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The Meaning of ‘God’—I

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Michael Durrant
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Extract

In this paper I shall be examining the following claims:

that ‘God’ has no meaning, in the sense of ‘sense’; that it is a proper name analogous to a Russellian proper name in that it has reference only. More crudely, that we cannot describe God in any way but only name Him and refer to Him by name;

that ‘God’ has no meaning, in the sense of ‘sense’ in that the nature of God is fundamentally inexpressible. That God is, as some have said, ‘wholly other’ or even ‘the wholly other’.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 31 , March 1992 , pp. 71 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1992

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References

1 I am not here implicitly introducing the thesis that proper names are ‘rigid designators’. The ‘rigid designator’ thesis, as I understand it, does not necessarily deny that proper names have a sense but holds that they have no definite sense in any actual system of discourse representing any actual world. Aristotle, for example, will only possess in all possible worlds such properties as are essential to his being Aristotle. On other grounds I should wish to reject the ‘rigid designator’ theory of names and the ‘causal’ theory of reference but this is not the place to pursue the matter. I present some implicit criticisms in my discussion of Soskice (see also Durrant 1989).

2 It is clear from Professor Geach' s reply to this paper that we are agreed that ‘God’ is grammatically a common noun.

3 Here, on points of substance, Geach and I are in agreement.

4 Geach and I are in agreement concerning the restricted range of answers to the Aristotelian ‘τίστιν;’ question—St Thomas’ ‘quid sit?’ question—and we do not take it for granted that ‘this medieval stuff’ has long since been shown worthless by the labours of John Locke. I further concur with Geach that ‘if someone should compare our present knowledge of God to Lockyer' s knowledge of helium, he would not be saying something obviously absurd, nor yet refuting himself in every affirmation he made about God’. I may consistently so concur for I am holding that we may affirm something truly of God, that we may truly describe God, even though we may not know concerning God quid sit.

* See additional note at the conclusion of this paper (page 84).

5 Wittgenstein 1958: 69; 1953:1, para. 43. See also: ‘You might say … of a word, “Its meaning is its purpose”.’ (Wittgenstein 1975: 59)

6 Geach finds the presentation of the alleged difference between the God of Philosophy and the God of the Christian believer puzzling, and even more importantly he finds it very odd when an Anselmian God is contrasted with the God of the Christian believer. I think it fair to point out that I do not actually use the term ‘Christian believer’. The contrast introduced is that introduced by Morris and I am not claiming that ‘those who think of God as a ceaselessly changing, perfectly responsive temporal agent continually interacting with created temporal beings’ are the true Christian believers. I apologise if I have given this impression. Further, I am not holding that an ‘Anselmian’ God is to be contrasted with the God of the Christian believer; I am simply reflecting a contrast which has been drawn. As Morris expresses the matter: ‘Those who draw their sustenance from the pages of scripture and the day to day realities of religious experience are for their part apt to contrast starkly the God of faith with the God of reason …’. Geach presents an argument for saying that no such contrast exists for St Anselm, but from the fact that no such contrast exists for St Anselm it does not follow that no such contrast has been drawn. Geach would hold, I surmise, that to draw such a contrast is misguided. In fairness to him I cannot pursue this matter further here; I must simply note the point.

7 In fact it is not always possible to draw such a clear cut divide but that there is a divide seems prima facie clear.

8 Geach finds himself unable to make the ‘thought experiment’ outlined by Morris. The parity he makes between the mathematical example and Morris' thought experiment, I understand, is simply the parity of absurdity. In the light of private correspondence I would now concur with Geach' s bafflement concerning the idea of discovering or finding out that a being knowledgeable but not omniscient, etc., is in point of fact someone who created and sustains the world, for, as Geach has pointed out to me, the question arises: ‘Finding out how?’—‘By some empirical observation?’ or ‘Because the being himself revealed it?’ If the latter the problem clearly arises that such a being might be mistaken. To this one might conjecture that Morris would reply that one can imagine that a knowledgeable but less than omniscient being created and sustains the world; the idea of a less than omniscient being, i.e. a limited being, creating and sustaining the world is not an impossible one. To this I think it would be fair to say that Geach would reply that no being other than an omniscient one could be the creator and sustainer of the world, for if X is less than omniscient then X itself is a created being. Clearly however the matter cannot be further pursued here and it remains an open question as to whether Morris would so reply.

9 In the last section of his paper Geach raises the serious question of whether worship is in fact being paid to the right God. I concur with him that the question whether worship is in fact being paid to the right God cannot be settled by the argument that since there is only one God no λατρεία can ‘fail to reach the right address’. He cites several examples in which this total misdirection of λατρεία is ‘practically certain’. From such examples we may glean at least a set of features which are sufficient for any F not being God and necessary for any F being God. Having gleaned this list, however, I think we are still faced with the problem of at least two seemingly incompatible descriptive meanings or uses for ‘God’, since from the set of features gleaned we discover that some members of the set are compatible with both the conception of ‘God’ as impassible, immutable, atemporal and metaphysically simple and the conception of ‘God’ as a ceaselessly changing, perfectly responsive temporal agent continually interacting with his creatures, and other members of the set (at least one) are compatible with only one of the conceptions. From private correspondence I understand that for Geach there is no problem of accommodating the conception of ‘God’ as ‘a ceaselessly changing, perfectly responsive temporal agent, etc.’; he would simply reject this idea as false. He would hold that the two views, the two conceptions, the two descriptive meanings of which I have spoken are incompatible and that one must choose (cf. his last paragraph).

10 I am grateful to the Editor for permission to include in the revised version of this paper some initial responses to some points Professor Geach has raised.