From Odd-Talk to God-Talk?

Abstract

ONE OF the most creative and influential attempts to wed theological reflection and linguistic analysis is the effort to draw parallels between the logic of the words I and God. These efforts have been undertaken most notably by Bishop Ian Ramsey and Professor William Poteat.' The gist of the proposal is that the grammatical and logical oddness of I constitutes a paradigm or model for the oddness of God-talk; more strongly, it is said that one who does not understand why the use of I generates peculiarities cannot hope to grasp what it is to speak of God. The proposals of this program are highly significant for three reasons at least. In a day when metaphysics is on the ropes, here is an apology which eschews that dark science for the illumination of linguistic and phenomenological analysis. Second, it is apologetic! Some efforts to blend analysis and theology simply begin with the religious as given and proceed to an analysis of its grammar, its methods of verification, and, in general, the sorts of meaning its utterances possess. One who does not play the game already will find little reason or argument given in these writings for joining in. As it has been remarked recently, such an analysis . . . is not at all equipped to establish or to demonstrate [its] intelligibility, to recommend religious language as essential to life, to show a secular doubter why this language game should be used in the first place.2 This is less true of the proposal before us, for it takes a word from ordinary language, I, and uses it to show us what God means. It represents an effort to bridge the gap between secular and religious language. Finally, we have here a theological effort which makes contact with continental thought. Like existentialism it tries to show the irreducible difference between persons and things, between mysteries and observa-