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All those who insist God-talk is equivocal claim that an infinite God always transcends the ability of finite language to express Him. God-talk is not descriptive of the way God is. Some of these thinkers say God-talk informs us of what God does. Others insist it can only reveal what God is not. And still others claim God-talk is only about the way God desires us to live, or merely to think about Him.

Negative God-Talk

Plotinus (see chap. 11) believed that God-talk is basically negative. This perspective is called the via negativa (the way of negation). Plotinus argued that God is absolutely and simply One;

He is beyond all duality. But all our statements about God have a duality (subject and predicate).

Further, God is simple but our ideas about Him are multiple; we give many attributes to God but He is One in essence. Plotinus claimed that since all our ideas are finite forms, and since God is infinite and beyond all form, then there is no way we can talk positively about God. Even the word One as applied to God means “not many,” a negation.

Many other philosophers, especially mystics, agree with Plotinus. They insist that God can be “known” only intuitively by mystical union. But such an intuition is dependent on prior negation. We must negate all finite conceptions of God until we evoke a pure intuition of His majesty. Such an intuition necessarily defies any positive description.

The problem with this position is that all negations imply some positive knowledge. One cannot say God is “not-that” unless he has some knowledge of the “that.” Further, how would one know what does not apply to God unless he knows what does apply? In short, negations imply prior affirmations.

Extrinsic Analogy

There is another approach to God-talk in Plotinus that has been adopted even by some Christian thinkers. Plotinus argued that we call God “good” only because He causes goodness in things. We call God “good” in the same way that we call food “healthy”—food itself does not possess health, but food causes health in an organism. Likewise, we call God “good,” “true,” and so forth, not because He really is these things but because He causes them in others. As a matter of fact, argued Plotinus, the Cause of Being cannot have being, for “He had no need of Being, who brought Being to be.” Creation, then, is not like the Creator. There is only an extrinsic, causal relationship between God (the Cause) and creation (His effects).

Christian thinkers have pointed out several problems with this equivocal view of God-talk. First, it conflicts with the biblical claim that creatures are “like” God, or made “in his image” (Gen. 1:26; 9:6; James 3:9). Second, it leads to complete agnosticism about the nature of God, and we have already noted that total agnosticism is inadequate (see chap.

19). Finally, some ask how God can give perfections He does not have to give. How can He produce what He does not possess? Can something come from nothing?

Symbolic Language

Perhaps the most common form of the argument for equivocal God-talk is the insistence that religious language is purely symbolic, mythical, parabolic, metaphoric, or the like. Some say that

religious language contains qualified “models” which are evocative but not descriptive. Others consider such language a collection of “ciphers.” These thinkers agree that God-talk cannot be literal.

At the core of this position are two main arguments. First, literal God-talk would be idolatrous. The existentialist Martin Buber (1878–1965) contended that idols are idols whether they are metal or mental. Ideas or concepts can cause “the eclipse of God.” Soren Kierkegaard insisted that since God is “wholly Other”; our attempts at language about Him are like arrows shot in His direction—they are always far short of their target.

Second, only symbolic or mythological language is religiously evocative. The neo-orthodox theologian Emil Brunner (1889–1966) argued that a belief in the Bible as a propositionally descriptive revelation of God is “Bibliolatry.” It is worshiping a “paper Pope.” According to Brunner, the Bible is only a personal revelation geared to evoke a personal response from us. Paul Tillich (1886–1965) insisted on the symbolic nature of God-talk, since nothing from our empirical experience is literally true of the “Ground of Being” (God). Karl Jaspers (1883–1969) spoke of preserving myths and ciphers of God because they are “openings to Transcendence,” whereas objective language has no religious value. Common, then, to all these positions is the belief that religious language is not

descriptive of God but is merely evocative of an experience with God. Only subjective, metaphorical, or mythical language can call one “beyond” the empirical to the

transcendent.

There is some validity to this position. First of all, surely straightforward, unqualified literal talk from the finite world does not have a one-to-one correspondence with the infinite, transcendent God. No finite concept can capture the infinite. Second, symbolic language, that is, metaphors and the like, play a very important function in religious language. Even though they are not literally descriptive of God, they nevertheless evoke a response in the reader/hearer to the object of religious language (God). And since gaining a response from the reader/hearer is an important purpose of God-talk, it is essential that the metaphorical aspect be preserved.

However, there is a serious problem in claiming that all God-language is purely metaphorical or symbolic. Tillich himself recognized this, and was later forced to

acknowledge that there must be at least one non-symbolic truth about God (namely. He is

“Being” or “Ground of Being”). For unless one knew that something was literally true, how could one know that everything else was not literally true (that is, symbolic)? As others have noted, even a metaphor, such as “God is a rock,” must have some literal truth behind it. For while God is not finite or limited in extension as a rock is. He is nonetheless

enduring or unmovable.

Equivocal God-talk is described in several other ways. Some speak of religious language as “pointers,” “parables,” or “myths.” What all of these have in common is the belief that human language does not inform us about what God is but only about how He desires us to live.

Activity Language

The medieval Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) claimed that religious language, although largely negative, does possess a “positive” element. It is a positive

description not of God’s attributes but of His activity. It does not inform us about God’s essence

(which is unknowable) but about His actions. What God is remains unknowable; only what God does can be known. By activity language we can know that God does good, and speaks truth. We may not conclude, however, that God is goodness and truth.

But here again we are left with total agnosticism. How do we know we cannot know anything about God? How can we negate things about Him without prior knowledge of His positive attributes? If what God does is no indication of what He is, then He could be evil even though He does good.

From the Christian perspective, however, we do know many positive things about God.

The Bible says God is love (I John 4:16); He is holy (Lev. 19:2); He is truth, and so on. Even though we cannot comprehend Him completely (I Cor. 13:12), we nevertheless do

apprehend Him clearly (Rom. 1:23). What obscures God is not so much man’s finiteness but his sinfulness. Men are blinded by sin (II Cor. 4:4) and “suppress the truth” (Rom.

1:18, RSV).