no. 3, 1956; R. B. Braithwaite, An Empiricist’s View of the Nature of Religious Belief (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955).
R. M. Hare, “Theology and Falsification,” in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, edited by Antony Flew and Alasdair Maclntyre, pp. 99–100.
Ibid., p.101.
Ibid.,pp. 100–101.
Ibid., p.103.
Ibid., p. 100.
Ian T. Ramsey, Religious Language (New York: Macmillan, 1957), pp. 20–21. Also see Ramsey’s “Talking about God,” in Myth and Symbol,edited by F. W. Dillistone (London: SPCK, 1966).
Ibid., p. 34.
Ibid., p. 39.
See ibid., pp. 69fî.
Ian T. Ramsey, Models for Divine Activity (London: SCM, 1973), p. 58.
Ibid., p.61.
Ian T. Ramsey, Religious Language, p. 91.
See James F. Harris, “Models and Qualifiers,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion. Vol. 3, no. 2, summer 1972, pp. 87ff.
This point and these examples follow ibid.,pp. 88ff.
Janet Martin Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p. 147. 36Ibid.,p. 147.
Ibid., p. 149.
Ibid., p. 151. Notice that though Soskice’s theory is social, her commitment to realism separates her from the Wittgensteinians and the use of language-games.
Ian Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science: The Gifford Lectures, 1989–91 (San Francisco, Calif.: Harper and Row, 1990), p. 46.
Ramsey, Religious Language, p. 89.
Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language,p. 153.
See primarily A. M. Farrer, Finite and Infinite (London, Dacre Press, 1959), and E. L. Mascall, Existence and Analogy (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1949). Republished by Archon Books, 1967.
Mascall, ibid., pp. 92–94.
Ibid., 95.
Ibid., p. 102.
These examples come from Mascall, ibid., pp. 104ff.
For a brief summary of some of the disputes and the references see Mascall, ibid., pp. 113–15. 48Ibid., pp. 117–19.
Ibid., p. 120. 5o Ibid., p. 121.
See, for example, William T. Blackstone, “The Logical Status of God-Talk,” in Religious Language and Knowledge, edited by Robert H. Ayers and William T. Blackstone (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1972), pp. 8–9, and Blackstone, The Problem of Religious Knowledge,pp. 66–67. Also see William P. Alston, “Tillich’s Conception of Religious Symbol,” in Religious Experience and Truth, edited by Sidney Hook (New York: New York University Press, 1961), p. 17.
Thomas McPherson, “Assertion and Analogy,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Vol. 60, 1959–60, p. 164.
James F. Harris, “The Epistemic Status of Analogical Language,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 1, no. 4, winter 1970, p. 213.
See Jerry A. Fodor and Jerrold J. Katz, The Structure of Language (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1964), p. 13.
The point is made specifically about Judaism and Christianity.
Sallie McFague, Metaphorical Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), p. 3. Also see David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1981).
Sallie McFague, ibid.
Ibid.,p. 28.
There are many issues here about original meaning and interpretation that are discussed at length in Chapter IX.
R. B. Braithwaite, An Empiricist’s View of the Nature of Religious Belief (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955).
Ibid., p. 16.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 27.
Alasdair Maclntyre, “The Logical Status of Religious Belief,” in Metaphysical Beliefs, edited by Alasdair Maclntyre (London: SCM Press, 1957), p. 191.
Ibid., pp. 208–09.
See his “Is Understanding Religion Compatible with Believing,” in Faith and the Philosophers, edited by John Hick (London: Macmillan, 1964), and in Rationality, edited by Brian Wilson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970), to which the page numbers here refer, p. 75.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations,translated by G. E. M. Anscombe (New York:
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Section 7.
Ibid., Section 23.
Van Buren himself suggests the analogy of a platform with planks that extend in different directions. See Paul van Buren, The Edges of Language (New York: Macmillan, 1972), p. 82.
Ibid., p. 79.
Ibid., p. 82.
It would now seem very natural and easy to slip here into the use of Wittgenstein’s notion of language-game; however, for whatever reasons, van Buren failed to make use of this concept. He does not make the move to regard the different uses of language as separate, autonomous language-games.
Ibid., p. 43.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 101–109.
See Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (London: Nisbet and Company, 1953). For a more focused treatment of religious language, see his “The Religious Symbol,” in Religious Experience and Truth, edited by Sidney Hook.
Tillich, Systematic Theology, p. 264.
Tillich, “The Religious Symbol,” p. 303.
Several critics have made this point, including William Alston, “Tillich’s Conception of a Religious Symbol,” in Religious Experience and Truth, edited by Sidney Hook, pp. 14 and 19. Also see William T Blackstone, “The Status of God-Talk,” in Religious Language and Knowledge, edited by Robert H. Ayers and William T. Blackstone.
Alston, ibid., p. 14.
Paul Tillich, “Theology and Symbolism,” in Religious Symbolism, edited by F. Ernest John (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1955), p. 110.
Alston, “Tillich’s Conception of a Religious Symbol,” p. 23.
Bowman L. Clarke, “God and the Symbolic in Tillich,” Anglican Theological Review, July 1961, pp. 9–10.
Thomas McPherson, “Religion as the Inexpressible,” in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, pp. 131–43.
Ibid., p. 142.
Ibid., pp. 132–33.
Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958).
See Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, translated by D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (London: Routledge and Regan Paul, 1961). §6.44, §6.45, and §6.5.
McPherson, “Religion as the Inexpressible,” p. 139.
See Blackstone, “The Status of God-Talk,” p. 88.
McPherson, “Religion as the Inexpressible,” p. 135.
R. F. Holland, “Religious Discourse and Theological Discourse,” The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 34, no. 3, 1956.
1bid., p. 147.
I. M. Crombie, “Theology and Falsification,” in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, edited by Antony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre, p. 125.
I discuss the relationship between ethics and religion in detail in Chapter VIII.
Ibid.,pp. 125–26.
lbid., p. 125–26.
See ibid., pp. 126ff.
Ibid.,p. 126.
Ibid.
Ibid.
See John Hick, Faith and Knowledge (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1957), pp. 150–62, and “Theology and Verification,” originally in Theology Today, Vol. 17, 1960. Reprinted in Religious Language and the Problem of Religious Knowledge,edited by Ronald E. Santoni, to which the page numbers here refer.
Hick, “Theology and Verification,” p. 381.
Ibid., p. 366.
Ibid.
Antony Flew, “Death,” in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, edited by Antony Flew and Alasdair Maclntyre, pp. 267–72.
See Hick, “Theology and Verification,” pp. 370ff.
Moritz Schlick, “Meaning and Verification,” Philosophical Review, 1936. Also, see Hick, “Theology and Verification,” op. cit.,p. 370. See also Antony Flew, “Can a Man Witness His Own Funeral,” in The Presumption of Atheism (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1976), and The Logic of Immortality (Oxford: Backwell Publishing, 1987).
See, for example, Michael Peterson, William Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach, and David Basinger, Reason and Religious Belief. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, Second Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 277, fn. 21.
Ibid.
Basil, Mitchell, “Theology and Falsification, ” in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, edited by Antony Flew and Alasdair Maclntyre, pp.103–104.
Ibid., pp. 104–105.
William P. Alston, “Speaking Literally of God,” in Is God GOD? edited by Axel D. Steuer and James W. McClendon, Jr. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1981). Reprinted in Michael Peterson, William Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach, and David Basinger, Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), to which the page numbers here refer. Also see his “Functionalism and Theological Language,” American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 22, 1985. Both “Speaking Literally of God” and “Functionalism and Theological Language” are reprinted in Divine Nature and Human Language: Essays in Philosophical Theology, edited by William P. Alston (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989).
Alston, “Speaking Literally of God,” p. 366–67.
See ibid., p. 371. Alston suggests that this issue is part of a much broader project in which one would conduct a similar inquiry regarding the other metaphysical attributes, such as infinity, omnipotence, and eternality, in a similar manner.
Ibid., p. 367. Also, see P. F. Strawson, Individuals (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959) pp. 100ff.
Alston, “Speaking Literally of God,” pp. 367–68.
Ibid., p. 370.
Ibid., p. 371.
Ibid., p. 372. Alston’s use of the designation “M-predicates” for mental predicates as a subclass of P-predicates can easily be confusing for those familiar with Strawson’s original treatment of P-predicates in Individuals. There, M-predicates are bodily predicates.
Basic actions have been defined in different ways by different people. See, for example, Arthur Danto, “Basic Actions,” American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 2, 1965, and Terence Penelhum
Including Paul Edwards, “Difficulties in the Idea of God,” in The Idea of God, edited by Edward H. Madden, Rollo Handy, and Marvin Faber (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, Publisher, 1968), p. 48, and Kai Nielsen, Contemporary Critiques of Religion (London: Macmillan, 1971), pp. 116–17.
Alston, “Speaking Literally of God,” p. 383.
Ibid., p. 383–84.
Ibid., p. 371.
Ibid.,p. 382–83.
Perhaps Alston means that he is “following Strawson” just in naming or calling these predicates “P-predicates”; however, the context suggests that he means that he is following Strawson in using P-predicates as Strawson does.
Strawson, Individuals,pp. 97–98.
Ibid., p. 98.
Ibid., p. 100.
Terence Penelhum, Survival and Disembodied Existence,p. 42. Penelhum first suggested using the distinction between basic and nonbasic actions to explore the possibility of a disembodied, noncorporeal agency. See pp. 40ff.
Alston, “Speaking Literally of God,” p. 383.
For a detailed treatment of the possibility of understanding God as a noncorporeal agent, see Charles Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
Alston, “Speaking Literally of God,” p. 367–68.
See Penelhum, Survival and Disembodied Existence,p. 38.
Much of the following is drawn from James F. Harris, “The Causal Theory of Reference and Religious Language,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 29, 1991, pp. 75–86.
For a more complete treatment, see ibid., pp. 75–76.
Sec ibid., p. 76, and Keith Donnellan, “Proper Names and Identifying Descriptions,” Synthese, Vol. 21, 1970, pp. 335–58.
Such a connection is always established within a community in which other speakers recognize and use the same referring expression. Thus, the causal theory of reference depends upon the placing of an individual speaker within a community of speakers of the same language. See Harris, “The Causal Theory of Reference and Religious Language,” pp. 76–77, and Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972), pp. 94–98.
Kripke, ibid., p. 96.
Harris, “The Causal Theory of Reference and Religious Language,” pp. 77–78.
Richard B. Miller, “The Reference of `God,”` Faith and Philosophy, Vol. 3, no. 1, January 1986, pp. 10–12.
Harris, “The Causal Theory of Reference and Religious Language,” pp. 79–80.
Ibid., p. 80, and Kripke, Naming and Necessity, p. 66.
For a detailed treatment of how speech-act analysis might be used in analyzing religious language, see Donald D. Evans, The Logic of Self Involvement (London: SCM Press, 1963).
See James F. Harris, “Speech Acts and God Talk,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 11, 1980, pp. 170ff.
Ibid., pp. 170–71.
We might suppose, for the sake of the example, that this is a remedial class in the philosophy of religion.
For a more detailed treatment, see Harris, “Speech Acts and God Talk,” pp. 174–79.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2002 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Harris, J.F. (2002). The Problem of Religious Language. In: Analytic Philosophy of Religion. Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0719-0_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-0719-0_2
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5983-3
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-0719-0
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive