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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
The one clear insight which can be gleaned from the discussions of religious language by both theologians and philosophers is that its reference is to the transcendent. This is almost axiomatic in Philosophy of Religion nowadays, and we feel that the remarks of Milton's archangel to the first man are most appropriate when he insists that all the conceptions we have of God or of the spiritual world are but inadequate symbols. Though this view has a long history, it does not seem to have been at all general in antiquity. It may be said to have begun with Plato and then to have continued through later generations in Neo-Platonism till it mingled with the Christian tradition. We can see how easily such traditions were fused when we look at the fusion of Platonism and Judaism in Philo of Alexandria. This is how he expounds the Exodus passage where Moses is allowed to see the back, but not the face, of God:
Everything which is subsequent to God the virtuous man may apprehend: God alone is inapprehensible. That is to say, God is not apprehensible by direct frontal approach—for such approach would imply God's being disclosed such as He is: but He is apprehensible through the Powers which are consequent upon His being; for those Powers do not present His being, nature, essence but only His existence from the resultant effects.
Page 89 note 1 Milton, , Paradise Lost, Bk. v, 11. 563–76.Google Scholar
Page 89 note 2 Vide Edwyn Bevan, Symbolism and Belief.
Page 89 note 3 De Posteritate Caini (Philonis Alexandrini Opera, ed. Cohn, and Wendland, , vol. 2, p. 37).Google Scholar
Page 91 note 1 E. Bevan, op. cit. p. 15 (Fontana edition).
Page 91 note 2 Tillich, P., Systematic Theology (Nisbet), vol. 1, pp. 264–8.Google Scholar
Page 91 note 3 Weigel, G., ‘Myth, Symbol and Analogy’, Religion and Culture (ed. Leibrecht, ), p. 124.Google Scholar
Page 92 note 1 Systematic Theology (Nisbet), vol. 2, p. 177.Google Scholar
Page 92 note 2 Whately, R., Elements of Rhetoric (1846 edition), p. 280.Google Scholar
Page 93 note 1 Cf. I. T. Ramsey, Models and Mysteries, where he distinguishes between models as copy pictures (‘picturing models’) and models as standing somewhere between a picture and a formula, which deal in hints rather than in identities (‘disclosure models’).
Richards, I. A., Philosophy of Rhetoric, p. 93.Google Scholar