Monday, March 24, 2014

Proper God-talk

J.I. Packer outlines the traditional reformed position of how one should view theological language concerning God:

“Christians regard God as free from the limits that bind creatures like ourselves, who bear God's image while not existing on his level, and Christian language, following biblical precedent, shakes free from ordinary limits in a way that reflects this fact...  Christian speech verbalizes the apprehended mystery of God by using a distinctive non-representational ‘picture-language’... The doctrine of analogy is the time-harboured account, going back to Aquinas, of how ordinary language is used to speak intelligibly of a God who is partly like us (because we bear his image) and partly unlike us (because he is the infinite Creator while we are finite creatures).” (The J.I. Packer Collection, 104)

Is Christian speech concerning God really non-representational picture-language?

The bible says “God is love,” in 1 John 4:8.  Does our finite language and categories (like “love”) accurately represent God?  Only if we take it analogically or as picture-language says Packer.  Our language is a model of the true divine quality, not a direct representation of it.  Does it follow that the bible is a non-representational model?  For Packer and the traditional stream of classic and reformed theology, yes.

I want to push back.  What is an analogy?  What is a model?  Jesus says, “I am the vine you are the branches.”  How am I “a branch” Jesus?  Am I a branch because I have chloroplast like every other plant?  Am I a branch because most branches are brown and my skin is brown?  The answer of course is that I am a branch because of the relational matrix branches find themselves within in reference to the vine and the fruit.  I am a branch because fruit depends on me and I depend on the vine.  Though many qualities are different (between me and branches), at least one is the same.  This is how analogies work.  Something is like another because there is one or more shared qualities.

So back to Packer.  Reducing God-talk to non-representational analogies does not get him where I think he wants to land.  He wants to land in a linguistic world where direct representation concerning God is disallowed.  This is what analogies and picture-language do for him.  And so for him and many others, this secures God's infinite transcendence.  But even an analogy requires at least one matching quality for it to function!  It requires representation at its core, like every fragment of language.  If this is right, there is actually no such thing as “non-representational analogies.”

My second worry is theological, not just linguistic.  Evangelicals believe the bible is the word of God.  It is a collection of words in human language that represent God accurately.  Packer believes this, but he (and the tradition of the reformers) would slightly qualify this.  It is a collection of words in human language that model/picture/analogize God accurately.  Why this qualification?  Because they say it is presumptuous and impious to suppose that limited and finite human language can truly and definitively represent an infinite God.  But the problem for this position, it seems to me, is that God chose human language be the means for how we are to understand him.  It falls in the same way the position which says God becoming human is too presumptuous and impious.  The position which says finite human existence is too limiting for an infinite God.  But of course, God can choose (and freely did choose!) to become man for us and for us to understand Him climatically in this limited capacity.  In the same way, God chose human language to be his definitive word to us.   Maybe the impiety is actually qualifying down God's self revelation so it squares better with our (perhaps semi-platonic) views about God's transcendence.  Perhaps its presumptuous to suppose that God stooping to our linguistic level only gives us “the word of God” with an asterisk.

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