The Status of Religious Language :: Religion Philosophy Christianity Essays

In recent work on the philosophy of religion, there has been a great deal of concentration on what John Hick, in his Philosophy of Religion [Prentice Hall International Editions, 1990, Chapter 7] calls "the peculiarity of religious language". What Hick is referring to is the fact that when language is used either to describe God, or to make any kind of religious statement, it is used in ways that quickly reveal inherent difficulties of meaning. These problems have to do with the fact that while religious statements seem to have all the authority of factual statements, it is quite clearly not possible to regard them as actually being equivalently authoritative. It is not difficult to demonstrate this: a) Jesus loves Bob and Edna. Edna loves Bob. b) God has ordered me to do this. c) My parents have ordered me to stay in this evening. In the case of statements a), it would be straightforward, in all kinds of ways, to discover evidence for or against the truth of the statement that "Edna loves Bob". If one could listen to their private conversations over dinner, for example, it would not be difficult to interpret the affection of Edna for Bob and, hopefully, of Bob for Edna. If Bob were ill or unhappy, Edna's conduct towards him would demonstrate her love. We could go on with this list and, without any difficulty, lengthen it considerably in ways which, despite the theoretical possibility of our being deceived, would be generally verifiable and agreeable not only to Bob and Edna, but also to anyone else not devoutly sceptical to whom we might talk about Bob and Edna and their relationship. It would, though, surely, be rather more difficult to provide similar validation of the statement that "Jesus loves Bob and Edna", for, in attempting to do so, one would need to address such intractable questions as the following: how would we go about demonstrating either the truth or the falsity of this statement if Bob said that he did not believe it was true and Edna said that she did, who would be speaking the truth if the statement were made by a friendly neighbour, worried about Bob and Edna never attending church, on what basis might the statement be said to be veritably either true or false if Bob and Edna won a large amount of money in the national lottery, would this demonstrate that Jesus loved them The Status of Religious Language :: Religion Philosophy Christianity Essays In recent work on the philosophy of religion, there has been a great deal of concentration on what John Hick, in his Philosophy of Religion [Prentice Hall International Editions, 1990, Chapter 7] calls "the peculiarity of religious language". What Hick is referring to is the fact that when language is used either to describe God, or to make any kind of religious statement, it is used in ways that quickly reveal inherent difficulties of meaning. These problems have to do with the fact that while religious statements seem to have all the authority of factual statements, it is quite clearly not possible to regard them as actually being equivalently authoritative. It is not difficult to demonstrate this: a) Jesus loves Bob and Edna. Edna loves Bob. b) God has ordered me to do this. c) My parents have ordered me to stay in this evening. In the case of statements a), it would be straightforward, in all kinds of ways, to discover evidence for or against the truth of the statement that "Edna loves Bob". If one could listen to their private conversations over dinner, for example, it would not be difficult to interpret the affection of Edna for Bob and, hopefully, of Bob for Edna. If Bob were ill or unhappy, Edna's conduct towards him would demonstrate her love. We could go on with this list and, without any difficulty, lengthen it considerably in ways which, despite the theoretical possibility of our being deceived, would be generally verifiable and agreeable not only to Bob and Edna, but also to anyone else not devoutly sceptical to whom we might talk about Bob and Edna and their relationship. It would, though, surely, be rather more difficult to provide similar validation of the statement that "Jesus loves Bob and Edna", for, in attempting to do so, one would need to address such intractable questions as the following: how would we go about demonstrating either the truth or the falsity of this statement if Bob said that he did not believe it was true and Edna said that she did, who would be speaking the truth if the statement were made by a friendly neighbour, worried about Bob and Edna never attending church, on what basis might the statement be said to be veritably either true or false if Bob and Edna won a large amount of money in the national lottery, would this demonstrate that Jesus loved them