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Does the Analysis of Religious Language Rest on a Mistake?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Margaret Chatterjee
Margaret Chatterjee
Affiliation:
Reader in Philosophy, University of Delhi
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Extract

The rival claims of religion, philosophy and science as dispensers of light have come to the fore in successive periods of history. Betwixt and between them all is the discipline known as theology, a rational study of the concept of God and attendant concepts connected with theistic belief. The dominant period of the connection between religion and philosophy in the west extends from Neo-Platonic thought to the seventeenth century. Before that for the most part philosophy tried to steer clear of ‘mysteries’, and after that philosophy made strenuous efforts to free itself from religion, and even more, from theology. Secular influences on religious language are legion. I mention only a few: governmental analogies (King, government, etc.), agricultural analogies (Shepherd, flock, sower and the seed), analogies from art (Design and Designer), historical approaches of the early Romantic movement (used by Renan and others), and influences from science (Paley's ‘watch’ metaphor, the idea of evolution as shown in the concept of ‘progressive revelation’, the ‘new theology’ of the twentieth century and so on). Recent interest in religious language is part of the last of these influences (influences from science) in so far as the desire to find some empirical moorings for various types of discourse is one of the early springs of the analytical movement. This interest is symptomatic of the trend to rethink ontological matters in terms of epistemology, a trend for which Galileo and Kepler bear a considerable responsibility. Earlier interest in religious language, it must be remembered, was deeply rooted in ontological concern. I refer to the skilled use by Catholic theologians of the method of analogia entis. The basis of this method, and it was a method of argument, was specific beliefs concerning the distinction between finite and infinite being and the relation between them.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , December 1974 , pp. 469 - 478
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

page 470 note 1 Vide Lectures and Conversations on aesthetics, psychology and religious belief.

page 474 note 1 A valuable analysis is provied in Banerjee's, N. V. new book The Spirit of Indian Philosophy (Arnold-Heinemann, 1974) where he shows that the preoccupation of many of ancient Indian philosophers was with ‘ways of life’ rather than with theologies.Google Scholar

page 474 note 2 I have discussed the presuppositions of this understanding in my paper ‘The presuppositions of inter-religious communication, a philosophical approach’, Religious Studies (London), III, 1966.

page 474 note 3 That some religious utterances may have socially undesirable consequences is not ruled out by this.

page 475 note 1 Among recent publications I. M. Lewis’ book on Ecstatic Religion is interesting in this regard.

page 475 note 2 Cf. the ‘rock’ image in the Old Testament (a great rock is a blessing in the desert as it gives shade), the Baul imagery of the ferry, river-banks, the caged bird etc.

page 475 note 3 Peter Brent's book on Godmen gives many examples of this from contemporary sources. The guru's language might be comparable with normative ethical language which has been somewhat frowned on by those who adopt the linguistic approach to ethics.

page 476 note 1 The use of language as a preparation for its absence, i.e. techniques of prayer, meditation, contemplative exercises etc., needs separate treatment. There is a significant difference, I think, between pre-verbal silence e.g. as a preparation for worship, and post-verbal silence, i.e. communion.