IB Philosophy 5.2.1 Nature of Religious Language Notes

What Kind of Language Is Religious Language?

1. The Nature and Existence of God sub-theme (5.1) examined what God is and whether God's existence can be proved or disproved. This sub-theme shifts to a prior question: what kind of language do we use when we talk about God, and is that language meaningful?
2. These questions matter because if religious language is confused or empty, then the arguments about God's existence in 5.1 may be built on a shaky base, one that collapses before the arguments even get started.
3. This connects directly to ethical language (discussed in 4.2.3). Just as the theory of ethics (meta-ethics) asks whether moral statements are stating facts, expressing feelings, or giving instructions, the philosophy of religious language asks whether religious statements describe a transcendent reality (something beyond the physical world), express spiritual feelings, or serve some other purpose.
4. The key question is whether religious claims are truth-apt (that is, whether they can be true or false) or whether they do something else entirely. This is the cognitivism/non-cognitivism debate from 4.2.3 applied to religion.
5. Religious language presents a distinctive philosophical problem because of the nature of its subject matter. If God is infinite, transcendent, and beyond human comprehension (as discussed in 5.1.1), then ordinary human language, which is developed to describe finite, empirical objects, may be inherently inadequate for describing the divine.
6. The question is whether religious language can bridge the gap between the finite and the infinite.

Three Approaches to Religious Language

1. Three main approaches to understanding religious language have been developed: literal, symbolic/metaphorical, and analogical.
   1. The literal approach treats religious statements as straightforward factual claims ("God created the heavens and the earth" means exactly what it says).
   2. The symbolic approach treats religious statements as poetic expressions pointing toward realities that transcend literal description.
   3. The analogical approach (developed by Aquinas) occupies a middle ground.
2. Topic 5.2.2 will examine the problem (whether it is meaningful), and 5.2.3 will examine attempted solutions. Together, these topics provide the philosophical toolkit for evaluating any religious claim.
3. The question "Is spirituality possible without religion or belief in a higher being?" (another overarching question) is also relevant.
   1. If religious language is primarily symbolic or metaphorical, then its value may lie in its capacity to express spiritual experience and meaning rather than in making factual claims about a supernatural being.
   2. This opens the possibility of a religion without literal belief, one that keeps the stories, rituals, and language of a tradition but reads them as symbols or metaphors rather than factual claims about a supernatural being.
4. The IB syllabus asks: "What kind of language is religious language?"
   1. This question recognises that religious statements ("God is love," "The Lord is my shepherd," "Brahman is the ground of all being") do not function like ordinary factual claims ("Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius").
   2. Religious language uses metaphor, symbol, analogy, and myth in ways that require special philosophical analysis.
5. The debate in this sub-unit is not about whether religious beliefs are true or false (that was the question in 5.1).
   1. Instead it asks: what are religious believers actually doing when they use language about God?
   2. Are they making factual claims, or something else?
   3. This is a question of philosophy of language applied to religion,.

Aquinas and the Language of Analogy

1. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) developed the most influential philosophical account of religious language in the Western tradition. Aquinas recognised that literal (univocal) language and purely metaphorical (equivocal) language both fail when applied to God.
2. His solution was the doctrine of analogy: religious language is neither purely literal nor purely metaphorical but analogical.
3. Univocal language uses a word with exactly the same meaning in different contexts. If we say "John is wise" and "God is wise" univocally, we mean the same thing by "wise" in both cases.
4. Aquinas rejected this because God's wisdom is infinitely different from human wisdom. Using the same word with the same meaning fails to capture the divine transcendence emphasised in 5.1.1.
5. Equivocal language uses a word with completely different meanings in different contexts (as "bank" can mean a financial institution or a riverbank). If "wise" means something entirely different when applied to God, then religious language tells us nothing about God's actual nature: calling God "wise" would be as uninformative as calling God "glurp."