The Use of Analogy in Religious Language

Religious language has been rejected by many philosophers as meaningless, due to an emphasis on the importance of language being cognitive, or factually significant, and supported by empirical evidence.
However, theologians have maintained that is possible to communicate meaningfully about God through the use of analogy.

An analogy is a comparison between one thing and another, and is not used in a literal sense, but for explanatory purposes. Thomas Aquinas proposed that it is possible to use an analogy to talk about God, as long as we recognise that the divinity has a distinctive quality of reality to humanity, because humankind was created by God in the imago Dei (i.e. in the image of God). Therefore, although human language and understanding of God is limited due to the epistemic distance between humans and God, we can still draw meaningful connections between creature and Creator. Aquinas had previously rejected other manners of talking about God as they were inadequate.

• First he rejects univocal language, which means that language is used in a spatio-temporal context and does not differ in the case of God at all.
  For example, to say "God is good" in the same way that "John is good".
  This is a fallacy because the language then anthropomorphises God and limits him to human understanding and language, when in fact God is a being transcendent of the realms of human understanding. 
• Secondly he rejects equivocal language, which means that language is used in a completely different sense to talk about God than ordinary objects of the world and that language has different meanings in different contexts.
  For example, "That bird is a crane" uses 'crane' in a different sense to "The crane lifted the skip".
  It is vital that you have the right context in order to understand the meaning of a statement, Ferdinand de Saussure would argue that we need the same sign for an object in order to communicate meaningfully. Therefore, it is not possible to speak of God in these terms because we do not understand God's nature and cannot speak about something beyond our experience.

For Aquinas, the correct way to talk about God is in analogical terms, whilst always remembering that this is a limited way to speak about God. In the Bible, God is often personified and seen to have behaviour like humans. 

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 

- Genesis 3:8

This demonstrates the likeness of humans to God because God is pictured as walking through the garden of Eden just as Adam or Eve would have. In addition there are other qualities that humanity shares with God, such as knowledge and kindness: 

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him. 

- James 1:5

There are two ways in which we can use analogy to discuss God and they are analogies of attribution and analogies of proportion. An analogy of attribution is used to attribute qualities that are valued by humans to God. We are able to do this because God is the creator of the universe, and therefore all valuable traits in humanity are connected to the valuable traits of God. For example, we believe that mercy, power and love are admirable, so we say that God is merciful, powerful and loving. However, when using analogies of attribution it is recognised that although these qualities are not a magnified version of those possessed by humanity, but that they are different to the human qualities. Ludwig Feuerbach would argue that humans take all the best qualities of humanity and project them onto an external being who they feel is worthy of their praise and devotion, when in fact the analogy of attribution is really only a reflection of the pleasant side of humanity.

The analogy of proportion differs to attribution, because it recognises the quantitative difference between humans and God. In Aquinas' First Way of the Cosmological argument, he argues that all living things in the world have potential (i.e. they could be the 100% greatest) whereas God is pure actuality and does not have potential (i.e. he is that than which nothing greater can be conceived, he is 100% of everything that it is to be God). Therefore, in an analogy of proportion it is possible to say that whatever God is, for example, loving or powerful, he is infinitely so because he fulfills everything that it is to be God. Aquinas uses the biblical example of God speaking to Moses:

"I am who I am" (Exodus 3:14)

Which he interpreted that God perfectly fulfills his own nature. An issue to be raised here is whether we can really know God's nature in order to discuss him, because God is a transcendent reality beyond the realm of ordinary experience and therefore, we cannot have sufficient knowledge of God to say what he is like.