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Aquinas and Tillich are both correct in their observation that “we name God from creatures” and that anything beyond the Tetragrammaton – which literally describes God as “Being-itself” – can only be predicated of God symbolically, or analogically.

This should come as no surprise as Descartes correctly lays the logical problem before us: “it is in the nature of the infinite not to be comprehended by me, who am finite.”  We should maintain, then, that we speak meaningfully of God only as He is known to us [pro nobis]  and yet repudiate the views of Ayer and his ilk who would render all theological and religious language senseless.

Logical positivism is so passé.  Ayer’s Vienna Circle chums’ thesis (that only that which can be verified has literal sense) is, itself, unverifiable – as it is neither a tautology, nor can any empirical demonstration verify it.

Yet even if we ignored this (somewhat gross) error and adopted Ayer’s position, there is no need to throw out metaphysical statements – which he relegates to a sort of untouchable caste below poetry.  Hick correctly demonstrates with his example of three consecutive 7s in π and his parable of the Celestial City, that falsification and verification are not always symmetrical and, as Pascal’s wager alludes to, if the theist is correct, much God-talk would be verified eschatologically.  Of course, this doesn’t help if it is all bunk. But then, we’ll never know.

Our question realises two important and subordinate questions: (1) What is signified by “meaning”? and, (2) What does “speaking about God” signify?

We should draw a distinction, as Tillich does, between religious language and theological language – where the former assists worship and belongs to the confessor and the latter, an attempt to speak accurately and, often, philosophically – about that which is beyond.

“Meaning” is, itself, a weighted word.  Far too many casual readers of Ayer fall into the trap of thinking Ayer posits the view that religious language is meaningless.  This is certainly not what he says – indeed, he repudiates this view himself in his emotivist thesis that religious language is an “ejaculation” of feeling – designed to “arouse similar sentiment” in another.  Hence, “I believe in God” or “God exists” is rendered, “God – Yay!”

In this respect, even for Ayer, talk about God has a certain meaning, or function.  It is just, for him, literally senseless.

One useful thing Ayer encourages us to do is to properly analyse what we are saying with language.  It is an idea that Wittgenstein champions in his early work in the Tractatus with that famous line, “what can be said at all can be said clearly – and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”  Since metaphysical statements cannot be properly analysed – and are not ostensive, they must show, rather than tell.  Hence there is still mystery, for Wittgenstein.

However, his dawning realisation in his later work, that there is not a “single calculus of language” is helpful.  Wittgenstein’s example of the cow and the money – that the meaning of a word is no more intrinsic to the word than the concept of a cow is intrinsic to money – rather, money can be used to buy a cow (or a capybara, or a Mars bar) – so words are used to convey ideas (some of which are ostensive.)  Thus, his general point that, for many things, the life of the sign is its use – stands.

Indeed, Wittgenstein’s whole theory of language games is particularly helpful in understanding the functions of religious and theological language.

As we learn to play chess by rules, so we learn rules of particular language games.  We all use words idiosyncratically of course, and a Mrs Malaprop or Dogberry may misuse words to convey the same meaning.  So, in Much Ado About Nothing, when Dogberry says, “thou wilt be condemned into everlasting redemption for this!” the audience laughs, knowing he has confused the sign, “redemption” for the sign, “damnation.”  Yet they would not find this amusing if they did not know the language game of Christian soteriology.

In our School*, “Mechanics” denotes not persons who work on repairing cars, but the “nuts and bolts” of a subject.

Yet even in different subjects, the word is used in a slightly nuanced way.  We have to practise using the language to gain understanding of its meaning – for us (pro nobis).  Yet one might say, this renders the word meaningless for those who stand outside the language game.  Perhaps.  But perhaps there is something innate in us that draws us to speak in a similar way:

Suppose a child who has never been taught the rules of chess finds an old chess set and begins playing – inventing for herself – as by coincidence – the very same rules of chess?  Is she playing chess?  Must we be conscious of how we are using a sign to use it properly?

This harks back to the opening of Augustine’s Confessions – “teach me to know if I am first to call on You or to know you?  Yet how can I call on one not knowing You and how am I to know  You without calling on you?  For I may call on some other.”

The answer is, of course, from St.  Paul: “we know in part.” All language is merely a description of reality pro me.  The table is named by us as the function it appears to perform.  Wittgenstein’s example of the blue sky – that we assume the other person shares some notion of the signification of the word – to speak at all.  For the functions of language are rich, but they all attempt to communicate thought.

It would seem, remarks, Aquinas, that we must resort to Dionysius’ via negativa – that we can only name God in the negative – because we cannot apprehend His essence in Himself.  And yet, if Ayer is right – that to “say something is, is to say it’s not what it isn’t” then in saying “God is not mortal” is to say He is immortal.  The apophatic tradition is helpful in pointing out some of the “blind alleys that had to be pursued” (to quote Barth) but it falls short – we want to say something positively of God and we can.

The answer must be revelation.  St. John’s first letter tells us that, “we love because He first loved us.”  So we can speak because we were spoken to.

Unfortunately, all human language is limited – as are our minds and our imagination.  It is in our very nature.  No – it is our nature.

Aquinas’ analogical approach to language and his observation that, “God is multiple in idea, yet one in reality” is helpful, although it naturally rests on the doctrine of the simplicity of God (an axiom we do not have time to challenge, here).  Yet, if God is, indeed, multiple in idea, are we all genuinely in the same “language game” when we use the sign, God?

This idea is explored in Life of Pi – when the eponymous hero adopts Hinduism, Christianity and Islam – arguing that, “if there is one country in the sky, should not all passports be valid?” Pi sees that all our language is inadequate.  Perhaps, then, none of us speaks truthfully about God (theologically).  And yet, to return to our chess analogy – if one does not know the en passant rule, or pawn promotion rule, is one not still playing chess?  Our language is limited – it may be truth that God is Trinity – or not – but it does not mean that those who say, “there is only one God” are not speaking meaningfully.

Rather, we come to realise, as Tillich, that all language other than the understanding of God as being-itself is symbolic – and that symbols are “double edged” – revealing something about God and sanctifying the earthly.  Symbol is tautegorical as Coleridge points out, and infinite in meaning – rich – it bridges the spheres of heaven and earth (as Hedley observes) because “human beings are amphibious” and inhabit phenomenal and noumenal realms (as Kant would have it, in a development of Plato’s ascent up the Divided Line from the material to intelligible realm).  In this regard, symbol literally “throws together” the finite and infinite, via the imaginal so that, as Wordsworth has it,

Love, now an universal birth

From heart to heart is stealing:

From earth to man, from man to earth

It is the hour of Feeling!

Barth’s observation that, “there can be no complete work” in theology is correct.  We cannot know God as He is in Himself but we can speak meaningfully enough of Hi who is ineffable – as long as we hold it in mind that, “we see but through a glass, dimly.”  We approach God through myth.  This was the very reason Aslan brought the children to Narnia – that by knowing Him a little, there, they should know Him better, here.  For, in the symbol we meet the Other in a familiar and yet unfamiliar way.  Ultimately, we are ever in danger of anthropomorphising God because we inhabit the Shadowlands.  Only in the eschaton, shall language be glorified and, as all things, be perfected and take on their true Forms: “for Then we shall see face to Face and know, even as we are known.”

Tristan Stone, Teacher of Philosophy, Theology and Ethics at Harris Westminster Sixth Form

* Harris Westminster Sixth Form assesses students for their Mechanics (the ‘nuts and bolts’ of a subject – for example, how well a student grasps a particular concept or can write an essay) Purpose (the wider picture, thinking synoptically) and Response (how students respond to feedback in and outside of the classroom and the initiative taken to improve and take responsibility for their own learning).  Even within the School, Mechanics, Purpose and Response can mean slightly different things across the different Subjects and so one has to be within the ‘language game’ to fully appreciate the meaning.