Religious Language Essay Plans (via negativa, analogical and symbolic)
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Course
G581 - A2 Philosophy of Religion
Institution
OCR
These are A* essay plans that discuss via negativa and via positiva approaches to religious language.
Questions include:
How useful is Aquinas' analogical approach for communicating religious ideas?
"The best approach tk religious language is the cataphatic way." Discuss.
"Tillich's sym...
How effective is analogy in communicating religious ideas and beliefs?
LoA: overall I do not think that analogy is effective at communicating religious ideas and
beliefs. This is because God could possibly be nothing like his creation, and asserting that he
is anthropomorphises him by comparing him to makers within the empirical universe.
Moreover, we could decipher that God is imperfect, showing it is not effective at
communicating Christian ideas of God.
A01 para:
- Aquinas’ analogy of attribution: we can learn something about an author from the
product he has created.
- Because of this, we can learn about the attributes of God by looking at the attributes
of his creation, eg. When we say we
- Aquinas’ analogy of proportion: from a lesser thing we can say that something else
possesses proportionately more of that quality.
Aquinas’ analogical approach may be appropriate for communicating religious ideas and
beliefs because it avoids anthropomorphising God.
A01:
- Aquinas’ analogy of proportion: from a lesser thing we can say that something else
has proportionately more of the same quality.
- Hicks example: a dog’s loyalty versus a human’s loyalty
- E.g. when me say “Jesus is the lamb of God” we are saying that God has the
attributes of a lamb, but proportionately more.
- E.g. a lamb is meek and mild, but Jesus is infinitely more meek and mild.
A02:
- The analogy of proper proportion avoids anthropomorphising God by emphasising
that God is infinitely more than any of his creation.
- It acknowledges that we can assert certain things about God, but this is the smallest
window to who God actually is.
- By emphasising the difference between creation and God, he avoids
anthropomorphising God
- This is a useful aspect as it does not diminish the infinite greatness of God,
anthropomorphising him would limit his greatness.
COUNTER:
- Aquinas actually does end up anthropomorphising God by comparing him to makers
within the empirical universe.
- He says we can observe that we can learn something about a maker from the
product he has created e.g. bulls urine, you can learn about the health of a bull
through looking at its urine. He could only know this through observation
- However, here he ends up anthropomorphising by comparing him to makers in the
empirical universe. God is outside the empirical universe so we can’t apply the same
rules to him, this puts a limit on his greatness.
- God could be absolutely nothing like his creation.
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