While pondering if I should post my musings on my readings about language on my anthnomics (clearly a rip of of economics) blog I remembered no one reads this anyway so who cares.
I’ve started this spectacular little book attempting to explaining both the historical debate over the language of theology as well as discussing the different philosophies of language. This topic—although it may seem confusing at first—is quite simple and necessary to understand. But first, we need to figure out what a ‘language of theology’ is.
It is easiest to wrap our heads around the philosophy or theology of language by understanding the debated topics. The main topic/question is; is language a human convention or is it something humans know because of inspiration from God? If it is simply human convention then how could we possibly communicate with God? How could God communicate with us while maintaining his divine otherness? How could we even speak of God? If it is fully from god how can we know and use language?
The topic has added significance in recent times. Initially there was the idealism that words directly corresponded to the real. When I talk about the Nile delta I’m talking about something concrete—something you could point to on a map—we could go there—we could know the Nile delta. But our language would confirm that we speak in metaphor—and our words don’t carry the ‘real’ as hoped. We would have to talk about the mouth of the river—but is it really a mouth? No this name is a metaphor that has been used and translated through different cultures and times. You and I have similar understanding of what the ‘mouth of the river’ means—but the phrase can’t carry the real meaning, it can only conjure shared knowledge. It is possible to imagine and find cultures and times where the words we use meant different things. Thus language became subjected to culture, time, and a host of other factors, not the carrier of the real concrete meaning. This is the crisis that language is in.
Aquinas—and subsequently Barth—developed an analogy of attribution which certain concepts like good, wise, and pure, reefer properly to God and reefer improperly to earthly things. We can talk about Wisdom—but it is only as a metaphor when used to describe anything other than God. But a theology of language must reach beyond these nouns and explain the rest of language.
Barth then continues to accept a theology of language that is ‘outside of human’—but ‘within our understanding’. A few problems arise—first, what words and concepts fit into this model and—perhaps more glaringly—how can something be extrinsece, outside of human power, and still within our understanding? How can something be known without being recognized? This is exactly the predicament that the crisis of language offers us, especially if we believe language can convey ideas about something outside human convention; if we believe we can have a conversation about God.
