Religious Language - Using analogy to understand God

Analogy: an approach to religious language that compares the normal use of a word to its religious use. To say God is good means a similar thing as saying that John is good.

Anthropomorphism: conception of God as having the form, personality or attributes of man.

What is analogy?

• Analogies are something that we use frequently in everyday speech.
• To describe strawberry ice cream to someone who had never tasted it, you might say something like this, 'its like vanilla ice cream but it tastes like strawberries'.
• An analogy is describing something that is unfamiliar to us by making a comparison with something that we already know.
• Sometimes the analogy drawn may seem odd when we reflect on the language literally.
• Yet a phrase such as 'her face was like thunder' does communicate something to us.
• Hopefully low rumbling sounds are not coming from her face but nevertheless the phrase conveys something of the 'storminess' of the anger she has.

Why analogy?

• Hence analogies are comparisons that are helpful to point.
• We find ourselves saying, 'it is like.....but.....'.
• Religiously, analogies are the only option available given the difficulties of making univocal or equivocal statements about God.

Types of analogy

• Aquinas argued that language cannot be used literally of God.
• The writers of scripture certainly do use analogies but thinkers such as Aquinas suggest that even terms such as 'God is good' should be understood analogically.
• When I say that 'God is good' I cannot mean exactly the same as when I say that 'Gemma is good'.
• God's goodness must be on a different scale.
• Aquinas uses analogy in two different ways:
• analogy of attribution
• analogy of proportion.

Analogy of attribution

• The qualities that we ascribe to eachother are a reflection of the qualities of God.
• Davies - uses the example of the baker and bread.
• If we say that the bread is…