Referring to God

Jewish and Christian Perspectives

Paul Helm

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136112027
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Ethnische Studien

There is a long tradition of discussion in the philosophy of religion about the problems and possibilities involved in talking about God. This book presents accounts of the problem within Jewish and Christian philosophy.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

Oliver Leaman

There is a close historical connection between the three religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is more than historical, though, and the religions themselves accept the existence of some sort of link, albeit the nature of that link is often highly disputed. Judaism is the earliest and provided the context out of which Christianity, and in particular Jesus the Jew, emerged. When we come to slightly later Christian figures such as St Paul who try to set themselves determinedly against both Judaism and their own Judaism, we still have to acknowledge the role of Judaism in the characterisation of the new religion. Even Christians who were hostile to Judaism included the Old Testament in the canon, as a series of texts which point to Jesus and the New Testament. This logic of emergence finds its fullest description in Islam, of course, which accepts the validity of both the Jewish and Christian revelations, arguing that these were superseded by the final prophecy of Muhammad. Although Christianity and Islam are very obviously, and selfconsciously, different religions, the close links which exist between them lead to the interesting question as to whether the Jew, Christian and Muslim actually pray to the same God. Or, to ask a slightly different question, do they mean by ‘God’ the same person? Could a God who is a trinity of persons be the same God as one who is not? It would be interesting if this is the same God, since we are well aware of millennia of conflicts between these religions, conflicts which continue today despite the politeness of their theologians when they meet together.

We need to distinguish here between a number of different ways of talking about the same thing. But before we look at these distinctions, it is worth wondering whether these religions could really be talking of the same God given the long histories of conflict which have existed, and continue to exist, between them. If they are really talking of the same God, one might think, then the point of such conflicts is lost. It might seem to be rather like the argument between the optimist, who suggests that his glass is half full, with the pessimist, who insists that it is half empty. This sort of vacuous dispute is accurately characterised by Swift in Gulliver's Travels in his account of the protracted warfare between two nations, the Big-enders and the Little-enders. These names originated from an original argument as to which end of a boiled egg one ought to open before eating it. The point that Swift was alluding to here is that theology consists of rather nice distinctions which can have terrible consequences. Within Christianity, for example, one thinks of the conflicts which have existed between different theological schools over the nature of the Trinity, conflicts which have resulted in whole cities and communities being destroyed. These are conflicts within a religion, not even between religions, and if such conflicts can occur within a religion, presumably the idea is that even within a religion individuals may mean something very different when they talk of ‘God’. In that case it seems even harder to argue that those in different religions are referring to the same being when they use that name.

The satirical approach to such theoretical differences in religion is not really a critique of religion itself, but rather of theology. During the Enlightenment, for example, there was a movement for a type of rational religion, a religion which eschewed theology and went to the essence of faith itself, belief in God.¹ The assumption was that the deity in question was the same for all the faiths, or at least for all the Abrahamic faiths. Lessing's Nathan the Wise is perhaps the perfect example of this, and is touching in its support for a general religious pluralism surrounding a basic, and common, belief in God. It is interesting that this should be an Enlightenment idea, since the other important religious strand which also often advocates a form of pluralism comes at the other extreme from the Enlightenment, and that is mysticism. Many mystics are prepared to accept that the mystical, and obviously similar, experiences of those of other faiths could well constitute genuine connection with the divine, or some aspect of the divine. After all, the sorts of instructions which map the mystical path are so similar in so many different faiths that it is difficult, although not impossible, to argue that those paths are all to somewhere different. Once one accepts this then yet again theology seems to be placed in abeyance. Although of course many mystics criticize an antinomian strategy, and often insist on a strict application of religious law and custom, if it is the case that mystical experience is rather similar across religions, then the precise rules of theology and ritual do rather shrink into the background. As with the Enlightenment religion of reason we seem to be coming to a religion without a theology, a religion purified of its localized and specific accretions.

How important is theology in a description of God? If it is important, then given that different religions have different theologies, they might be taken to be referring to different notions of God. Indeed, given that even within a religion there are often entirely divergent theologies in operation, these might be taken to be referring to different notions of God also. This is linked with a logical point about reference, about what is necessary for reference to be successful. For example, I have three daughters, and two are at the moment away at university, while one still lives in my house. Someone might ask me while I am at work who is now at home, and I might say ‘my daughter’, meaning my youngest daughter who still lives at home. Yet perhaps, unbeknown to me, one of the older daughters has returned home, while the youngest one is out of the house, and so what I say is literally true even though the person I mean to refer to is not in fact the person to whom I actually refer on this occasion. My wife might know precisely which daughter is in the house, and when she answers the same question she also says ‘my daughter’, and what she says is also true, and not only true but also in line with the person she means. Are we referring to the same person? In a sense we are, since we both assert that our daughter is in the house, and we even both express true propositions. But it is far from clear that in my case I really do refer to my daughter, since the daughter I mean is not the daughter who appears in the true proposition.

Would we say that when my wife and I refer to ‘my daughter’ in this case, we are referring to the same person? I intend to pick out a different individual than the individual whom I do in fact pick out, but the fact that I have a different intention does not mean that I am wrong in thinking that I have referred to ‘my daughter’. As readers of the following essays will see, there are a variety of ways of describing this and similar situations, some of which will allow that I have referred to ‘my daughter’, and some which will deny this. An approach to meaning which might be helpful is that which is most frequently associated with the views of the later Wittgenstein, the approach that would argue for the looseness of our language on the question of reference. On this view it is hardly surprising that there are situations in which it is difficult to say whether an attempt to refer succeeds since what we are doing when we talk about reference is a number of different things, some of which contrast with each other. There are ways of referring where it is not important that one picks out precisely who one intends to pick out, since a generic description will do. In such cases what is important in reference is not which precise daughter is picked out, provided that it is a daughter. If one sees language as a system of loosely connected language games then reference itself will cross some of these language games and will be variously describable as succeeding, or otherwise. It would not then be surprising if there seems to be no clear answer in all such cases as to whether the reference succeeds, since it would be a mistake to look for an account of reference which applies to all language games.

This brings out some of the problems in asking whether the name ‘God’ refers to the same being in the three Abrahamic religions. Does ‘God’ have the same function in all the religions, is it being used in the same way? Talking about reference seems to be a way of leaving this question behind, since talking about reference is very different from talking about sense, about the connotations which words have. Clearly the sense or meaning of ‘God’ in the different religions is distinct and peculiar to each religion (although doubtless there are similarities as well as dissimilarities, and even perhaps a common core of meaning). This way of talking about God is certainly there in what we have called rational religion, and many forms of mysticism. At the kernel of religion is a particular being, and that being gives each religion its transcendental significance. It is rather like the way in which one individual may change her clothes and seem different on different occasions, but beneath all the clothes she is the same person, and when we speak of her as being the same person despite her different outfits, we are speaking of the person who is the bearer of the clothes, as opposed to the clothed person. Reference is to the essence, to the basis of fact on which different accounts of meaning cling.

What is interesting about this sort of view is that it does not really matter that different people do not realise that one thing is being named by different descriptions. In such cases sense varies while reference remains constant. The famous example is that of Frege in pointing out that Venus may be referred to variously as the morning star and/or the evening star. We might think of God in this way, as being the essence of the different faiths, and not just the Abrahamic faiths, while at the same time being variously described. Within Islamic philosophy there is a tradition of seeing the deity in this way, something particularly easy to do given the historical development of Islam out of Judaism and Christianity. The latter two religions represent what at their time was the divine message, a message which has been extended and finalized by Islam. Jews and Christians were, and indeed still are, right to think that many of their prophets were prophets, and correct in thinking that the messages of those prophets came from the same source as the final message of the Prophet Muhammad. What makes the final message final is not that it comes from God, since all the messages come from God, but that it is God's final message. Jews and Christians who do not accept that message as final are not thereby cut off from any genuine contact with God, they keep this through their acceptance of his earlier messages, but their contact is necessarily limited by the rather antiquated ideas of God which they refuse to exchange for more efficient products.

Now, this is just one view of one religion about other religions. What cannot be emphasized enough is that there is nothing to be said for presenting ‘the Islamic view’ of other religions, as though there exists one view which is shared by all Muslims. All religions contain a variety of interpretations of that religion, and trying to work out what the right view is should not detain us. Working out the orthodox position in each religion is in itself a minefield, and even if we skirt that minefield without coming to harm, it is not at all clear that an unorthodox belief is not nonetheless a belief which can be classified as falling under the religion. We not only have problems in knowing what is involved in referring to God, we also have problems in knowing what is involved in referring to a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim, and so on. When philosophers talk about religion they tend to simplify to an extent which would make a theologian weep.²

One might think that any variety of view of whether the same God is referred to in the three religions is irrelevant in any case. After all, when it comes to reference it might be argued that it does not matter what people think they are referring to, what matters is what they in fact refer to. If in fact they are referring to the same person, then whatever their views on this are they are not relevant to the question of the object of the reference. If the person known to me as Amy is always, in my experience, dressed in jeans, and the person known to you as Mary is always dressed in a frock, and that person's real name is Jill, then when I talk about Amy and you talk about Mary we are really talking of the same person, even if we do not recognize her in the clothes with which we are unfamiliar. We may not be able to grasp that Amy and Mary are the same person even when she shows us that she is, because we are so used to seeing her in a particular way. Whose problem is this? It is not Jill's problem, it is our problem, and shows why our views of who she is are not decisive, or even perhaps relevant.

As well as examining some of the problems of referring to God across the three religions, we should also look at the problems of referring to him within one of the religions. This is because it is far from obvious that all co-religionists share the same idea of God when they refer to him. Many believers, for example, have in mind a highly anthropomorphic concept of the deity, perhaps someone like a king sitting on a throne, or a man with a long white beard. Much of the language in the three religions encourages this idea, and it is hardly surprising that many believers accept the language at face value (a useful phrase in this context) and interpret God as rather like us. Other believers take different attitudes, and insist on God as a gender-free individual, or take the injunctions within Judaism and Islam against idolatry to mean that he cannot be described in any way like us. So the language about God is sufficiently flexible to encompass both sorts of views, and many permutations along the way. This is hardly surprising, and even those philosophers like Maimonides and ibn Rushd (Averroes) who take a firmly hostile attitude to anthropomorphism recognize the point of anthropomorphic language. It is used, they argue, to explain to everyone in the community, including those rather weak intellectually, what the nature of basic truths about reality is.

Many people find it difficult to realise that the point of prayer is not that a particular individual listens to the prayer and considers responding directly to it. God cannot literally listen to prayer, since he has nothing to listen with, being without physical organs, yet for many believers such a conception of God would make the institution of prayer vacuous. They expect when they pray that their prayers are heard, or at the very least could be heard, and their actions observed and noted for eschatological purposes. But according to Maimonides and ibn Rushd this could not literally be the case. God is not a person like us who could listen to what we say and see what we do. Our scriptures do sometimes describe him in this way, though, because those texts are designed to convey the truth to those who find it impossible to accept in its pure form. They require it to be dressed up in imaginative language.

Does this mean that the ordinary believer accepts something which is literally false? It is literally false that God is a person rather like us, but it is not false that he is able to find out what we get up to, and the point of the imaginative language of scripture is to get this message over to the community at large. Most people are better able to think of God imaginatively, only a few intellectuals can consider him entirely rationally, and the interesting question which then arises is whether the imaginative route to God and the rational or philosophical route to God are both routes to the same person. Certainly the ways in which ibn Rushd and Maimonides speak of these different routes implies that they are routes to the same destination, to the same person. But what we should notice about their accounts is that the personhood of God drops out of the description of the way things really are. For both of them talking about God is really equivalent to talking about the world. They defend the continuing significance of religion in terms of explaining to the community at large where its duties and obligations lie, while at the same time giving some imaginative information about the real nature of things. They defend the religious acceptability of what they argue on the basis of the injunctions against idolatry in both Islam and Judaism. The Talmud goes so far as to claim that anyone who denies idolatry is to be counted as a Jew (Megillah 13a), and Islam is not exactly reticent in criticizing shirk or idolatry, which is generally defined in terms of identifying God with finite properties.

Their critics are no less hostile to idolatry than are ibn Rushd or Maimonides, of course, but they claim that one can avoid idolatry and yet hold onto much traditional religious language as ordinarily understood. Critics of philosophy such as al-Ghazali, for example, claim with some justification that whatever else may be said about the arguments of the philosophers, they do not leave a significant role for God in the universe. The term ‘God’ seems to be used to describe a way in which events unfold, and what is behind their unfolding in that way is implicit in the nature of the events themselves. According to al-Ghazali, there is no point in using a term like ‘God’ unless that term is taken to refer to some being, as opposed to some general and rational arrangement of nature. According to Maimonides and ibn Rushd, once you use a term like ‘God’ to refer to an individual in the same sort of way that our normal referring terms refer to individuals, one is in danger of associating God with us, of committing idolatry. So the question of whether those of different religions are referring to the same God would be like the question of whether those within the same religion are referring to the same God, and would depend on how far they were able to put idolatry aside and link what they call ‘God’ with the rational organization of nature and the way we should act.

Since only the philosophers manage to understand the way things really are, on this view, it looks like most people are stuck with inaccurate and confused views of God, and certainly views which cannot be of the same person, since each person will have different ways of thinking about him. Yet these different ways of thinking are not necessarily equivalent to ways of thinking about a different being, since they could just be different ways of going about the same activity, referring to the same being. There is a tendency to think that these different ways of describing God may relate to the same being if there is something essential that the different descriptions have in common. For example, the Jewish feminist who thinks of God as a She and the Christian fundamentalist who adopts a literal understanding of the language of the New Testament may have very different ways of thinking about God, but in so far as they both, perhaps, regard God as the creator of the world, they might be thought to share some essential feature of a referring expression which they could then be taken to apply to the same being. It would often be difficult to find this essential attribute which different groups accept they share, though, and again we return to the fact that the actual diversity of beliefs even within a religion surpasses the brief and clear-cut distinctions which philosophers make when outlining what are taken to be the basic beliefs of the faith.

But surely, it will be argued, there are particular ideas and principles which are essential to the different religions, so that one could not allow that anyone is a member of a religious group unless they adhered to those basic and axiomatic principles. What those within a religion differ on are not the main principles, but the more superficial aspects of faith, and it might even be argued that the three Abrahamic religions themselves all agree on certain points. This is a dec...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• CURZON JEWISH PHILOSOPHY SERIES
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Source and Destination of Thought
• 3 William Alston on Referring to God
• 4 Identifying God in Experience: On Strawson, Sounds and God's Space
• 5 The God of Abraham, Saadia and Aquinas
• 6 Judaic Perspectives on Petitionary Prayer
• 7 Maimonides and Calvin on Divine Accommodation
• Bibliography
• Index