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Is Language About God Fraudulent?1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Frederick Ferré
Affiliation:
Mount Holyoke, Mass.

Extract

The question stated in the title of this paper may seem absurd to many who are unacquainted with the concerns of contemporary philosophy. ‘Is language about God fraudulent?’ How strange (they may say) that anyone should be silly enough to raise the question! Because, therefore, the seriousness of the issue and the genuineness of its challenge may not be immediately apparent to everyone, it will not be amiss to sample some of the ways in which innocent-seeming language is liable to mislead. The failure of philosophers to make such preliminary points—which to them are platitudes too familiar to require repetition—may account for the sense of unreality which many non-philosophers find in modern critiques.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1959

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References

page 343 note 1 ‘Theological language’ is here taken in its broadest sense, as ‘theo-logy’ (wordsabout- God), whether in academic or worshipful contexts.

page 347 note 1 London: Watts, 1958.

page 350 note 1 Flew's, A. G. N. ‘Theology and Falsification’, University, 1950Google Scholar.

page 352 note 1 Stevenson's, G. L.Persuasive Definitions’, Mind, Vol. 47, 1937Google Scholar.

page 358 note 1 To continue this line of thought would involve a lengthy consideration of metaphysical issues into which we cannot go here.