The Analogy of Proper Proportion

John Hick has given a useful example to help to illustrate this idea:

‘Consider the term ‘faithful’. A man or a woman can be faithful, and this shows in particular patters of speech, behaviour and so on. We can also say that a dog is faithful. Clearly there is a great difference between the faithfulness of a man or woman and that of a dog, yet there is a recognisable similarity or analogy – otherwise, we would not think of the dog as faithful. Further, in the case of the analogy between the human beings and the dog true faithfulness is something we know in ourselves, and a dim and imperfect likeness of this in the dog is known by analogy.’ John Hick

The theory is not John Hick’s, it was developed by Aquinas, but Hick’s example helps to explain it. The basic idea is that we possess qualities like those of God (goodness, wisdom, faithfulness etc) because we were created in his image and likeness, but because we are inferior to God, we possess those qualities in lesser proportion to God.

Evaluation of Analogy

So, analogy is one suggested way of being able to speak about God, but does it work?

Aquinas based his work upon a number of assumptions that came from his religious belief. Obviously, he believed that God was ultimately responsible for the creation of the earth (as shown in his 5 Ways) and he also believed that humans were created ‘in the image and likeness of God’ as is stated in Genesis. The idea that we were created has been refuted implicitly by Darwin and explicitly by Richard Dawkins. If one doesn’t accept his assumptions, one doesn’t have to accept the idea that we can work out what God is like by examining a creation that may or may not be his.

Another criticism, is that analogy picks some qualities, but not others i.e. the good qualities. The world also comprises evil, does God possess these qualities as well? This criticism would appear to have been refuted by Augustine, who argues that there is no such thing as evil, just a falling away from or privation of the good.

Also, analogy can tell us nothing new about God, as it is based upon things that are already in existence, it is rather like saying that we can work out everything about a car designer from the car that he has designed.

The bridge that Aquinas attempts to create between things known and unknown, is built of imaginary blocks. However, some scholars would argue that it is possible to speak of life on Mars meaningfully without having had empirical experience of it, also, eschatological verification can be suggested against this criticism.

Analogy does not stand up to verification, because the object one is trying to illustrate by use of analogy, cannot be empirically verified. Another criticism, is that of Richard Swinburne, who argues that we don’t really need analogy at all. When we say ‘God is good’ and ‘humans are good’, we may be using ‘good’ to apply to different things, but we are using it to mean the same thing: i.e. we are using the word good univocally.

Obviously, the criticisms of people like AJ Ayer are difficult to reject and of course, an analogical statement referring to God is impossible to verify. However, analogy is incredibly valuable for people who are already in the religious language game, that is, people who already believe. It can help them to make sense of a concept that really is beyond human comprehension and would work as a great aid to faith. This was the perspective that Aquinas was working from.

Paul Tillich – Language as Symbol

Paul Tillich was a theologian who believed that it is possible to speak meaningfully about metaphysical concepts and came up with the theory that religious language, because it is symbolic in nature, has a profound effect upon humans.

Paul Tillich starts by making a distinction between signs and symbols. Look at the pictures above (I haven’t uploaded these yet- ed). The top row are signs and the bottom row are symbols. Both sets of pictures point to something beyond themselves, i.e. they mean something else. But there is a crucial difference. Tillich said that signs do not participate in what they symbolise. This means that without knowing what the top row of signs mean, they would make no sense. Also, all these signs do is point to a statement such as ‘you can now travel at the national speed limit’ they have no other effect.

Symbols on the other hand are powerful and they actually take part in the power and meaning of what they symbolise. If you look at the cross in the second row, this is the symbol of Christianity. Not only does it stand as a marker for that religion, but it also makes a powerful statement. It immediately reminds Christians of the sacrifice they believe Jesus to have made on the cross for them, it also reminds them of their beliefs about God and his plan for the salvation of human beings. In this way, a symbol communicates much more powerfully with us. Tillich believed that religious language operates as a symbol.

Tillich outlined four main functions that symbols perform:

1. They point to something beyond themselves.
2. They participate in that to which they point.
3. Symbols open up levels of reality that otherwise are closed to us.
4. They also open up the levels and dimensions of the soul that correspond to those levels of reality.

Tillich argued that symbolic language operates in much the same way that a piece of music or a work of art or poetry might. They can have a deep and profound effect upon us that we can only explain in a limited way, and the explanation would only really be understood by someone else who has seen that same work of art. Also, symbols, like works of art, can open up new levels of reality for us and offer a new perspective on life.

Being-Itself

Tillich maintained that religious language is a symbolic way of pointing towards the ultimate reality, the vision of God which he called ‘Being-Itself.’ Being-Itself is that upon which everything else depends for its being and Tillich believed that we came to knowledge of this through symbols which direct us to it.

Criticisms of Tillich

Tillich has been criticised by William Alston for removing religious language of its substantive content. Paul Tillich argues that statements such as ‘God loves his creatures’ are to be understood symbolically. Alston argues that if we take the symbolic line, the statement does not have any real meaning to do with being saved and going to heaven or hell. Alston argues that religious statements and statements about God should have real and existential significance. He believes that Tillich removes this.

Bultmann: Language as Myth

Source: not part of Dr Guy Williams’ original handout, added March 2013

Background to Bultmann

Rudolf Bultmann (1884-1976) wanted to demythologize the New Testament. The modern listener to the Christian faith is confronted with stumbling blocks to faith, which seems to require the personal abandonment of reason, logic and scientific evidence.

Bultmann’s main aim was to show that the New Testament is a product of first century myth. The ideas at the time about a ‘three-tier universe’ for example (hell underground, earth on the surface and heaven in the sky) were ways of explaining the divine in human terms.

It is not surprising that modern man has abandoned the New Testament because it goes against our advanced knowledge about the nature of the world. It is seen as unbelievable and dismissed as naïve and fairytale-like.

But for Bultmann, that doesn’t mean the New Testament is all wrong. It contains the truth- the core message or erygma- but it requires a demythologization of the text to identify the kerygma (gospel message).

Demythologization = an interpretation of the NT in a way that contemporary man can understand.

“The real point of myths is not to give an objctive world picture; what is expressed in it, rather, is how we human beings understand ourselves in the world”. Bultmann

So Bultmann’s aim is simply to translate the New Testament into modern terms that means the modern man does not have to abandon his scientific and logical knowledge to believe. The solution, hebelieved, was to recast the story of Christ’s redemptive work in modern philosophical, psychological and scientific language that would enable today’s men and women to ascertain the truth that the mythological language no longer conveys.

Miracles

For Bultmann, miracles cannot exist because they cannot be replicated by man’s scientific experiments. They do not happen because that would make God objective and distant – restricted to an association with historical events, rather than personal and on-going. Miracles are a crutch that many Christians base their faith on and use to prove God, but this is not the point since, for Bultmann, God is not objective.

Examples:

1. The Virgin Birth

Science tells us it is impossible for a virgin to become pregnant. Therefore, rather than an actual event, the virgin birth is meant as a myth to express a scriptural meaning. He meaning could be linked with Jesus being a new start for humanity (the second Adam), untainted by ‘original sin’ that affects the rest of humanity. In this way, the myth has been demythologized and the scriptural meaning has been retained.

2. The Crucifixion

While the cross of Jesus is still important for Bultmann, it is not the substitution of sin from the individual to Jesus that the Bible describes. This atonement sacrifice is illogical and unscientific. (In fact the idea of a God that might sacrifice his own son as a punishment for others seems repulsive to modern sensibilities.) Instead, the meaning of the crucifixion is a model to support people as they “crucify” sin in their own lives. This interpretation means that the historical reality of the crucifixion is not even necessary.

Evaluation of Bultmann’s Myth

• If the first Christians drew on myths to describe Jesus, how do we know he was different to anyone else? And indeed, was he?
• The NT is grounded and routed in historical events (see Acts) and other historical sources confirm actual NT events (e.g. Josephus, writing in 93 AD

“Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day” (Antiquities 18: 3, 3).

So:

1. It denies much of the historicity of the NT and, on the other hand,
2. It lets Christianity off the historical hook. Surely, doubts about the historicity of the NT cannot but lead to doubts about the message of the NT. What claims might anyone make if historical accuracy was irrelevant?
3. It undermines the basis of the faith of many. God is believed to be “Creator, redeemer, Lord” and as such worthy of worship. Christ’s divinity is proved by resurrection in a literal sense. Bultmann’s version seems to be an atheistic apologetic which humanises the transcendental and numinous (awesome) nature of the faith.

[In response to this, Bultmann might argue that it is nonsense to impose a modern sense of history on first century writers. The way of writing history has changed – history is always written from the perspective of the victorious to make a point, the relationship between events and meaning has always been a question of interpretation – perhaps we have a particular way of interpreting historical truth in the twenty-first century, but it would be foolish to think that this same interpretative method or approach to (historical) truth was the same in the 1st or 2nd centuries]

Q. Is Bultmann’s mythology more or less believable?

RB Braithwaite: Religious Language as Moral Assertion

Braithwaite was concerned not with what religious statements are, but with how they are used. Braithwaite believed that religious statements are moral in content and intention and can therefore be verified, because they result in a change of behaviour. Religious statements are:

‘…declarations of adherence to a policy of action, declarations of commitment to a way of life.’

Correspondingly, moral assertions are described as follows:

‘It makes the primary use of a moral assertion that of expressing the intention of the asserter to act in a particular sort of way specified in the assertion.’

Braithwaite argued that because religious statements such as ‘God is the almighty father’ result in action, they have meaning. He used the conversion of CS Lewis, who wrote the stories about Narnia, as an example of how becoming a Christian redirected the way he lived his life: it engendered a commitment to live an agapeistic life.

Braithwaite also argued that religious belief and hence religious moral assertions, are based upon a) a commitment to live a particular life as we have seen, and b) religious stories such as the life of Jesus, or the life of the Buddha. What is interesting about this, is that Braithwaite claims religious people do not have to rely upon these stories as being empirically verifiable, i.e. a Christian does not have to produce Jesus’ certificate of death, they can just use these stories as an influence.

‘It is completely untrue, as a matter of psychological fact, to think that the only intellectual considerations which affect action are beliefs: it is all the thoughts of a man that determine his behaviour; and these include his phantasies, imaginations, ideas of what he would wish to be and do, as well as the propositions which he believes to be true…’

So, for Braithwaite, religious assertions are meaningful because they result in particular action and a particular way of life that can be verified.

Ludwig Wittgenstein and Language Games

So, we are back where we started, with Ludwig Wittgenstein. As we saw earlier, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus set the Logical Positivists off on their journey of requiring that a statement meets the criteria of the principle of verification.

Later on however, Wittgenstein wrote a book called Philosophical Investigations which was published posthumously. In this, he developed the theory of language games, which he arrived at (supposedly) after having attended a football match. Wittgenstein observed that just like games such as football and Rugby, language operates according to rules. Just as football players understand the offside trap and Rugby players understand rucks and mauls, so religious people understand the language of religion. Not only this, but Wittgenstein said that language has a meaning for the people in those particular language games (or contexts of use).

This theory has been very influential and fits into a philosophical movement that prefers something called the coherence theory of truth. The coherence theory of truth states that human knowledge is made up of a broad spread of statements about the world, that can be imagined like a patchwork quilt. A statement is true if it fits in with other statements about the world i.e. it can be ‘stitched in’ to the patchwork quilt; a statement coheres with other statements.

For example, if I claim that I have just flown from London to Edinburgh by flapping my arms, you would test the truth of that statement by trying to ‘stitch it in’ to other statements you know to be true about the world. People who follow the coherence theory are often called pragmatists and reject something called the correspondence theory of truth, which states that language is only meaningful if it directly corresponds to facts about the world, that is, language should mirror life. Wittgenstein and the pragmatists that followed him, were more interested in how language was used as a way of judging its meaning, rather than looking at what it corresponds to or mirrors.

© Dr Guy Williams

Wellington College