CHAPTER THREE

Cognitivitist Theories Of Religious

Contents:

1. Religious Experience 1 -1. Introduction 118 1-2. Theories of Religious Experience 120 1-2-1. Lewis, Theory 122 1-2-2. Wilson’s Theory 124 1-2-3. Ewing’s Theory 125 1-2-4. Buber’s Theory 126 1-2-5. Price’s Theory 127 1-3. Criticism 127 1-4. Conclusion 134

2. Theory of Analogy. 2 -1. Introduction 135 2-2. Aquinas’ Theory of Analogy 138 2-3. Mascall’s Theory 139 2-4. Crombie’s Theory 142 2-5. Criticism 143

3. R.L. as Falsifiable Statements 3-1. Introduction 146 3-2. R.L. Is Falsifiable 147 3-3. Theory of Eschatology 150 3-4. Criticism 151

4. Theory of Symbol. 4-1. latroduction 152 4-2. Tillich’s Theory of Symbol 154 4-3. Functions of Religious Language 156 4-4. Meaningfulness of Religious Symbols 157 4-5. of Religious Symbols 160 4-6. C riticism 161

5. Theory of Metaphor. 5-1. Introduction 163 5-2. What Is Metaphor? 164 5-3. Theories of Metaphor 166 5-4. Metaphor and Model in 169 5-5. Justification of Religious Metaphor & Model 171 5-6. Criticism 174 # Notes and References 177

117 The set of theories presented in this chapter argues that religious language is descriptive, though in different ways and different degrees. Obviously, the central religious assertions do seem to be making statements about certain superamundane objects, states of affairs, or dimensions of experience. The descriptivist challenges the nondescriptivist then to show how the latter’s position can escape the facts how can they be justified? As we saw earlier, even if we say that they are neither true nor false but are rather appropriate or inappropriate, we may still ask, what makes them appropriate? What for instance makes “ talk”; in general, appropriate and atheist talk inappropriate. Now, we will see how descriptive theories can be successful in answering this and the other questions mentioned earlier. We begin with the discussing of ‘religious experience’ in terms of which some have attempted to solve the difficulties of religious language.

(1) Religious Experience

1-1. Introduction We have seen that logical positivists tried to refute metaphysical and religious beliefs as insignificant and nonsense on the basis of a criterion of meaningfulness propounded in the form of verifiability theory. The theory demanded that any to be meaningful must be capable of verification by some sense-experience. Flaw’s use of the parable about the invisible 118 gardener, also, and much of the discussion which follows it, assumes that so far as this present life goes there are no tests or observations which establish the truth of religious assertions. But a great majority of religious believers past and present would argue that certain tests and observations are relevant to religious belief, and if carried out properly can produce evidence in support of religion's supernatural claims. Religious language claims to be factual; and theologians who favour such claims of this language have not been unresponsive to the relevant force of the verifiability demand. They have really faced the challenge from the verifiability demand head on and have tried to show in face of that that religious language also, like ordinary factual or scientific language, has got some empirical basis, some empirical evidences behind it so that its truth or falsity can be ascertained with reference to them. Some have taken the challenge from the verifiability criterion so directly that they have really made attempts to show that just as in the case of scientific language there are sense-empirical evidences, similarly in the case of religious language also there are such evidences. The presence of causal law through the world, the existence of system and order everywhere are some of the clear sense- empirical evidences which speak of the behind the world. Belief in God is amply justified with reference to sense-empirical data present in the world. F.R. Tennant has been an important contemporary thinker to preach such a view.^ But such pleas to defend the factual or empirical nature of religious language can hardly be supported. Such empirical justifications of religious language made by Tennant and others are really nothing different from showing the validity of the causal and teleological arguments for the existence of God which, it is well established now, do not constitute valid proofs for the existence of God. Religious language, by its very nature, purports to be beliefs about a fact (or facts) which transcends (or transcend) sense-experience; and hence 119 it is absurd to seek a verification of it by sense-experience. Sense- experience is not the only experience that man has and therefore to confine the use of the word 'experience' in such a way exhibits nothing but a sense of dogmatism, narrowness, arbitrariness and a pre-possessed bias on the part of the positivists. By this act of narrowness the positivists leave a vast track of human experience untrodden, exclude from consideration great tracts of reality and confine them within a constricted and impoverished world.^ The experience to which religious statements are said to refer for their empirical verification is known as 'religious experience.' A religious experience, is one that is believed to provide us with a clue to the ultimate nature of things, with access to ultimate , goodness, and truth, with insight into the ultimate " of life. With certain minor differences, there are many types of experiences that are commonly called religious experiences and that are commonly believed to have religious significance. , however, in his famous work The Varieties of Religious Experience, offers fourfold characterisation of religious experience: 'Ineffability', 'Noetic quality', 'Transiency', and 'Passivity'.^ A partial list of these kinds of experiences would include mystical experience, intuitive experience, personal encounters with the ultimate, revelatory experiences, experiences of holy, experiences of deep prayer or contemplation, experiences that make us acutely aware of our own finitude, sinfulness, and contingency, and experiences in which we are deeply conscious of the impingement of an ultimate moral demand on our wills.

1-2. Theories of Religious Experience Now, we shall note the family of theories, which sees a method of justifying certain knowledge-claims in religious or mystical experiences. It 120 would take too much to summarise here all the arguments concerning religious experience that have been offered in the modem debate. Asking if there is some kind of knowledge given through religious experiences, we are also to consider whether certain assertions about reality can be based exclusively upon religious experiences. In this case, religious experiences are questioned as verifying processes. Among contemporary thinkers, those who have tried to save the factual and cognitive status of religious language or statements by connecting them to religious experience, the names of H.D. Lewis, John Wilson, A.C. Ewing, etc., are leading. It is not a fact that all of these thinkers make an appeal to religious experience exactly in the same way to defend the factual status of religious statements, nevertheless, all of them somehow try to establish that religious language is not merely emotive, psychological or something like that. They try to establish by reference to religious experience that they have some objective content and they refer to some objective, real situation. Such objective facts or situations (about which the truth or falsity of the religious statements is to be verified) are somehow revealed to us in some unique kind of experience known as 'religious experience.' These experiences, although occurring to only a few, are still genuine experiences of something perfectly real and objective. They are not mere subjective fancies or certain subjective states of feelings or emotions, as some contemporary empirical thinkers take them to be. Religious language, therefore, is not merely emotive or expressive in character, it refers to objective facts and therefore it is factual cognitive and informative. Although many problems arise about religious experience, the basic problem is the bearing of such experiences on the issue of the existence or non-existence of God. The above view that religious language has an objective referent clearly means that God exists as an objective reality. Here 121 again, all the above thinkers agree on the point that although God exists objectively, his existence is in no way comparable to the existence of ordinary physical objects. He does not exist in the fashion of a table or chair's existence. God exists in his own unique way and his existence and nature, although revealed to us to some extent in religious experiences, remain, for the most part, a 'mystery.' They emphasise that on that account, i.e., because of the fact that God's being is a mystery, we cannot say that there is nothing like true or false about the religious language, that it does not refer to any objective situation. Because God is a mystery, religious language is naturally metaphorical (or symbolical) but its metaphorical nature does not prevent it from being factual and cognitive. The logic of religious language is not different from that of ordinary factual . Now, as we have said, although the various thinkers named above agree on these essential points, they differ as to their detailed app'roaches and treatments of the matter. To see the point of each, let us have a brief consideration of their views separately.

1-2-1. Lewis' Theory Among all the thinkers, Lewis seems to be the most enthusiastic to save the factual and cognitive status of religious language. He insists more than once that religious language has an objective content, it refers to a 'beyond' and that the question of truth and falsity must somehow be applicable to it in the literal sense.^ "A religious must stand the test of truth and falsity in the normal sense... there must be at the core of religion something significant to which the distinction of true and false in the normal or literal sense applies."^ In contemporary philosophical there are two kinds of views regarding the nature of religious language: (T) Religious language is not cognitive. Its direct indicative form is logically misleading. It is to be interpreted indirectly, in an oblique way. (2) Religious language 122 is cognitive, but it is so in its own way. It has a private, autonomous status, and the questions of truth and falsity in the ordinary sense are inapplicable to it. Lewis opposes both these views and strongly holds that religious statements are factual and cognitive and the considerations of truth and falsity must be applied to them in the literal, normal sense. Logically, religious language is not different from ordinary factual language; and just as the question of truth and falsity of ordinary factual statements is decided by sense-experience, similarly the question of the truth and falsity of religious statements is to be ascertained by religious experience. However, all this does not mean that God exists exactly in the same way in which the ordinary physical object exists. Again, it does not mean that God is revealed in our religious experiences in a 'total' way. The nature and existence of God, for the most, remain a mystery to us and this mystery can never be unveiled. It is really this element of mystery that is the corner stone of religion. Lewis much emphasises this element of mystery in the object of religion and points out in consequence that religious experiences are also for the most part elusive and mysterious.^ Lewis criticises such a view of religious experience that tells of a direct ’I-thou’ encounter where the or the individual is in a direct, face to face, relationship with God to have a total apprehension of him. Total or complete apprehension of God is never possible. The notion of a direct 'I-thou' encounter is a misrepresentation of the true nature of the experience of God. The mystery around God always eludes our total apprehension of him. Now, because religious experiences are elusive and mysterious, it is natural that religious language will be elusive and metaphorical; but this, says Lewis, is a false prejudice to assume that the elusive or metaphorical nature of religious language debars it from all considerations of truth and falsity. Every religious experience, in spite of being mysterious, has an element of cognition in it and this cognition has an element of certainty in it as compelling as that found in logic and 123 mathematics. "It must be stressed however, that the elusive insight or intuition in question has the same compelling character as the apprehensions we have in logic and mathematics. It presents what we feel must be the case, and its elusiveness in other regards does not affect the certainty it brings."* Religious experience reveals the mystery of to us to some extent and to the extent it does so we can very well use religious language cognitively.

1-2-2. Wilson *s Theory Like Lewis, John Wilson is also very enthusiastic in defending the cognitive function of religious language by an appeal to religious experience. He says: "To say 'there is a God' is to state a fact: God is real in the same sense, though not in the same way, as physical objects are real..."^ The word 'God' therefore, refers to a perfectly objective reality according to Wilson and that statements about God are all genuine assertions expressing that such and such is the case and such is not the case. They are thus capable of being verified and falsified and are, therefore, to be put "in the same logical boat, as they were, with straightforward empirical statements."^® Now the question arises, how is the factual, informative status of the religious language to be justified? That is, in other words, how are they to be verified? For a to be factual and informative and to be put in the same logical boat as that of the ordinary empirical statements, we have seen, it is necessary that it is verifiable or falsifiable by some experience. Now, how can religious language be verified if it claims to be as much factual, cognitive and informative as the straightforward empirical language? Wilson's brief answer to this question is: "By religious experience”.“ Wilson criticises the notion of verifiability by sense- experience merely and points out that there is no valid logical ground to limit the word 'experience' within the narrow boundary of 'sense-experience' 124 merely. Each statement must be sought to be tested by an experience that is suited to or is in consonance with the nature of the assertion. As Wilson himself says: "...assertions do have to pass tests, not arbitrary tests, but tests, which they impose on themselves, as it were, because of what they assert” . In spite of the force with which Wilson tries to establish that God is real and that the statements about God are cognitive, he is not prepared to say that God is a reality, an object just like a table or a chair. According to him, God is real in the same 'sense,' but not in the same way as the physical objects are. He accepts, like Lewis, that for the most part God is a mystery and largely his nature is uncomprehended;^'* but then, this mysterious nature, according to him, does not prevent us from cognising and saying at least something about him. In our future experiences, we may be able to know more and more about God, and accordingly, we can go pn extending the meaning of the word 'God.' "Instead of Vedantist's 'Not this, not this,' Christians must be able to say, 'At least this, at least this. They must be able to assert definitely about God, whilst admitting that there is much more to be known about Him. There is nothing in logic to prevent our expanding the / meaning of the word God."^® Moreover, Wilson also admits that much of religious language is metaphorical, but metaphors, according to him are not vacuous, "Because a metaphor may assert something quite as precise and informative as any other assertion.

1-2-3. Ewing's Theory In the chain of the thinkers who have tried to defend the cognitive status of religious language by defending its verifiability in terms of religious experience, A.C. Ewing also does not lag behind. In one of his essays,*^ Ewing has defended strongly the genuineness of intuitive or religious experiences as being perfectly objective and cognitive in nature. 125 His main argument here in face of the criticisms of religious experience made by the positivists seems to be that if the genuineness of such experiences as being objective and cognitive cannot be conclusively established, it cannot be conclusively refuted either. So, according to Ewing, "...there are certain 'mystical' and other religious experiences which can without argument adequately and rationally assure one of God's existence."^* Those who dispute the genuineness of such experiences are, according to Ewing, like those 'tone-deaf men who are unable to hear and recognise the of Beethoven's music. If sense-experience can be believed as giving us genuine factual and cognitive information, why not religious experience, "Why should 'facts' be necessarily limited to those potentially present to sense-perception?"*^ "In every cognition," says Ewing, "there is an inference from experience to object."^® Now, if such an inference is warranted and justified in case of our ordinary cognitions, why should the same be taken unwarranted and unjustified in case of religious cognitions? It is with such arguments that Ewing tries to defend the factual and cognitive status of religious statements.

1-2-4. Buber's Theory A still another plea to maintain the factuality of religious experience is advanced by way of making a distinction between two kinds of relationship, originally brought about, perhaps, by .He holds that the relationship of a person to a sense-object is one in which only one side is lively and responding, whereas the relationship (or experience) in which God is revealed to man is an 'I-Thou' relationship, a person-to-person encounter in which both the sides are lively and responding. Thus the religious relationship cannot bear a direct comparison with the sense-object relationship and the 'Thou' represents a perfectly objective situation.

126 1-2-5. Pricers Theory Similarly, H.H. Price, in one of his essays, claims that there is a very specific acquaintance-experience that we can have in kind of awareness of God.^^ It is impossible to describe this experience adequately,but- and this is the point of Price's essay- we can describe clearly a certain practice which leads to the indescribable experience.^'* This practice is to adopt a certain role- to act as if there was a loving God, a person whom we can address in prayer and who demands of us a life of love towards our fellow- men. Adopting the role of anapaestic man under the guidance of a , we will all of us discern a cognitive ability of which we were not previously aware. We experience an encounter, after which we know that certain sentences in the religious language have a real anchorage, although the existence of this anchorage cannot be empirically verified.

1'3. Criticism We have seen above some of the important attempts to defend the objective, factual or cognitive status of religious statements by appeal to religious experience. In all such attempts, it is clear, what the defenders want to show is that religious statements are certainly not scientific statements, because the former are not verifiable like the latter by sense- experience. Nevertheless, religious statements are like scientific statements, have an objective, factual status similar to that of the scientific statements, because just as the latter refer to, describe, and are verifiable by-the facts of sense-experience, the former also refer to, describe, and are verifiable by a perfectly objective fact revealed to us in our religious experience. Now, among the many common arguments against intuitive cognition of religious language, I think, there are two important questions that the existing theories seem to provide no clear answer for them: 127 (1) Is there any public checking-procedure in case of religious experiences? (2) Are there any workable criteria for discriminating between genuine religious experiences and illusory ones?

Q.l) We know that scientific statements are verifiable by sense- experience in a public manner. That is, the sense-experience about which a particular scientific statement is to be verified is not confined to only one or two persons, but it is open to all those whose senses are in order, and each one can repeat his experience as many as he wills to confirm the result of his verification. Thus, in case of scientific statements there are repeatable public checking-procedures. Are there such public verification or public checking-procedures in case of religious statements? Certainly not. Religious experiences are rare. They occur to only a few and that also on certain special moments. Such experiences are not open to all, and in case of those who have such experiences, they are not repeatable at will. How can then religious statements claim the same objective or factual status as that of the scientific statements? Wilson, however, seems fully alive to the first difficulty in the path of the objectivity or genuine cognitivity of the religious language. He distinguishes between objective and subjective, existential and psychological statements by pointing out that while the former are concerned with a matter of public interest, the latter are not so.^^ But, on the basis of these distinctions, Wilson does not give up the objectivity of religious statements, rather he argues for their objective and existential status on the plea that they are also matters of public interest and experience. Of course, the word 'public,' Wilson concedes, is not to be taken here in the same broad sense in which we take it in case of scientific statements. The word 'public' means here a group- a large group- the group 128 of the religious persons. Within such a religious group, religious statements are publicly verifiable. Such religious people, Wilson says, have not only common, but co-recurrent religious experiences and such experiences can even be repeated, if certain conditions are fulfilled as below; (a) The mind is freed from the direction of sense. (b) The mind is trained to experience something general beneath the myriad particulars of the world. (c) A certain mental attitude, a general, unprejudiced in the possibility of religious experience.^’

Now, with all our regard for the seriousness and sincerity of Wilson's attempt to put the religious statements in the same logical boat as that of the scientific or ordinary factual statements, we must point out that he does not really succeed in doing so. First, we must point out that a group, even a large group, cannot mean 'public,' it cannot be equivalent to 'all'. Secondly, Wilson argues that because religious experiences occur to a large group, logically it is possible that they may occur to all; but we see that from the fact religious experiences occur only to a group of people, the religious group, a conclusion just reverse to that of Wilson follows. That religious experiences occur to only religious people and not to all, clearly shows that they are open to only those who are bound by a common commitment, a common conviction, and not to all does who do not share such convictions. This has a clear implication that religious statements do not refer to and describe an objective reality, that religious experiences do not reveal an objective fact; rather they express merely the common convictions of a particular group of people. Those who are unaware of or untouched with such convictions can in no way have religious experiences; and really speaking Wilson and all others who try a defence like him have themselves

129 spoken of such commitment as a necessary condition for the occurrence of religious experiences. It is in this vein of laying down the conditions that Mascall speaks of "purity of heart and religious devotion,"^* Wilson speaks of "sympathetic inclination towards the possibility of religious experiences," B. Mitchell speaks of a "religious tradition of the community,and H.D. Lewis writes the following lines: "I do not know what it would mean at all to encounter God independently of what I believe His character and activity to be or what He requires of me in some situation."^” How can, then, religious experiences claim genuine objectivity when the very precondition for their occurrence is a prior commitment? How can religious statements claim a genuine factual status like that of scientifrc statements under these conditions? Or, as Paul Schmidt remarks in this connection; "How can we critically and dispassionately appraise a view when the first condition for testing it is a commitment which forces us to relinquish our impartial position?"^^ Here is a great contrast between scientific and religious statements and it is useless to attempt to put both of them in the same logical boat. Speaking of the between the experiences of a scientific and those of a religious man in this light, Bella K. Milmed amply remarks: "He (scientist) is careful not to see certain results because he wants to see them... Religious experience, on the other hand is utterly unattainable unless we not only know what we are looking for but make an effort to perceive what we want to perceive. Wilson himself and all those who speak with Jiim call God a mystery. How can such a mysterious object be a matter of„public test? Whatever efforts one may make considering the conditions laid down by Wilson it is not possible to see God unless one has an inner conviction, an inner eye, to see God. Public tests, then, in the fashion of those carried out in the case of scientific statements are impossible not only due to certain 130 practical or technical difficulties, but, as C.B. Martin says, due to the very nature of the case.^^ Further, if religious statements are to be tested like scientific statements, they become mere provisional hypotheses to be accepted or rejected on such tests. However, do the religious believers treat religious statements as hypotheses? They rather assert these statements with a sense or total commitment. Hence, any talk of public test in case of religious statements seems going against the real nature of such statements. Wilson says that within the religious group means only the Christian group. The religious experience that the Hindu group has sharply differs from one that occurs to a Christian or a Muslim. The descriptions contained in world- religions that are all allegedly based upon certain religious experiences of their prophets and saints hardly coincide. In addition, even in case of persons belonging to the same religious group, sometimes such experiences are not similar. Even within the Hindu group, a worshipper of Rama has an experience of Rama, a worshipper of Shiva has that of Shiva and so on, although it is granted in that all these different are the different forms of the same God. The above considerations clearly show that religious experiences are not common, co-recurrent and similar even amongst the persons of the religious group itself. Such experiences are all based on individual, social or traditional pre-possessions. Again, we may say that they seem to be the results of not a dispassionate scientific enquiry, but of a personal or social conviction.

Q.2) Furthermore, suppose there are people who have strong and extraordinary experience of seeing or meeting something real; but there is always the danger that even if some religious experience are genuine, others are not. However, how may these be distinguished? How can we decide which religious experiences, and knowledge-claims based on them, should 131 be accepted, and which should be rejected? There are a great number of erroneous extraordinary experiences such as meetings with ghosts, demons, devils, angels and gods; whether these people have provided or can provide any workable criteria for discriminating between extraordinary experiences of something real and illusory ones? Supposedly, the convictional character of the experience itself might be the same in all cases, so this will not do as a criterion of demarcation, no matter how overpowering or personally convincing it might be. Second, without an objective testing procedure, believers would have to give all knowledge-claims based on religious experience the same weight, with the result that one must be prepared to accept the logically untenable position of admitting as objectively true even claims that contradict one another.^'* Some philosophers like Martin Buber, as we have seen before, have tried to defend the cognition of religious experience by analogy of a personal encounter to the specific I-Thou relation between men. Thus, the religious relationship cannot bear a direct comparison with the sense-object relationship. However, to such a plea one may reply that even if religious experience is taken as a case of person-to-person encounter as contrasted with person-to-object relationship, where is the basic issue altered? As Hepburn, in this context, asks; "Are there no checking-procedures relevant to the encounter of person with person? Or does all 'checking' necessarily degrade persons to status of things? If the vital analogy here is that between meeting people and meeting God, have the theologians established this analogy firmly enough to bear the weighty superstructure that they have erected upon it?"^^ However, if by the uniqueness of the 'I-Thou' relationship, it is intended to be maintained that such a relationship (or experience) is not possible to an unconcerned, neutral observer in the same coercive way as experience of a material object ('It') is possible, that such an experience requires what the existentialists like Buber and Tillich would 132 call a sense of personal 'involvement' into or 'participation' with the object of experience (the 'Thou'), then we are certainly not to dispute the uniqueness. Then on this sense of uniqueness, the genuine objectivity of religious experiences cannot be maintained. If the experience of 'Thou' requires a personal involvement on the part of the observer, if the experience is not possible, without a personal commitment, if the 'Thou' is not to be revealed to a disinterested neutral observer, then where does the 'Thou' remain genuinely objective? It is only relatively objective, i.e., objective for an interested, committed T. Thus, where do the religious statements remain genuinely factual and cognitive? They become the statements expressing a personal conviction, a personal commitment. Of course, corresponding to his conviction, the man sometimes has certain before him in which he seems to face an objective situation, but the situation has only an objective force for him, it is not genuinely objective. Because of the points discussed above, several recent writers have ruled out the possibility of experimenting with religious language. By rejection of experiment, they attempt to define 'religious belief in such a way that any sort of tentativeness or testing is ruled out. For example, Terence Penelhum says: "one cannot... take up a belief in order to test it”.^^ And T.R. Miles claims; "If acts of commitment are carried out with some ulterior objective in mind, then, however commendable such an objective may be, the commitment is not religious."^’ A. MacIntyre, too, says: "...to hold Christian belief as a hypothesis would be to render it no longer Christian belief’.^* Some writers, however, in response to the challenges against factuality of religious experience in this life, offer a constructive suggestion based upon the fact that Christianity / Islam includes beliefs.This suggestion is presented more fully in John Hick's paper 'Theology and Verification'.For Hick, the verifying or testing of 133 statements means the removal of ignorance or uncertainty concerning their truth. He says: "What we rightly seek, when we desire the verification of a factual , is not a demonstration of the logical impossibility of the proposition's being false (for this would be a self-contradictory demand), but such weight of evidence as suffices, in the type of case in question, to exclude rational doubt. The possibility of man's finding such confirming evidence. Hick points out, is built into the Christian's beliefs. For the Christian / Islam theist’s picture of the universe carries with it certain expectations, not only about the end of the age or the ultimate triumph of God, but about a transformed experience for certain human after death- a life to come, in which doubt and uncertainty are removed. Thus, Hick suggests that the demand for testability in principle can be met. Religious statements can be understood as having factual content, even though their factuality may not be substantiated except to those who survive death and experience a life to come.'*^

1-4. Conclusion What we are made to conclude, thus, on the basis of a consideration of the verifiability of religious statements with reference to religious experience is that religious language can be taken cognitive and objective because it is testable; however, not in the same sense in which ordinary factual or scientific statements are taken. And a critical examination of the appeal made to religious experience for the verification of religious statements itself shows that such experiences are possible for only those who are within the circle of religious and not for all. In other words, religious statements may have only, what we may call, a 'convictional' or 'relative' factuality. The believer, if he acts according to what he to be divine promises or a course of action willed by God, will in fact be 134 putting God to the test, even if that is not his intention. And even the test may well be one from which a religiously informed observer can draw significant findings. Further, because the object to which religious statements refer is unique, mysterious and infinite, it is not possible to have a clear and exhaustive picture of it in religious experiences. Therefore, religious statements are metaphorical, parabolical, and analogical. Their meanings are not literally clear and therefore ordinary public tests may not be carried out in case of them. Moreover, because the infinite reality is not exhaustively apprehended by any one in all its aspects, therefore, differences in reports may be there and hence all may not undergo the same verification-procedure for the statements. Still from this, it does not follow that religious statements do not say anything about a reality. They say, as Wilson suggests, at least something about the reality. Finally, religious statements cannot be taken as having factuality as hard and genuine as that of ordinary factual or scientific statements.

(2) Theory of Analogy

2-1. Introduction If the major works' attempts to show that religious language is meaningless are unsuccessful, there remains the problem of explaining how they are meaningful and what, in particular, they mean. This problem may be divided in to two parts: 1) In what sense the attributes given to God, are to be understood and applied to God?

135 2) Do the predicates attributed to God describe an objective reality? In other words, are they verifiable or falsifiable?

Now, in this section, we shall have a look at the first problem and consider the best-known explanation of the cognitive function of religious language: the Thomistic theory of analogy. (We will discuss the second problem in the next section). A summary of this theory can be found in every textbook in the . The difference between ordinary language and religious language is not apparently observable because the words used in religious language are, in themselves, quite ordinary; but in their application, they completely differ from that, they ordinarily indicate. When say "God is great" we do not mean that God occupies a large volume of space. When the Qura~n declares, "When his Lord said to him (Abraham), be a Muslim, he said: I submit myself to the Lord of the worlds. "[Qwra-w, Ch. 2, Ver. 131] it does not mean that God spoke in the same way through his speech organ as a human being does. The statement "...Nay, both His hands are spread onX..."{Qura~n, Ch. 5, Ver. 64] does not mean that God has two physical hands. As says John Hick, "There has clearly been a long shift of meaning between the familiar use of these words and their theological employment".'*^ We can thus see that religious language plainly uses ordinary words to represent something extraordinary. The problem of explaining how these sentences are meaningful and what, in particular, they mean arises mainly from two essential features of the theistic God. The first of these is that God is eternal being: that God is timeless, outside of . But if God is eternal in the sense of being outside of time, what can possibly be meant by ascribing action terms like 'making' or 'forgiving' to God? For surely the activities expressed by these terms take 'time' for their performance. If someone has forgiven you, it makes sense to 136 ask when he or she performed this act. However, if God is timeless, it makes no sense to ask when he performed some act. The clear implication, then, of the idea that God is timeless is that action terms like 'making' and 'forgiving' cannot be used with their primary or literal meaning when they are ascribed to God. If so, then what do they mean when we ascribe them to God? The second essential feature of the theistic God that causes the need for explaining how our talk about God is meaningful is that he is a 'purely spiritual', 'immaterial' being. In recognition of this, a number of traditional theologians have distinguished between predicate expressions which in their primary meaning refer either to parts of a body (for example, 'hand' or 'face'), and predicate expressions which in their primary meaning refer to properties of the mind or to mental activities (for example, 'wise', 'just', 'merciful', or 'loving'). Expressions of the first kind cannot be predicated 'properly' (that is, with their primary meaning) of God. Since God does not have a body, to apply the expressions of the first kind to him would result either in contradiction or nonsense. Thus, such expressions may predicate of God only metaphorically. Expressions of the second kind, it is felt, can predicate properly of God. One major difficulty with the view that terms which seem to designate mental activities ('forgiving' or 'loving') can be applied to God in their primary or literal sense is that the ways in which we tell whether an individual is forgiving or just do include 'bodily behaviour'- what she or he says and how she or he behaves. How then does one determine that a purely immaterial being has performed an act of forgiveness?

137 2-2. Aquinas* Theory of Analogy Among the theories which endeavour to explain how predicates, whose primary meaning is acquired in relation to human beings (loving, forgiving, and so forth), are to be understood when applied to God, perhaps the major theory is the theory of Analogy, a theory found in the writings of Aquinas and his commentator Cajetan.'^'^ When St. dealt with the problem of the religious language, he examined the position that took these attributes in a negative way."*® So, for example, those who hold this view would make "God is " equivalent to "God is not bad," or "God is just" equivalent to "God is not unjust." The negative-meaning theory, Aquinas wrote, is inadequate because "this is against the intention of those who speak of God."'*^ The person who says "God is good" means something more than "God is not bad"; and, we might add, it can be taken as a general guideline that an adequate account of how theological or religious statements mean must carefully respect the intention of those who use those statements. According to Aquinas, religious language has to walk the narrow road between and . If, on the one hand, the terms used in speaking of God have no connection with ordinary language, we are in effect saying that we know nothing about God {agnosticism). If, on the other hand, the terms used in speaking of God have exactly the same meaning when used in ordinary discourse, God has been thereby reduced to a finite, creatively level, and his utter transcendence has been compromised {anthropomorphism). The road between these extremes Aquinas marked out in terms of analogy, a subtle metaphysical and logical tool that could avoid the dilemma by going between its horns. According to the theory of analogy, predicate expressions like 'just' and 'merciful' do not have the same meaning when applied to creatures as they do when applied to God. Nor are they used in an entirely different sense. In other words, they are used neither univocally (with the same meaning) nor equivocally (with a 138 purely different meaning); they are, according to the theory, used analogically.

2-3. MascaWs Theory Among the contemporary analysts, E.L. Mascall is one important figure who makes an appeal to the theory of analogical predication to defend the cognitive status of religious statements. His formulation of the doctrine contained in his book Existence and Analogy is the clearest, most important, and most widely read/’ He points out that analogies are of two kinds, and the real analogical relation between world and God cannot be understood unless we view it in terms of both the kinds of analogy. These two sorts of analogous predication are analogy of attribution (unius ad alterum) and analogy of proportionality {duorum ad tertium). This is the fundamental distinction made by Aquinas in both the Summa Theologia and the Summa contra Gentiles.‘^^ The analogy of attribution refers to an analogy in which one of the analogues possesses the attribute in question in an actual or, as it is technically called, in a 'formal' sense, while the other possesses the same attribute in a derivative sense. A classical example of this type of analogy is the application of the 'healthy' to both a person and his or her complexion. The same term is applied to both the person and the complexion because of a certain relation between a healthy human being and a healthy complexion; namely, the latter is a of the former. Health belongs primarily to the person and only secondarily to the complexion. The analogy of proportionality refers to an analogy where the meaning of the nature of the analogues is to be understood proportionally to the nature of the analogues to which they are applied. For example, when we say 'the dog is wise' and 'the man is wise' the meaning of the word 'wise' 139 is to be understood in both the in proportion to the nature of 'dog' and 'man'. Now, according to Mascall the words used for God are analogous to similar words used in ordinary empirical contexts in both these senses, i.e., in the sense of the analogy of attribution as well as in the sense of the analogy of proportionality. The analogy of attribution implies that qualities of 'goodness', 'love' etc. are actually and formally possessed by men only; God possesses these attributes only in a derivative sense, i.e., in a sense in which he is able to produce or cause these qualities in men as his creatures. Thus, qualities, which are found in finite objects 'formally' or 'actually', exist in God only virtually. Thus, 'God is good' does not mean that God possesses this quality. It simply means that God has this quality in some such way that as creator he is able to produce this quality in others. The analogy of proportionality, on the other hand, implies that God possesses the qualities such as 'goodness', 'love' etc. in a formal way as does man. However, man possesses the qualities in a mode that is determined by his nature; God does not possess them exactly in the same way. Thus, 'goodness’ is found in man and God both but not exactly in the same way, rather 'goodness' in man is found in mode proper to the nature of men and 'goodness' in God is found "in that supreme, and by us unimaginable, mode proper to self-existence being itself.Hence, the formula in which the analogy between the goodness of a man and the goodness of God is to be expressed is not, according to Mascall, goodness of man = goodness of God, but

goodness of man ^ goodness of God the of man the essence of God.

140 Then Mascall cautions here that "We must, however, beware of interpreting the equal sign too literally."®” The point indicated by the formula is simply that, the goodness determined by the essence of man is appropriate to manhood while the goodness determined by the essence of God is appropriate to Godhood. However, apart from the above strict sense of the analogy of proportionality, there is also a loose or 'spurious' sense in which this analogy is used and in that spurious use it becomes a metaphor}^ In such a spurious sense, the analogy of proportionality implies that there is not a formal participation of the same characteristic in the different analogies but only a similarity of effects. Thus, to take a classic example, the lion is called the king of the animals because he bears to savage animals a relation similar to that which a king bears to his subjects, but no one would assert that kingship is to be found formally in the lion. Again, God is described as being angry, because his relation to the punishments, which he imposes, is similar to that which an angry man has to the injuries which he inflicts, but no one would say that anger was to be found formally in God. Which of the two forms of analogy (attribution and proportionality) is primary has been, and still is, a hotly debated question among scholastic philosophers. Some have asserted the primacy of attribution and alleged that in this the true thought of St. Thomas has been expressed.®^ On the other hand, the 'prince of commentators' Cajetan, in De Nominum Analogia, asserted that only proportionality was analogy in the true and strict sense and the majority of Thomists have followed him. Some modern, however, exponents of the theory of analogy have suggested that a satisfactory theory of religious meaning would require a combination of both the analogy of attribution and the analogy of proportionality. E.L. Mascall says; "...in order to make the doctrine of analogy really satisfactory, we must see the analogical relation between God and world as combining in a tightly 141 interlocked union of both analogy of attribution and analogy of proportionality. Without analogy of proportionality it is very doubtful whether the attributes which we predicate of God can be ascribed to him in more than a merely virtual sense; without analogy of attribution it hardly seems possible to avoid agnosticism.

2-4. Crombie^s Theory of Parable I.M. Crombie too, appealing to the doctrine of Parable, has tried to answer to the questions regarding the meaning of religious statements. According to him, when we speak about God, the words we use are intended in their ordinary sense, although we do not suppose that in their ordinary interpretation they can be strictly true. Statements about God, as Crombie claims, are parables and therefore things, which are said of God, are said parabolically. The point behind a parable, says Crombie, is "that you do not suppose that there is any literal resemblance between the truth which is expressed and the story which expresses it, but you do suppose that if you accept the story, not be misled as to the nature of the underlying reality."®^ Thus, when the analogy between an ordinary statement and a religious statement is understood within the context of a parable, the latter assumes a communication value being determined by the communication value of the former, although we do not exactly know what the divine love is like or how the word 'loves' really applies to God when we say 'God loves us'. As he says; "In talking about God we remain within the parable, and so our statement communicates; we do not know how the parable applies, but we believe that it does apply... Crombie’s defence of the cognitive status of religious statements made by an appeal to analogical predication depends for its validity on the authority of Christ who represents in human form a faithful image of God. 142 According to him, "we believe that parable does apply" due to our belief in the source of it, i.e., in Christ. In Christ's love for men, we get an authority to postulate a resemblance, an analogy, between human love and divine love.®*

2-5. Criticism The doctrine of analogy, as we have seen, seems to have been taken recourse to by the theologians for saving the genuine cognitive nature of religious language when they feel like failing to do so on a literal interpretation of the same (the predicates). However, let us see how far do they succeed in this attempt too. The very first point that can be raised against the appeal to analogical predication made in the above ways is that the appeal does not in any way make it clear in what exact sense after all, the statements about God are to be understood. "What/' as John Hick asks, "does 'loving* mean when it is transferred to a Being who is defined inter alia, as having no body, so that he cannot be thought of as performing any action? What is disembodied love, and how can we ever ascertain that it exists?"®^ Words introduced in human context have a well-defined meaning; but if we transfer these words to a totally different context, it is unwarranted whether the words carry any clear sense. As Paul Edwards says in a relevant context; "... it is illegitimate to use words which have a reasonably well- defined meaning in everyday context to make assertions about a reality that is infinitely removed from the context in which these expressions were originally introduced."^® Further, to understand any statement on an analogy of the other; it is necessary that at least something must be known about the nature of both the analogues literally and independently. As McPherson well realises: "If we are to be able to say that statements are analogical, metaphorical, 143 parabolical, some at least of their terms must in the literal sense be understood by us...it does not make sense to say all religious statements have semiotic (analogical) meaning; it would be pointless to say of some that they had semiotic meaning unless we are also prepared to say of others that they had literal meaning."^* Paul Hayner also points to this difficulty while criticising Thomas Aquinas's use of analogy.It is in this sense that Paul Edwards distinguishes between "reducible" and "irreducible" metaphors and takes religious metaphorical statements under the second category and calls them cognitively meaningless.^^ The statement 'the sea is angry' is understandable, because it is, in the words of Paul Edwards, a "reducible metaphor", but the statement 'God is angry' is not so, because it is an "irreducible metaphor". In other words, the statement 'the sea is angry' carries intelligible sense, because we know many things about tfie behaviour of the sea quite non-metaphorically or literally, but the 'God is angry' is not intelligible, because we hardly know anything about God's behaviours in a literal, non-metaphorical way. Further, any meaningful appeal to the doctrine of analogy would have meant that God possesses the attributes given to him in a far superior degree as compared to men. However, seeing the nature of the attributes given to God, even this sense fails. God is said to possess the attributes in an absolute and infinite way. Now, no conceivable superior degree of power, wisdom, goodness etc. given to God can make him really omnipotent, omniscient, infinitely good etc. "By no idealisation of the creaturely can we transcend the creaturely."^"^ To possess the characters absolutely, infinitely and necessarily, God must possess them in a way which is different from human possession of them not only in degree but also in kind. God can be taken omnipotent only if he is put beyond or outside time, because so long as he continues through time, causal laws will bind him. But God to be God, creating and acting through the world and the of omnipotence to be meaningfully ascribed to 144 him, cannot be outside time, because in that way he cannot have relationships with the world, and the notion of all-powerfulness ascribed to him will be meaningless.^^ And hence the meaningful cognitive use of analogy breaks. This also shows the irrelevance of drawing an analogy between man and God. Above all, the problem about the cognitivity of religious statements is not only a problem as to the nature of their predicates, but more importantly as to the nature of their subject. Walter Kaufmann, in this context, remarks: "It is a besetting fault of most discussion about the nature of God that it is simply assumed at the outset that everybody knows what 'God' means, as if the issue were merely whether 'He' is this or does that along with what else is already known about 'Him".^^ Besides all these, the , superfluity and vacuity of analogical or metaphorical predication is further exposed by a practical consideration to which Flew refers when he speaks of religious statements as "dying the death of hundred qualifications".^^ So long as one does not question an analogy or metaphor related to God, it seems to work somehow perfectly well to give us a meaning of religious statements. However, the moment one begins questioning such analogies and metaphors, they seem to break away. Under persistent questioning, they are modified and modified, as Flew says, "eroded", to an extent where they become vacuous and convey no cognitive sense at all.

145 (3) R.L. as Falsifiable Statements

3-1. Introduction In this section, as it was mentioned in the last one, following the question: "Are the predicates given to God describe an objective reality?" we shall consider the theory of falsiflability of religious language. We have seen that, according to ’Falsifiability’ principle, any statement to be called factual or scientific must be capable of being falsified with reference to some empirical situation. Now, one implication of the principle, as l.M. Crombie notes, in 'Theology and Falsification,'^* is that any statement claiming to be factual must be such that it delimits a definite range of application, i.e., it must be such that it is applicable to or compatible with some empirical situations (with reference to which it is verified) and it is not applicable to or not compatible with some other situations (with reference to which it is falsifiable). If a statement, on the other hand, delimits no definite range of application, is applicable to each and every situation, it cannot assert anything factual and it must in that case be factual vacuous. There are some who hold that religious statements cannot be fully meaningful, on the ground that those who use them allow nothing to count decisively against them, treat them, that is, as incapable of falsification. God, as has been noted, is taken not only to exist necessarily, but also to possess his attributes in such a necessary manner that in no case they may be conceived away. He is said to be all-comprehensive, infinitely present (omnipresent), all-known (omniscient) etc. How can all these attributes be applicable to God? They must be, and are, taken as compatible with each empirical situation. In addition, if they are compatible with any and every state of affairs, they cannot mark out some one state of affairs (or group of states of affairs); and if they do not mark out some one state of affairs, how 146 can they be statements? In the case of any ordinary statement, such as 'It is raining', there is at least one situation (the absence of falling water) which is held to incompatible with the statement, and it is the incompatibility of the situation with the statement which gives the statement its meaning. If, then, religious statements are compatible with anything and everything, how can they be statements? How do we stand about verification and falsification? Must we, to preserve our claim to be making assertion, be prepared to say what would count against them? Let us see how far we can do so.

3-2. R.L. Is Falsifiable Does anything count against the assertion that God is merciful? Yes, . J.L. Mackie presses the 'in fact falsified' charge and argues that, as things are, the existence of evil is incompatible with the world's having been created by a benevolent and omnipotent God.^^ Mackie claims that can be refuted on the ground of inconsistency. The theist is committed to three assertions: (i) God is omnipotent; (ii) God is wholly good; (iii) evil exists. Given that 'a good thing always eliminates evil as far as it can, and that there are no limits to what an omnipotent thing can do' these three propositions cannot be true together. Finally, he concludes that God is not omnipotent. It is the issue to which directs himself in 'The Defence'.'^® I.M. Crombie's answer to the question of falsifiability of religious language is positive too. He, in 'Theology and Falsification', argues that " which was utterly, and eternally and irredeemably pointless" would count decisively against the assertion that God is merciful.’^ He does a good deal to elucidate what is involved in the argument about falsifiability. The demand for falsifiability, he suggests, amounts to two requirements for the factual status of theological propositions: 1) that there 147 should not be a rule of language prohibiting verification; 2) that for the speaker to understand what he is saying he must have some idea,what would serve to falsify his assertion. With regard to the first condition, which Crombie calls logical stipulation, the way the statement is to be taken must not be such that to try to test it is to show that you do not understand it.’^ If we say that it is wrong to kill, and you challenge my statement and adduce as evidence against it that thugs and head-hunters do so out of religious duty, then you have not understood my statement. Our statement was not a statement of fact, but a moral judgement, and your statement that it should be tested by anthropological investigations shows that you did not understand it. So long as there exists no logical (or we might say interpretational) ban on looking around for verification, the existence of a factual ban on verification does not matter. He adds, regarding the second condition- communicational stipulation, "'to understand a statement, we must know what a test of it would be like. If I have no idea how to test whether somebody had mutton, then I do not know what 'having mutton’ means. Now, according to Crombie, with respect to (1) "there is no language rule implicit in a correct understanding of religious utterances which precludes putting them to the test (there may be a rule of faith, but that is another matter).If a man says: 'How can God be loving, and allow pain?' he does not show that he has misunderstood- the statement that God is loving. There is a prima facie incompatibility between the love of God, and pain and suffering. The religious man maintains that it is prima facie only; others maintain that it is not. They may argue about it, and the issue cannot be decided; but it cannot be decided, not because (as in the case of e.g. moral or mathematical judgements) the appeal to facts is logically the wrong way of trying to decide the issue, and shows that you have not understood the judgement; but because, since our experience is limited in the way it is, 148 we cannot get into position to decide it. For the Muslim / Christian the operation of getting into position to decide it is called dying; and, though we can all do that, we cannot return to report what we find. By this test, then, religious utterances can be called statements of fact; that is their logical classification. With regard to the second condition, as Crombie adds,’® the case is a little complicated, for here we are concerned with communication value, and there are the two levels, the one on which we remain within the parable, and the other on which we try to step outside it. Now, according to Crombie,’^ on the first level we know well enough how to test a statement like 'God loves us'; it is, for example, like testing 'My father loves me'. In fact, of course, since with parents and schoolmasters severity is notoriously a way of displaying affection, the decisive testing of such a statement is not easy; but there is a point beyond which it is foolish to continue to have doubts. Now, within the parable, we are supposing 'God loves us' to be a subject similar to 'My father’, 'God loves us' being thus related to 'My father loves me' as the latter is related to ''s father loved him'. We do not suppose that we can actually test 'God loves us', for reasons already given (any more than we can test the one about Aristotle); but the communication value of the statement whose subject is 'God' is derived from the communication value of the same statement with a different proper name as subject. If we try to step outside the parable, then we must admit that we do not know what the situation about which our parable is being told is like; we should only know if we could know God, and know even as also we have been known; see, that is, the unfolding of the divine purposes in their entirety. Such ignorance is what we ought to expect. We do not know how what we call the divine wrath differs from the divine mercy (because we do not know how they respectively resemble human wrath and mercy); but we do know how what we mean when we talk about the wrath of God differs 149 from what we mean when we talk about his mercy, because then we are within the parable, talking within the framework of admitted ignorance, in language which we accept because we trust its source. We know that we are here promised that whenever we come to ourselves and return to God, he will come to meet us. This is enough to encourage us to return and to make us alert to catch the of the divine response; but it does not lead us to presume to an understanding of the mind and heart of God. In talking, we remain within the parable, and so our statements communicate; we do not know how the parable applies, but we believe that it does apply, and that we shall one day see how. (Some even believe, perhaps rightly, that in our earthly condition we may by direct illumination of our minds be enabled to know progressively more about the realities to which our parables apply, and in consequence about the manner of their application).

3-3. Theory of Eschatology Our recent mention of death may suggest a possible opportunity for empirical verification or falsification beyond the grave. John Hick in Faith and Knowledge claims that it is in principle impossible to falsify theism, but that it is possible to conceive experiences after death which, if they occurred, would verify it.^^ The idea of eschatological verification. Hick suggests, can be indicated in the following parable:

Two men are travelling together along a road. One believes that it leads to the Celestial City. The pleasant stretches of road are interpreted by him as designed by the King of the City to encourage him along his way. The hardships he sees as trials devised by the King to make him a worthy citizen of the City. The other traveller believes none of this. For him the

150 journey is an aimless and unavoidable ramble. The road is there and must be travelled. There is only the luck of road in good weather and bad.’*

According to this parable as told by Hick, theist and atheist inhabit the same world. They are distinguished from one another not in terms of what they might experience here and now, but in what they expect when history is completed. The theist believes that history will have fulfilled the purpose of creating children of God. Death is not the end of all experience, but the beginning of a new kind of experience as then man inhabits a world in a spirit body and apprehends the direct expression of the divine purpose, while always conscious of existing in the presence of God. None of this may occur, of course. The atheist may be right; there may be neither King nor City, only the luck of the road in good weather and bad. However, the expectation of experience is sufficient to mark a meaningful distinction between atheist and theist and to insure that the statements of religious belief are genuine, that is, meaningful, assertions. Positivism objected to religious language because it said nothing about experience. Hick counters that it does, even though the experience to which it is relevant will begin only after life has ended.Similarly, Crombie argues that religious man looks for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come; he believes, that is, that we do not see all of the picture, and that the parts which we do not see are precisely the parts which determine the design of the whole. He admits that if this hope be vain then we are of all men the most miserable.

3-4. Criticism However, sever logical difficulties weigh heavily against such a proposal. First, there is obviously a radical difference, at least between what 151 is meant by "empirical" in our ordinary discourse and the alleged post­ mortem experiences that would be needed on this approach. It is hard to know how to go about specifying, even generally, what the nature of these experiences would have to be like. In addition, we are not in a position to report on the adequacy of these specifications, even if we could work them out, to the living world whose tests they are supposed to be. Second, "verification" beyond this life would be vulnerable to the same open-ended inconclusiveness we have noted already, while the logic of "falsification," too, would seem not to be changed by being merely extended into another life. That is, if appearances in the "next world" seemed contrary to theistic expectations, this "fact" might be taken as one more "test of faith" to be patiently and adoringly endured. Finally, if no experience after the termination of physical life should be the case, it is hard to understand how this could conceivably constitute "falsification" of any hypothesis. Falsification fo r whom? The proposal of "eschatological verification" appears therefore to be unable to assimilate theistic utterances into the of empirical hypotheses.

(4) Theory of Symbol

4-1. Introduction In the previous three sections, we have seen some typical ways in which the cognitivity of religious language has been defended. There are, of course, a number of other ways in which the problem can be posed and possible solutions may be delineated. There are two other theories that can be developed in either of two opposite directions- the cognitivity and non- 152 cognitivity- of religious language. Theory of Symbol and theory of metaphor are presented in such a way as to preserve its ambiguity and flexibility. We shall, in this section and the next, consider these theories in their theistic development.** If we look at the religions of the world, we can see that none of them has been able to avoid symbolism and the livelier a religion is, the more complex is its symbolism. We may refer here to some religious symbols, in way of illustration, used by the different major religions of the world. The most pronounced employment of symbolic language is found in Hinduism. Actually, Hinduism believes in a reality which is indescribable, indefinable, unknowable and unfathomable, and naturally, there is no way to express it except through symbols. The commonest symbol for this inexplicable reality is . The Hindu idols too are all symbolic in nature. Kartikeya is the symbol of strength, Ganesa of success, Saraswati of learning, Lakshmi of wealth, and so on. The most popular Hindu deity Vishnu is idolised as holding a discus (chakra). The Linga is the symbol of Shiva and the Salagrama; the sacred ammonitestone is worshipped as the symbol of Narayana. In Christianity, also we find abundant examples of symbolic expressions. Christian belief finds its satisfactory expressions in certain symbols- literary, pictorial and in material shape. The of 'Trinity' is a symbolic expression. It symbolises the different modes under which God reveals himself in the history of salvation. The parables used by Jesus Christ to teach his followers are at times highly symbolic in character. The concept of the 'Kingdom of God' symbolises the good things to come and the stories about the performed by Jesus mentioned in the New Testament symbolise God's power and compassion and his desire to release human beings from suffering. The most important and well-known symbol of Christianity, is the 'Cross'. It is full of significance, symbolising the majesty 153 of the divine Sufferer. Jesus Christ took birth in this wretched world and sacrificed himself for the sin of man and the cross stands for that. The whole of Christian liturgy is a complex of symbolic acts and the white dress of the priest is the symbol of purity and innocence. Zoroastrianism, the religion of the Parsis, uses fire as the symbol of God. Its fire-temples contain only fire and no images of deity are permitted. Devoted Parsis go to their fire-temples and recite prayers before the fire, but they are not fire-worshippers. Fire is not their object of devotion; it is the sacred symbol of their faith. The concept of the Amesha Spentas or the 'Holy Immortals' also is symbolical in character. The six Holy Immortals, namely, Asha, Vohumano, Kshatra, Armaiti, Haurvata and Ameretat which are treated as personified divine beings symbolise: Rightness, Good Thought, Power, Piety, Salvation and Immortality respectively. Islam, which seeks to bring out the richness of the divine nature by the names applied to God, has recorded, as many as ninety-nine names and all these names are symbolic. These names represent the divine attributes of Power, Sovereignty, Majesty, Compassion, and so on. We thus see that there has been no religion, which has not taken the help of symbolism in some way or other. The question now arises; can these symbols used in religion be regarded as meaningful?

4-2. Tillich's Theory of Symbol holds that religious faith, which is the state of being "ultimately concerned" about the ultimate, can express itself only in symbolic language. Religious symbols are the language of religion and the only way in which religion can express itself directly. Indirectly and reflectly religion can express itself in theological, philosophical, and artistic terms. However, its direct self-expression is the symbol. Tillich says; 154 "Whatever we say about that which concerns us ultimately, whether or not we call it God, has a symbolic meaning. It points beyond itself while participating in that to which it points. In no other way can faith express itself adequately. The language of faith is the language of symbols."*^ Now what does a symbol mean? The word "symbol" has come from the Greek word "symbolon" meaning "tally", and so, etymologically it means that which tallies or represents something. In a wider sense, language itself is symbolic and each word is a symbol because it stands for something. It may be pointed out here that religious language employs for its expression not only verbal symbols but also non-verbal ones and it is not unjustified in doing that. Language does not consist only in a particular combination of meaningful words. Anything, which conveys some idea or knowledge, is language. Therefore, the non-verbal symbols like "the cross" or "the crescent" have as good a role in religious language as verbal symbolic expressions. However, as Tillich has mentioned, the term symbol is being applied to things, which should not be called, symbols at all, e.g., signs, symptoms, metaphors, etc. Symbols, which deserve the name, shall be called "representive symbols"; in contrast, to the symbols, which are only signs, such as mathematical and logical symbols- which one calls "discursive symbols". The realms in which representative symbols appear are language and history, the arts and religion.*'* Tillich has made an elaborate attempt to explain the nature of symbol which gives us a fairly clear idea about their characteristics. 8S The first and the most important characteristic of a symbol is that it does not stand for its own sake but points to something beyond itself.*^ Secondly, symbol participates in that which it represents. Tillich wished to distinguish sharply such conventional signs from symbols, which in his view "participate" in that to which they point, as signs do not.*’ For instance, he cites the example of the flag, which "cannot be replaced except after an 155 historic catastrophe that changes the character of the nation which it symbolised. An attack on the flag is... considered blasphemy."** Thirdly, a symbol reveals the inner level of reality, which is otherwise closed to us. A picture reveals such elements of reality, which cannot be known through scientific or logical analysis. Fourthly, symbols are not permanent. "Like living beings, they grow and they die". Fifthly, a symbol cannot be produced causally or intentionally nor can it be formed or established by legislation.

4-3. Functions of Religious Symbols Religious symbols do exactly the same thing as all symbols do as mentioned above. Moreover, they serve several important functions: First, religious symbols act as the links between worshiper and worshipped. They are the necessary and helpful intermediaries between the inadequate capacity of the mind of the worshipper and the nature of the unknown. Sometimes they provide us in material forms suitable objects of reverence and satisfy the needs of the minds, which are incapable of grasping the transcendent. Secondly, religious symbols evoke within us streams of emotions. It is because of this function that even the positivists have assigned a special type of meaning to religious language which they have called 'emotive meaning'.*^ Religious symbols elicit a set of emotional responses from people who have been conditioned to expressions of this kind and evoke those "feelings which are a far-off view of the divine".^® Thirdly, religious symbols express a faith-situation. A Christian making the sign of the cross expresses his faith in Christ. Faith is something more than cognitive belief, which cannot be expressed directly, and symbols are the best means to express one's faith in the divine reality. Fourthly, religious symbols are loaded with such concrete reference that they cannot be regarded as meaningless. They connote something which ordinary language 156 cannot capture, a mystery which is not to be resolved.Fifthly, like other symbols, symbolic expressions in religion also serve as shorthand representations of complex ideas. For a Christian, one small cross is worth a thousand words. Lastly, religious symbols are unique because the reality they represent is unique; so unlike the other symbols that can be replaced by substitutes e.g., mathematical and logical symbols, religious symbols do not have their substitutes.^^ The religious symbols must express an object that by its very nature transcends everything in the world that is split into subjectivity and objectivity. A real symbol points to an object, which never can become an object. Religious symbols represent the transcendent but do not make the transcendent immanent. They do not make God a part of the empirical world.

4-4. Meaningfulness of Religious symbols Generally there are two theories of the religious symbols; 1) the symbol is not an external truth, but it is psychologically true, for it was and is the bridge to all that is best in humanity. In this theory of symbolism, the symbols, metaphysical or psychological, are inseparable from the system they express; 2) the other theory of religious symbolism is different in one radically important respect. Here the symbols purport to represent God, considered as "Wholly Other" (),^"* the eternal "Thou" (Martin Buber),"Being-itself (),^^ transcending not only the human situation but also even Nature itself. The "Other" whose meaning the symbol purports to convey is hidden, unknown; yet through the ^symbol it is disclosed, being somehow adapted to fit man's finite intellectual need. Man does not grasp God, which is impossible; yet, he does know God through the symbol: he knows what he needs to know of God.

157 According to Tillich, the symbolic sentences can be understood as ordinary statements in our everyday language. We see what it means, for instance, to ascribe wisdom to a being and, consequently, we easily understand the sentence 'God is wise'. However, this statement in its ordinary meaning has, according to Tillich, no anchorage in the real world. There is no such being as is talked about in the statement.^’ Its anchorage is fictitious and the statement is false, if seen as localised in the real world. If, however, we realise that the statement is symbolic, then we can find that it is true. Tillich obviously sees many symbolic sentences as statements. He himself often uses the term 'assertion', and explicitly states that symbolic sentences give knowledge. What is now of interest is how Tillich describes the mechanism which allows a sentence with an ordinary empirical statement to say something true about an indescribable reality. Tillich seems to mean that this is due partly to the fact that the symbol participates in what is symbolized. 98 So, his constructive teaching, offering an ” alternative to the doctrine of analogy, is his theory of "participation." He adds that symbolic statements of religion can be neither described nor indicated, but we can have some sort of experience of it. Tillich calls this 'Being-itself or 'the Absolute' or 'God'.^^ However, the question of meaningfulness of religious symbols remains. What does 'Being-itself, 'Absolute' or 'God' as the referent of religious symbols mean? In the other words, 'is there a non symbolic statement about the referent of religious symbols?' There are two ways to answer this question, which lead to the same result, a phenomenological, and an ontological one. 1) The phenomenological approach describes the holy as a quality of some encounters with reality. The holy is a "quality in encounter”, not an object among objects, and not an emotional response without a basis in the whole of objects. The experience of the holy transcends the subject-object structure of experience. The subject is drawn 158 into the holy, embodied in a finite object, which, in this encounter, becomes sacred. Wherever the holy appears it is a matter of ultimate concern both in attracting and in repelling. The phenomenological analysis of the experience of the holy has been carried through in an excellent way by Rudolf Otto.^”” 2) The ontological way of reaching the reference of religious symbolism tries to find it not in a particular experience, that of the holy and of the ultimate concern implied in the holy, but it tries to find it in the character of being-as-such, in everything that is. The ontological method, as indicated here, does not argue for existence of a being, about which religion makes symbolic statements, but it gives an analysis of its self-transcending quality, its pointing beyond, and its finitude. One can give it metaphoric names, like 'being-itself or 'power of being' or 'ultimate reality' as the scholastics did. Such names are not names of a being but of qualities of being. Tillich, in this regard, insists that there must be one non-symbolic statement in religious language that could be understood literally. According to him, the statement that 'God is being-itself is a non-symbolic statement. Certainly the awareness of something unconditional is in itself what it is, is not symbolic. However, after this has been said, nothing else can be said about God as God, which is not symbolic. If anything beyond this bare assertion is said about God, it no longer is a direct and proper statement. It is indirect, and it points to something beyond itself. In a word, it is symbolic.*”* And we could not be in communication with God if he were only "ultimate being”. However, in our relationship to ultimate we symbolise and must symbolise. In our relationship to him, we encounter him with the highest of what we ourselves are, person. And so in the symbolic form of speaking about him, we have both that which transcends infinitely our experience of ourselves as persons, and that which is so adequate to our being persons that we can say, "Thou" to God, and can pray to him. Therefore, the word God in Tillich's terminology involves a double 159 meaning: it connotes the unconditioned transcendent, the ultimate, and an object somehow endowed with qualities and actions. The first is not figurative or symbolic, but is rather in the strictest sense what it is said to be. The second, however, is really symbolic, figurative. And these two meanings must be preserved. If we preserve only the element of the unconditional, then no relationship to God is possible. If we preserve only the element of the attributed God, we lose the element of the divine_ namely, the unconditional which transcends subject and object and all other polarities.

4-5. Justification of Religious Symbols Tillich explicitly excludes science from the dimension of human existence with which religion dealt; consequently, the standards of truth for science are not applicable to religion.Symbols, according to him, are independent of any empirical criticism. "You cannot kill a symbol by criticism in terms of natural sciences or in terms of historical ’research. In Tillich's theory of symbol, the validity of religious symbols is their adequacy to the religious experience they express. This is, he says, the basic criterion of all symbols. This criterion (adequacy) does not answer the question of the amount of truth a symbol possesses. The term 'truth' in this context, Tillich suggests, is the 'degree' to which it reaches the referent of all religious symbols.’”'* This can be determined either negatively or affirmatively. The negative criterion refers to the degree of "transparency" and self-negation the symbol has in relation to its referent. There is, he writes, an almost unavoidable danger in all religious symbols, in that they can bring about confusion between themselves and that to which they point. The religious symbol has a tendency to elevate itself to an ultimate place of power and meaning, to become an "idol'; and to the degree that it is self- 160 negating, resisting the tendency to be itself considered as an ultimate, to that degree it is true.*®^ The affirmative criterion refers to the Value of the material the symbol employs. The negative and positive criteria of the truth of a religious symbol show that their truth has nothing to do with the validity of factual statements concerning the symbolic material. Used in the service of theism, the negative aspect of Tillich's doctrine of religious symbols corresponds to the negative aspect of the doctrine of analogy. Tillich is insisting that we do not use human language literally, or univocally, when we speak of the ultimate. Because our terms can only be derived from our own finite human experience, they cannot be adequate in relation to God; when they are used theologically, their meaning is always partially "negated by that to which they point." Religiously, this doctrine constitutes a warning against the idolatry of thinking of God as merely a greatly magnified human being (anthropomorphism).

4-6. Criticism Tillich deviates from the traditional conception of religion for a number of reasons: 1) He does not see any reason to believe in the existence of God conceived as an immaterial, personal being Who literally enters into various relations with human beings. 2) The religious attitude, as he conceives it, is directed to a reality more ultimate, more unconditional than anything which is a being among others.Given these convictions we can understand why Tillich proposes to take what were not symbolised in the traditional scheme and make them into symbols too. Thus the personal creator of the universe and all His attributes and activities are lumped together with the sun, king, mountains, and bulls under the heading of symbols. Therefore, we can, in Tillich's program, treat a supernatural God and His doings, as symbols without making any assumption of objective 161 existence. We see this when Tillich argues that the personal God of theism is a symbol the question of His existence is of no religious importance.^®* This means that we cannot literally encounter the supernatural 'symbol' as another existence, but must 'encounter' it as conceived, imagined, or pictured. Tillich does not want to view religion as nothing but an organisation of human activity and experience. He thinks of religious symbols as symbolising not a being of any sort, but 'being-itself. In an article reprinted in Religious Symbolism, he writes; "the religious symbol has special character in that it points to the ultimate level of being, to ultimate reality, to being itself, to meaning itself. That which is the ground of being is the object to which the religious symbol points.One crucial consequence of this is that symbolic language becomes autonomous. In the traditional scheme, symbolic language is at least partly dependent on doctrines expressed in non-symbolic terms. Further, as Tillich explains 'being-itself, it makes no sense at all to speak of surrounding oneself to 'being-itself, or expecting anything from it, etc. This becomes even clearer when Tillich, in , says that "Ultimate concern is the abstract translation of the great commandment: 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength".But what would it mean to love 'being-itself so intensely, or even less intensely? Moreover, to Tillich, the utterances used in religious discourse are not signs of the ordinary type, but, as he puts it, symbols, i.e., they do not symbolise anything in the way in which most utterances do in other types of discourse. This is a factual problem. It can be resolved only by seeing what people really do intend when they use indicative sentences in religious discourse. Obviously, the believer does intend to have the said meaning; and it is difficult for him to conceive of God as 'being-itself or 'being-as-such' 162 instead of a 'Being'.Also, it has been said, the danger of the Tillich's symbolic interpretation of religious language is the de-historization of Christianity.**^ Tillich's theory of symbol has been criticised in the number of writings; nevertheless, it has still its value among the cognitive theories of religious language. Religious propositions, according to this theory are symbolically true. Therefore, they are meaningful but not in literal sense.

(5) Theory of Metaphor

5-1. Introduction Myth, metaphor, symbol, and model are all ways of expressing in ordinary language an extraordinary point. As we have seen in previous section, some philosophers attempted to show cognitivity

5-2. What is Metaphor? A metaphor, most simply, is seeing one thing as something else, pretending "this" is "that" because we do not know how to think or talk about "this", so we use "that" as a way of saying something about it. Thinking metaphorically means spotting a thread of similarity between two dissimilar objects, events, or whatever, one of which is better known than the other, and using the better-known one as a way speaking about the lesser known. A metaphor proposes analogies between the normal context of a word and a new context into which it is introduced. Some, but not all, of the familiar connotations of the word are transferred. 'The lion is king of the beasts', but it has only some of the attributes of royalty. 'Love is a fire', but we do not expect it to cook a meal. So, there is always a tension between affirmation and negation, for in metaphorical sentence there are both similarities and differences. I.A. Richards, in this regard, says; " In the simplest formulation, when we use a metaphor we have two thoughts of different things active together and supported by a single word, or phrase, whose meaning is a resultant of their interaction."*'^ So, metaphor is figure , of speech whereby we speak about one thing in terms which are seen to be suggestive of another. Symbolic statements, on the other hand, are not so much a way of knowing and soaking as they are sedimental thought, one 164 does not think of "this" as "that" but "this" as a part of "that". The tension of metaphor is absurd by the harmony of symbol. In addition, in metaphorical statements, on the contrary to symbolic ones, we always make judgements. That is, we make assertions; we say "I am thinking about 'this' in terms of 'that'." Paul Ricoeur in Interpretation Theory suggests a paradoxical relationship between symbol and metaphor: "On the one side, there is more in the metaphor than in the symbol; on the other side, there is more in the symbol than in the metaphor”. The "more" of metaphor is the capacity of language to clarity the seemingly endless correspondences between natural elements and the human meanings associated with them. The odd predications of metaphor choose elements of the symbolic world, isolate these elements, configure them in propositions, and develop them in texts. The "more" of the symbol is the symbol's capacity to call forth multiple metaphors. "Metaphors are just the linguistic surface of symbols. Symbols have roots in a non-linguistic reality in a way which metaphors do not. In that sense, again, Ricoeur notes that symbols are bound "to the configurations of the cosmos”.^^® Therefore, symbols need metaphors, for without them they are dumb, however, metaphors need symbols, for without them they lose their rootedness in life. Moreover, metaphor differs from myth and analogy too. Myth has its locus in textual or narrative analysis, and not in discussion of figures of speech. Analogy like symbol includes the non-linguistic, as does ‘image’ which, along with being a generic term for figures of speech, is used to designate mental events and visual representations. It can be said that theory of analogy and symbol in religious language are more ontological or epistemological than strictly concerned with linguistic relations. Rather than giving us a new picture, analogy, like some of other catachrestical forms discussed above, fits into standard speech without imaginative strain. Linguistic analogy concerns stretched usages, not figurative ones. Equivocation, univocation, and analogy are all 165 types of literal speech and nowhere concerned with expanding descriptive powers, whereas metaphor has nothing to do with straightforward speech but with a figurative ‘speaking about’ that generates new perspectives.

5-3. Theories of Metaphor The various theories of metaphor discussed in the philosophical literature involve assumptions of what it is that metaphor does and attempt explanations of how metaphor does it/^^ The theories can be divided, according to their visions of the metaphorical achievement, roughly into three groups; those that see metaphor as a decorative way of saying what could be said literally; those that see metaphor as original not in what it says but in the affective impact it has; and those that see metaphor as a unique cognitive vehicle enabling one to say things that can be said in no other way. Although some accounts fall in between, for the most part a division into what can be called the Substitution, Emotive, and Cognitive theories is useful. In this work, we shall restrict our discussion only on the cognitive theory. While substitution theories argue that the content or meaning of metaphor could equally well be expressed in non-metaphorical terms, and emotive theories that there is affective impact but no increment to meaning, the cognitive theories disagree with both. Basic to their position is the view that what is said by the metaphor can be expressed adequately in no other way, that the combination of parts in a metaphor can produce new and unique agents of meaning. There are, however, a variety of opinions as to how metaphor achieves its unique cognitive task. In many ways the most satisfactory contemporary philosophical account of metaphor, and the most often cited, is that of Max Black. His discussion, “Metaphor” in Models and Miftaphor, was the first to approach the neglected topic frotn the point of 166 view of modern .” ’ Another famous figure in this field is LA. Richards who had a great insight into metaphor. In the Philosophy of , Richards establishes that meanings are things determined by complete utterances and surrounding context, and not by the individual words in isolation. This stress on the whole utterance form an important background for Richards’s contention that: “When we use a metaphor we have two thoughts of different things active together and supported by a single word or phrase, whose meaning is a resultant of their interaction.” * It must be stressed that in committing oneself to duality, or indeed plurality, of associative networks for each metaphor, one is not thereby committed to the idea that each metaphor has two or more points of reference. While duality of associative networks is integral to metaphor, a duality of reference would undercut the whole of what makes metaphor interesting. At least part of the considerable confusion, which affects accounts of metaphorical reference, arises from the terminological confusion between ‘sense’ and ‘reference’, and particularly from a failure to see that there is a distinction between the reference of the metaphor and the so-called reference of terms used in the metaphor. Reference in metaphorical statement is something that a speaker makes on a particular occasion of making an utterance, and not something made by individual vocabulary terms in isolation. To return to Richards’s terminology: we conclude that the metaphorical vehicle is not used to pick out a second subject, or another referent, but to describe the referent picked out by the whole of the utterance or, more accurately, by the speaker in making the utterance. One often hears, and not just from the philosophers, talks of ‘mere metaphor’ or of something being ‘only metaphorical’ or ‘only metaphorically true’ in contradiction to ‘literal’. It is not correct to put metaphorical speech against literal one; but a better opposite to literal is non-literal. William p. Alston has pointed out that it is wrong to think in terms of literal and metaphorical 167 as types of meaning. “The confusion thickens”, he says, “when it is supposed that ‘literal meaning’ is respectable meaning, as opposed to what is indifferently labelled ‘emotive meaning’, or ‘metaphorical meaning’.”**^ The same judgement is implicit in recent studies which treat metaphors as instances of ‘semantic deviance’. To say, then, that an utterance is a metaphor is to make a comment on its form and is not to say that it has a particular and questionable ‘metaphorical meaning’. This is most important, as is a related point about ‘metaphorical truth’. A given truth may be expressed by using the metaphor, but this is not to say that it exemplifies a sort of ‘metaphorical truth’ distinguishable from and inferior to ‘literal truth’. We may warn someone, “Watch out! That is a live wire”, but even if we think wires are not literally ‘live’ we do not add ‘but of course that is only metaphorically true’. It is true and it is expressed with the use of a metaphor. It is important to see, however, that it is particular usages that are literal or metaphorical, and not particular facts. We do not imagine that there are two kinds of states of affairs, literal and metaphorical, but we do acknowledge that there may be two (or more) ways of expressing the same state of affairs. Now, at the level of utterance, where we should properly consider the meaning of a metaphor, we find yet another thesis about literal and metaphorical, namely that every metaphor has at the same time a literal meaning (and false), and a metaphorical one (true). The thesis that each metaphor has two meanings rest on a confusion between what the speaker says (the word and sentences he or she uses) and what the speaker intends by uttering them within a particular context. Usually, a speaker has one intended meaning for an utterance- otherwise speech would be impossibly ambiguous. In an important sense, then, the truth or falsity of the metaphorical claim can be assessed only at the level of intended meaning. Thus Aquinas has reason when he says that the literal sense of Scripture is 168 its intended sense; “When Scripture speaks of the arm of God, the literal sense is not that he has a physical limb, but that he has what it signifies, namely the power of doing and making.”*^® By this means Aquin-as was able to argue that, despite its figurative nature, Scripture is ‘literally’ true since, in his terms, “the metaphorical sense of a metaphor is then its literal sense, so also the parabolic sense of a story” . It is sometimes asserted and more frequently assumed that a metaphor, to be genuinely meaningful, must be reducible without loss to a literal statement. Any metaphor, which cannot be so reduced, it is argued, lacks cognitive (referential, assertive) meaning. This quality of irreducibility is judged particularly to inhere in religious metaphor and to constitute part of what is often called the ‘logical oddness’ of religious language.

5-4. Metaphor and Model in Religion It seems the universal practice in the theological literature to use the terms ‘model’ and ‘metaphor’ synonymously. Models can be distinguished from and related to metaphor in this way; an object or state of affairs is said to be a model when it is viewed in terms of some other object or state of affairs. A model need not be a metaphor, for a model need not be linguistic at all, as with a model train. In theology, if we use the concept of fatherhood as a frame on which to develop our understanding of God, then ‘fatherhood’ is the model. However, if we go on to speak of God’s loving concern for his children, we are speaking metaphorically on the basis of the fatherhood model. Talk based on models will be metaphorical, so model and metaphor, though different categories and not to be- as frequently they are by theologians- equated, are closely linked; the latter is what we have when we speak on the basis of former. 169 The notion that religious language is rich in models was popularised by Ian Ramsey. According to Ramsey, models are principally ways of talking meaningfully and appropriately about God; God as first cause, as infinitely wise, as infinitely good, as creator, as eternal purpose. In each of these phrases there is an empirical, concrete image such as cause, wise or good (which is the metaphor or model, the grid or screen that licenses talk about God) and there is a conceptual qualifier such as 'infinitely' or 'eternal' that protects the model from anthropomorphism and idolatry. Such talk about God is meaningful, says Ramsey, because it is based in empirical experiences of goodness, wisdom, and causation which we understand and it is appropriate because the qualifiers keep our God-talk from reducing the divine to the level of our models. Hence, metaphor and concept work together to create both meaningful and appropriate language about God. Ramsey believes that models of God arise from cosmic disclosures, which are mediated through natural, personal, conceptual, or moral experiences, and by transcending these experiences, one comes to a moment of insight where one sees something about God. He puts his main emphasis on the way models are disclosed in both science and religion. He calls them 'self- authenticating models in which the universe discloses itself to us. Ramsey V holds that religious models are 'occasions of divine self-disclosure'. We are to take the model 'loving father', for example, and then imagine a 'very loving father', developing it in the direction of 'infinitely loving father'. The latter is not part of the series, but logically different realisation which 'breaks in on us' as we develop the model. Ramsey, and others following him, also noted that religion is not alone in being dependent upon models to give form to its reflections; science too considers one entity in terms of another and speaks, for example, of the hypothetical light ‘wave’ or ‘magnetic ‘field’ which lies beyond experience. Religious apologists have further remarked that models 170 are used in both domains to make sense of complex area, to build up discourse, to speak of what eludes us, and that in both science and religion a given model must be comprehensive, consistent, and coherent if it is to be of any use.^^‘* Frederick Ferre’s discussion of metaphor and models in Basic Modern Philosophy of Religion is a good case in point. In discussing the cognitive possibility of religious language, he suggests that the theist’s models have a good deal in common with those of science; they provide ideational definiteness, conceptual unity, overall coherence, and so on.^^®

5-5. Justification of Religious Metaphor & Model Despite the drawing of the parallels of use and function in religious and scientific models, theological apologists have been cautious, often at the expense of consistency, about equating the use of models in the two areas. Ferre’s difficulty, and that of many others, is that while they wish to say that the theist’s models and metaphors guide our thought about God and are in some sense descriptive and explanatory, they face the alleged impossibility of specifying their referent in a way independent of further models and metaphors. At the critical stage for his comparison of the cognitive use of theistic models with the cognitive use of models elsewhere, Ferre is constrained to say that theistic models cannot be assessed in terms of truth and reference but only in terms of their valuational significance. A slightly different response to the same difficulty of specifying a referent for the theist’s claims, and one which has a certain popularity in discussions of parable and metaphor, retains reference as an issue but suggests the real referents of theistic models are certain kinds of human experiences, and not any transcendent states or relations.But speaking of the referents of the theist’s models as valuationally significant, or human experience do not resolve the problem of reference but simply force it to a different level. In 171 this refashioned treatment, talk of reference, truth claims, reality, and cognitive employment of models would drop out altogether. However, we are not fair to religious believers. The theist typically has not taken religious models as merely evaluative phenomena or redescriptions of human experience, but as speaking, albeit obliquely, about states and relations which he knows himself not fully to understand but which he takes to be more than simply human states and relations. The theist has been undeniably realist about religious models, whether he has a right to be or not. Nevertheless, can this realism be defended? Can we hold any testable reference for religious models? Finally, are religious models help the cognitivist theory of religious language? Ian Ramsey, in response to these questions, says that we can test the 'empirical fit' between a religious model and reality.He grants that there can be not strict 'empirical verification' because no predictions or testable deductions can be made, and because God is a mystery, which we cannot comprehend. A model is verified by its consequences in distinctive behaviour (e.g. the power of love) and by its ability to lead to articulations which provide 'the most comprehensive and most coherent map of the universe'.’^* Now, are there criteria for evaluating religious models themselves, or are they to be judged solely by their psychological V effectiveness for particular individuals in evoking disclosure? Ramsey says that one can judge models in part by their effectiveness in producing loving behaviour; this criterion, taken alone, would raise again all the problems encountered in Braithwaite's instrumentalism. He maintains that the functions of religious language are (i) the evocation of commitment and worship, which are non-cognitive functions, and also (ii) discernment, which is presumably cognitive.For Ramsey, the cognitive claims apparently rest on both divine and human intuition in the moment of disclosure. Ramsey takes intuition to be a form of immediate and 172 indubitable knowledge, which is not subject to revision or correction; if it is 'self-authenticating', the problem of distinguishing genuine from spurious disclosures can never arise. Similarly, Ian G. Barbour in Metaphorical Theology, says that there are several reasons for stressing that in religion there are at least minimally present some 'objective' features as common experience, relevant evidence and common criteria/^*^ First, he says, if it is true that an accepted paradigm is not falsified but replaced by an alternative, then the possibility of assessing a religious paradigm must in practice be compared with the possibility of assessing alternative religious or naturalistic paradigms. The most one can expect of any set of beliefs is that it will make more sense of all the available evidence than alternative beliefs. No basic beliefs are capable of demonstrable proof. A set of beliefs must be considered as an organic network of interrelated ideas. Second, the self-criticism of one's own basic beliefs is possible only if there are criteria, which are not totally paradigm-dependent. Better, then, to hold beliefs critically than uncritically, even if there is ambiguity and risk in any such process of evaluation. Third, communication between paradigm communities is impossible unless they partially share a common language and experience. Fourth, critical reflection is not incompatible with religious commitment. The centre of religion is worship- not the acceptance of an interpretative hypothesis but the acknowledgement of that which is worthy of devotion. Furthermore, expressing diversity of functions, he adds: “... it (religious model) sometimes does recommend a way of life or endorse a set of moral ... Again, it may express and evoke a distinctive self­ commitment... It may propose a particular kind of self-understanding... It may also express gratitude, dependence, and worship... However, beyond all these non-cognitive uses, I will maintain that a religious model may also direct attention to particular patterns in events. It provides a perspective on 173 the world and an interpretation of history and human experience. In particular, religious models are used in the interpretation of distinctive kinds of experience, such as awe and reverence, mystical joy, moral obligation, reorientation and reconciliation, and key historical events.”’^’ Finally, Francis X. D’Sa in ‘The world of Symbol and the Language of Metaphor’, from the existentialist point of view, says that a metaphor is verified existentially, not empirically. The function of metaphor, according to him, is not informatioa but transformation. Hence, verification of a metaphor means the transformation it leads to. He adds that a metaphor can be meaningful in diverse ways to different people but a metaphor does not, cannot, contradict another, since contradiction belongs to the realm of meaning only. Hence, it can never be the case that a metaphor is right or wrong, it can only be more relevant or less relevant.

5-6. Criticism We have seen that the metaphor and model have significant role in religious language. However, theologians are faced with many difficulties in justifying the cognitive function for models and metaphors in religion. To solve these problems, the theologian- it might be argued, need not retain this cognitivity. He might find it more satisfactory both philosophically and theologically to abandon any consideration of reality depiction with its realist overtones and devote himself to an account of tke structures of ‘significance’ in religious language. He could concern himself simply with questions of meaning in the text, in the same way a literary critic might; though the theologian would be concerned with ‘meaning’ in a more personalistic sense. Such an approach to religious language would be perfectly consistent. What is not consistent is the position in which a theologian continues to speak of the cognitive use of models in religious 174 language and to insist on parallels between the use of models in religion and science, and yet fails to take sufficient account of the problem of reality depiction. The use of models in science obviously differs from their use in religion. These differences in the two areas can be reduced to two; the first is that, whereas the models of science are structural and causally explanatory, the models of religion are evocative and affective. The second is that, whereas the models of science are aids to theorising which can be replaced at any time by a pure theory or mathematical formulation, those of religion are irreplaceable or, at least, replaceable only by another equally unsubstantiated m odel.If these two claims hold, it would be reasonable to conclude that the religious apologist has little to gain from studying the use of the model in scientific explanation. Nevertheless, we have seen that some theologians, such as Ian Ramsey, are insisting that religious models like scientific one have cognitive function. It seems that theologians and philosophers of religion have failed to \ note that the debate about the nature and purpose of scientific theory, contrary to religion, is in essence a debate about the nature and purpose of scientific explanation. Our suggestion to hold a real reference for religious models and metaphors is: since we take it as given that no eye has seen God, and no finger pointed Him out, the theological application must rest on the theist’s claim that we are causally related to God, a claim that theologians have tended to insist upon in any case. There are various points at which one might wish to forge this causal link. One, with initial plausibility because it is seemingly analogous to the scientific case, is to argue that God relates causally to men in religious experience; thus one could say ‘God is that which Moses experienced as speaking to him on Mount Sinai’ and so on. So we must claim to point to God via some effect and a more satisfactory way of doing so is to follow the more experiential lead of Aquinas and say that ‘God is that which is the source and cause of all there t75 is’. Here we are not, of course, to describe God as a real reference for religious models, to say that the ‘objects’ of a theological study can also be the objects of a scientific theory; nor are we arguing that the theist is right in any of his claims about the Divine Other and his relationship to man. Rather, we are saying that the theist can reasonably take his talk of God, bound as it is within a wheel of images, as being reality depicting, while at the same time acknowledging its inadequacy as description. As a last word, religious believers while utterly to comprehend a transcendent God, are nevertheless justified in speaking of Him by means of the metaphors embedded in their sacred literary tradition. Religious models are empirical but not empiricist, grounded in experience, but understandable only within a particular tradition of religious belief. In short, if someone wished to understand the sense of 'God is spirit' one might do well to say to him, 'read the Bible'. Religion is as a progress from experience to images, and from images to prayer. 134

176 Notes & References:

Part (1) 1- Tennant, F.R., , vol. II, Cambridge Universe Press, (1928-30) 2- From a selection entitled 'Is Theological Discourse Possible?' in Arbernethy and Langford (eds.), Philosophy of Religion, New York, Macmillan, 1962, p. 251. 3- Edwards, R., & Rem, B., An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc., U.S.A., 1972, p. 289. 4- James, W., The Varieties of Religious Experience, New York, Modern Library, n.d., 1902, pp. 371-2. 5- Lewis, H.D., Our Experience of God', Allen & Unwin, London, 1959, & 'Recent Empiricism and Religion' in Philosophy, July 1957, and 'The Cognitive Factor in Religious Experience' in Proceedings o f the Aristotelian Society, Supple, vol. XXIX. 6- Lewis, H.D., Our Experience of God, p. 23. 6- Ibid., chapter II., and 'God and Mystery' in Ramsey, Ian T., (ed.). Prospects for , New York, Philosophical Library, 1961. Ib id , p. 47. 9- Wilson, J., Language & Christian Belief, London, Macmillan & Co., 1958, p.5. 10- Ibid., p. 11. 11- Ibid., p. 16. 12- Wilson, J., Philosophy and Religion, London, Oxford University Press, 1961, pp. 61-2. 177 13-/Z)/J., p. 71. \A -lbid., p. 13. 15- Ibid., p. 14. \6-Ibid., p. 11. 17- Ewing, A.C., 'Awareness of God' in Philosophy, vol. XL, No. 151, January 1965. \% -Ibid, p. 1. 19- Ibid., p. 4. 2 0 -Ib id , p. 8. 21- See Buber, M., I and Thou, Smith, R.G. (ed.), T & T Clark, Edinburgh, 1937. 22- Price, H.H., 'Faith and Belief in Hick, J. (ed.). Faith and the , Macmillan, 1966, p. 22. 2 3 -Ib id , p. 14. 2 4 -Ib id , p. 23. 25- Wilson, J., Language & Christian Belief, pp. 20-1. 2 6 -Ib id , pp. 24-5. 27- Wilson, J., Philosophy and Religion, p. 91. 28- Mascall, E.L., ‘Is Theological Discourse Possible?’ in Arbernethy & Longford (ed.), Philosophy of Religion, p. 251. 29- Mitchell, B., 'The Grace of God' in Mitchell, B. (ed.) Faith & Logic, Allen & Unwin, 1957, p. 161. 30- Lewis, H.D., Op.cit., p. 47. 31- Schmidt, P.F., Religious Knowledge, Free Press of Glancoe, 1961, p. 55. 32- Milmed, Bella K., 'Theories of Religious Knowledge from Kant to Jaspers' in Philosophy, vol. 29, 1954, p. 207. 33- Martin, C.B., 'A Religious Way of Knowledge' in Flew, A. & MacIntyre, A. (eds.). New Essays in Philosophical Theology, p. 95. 178 3A-Ibid., p. 83. 35- Hepburn, R.W., Christianity and Paradox, C.A. Watts & Co., London, 1958, p. 30. 36- Penelhum, T., Religion and Rationality, Random House, 1971, p. 170. 37- Miles, T.R., Religious Experience, Macmillan 1972, p. 58. 38- MacIntyre, A., 'The logical status of Religious Belief in Metaphysical Beliefs, SCM Press, 1957, p. 171. 39- For example, see Crombie, I.M., 'The Possibility of Theological Statements' in Mitchell, B. (ed.), Faith and Logic, Allen & Unwin, 1957, pp. 31-83. & Hick, J., Philosophy of Religion, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, U.S.A., 1990, pp. 103-5. 40- Hick, J., 'Theology and Verification' in Mitchell, B., (ed.). Philosophy o f Religion, Oxford University Press, 1971, pp. 53-71. A \-Ibid., p. 58. 42- The idea of 'eschatological verification' is very well indicated in the parable of 'Travellers' in Hick, J., Faith and Knowledge, (second edition), London, Macmillan, 1988, pp. 177-8: Two people are travelling together along a road. One of them believes that it leads to the Celestial City, the other that it leads nowhere; but since this is the only road there is, both must travel it. Neither has been this way before; therefore, neither is able to say what they will find around each corner. During their journey they meet with moments of refreshment and delight, and with moments of hardship and danger. All the time one of them thinks of the journey as a pilgrimage to the Celestial City. She interprets the pleasant parts as encouragements and the obstacles as trails of her purpose and lessons in endurance, prepared by the sovereign of that city and designed to make of her a worthy citizen of the place when at least she arrives. The other, however, believes none of this, and sees their journey as an unavoidable and aimless ramble. Since he has no choice in the matter,^ he enjoys the good endures the bad. For him there is no 179 Celestial City to be reached, no all-encompassing purpose ordaining their journey; there is only the road itself and the luck of the road in good weather and in bad.

Part (2) 43- Hick, J., Philosophy of Religion, Prentice-Hall, Inc., (fourth edition), 1990, p. 83. 44- Aquinas, T., Summa Theologia, part I, Question 12, in Anton C. Pegis (ed.), Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, by Random House, Inc., 1945. & See: Thomas De Vio, Cardinal Cajetan, The Analogy of Names, (second edition), Pittsburgh, Duquesne University Press, 1959. 45- Ibid., part I, Questions 13, 2. 46- Ibid. ^1,30-6. 47- Mascall, EX., Existence and Analogy, New York, Longman Group Limited, 1949. 48- Aquinas, T., Op.cit., I, xiii, 5c. 49- Mascall, E.L., Op.cit., p. 372. 50- Ib id , p. 371. 51- Ibidem. 52- Sylvester of Ferrara, Comments in Summa contra Gentiles, I, xxxiv. 53- Cajetan, De Nominum Analogia, chapter iii, no. 23. 54- Mascall, E.L., Op.cit., p. 110. 55- Crombie, I.M., 'Possibility of Theological Statements' in Mitchell, B. (ed.). Faith and Logic, p. 19. 5 6 -Ibid., p. 37. 57- Crombie, I.M., 'Theology and Falsification', in Flew, A. & MacIntyre, A. (eds.). New Essays in Philosophical Theology, London, 1955, p. 127. 5S-Ibid., p. 128. 58- Hick, J., 'Meaning and Truth in Religion' in Hook, S. (ed.). Religious 180 Experience and Truth, A Symposium, New York University Press, 1961, p. 205. 60- Edwards, P., 'Prof. Tillich's Confusion' in Mind,, vol. LXXIV, no. 294, April 1965, p. 198. 61- McPherson, T., 'Assertion & Analogy' in Proceedings o f the . Aristotelian Society, vol. 60, 1959-60. 62- Hayner, P., ‘Prof. Tillich’s Confusion’ in Mind, vol. LXXIV, p. 48. 63- Edwards, P., Op.cit., p. 47. 64- Smith, k.. Is Divine Existence Credible, p. 14. 65- Mackie, J.L., 'Evil and Omnipotence' in Mind, vol. LXIV, No. 254, April 1955, p. 220. 66- Kaufmann, W., Critique of Religion & Philosophy, Faber & Faber, London, 1958, p. 132. 67- Flew, A., 'Theology and Falsification' in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, p. 97.

Part (3) 68- Crombie, I.M ., Ibid., p. 109. 69- Mackie, J.L., 'Evil and Omnipotence' in Mitchell, B. (ed.) The Philosophy of Religion, Oxford University Press, 1971, p. 100. 70- Plantinga, A., 'The Free Will Defence', in Mitchell, B. (ed.). The Philosophy of Religion, Oxford University Press, 1971, pp. 105-20. 71- Crombie, I.M ., Op.cit., p. 124. 1 2 -Ib id , p. 125. 73- Ibidem. 1 A-Ib id , p. 126. 75- Ibidem. 76- Ibidem.

181 1957. 78- This is a summation of John Hick's parable from Ibid., pp. 150-1. 1 9 -Ibid., p. 155,162. 80- Crombie, I.M., Op.cit., p. 129.

Part (4) 81- It can also be developed naturalistically, e.g., see in Randall, J.H., The Journal of Philosophy, vol. LI, no. 5, March 4, 1954, p. 159. “In naturalistic theory of religious symbol, the symbol is interpreted as reflecting an aspect of reality that is not consciously intended in the symbol. This theory denies that symbol has an objective reference and attribute to it merely a subjective character. On scientific and systematic grounds these theories are ultimately reducible to two types: the psychological and the sociological theory of the symbol”. 82- For the religions' symbols see Hastings, J. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Religion and , T. and T. Clark, London, 1967, vol. 12, p. 141. 83- Tillich, P., Dynamics of Faith, George Allen and Unwin, London, 1957, p. 42. Also, MacGregor, G., in Philosophical Issues in Religious Thought says: "If there were any way of conveying God without symbols, there would be no need for religion at all, since one could possess the reality that the symbol purports to represent". (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1973, p. 49). 84- Tillich, P., Religious Experience and Truth, A Symposium, Hook, Sidney (ed.), New York University Press, 1961, p. 3. 85- Tillich, P., Dynamic of Faith, pp. 41-2. 86- McPherson, T., in Philosophy and Religious Belief, says; "...the symbol is seen to be in a sense nothing in itself, but to have value only in that it stands for something beyond itself, it distances the

182 religious worshipper from God. But because it is typically down-to-earth, 'concrete', 'finite', it can also induce a feeling of closeness to God which meditating on the abstract notion of God may not achieve. We cannot know that symbols are symbols unless we recognise that they 'stand for' something else. It is perhaps natural to suppose that we therefore must be able to say not only that they stand for something else but also what it is that they stand for- that is, to suppose that it must be possible to give an account in non-symbolic terms of the object of symbolism”. [Hutchinson & Co. (publishers) Ltd., London, 1974, p. 53.] 87- Tillich's use of the term 'participation' is very embarrassing. In his Systematic Theology, he says that every relation includes a kind of participation. (University of Press, 1951, vol. I, p. 196.) But he states elsewhere that a sign does not participate in the reality of that to which it points. {Dynamics of Faith, p. 42.) 88- Ibidem. 89- Stevenson, C.L., Ethics and Language, New Haven, Yale, 1944, Chap.I. 90- Stace, W.T., Religion and the Modern Mind, Macmillan & Co., 1953, p. 257. 91- Also see Faster, M., Mystery and Philosophy^ SCM Press, London, 1957, Chap. III. 92- Tillich, P., Dynamics of Faith, p. 54. 93- Jung, C.G., Symbols of Transformation, vol. I, New York; Harper Torchbooks, 1956, p. 231. 94- Otto, R., The Idea of the Holy, Harvey, J.W. (trans.), Oxford University Press, 1923. 95- Buber, M., I and Thou, Smith, R.G. (trans.), T. & T. Clark, 1937. 96- Heidegger, M., , 97- Tillich, P., Dynamics of Faith, p. 46f. 9?,-Ib id , p. 42. 183 99- Ibid., p. 46. Similarly, Stace, W .T. in Time and Eternity says: "Religious symbolism differs from all non-religious symbolism in two respects. In the first place, the symbolical propositions of religion cannot be translated into literal propositions, whereas all non-religious symbolic propositions- provided their symbolism is legitimate and not mere metaphor- can be so translated. What the religious symbolic proposition stands for is not a literal proposition but an experience”. (Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 1952, pp. 91-115.) 100- See Otto, R., in Op.cit; see also Gilkey, L., Naming the Whirlwind, Bobbs Merrill Co., 1969; Lewis, H.D., Our Experience of God, Allen & Unwin, 1959. 101- Tillich, P., Systematic Theology, vol. I, pp. 264-5. \0 2 -Ib id , p. 21. 103- Tillich, P., , Oxford Press, 1959, p. 65. 104- Tillich, P., 'The Meaning and Justification of Religious Symbols' in Hook, S. (ed.). Religious Experience and Truth, p. 10. 105- Ibidem. 106- Ibid., p. 11. 107- Tillich, P., Systematic Theology, vol. I, pp. 17, 24. 108- Tillich, P., Dynamics of Faith, p. 47. 109- Tillich, P., 'Theology and Symbolism' in Religious Symbolism, Johnson, F.E. (ed.), New York, Harper and Brothers, 1955, pp. 109-10. 110- Tillich, P., Systematic Theology, p. 14. 111- See Bochenski, J.M., 'Some Problems for a Philosophy of Religion' in Religious Experience and Truth, pp. 41,59. 112- Ibid., p. 56.

Part (5) 113- Richards, I.A., The Philosophy of Rhetoric, New York and London, 184 Oxford University Press, 1965, p. 89. 114- Ricoeur, Paul., Interpretation Theory, Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning, Fort Worth; Texas Christian University Press, 1976, pp. 68-9. 115- Ricoeur, Paul., 'Manifestation and Proclamation', Journal o f the Blaisdell Institute, 12, winter 1978, p. 19. 116- For summaries of the more common theories of metaphor, see M.C. Beardsley, Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism, New York, Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1958, pp. 134-44. 117- Black, M., Models and Metaphor, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962, p. 31. 118- Richards, I. A., Philosophy of Rhetoric, Oxford University Press, 1936, p. 93. 119- Alston, W.P., , Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1964, p. 102. 120- Aquinas, T., Systematic Theology, la. 1,10. 121- Gilby, Thomas., in Appendix 12, ‘The Sense of Scripture’, to Systematic Theology, vol. I, p. 140. 122- Edwards, P., ‘Professor Tillich’s Confusions’ in Mind, 74 (1965), pp. 199-200. 123- Ramsey, I., Models and Mystery, Oxford University Press, 1964, pp. 58,61. 124- See Ramsey, I., Models and Mystery, Oxford University Press, 1964. &, Models for Divine Activity, London, SCM Press, 1973. 125- Ferre, F., Basic Modern Philosophy of Religion, London, Allen & Unwin, 1968, p. 381. 126- For example, see Tracy, David., ‘Metaphor and Religion’ in On Metaphor, Sacks, Sheldon (ed.). The , 1979, pp.98-9. 127- Ramsey, I., Models and Mystery, p. 17. 185 128- Ramsey, I., Christian Discourse, Oxford University Press, 1965, pp. 25,60,82. 129- Ramsey, I., Religious Language, chap. I. 130- B arbour, I.G.^ Myth, Models and Paradigms, SCM Press Ltd., 1974, pp. 145-6. U \- l b id , p. 51. 132- D’Sa, Francis X., ‘The World of Symbol and the Language of Metaphor’, Typed lecture notes, Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune, 1955. 133- Although, for the positivists, models of science can be replaced or withdrawn, for the realists, on the contrary, models play cognitive part in theory and it cannot be withdrawn nor it cannot be replaced by anything. 134- Janet Martin Soskice, Metaphor and religious Language, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985, p. 141,161.

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