On Speaking of God

ion has been constructed — an ‘ideal’ religious or pseudo-religious discourse along humanistic, illuministic or idealistic lines, possessing a certain number of similarities with concrete religious discourse. Moreover, the term ‘religious language’ is sometimes used to refer to the ‘meta-language’ in which one speaks about diverse forms of concrete religious language. But here we are concerned neither with the variety of concrete extant or historical religions such as Buddhism. Islam, Hebrew, Greco-pagan, etc., nor with ‘religious discourse in general’, but rather with the form of religious language in which Christians, and specifically, practicing Roman Catholic Christians, express themselves.1 This is by no means intended as an exclusion of the way in which religious discourse is used by other Christian confessions or denominations. Between the language of Catholics and, for example, Lutherans, there are interesting differences of style, of argumentation, and of historical-cultural connections. From a logical and structural point of view these differences are minimal when compared with the differences which occur between the religious speech of Christians and the religious speech of nonChristians. Nevertheless they do make themselves felt. A Positive Delimitation Religious discourse consists in that which Christians say both institutionally and de facto about God. We can ‘deduce’ neither philosophically nor theologically what religious speech is or what is its essence. We don’t even want to propose a definition. We will not say, "religious language should be this way . . .", or: "One ought to speak thusly. . . ." Here we want simply to see how people, and specifically how Christians, use language in the context of their faith, i.e., when practicing their religion. (This does not of course exclude the ‘normativeness’ imparted by the rules of a specific religious discourse, especially Christian discourse – a normativeness which in any event is essential to any language.) We have to ask: "What is a ‘religious’ use of language? What is a religious practice? What is a religious context?" In this case we are asking Christians how they use the word ‘religion’, the word ‘faith’, or other terms that refer to the same thing. What for them makes a situation, a context, a practice ‘religious’? When a Christian speaks, he does not always use the language of his faith, though he might well make the claim that his entire life is, or ought to be, a life of faith, a life of testimony to the faith, etc. But linguistically this faith does not make itself continuously apparent, anymore than it does behaviorally. It can be the case that the daily language of a Christian is more or less colored by his being Christian. Nonetheless, not all daily speech can qualify as religious discourse. In particular, scientific speech and technical discourse — engaged in of course also by Christians — are wholly free of any religious shadings; it is simply illegitimate to import elements of religion into a strictly scientific or technical discourse. To be sure, there are borderline instances, but the man or woman forever giving a religious coloration to any and every subject of daily speech is generally considered strange, bigoted, boring and perhaps fanatical. It is an easy matter to tick off some typical cases of the religious use of language on the part of a Christian: to preach and to listen to a homily, to make a profession of faith, to participate at the Liturgy, to pray publicly with others or privately, aloud or in silence, to teach religion and to take a course in religion, to speak of the faith and discuss it with others, also with non-believers, to study or teach theology, and so on. It is also an easy matter to list some typical cases which no Christian would spontaneously classify as ‘religious’: to go over one’s accounts, to teach mathematics, to ask the time, to play ball. . . . However there are the borderline cases. These include expressions originally Christian but absorbed into the general linguistic-cultural baggage and now used not only without thinking about the origins, but often without even knowing them: local place-names (San Francisco), names of persons and of things, farewells (God be wi’ye = good-bye), curses. Indeed, borderline cases exist precisely because the borders of the various linguistic games are not fixed, and even the borders themselves depend on use. The words: religion, faith, etc., like the majority of words in fact, do not have a unique and ‘fixed’ meaning, but rather a certain ‘fuzziness’ around the edges. Thus even the significance of ‘religion’, ‘faith’, ‘Christian’, ‘language’, ‘religious language’, ‘Christian discourse’, etc.,2 is to be determined by the institutional use of these words within a given linguistic community,3 and not by means of a definition of their singular ‘essences’. We can for the moment then leave aside the question of whether and how far the word ‘religion’ is applicable to Confucianism, Buddhism, or to a religious ‘feeling’ purely interior and private, to a conviction of the existence of God which is purely philosophical ("natural religion"), to humanitarian and socialistic ideologies, etc.4 It has to be said that their respective discourses bear a resemblance among each other and also with the discourse that is used in the context of the great religions, including Christian discourse. However there are also noteworthy differences, of which we will speak in Chapter 3. The Facticity of the Linguistic Religious Behavior of Christians Every method, every reflection, every type of philosophical endeavor must have a datum to which it is then applied. In our specific case the datum to be considered consists in the social and historical reality of the religious linguistic behavior of the Christian, i.e., in the language actually used and spoken by Christians in the context of their faith. This behavior is describable and analyzable not only by sociology but also by philosophy — which is to say, by logic, phenomenology, and existential analysis. But we need first to pose a preliminary question here. Who engages in Christian religious discourse? Who are the Christian Catholics? This question too is to be treated in the same way as our preceding question, ‘What is religion?’ In other words, how are the words ‘Christian’ and ‘Catholic’ used in our language? Normally it is clear that one is a Christian when one acts and speaks as one. And it is quite evident that the amplitude of the terms ‘religious’, ‘Christian’ and ‘Catholic’ gradually narrows. One cannot legitimately use the term ‘Christian’ without a historical reference to Christ. Moreover the term "Catholic" is employed almost exclusively today to refer to an organized and institutional group of Christians which is called the "Catholic Church."5 It would appear to be legitimate also for this group to declare in a normative way: "This person has (or does not have) the right to call himself ‘Catholic’; this doctrine or behavior is Catholic (or is not)." Of course here too we encounter fuzziness around the edges. Whether or not a ‘Christianity without religion’, an ‘atheistic belief in Jesus’, a ‘Catholicism without the power structure’,6 are still to be called ‘Christian’ or ‘Catholic’ is a question of linguistic use and therefore a question of convention, and thus often a pedagogical, polemical, and political matter of no small importance. Thus it is clear that the datum of Christian discourse about God is a positive, historical, socially shared, institutional and in some way supernatural datum. This fact is the subject of our linguistic analysis here. Christian Discourse about God — a Positive Fact The datum ("that which is given") of any philosophical reflection always precedes the philosophical reflection itself, and the same holds with regard to an analysis. If nothing is ‘given’ to me, then I have nothing to analyze, nothing on which to reflect, nothing to order, organize or systematize. The ‘data’ of philosophical reflection as such are not the product of that philosophical reflection. In this sense, philosophy, of whatever branch, always and necessarily begins a posteriori.7 Christian Discourse on God is a Historical ‘Given’ A language or a speech form, in our case, religious/Christian/Catholic speech, is a reality that is born and develops historically. It is not developed according to logical rules, nor according to a project conceived of a priori, nor within the Divine Mind.8 In a philosophical analysis we must accept Christian-Catholic discourse in its accidental and historical concreteness. Perhaps it might have developed differently, but in fact it developed as it did. This actually-existing speech is the only speech which interests us because it is the only one which is ‘given’ us. Considering that its existence is historically contingent, there is always the possibility that in the future it will take another direction,9 but to us it is ‘given’ in the form in which it has developed to date. What ‘could be’ or ‘will be’ is not yet given to me, and therefore I am not able to analyze it. For the analysis of a particular form of discourse, especially of the religious-Christian kind, one must take into consideration the way in which this speech form arose and how it developed historically. Nevertheless the meaning of a linguistic expression consists not in its origin, nor in its development, its history or its etymology, but in its actual use. (And here, in the comprehension of its actual use, the history of a linguistic expression can be of considerable assistance.) For an understanding of religious-Christian discourse, we need to recall that this discourse has its ‘normative’ origin in scriptural speech – in the Old and, even more to the point, the New Testaments. One additional point in the context of the historical givenness of Christian-Catholic discourse: the normative truth of the dogmas of the faith is to be und