Religions and Discourse Edited by James Francis Volume2

PETER LANG Bern · Berlin · Bruxelles · Frankfurt a.M. , New York · Wien

Lieven Boeve Kurt Feyaerts (eds)

Metaphor and God. talk

PETER LANG Bern · Berlin · Bruxelles • Frankfurt a.M. • New York · Wien

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Roberta Pires de Oliveira

Rorty, Richard. 1995 [1991]. Essays on Heidegger and Others. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rorty, Richard. 1997. Truth, Politics and 'Post-Modernism'. Spinoza Lectures. The Netherlands: Van Gorcum. Soskice, Janet Martin. 1985. Metaphor and Religious Language. Oxford: Clarendon. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1991 [1953]. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.

Lieven Boeve & Kurt Feyaerts

Religious metaphors in a postmodern culture: Transverse links between apophatical theology and cognitive semantics

Introduction This contribution attempts to compare and make use of expertise from both theology and linguistics in analysing religious discourse. More specifically, this interdisciplinary approach is inspired by the observation that the rediscovery of the tradition of negative theology by postmodem philosophy and theology seems to share major points of interest with the cognitive semantic theory of language. Although specific religious metaphors do appear throughout the text, our presentation does not deal in the first place with their analysis. Its primary goal is situated on a more theoretical level, i.e. an attempt to compare two epistemological systems in a fruitful and promising way. The article consists of three major parts. The first two parts give an overview of the disciplines, which are involved in this project. Each of these parts is conceived as some kind of introduction for scholars of the other discipline. The first part deals with aspects of apophatical (or negative) theology and presents its rediscovery by postmodem theology. The second part describes central aspects of cognitive semantics with special attention to the theory of conceptual metaphor. In the third part we bring the two theories together in search of both similarities and differences between them. It will be shown that there surely are common points of interest and methodology, and that each approach can benefit from the other. To conclude this third part we illustrate this possible benefit for theology. Leaving the safe haven of one's own discipline may open new perspectives and offer additional background for one's own research. What we present in this article is to be considered a first attempt to overcome theoretical and terminological difficulties in order to pave the way for further analysis of the complex issue of religious discourse from an interdisciplinary perspective.

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1.

The rediscovery of apophatical theology as ultimate expression of theological critical consciousness

1.1.

The history oftheology: a continual recontextualisation ofthe 'fides quaerens intellectum '

The history of doing theology teaches the close observer that the vocabulary particular to theology, as well as the schemes of argumentation, is most often borrowed from the cultural enviromnent in which they were developed. Moreover, even the coming into being of theology itself, in line with the Anselmian adage fides quaerens intellectum defined as the attempt to reflexively elucidate the Christian faith, is due to the Hellenistic context in which early Christianity took shape (Cf. e.g. Allen 1985). Throughout the history of theology, contemporary philosophy always received special attention. Theologians turned first to (neo )Platonism, and later on also to Aristotelianism. Both of these provided concepts and patterns of reasoning supposed to facilitate the reflective disclosure of what and how Christians of their epoch and context believed. From modem times on, theologians also related their discourse to the increasingly diverse natural sciences and humanities. This is the case, for instance, in 19th century apologetics which accredited to 'supernatural experience', such as miracles and special revelations, evidential value for supernatural, religious truth claims, in a manner analogous to the procedures of empirical inquiry in positive sciences. In the same way, political theologies and theologies of liberation during the 1970's and 1980's used socioanalytical frames of interpretation in order to establish the social relevance of their theologising. What concerns theology also concerns faith and the praxis of faith: these, too, were shaped in continual relation to the context wherein they were handed down. Creed, ritual and sacramental praxis, moral code and formation of community are engaged in a dynamic process of tradition handed over and context-related formation of new tradition. We elaborate this in two moments, especially concerning religious language (that is to say, the evocation and interpretation of religious experiences). (1) Religious language is not shaped ex nihilo; religious experiences are not independent events, taking human beings by surprise, and interpreted religiously only afterwards. Human beings have religious experiences, only because they are embedded in a religious framework. (2) At the same time, only such religious experiences enable the religious framework to survive. A living religion consists of the continuing dialectical interaction between interpretation and experience. New experiences always occur within an interpretative frame, called tradition, which at the same time (partially) forms the context of both the new experience and the interpretation of this experience. This does not mean that the new experience does not add anything to the interpretative framework, but it does mean that it is not independent of this framework. Experience is always interpreted experience; interpretation is always experience-related interpretation.

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But, again, the fact that the new, always contextually embedded experience is not independent from the religious interpretative framework does not mean that it does not possibly add anything to the existing interpretation schemes. Experience can press upon the existing traditional interpretation schemes in a way that a new interpretation, coming from the given interpretation schemes and grafted onto the experience,. which presses upon these schemes, involves a shift with regard to these existing schemes. This can happen when, for example, an experience, because of a change in context, can no longer be expressed by traditional words which expressed this experience in the older context. The military language used in the naming of God in the Hebrew Bible, for instance, no longer seems to be appropriate to a lot of contemporary believers. Retrospectively, tradition and, more specifically, the religious language which developed through history, can be perceived as a series of transfers of meaning - meaning which can be accessed only by means of concrete words, sentences and texts, always specifically embedded in a particular historical context. In the interaction of contextual experience and traditional interpretation, religious language re-contextualises itself and shifts (cf. Schillebeeckx 1989, see also Boeve 1996b and 1996c). The fact that religious language is intrinsically bound to the context in which it arises, is due to the hermeneutical-critical consciousness which is proper to religion: it is the consciousness that the 'reality' at which religious language aims, and refers to, ·in the end cannot be put into words, cannot be signified, without misjudging it: the deus semper major. Certainly, from the sixth century on this consciousness has been made explicit in negative, or apophatical, theology.

1.2. Apophatical theology and knowledge about the 'deus semper major' A Syrian monk living at the end of the fifth and the beginning of the sixth century wrote five booklets (and some letters) which have been of major influence for the further development of theology, this partially due to the fact that he hides behind the pseudonym and authority of Dionysius Areopagita - Denis the Areopagite the name of the Athenian disciple of Paul (Acts 7,34). We know four tracts and some letters from Pseudo-Dionysius. In his reflection on the naming of (and being related to) God, Pseudo-Dionysius links the speculative Neo-Platonism of late antiquity (Proclus)- and its intensive concern for the way in which philosophical language meets its limits in addressing the absolute, the one, the good, the cause of everything -, with traces of apophasis from the Jewish-Christian belief in God (as was reflected upon by some of the Patristic Fathers, including Gregory of Nyssa; cf. Carabine 1995: 279-300, see also Hochstaffll976 and Mortley 1986). For Pseudo-Dionysius, God cannot be known in essence, but only in creative, causal divine activity -just as it is the sun rays which we perceive, and not their source, the sun itself. Creation, coming from God, refers to God, but without determining God. Creation, as a sign of the invisible, is a trace of God. Knowledge about creation leads necessarily to knowledge about God, although,

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because of its being bound to creation, this will always be secondary knowledge. Pseudo-Dionysius calls this the level of kataphatical or affirmative theology. All names and titles which are predicated of God - theological names such as Trinity Father,_ Son, Spirit; intelligible or conceptual names as the good, one, beauty: truth, hfe, love; representations of the experiential world as sun, rock, water, wind -, all have a strictly 'symbolic' nature: they stand for what we predicate of God, but they do not touch God (The Mystical Theology, 1032D-1033C). In the end this is also true for divine names as Trinity, and even for the name 'the One'. Not even these _names exha~t the divine essence, or make God knowable. They are names ref~g to what Is beyond all names, beyond all nanring. Only through the negation of these names can one create a space for God. Not a single name can be spared: neither titles borrowed from everyday experience, nor abstract concepts. In the . end, only neg~tions can be true, according to Pseudo-Dionysius; affirmations cannot posstbly come up to the mark. At stake in this never ending process of negating - starting with the sensible names and ending with the abstract conceptual names - is not the negating of God, but the affirmation of the impossibility of nanring and conceiving God. In the negation and in the negation of the negation, Pseudo-Dionysius attempts to evoke what does not permit evocation through language. We add two more remarks. First, for Pseudo-Dionysius apophasis is not only a theological method enabling us to speak of God as the unspeakable, to name God as the umtameable, and to know God as the unknowable, but also a specific way of looking for and dealing with God - namely, mysticism. Secondly, the incorporation ofNeo-Platonic ideas and thinking patterns founded apophasis, as it were, cosmologically, or ontologically. In this regard, affirmative theology is grafted onto what comes forth from God in creation, onto ''the outgoing (proodos) r:o~ God who always remains in himself (mone), while apophatical theology sigmfies the return (epistrophe) of all things to their source". 1 Ontologically as well as (or: because of this) logically, God is beyond the One. Precisely because of God's transcendence in relation to creation, human language does not reach 2 unt~ ~od. "We make assertions and denials of what is next to it, but never of it, for It Is both beyond every assertion, being the perfect and unique cause of all things, and by virtue of its preentinently simple and absolute nature, free of every limitation, beyond every limitation; it is also beyond every denial". 3 Negative theology received its classical expression in the work of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). In his theological methodology Aquinas reserved a central

2

3

Cf. Carabine (1995: 3): "In the Pseudo-Dionysius, the way down from the original darkness of God to the light of creatures is a way of knowing, a continual theophany of being. The way up, on the other hand, is an assent from the light of creatures to the darkness of God and is a process ofleaving creatures behind". "The divine transcendence is [... ] the transcendence even of difference between God and creation. Since there is no knowable 'distance' between God and creation, there is no language in which it is possible to state one. For all our terms of contrast state differentiations between creatures" (Turner 1995: 45). The Mystical Theology, nr. l048B (1987).

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place for apophatical critical consciousness: it functions as methodical presupposition for all nanring and knowing of God. Who/what God is, cannot be conceived or expressed in language by humans. This claim does not prevent Thomas from talking about God and investigating the cognitive value of this God-talk. 'Analogy' consists in a way of speaking (and knowing) which is not literal but at the same time goes beyond so-called metaphorical language. Although Aquinas asserts that God cannot be expressed in words and known in God's essence, in Godself, and can only be reached through creation - as Dionysius already stated, - he nevertheless stresses that creation can teach us something essential about God (though not the divine essence). Moreover, simple perfections possessed by creatures - being good, wise, etc. - belong more to God than to creatures. We predicate them more appropriately of God, because God possesses these simple perfections in a more proper manner, not in the way of creatures, but by excellence: if one predicates of God that God is good, then it is affirmed that God is not good as creatures are good, but exceedingly good. This does not mean that this goodness is of a totally different kind than human goodness, as if the word would be plurivocal. It is only analogically that one can at the same time say of God and creatures that they are good. "Whatever is said of God and creatures is said according as there is some relation of the creature to God as to its principle and cause, wherein all the perfections of things pre-exist excellently". 4 Consequently, whatever is predicated analogically of God, in fact is predicated more truly of God than of creatures: a creature possesses a perfection only because this perfection pre-existed in an eminent way in God and flows from God on to creation. Still, it remains true that we know this perfection only through creation and that we can predicate it of God only from there. 5 In Aquinas the logical, cognitive order ultimately leans upon the ontological order. It is only because of the fact that God is eminently good that creatures can be good. In the end, Thomas Aquinas modifies Dionysius' apophatical theology: when he affirms that God is unknowable, he does not mean that God is in no way knowable, but that ultimately no knowledge of God is adequate. In this perspective negative theology remains methodologically important, but begins to function as a background for affirmation. Nevertheless, one commentator has stated that, in the end, for Thomas Aquinas as for Pseudo-Dionysius, negative

4 5

Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia, Q. 13, art. 5, ed. Pegis (1945: 120). Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia, Q. 13, art. 3, ed. Pegis (1945: 116-117): "Our knowledge of God is derived from the perfections which flow from Him to creatures; which perfections are in God in a more eminent way than in creatures. Now our intellect apprehends them as they are in creatures, and as it apprehends them thus it signifies them by names. Therefore, as to the names applied to God, there are two things to be considered - viz. the perfections themselves which they signify, such as goodness, life, and the like, and their mode of signification. As regards what is signified by these names, they belong properly to God, and more properly than they belong to creatures, and are applied primarily to Him. But as regards their mode of signification, they do not properly and strictly apply to God; for their mode of signification befits creatures".

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theology "is not merely apophasis but aphasia, a devout and learned silence" (O'Rourke 1992: 61). In the history of theology, the critical consciousness which was expressed in apophatical theology took on a narrowed, standardised place in the so-called tres viae of scholastic theology; the via affirmativa, the via negativa and the via eminentiae: through affirmation something is predicated of God, which afterwards - in the second way - is negated, and finally again is affirmed, but this time in an eminent way, by excellence: God is good; God is not good in the way we humans are good; God is the excellence of goodness. In this threefold theological method, negative theology increasingly becomes in the course of history de facto a mere qualification of the positive naming of God, a rather harmless supplement which, as such, does not thoroughly affect the naming of God. 1.3. The rediscovery of negative theology in the postmodern context

The fact that apophatical theology has regained the attention of theologians today is certainly due especially to those philosophers who are commonly referred to as 'postmodern' or as 'thinkers of difference', including Jean-Fran