Meaning and meanings

Abstract

I have been arguing for an account of language and of God that will free us from essentialist-correspondentist metaphysics, as well as from the sense of limitation one may feel so long as one remains in the grip of metaphysical assumptions. Toward that end, the previous chapter advanced two lines of argument: first, that concepts are a species of norm, that their normativity is carried on through a process of intersubjective recognition, and that concepts are therefore continually changing; and, second, that the normative Spirit of Christ enters into, and is carried on by, this same process of recognition, so as to conform such norms to God. On the resulting picture, concepts can be seen as fit for God’s appropriation, and God can be seen to appropriate them through the work of Jesus and his Spirit. The previous chapter thus defended an account according to which the form of concepts – that is, their “normishness” – is fit for God’s use of them, which thereby renders optional one reason for thinking that God must stand at a distance from language. The present chapter rounds out this account by explaining the content of concepts, that is, their meaning. The problem here, recall, is this: if (a) the meaning of a concept use is its correspondence to an essence-like idea or “meaning,” and (b) this meaning is fixed once and for all by the concept’s application to certain creaturely objects, it follows (c) that to apply a concept to God would be to cut God down to the size of creaturely objects. It might seem, then, that in order to avoid setting God within a metaphysical framework, one must avoid the application of concepts to God, which would entail that God must be thought to stand at a remove from language about God. From a therapeutic point of view, however, this set of inferences can be seen to depend upon residually metaphysical assumptions about the meaning of concepts. The therapeutic strategy is thus to defend an account of meaning which calls into question premises (a) and (b), thereby rendering optional conclusion (c). Toward that end, this chapter argues, first, for an account according to which a concept’s meaning is the product of a normative trajectory implicit in a series of recognized precedents, such that its meaning is continually changing, and second, for an account according to which the Spirit of Christ applies certain concepts to God by appropriating these trajectories, thereby judging and fulfilling their meaning. With this account on board, it should be clear that the problems facing essentialist-correspondentist metaphysics need not be thought to entail that concepts cannot apply to God, since the inability of concepts to correspond to God would result in their distance from God only on the assumption that concept use depends upon such correspondence.