Paul Holmer - Language and Theology

8/4/2019 Paul Holmer - Language and Theology

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HARVARD THEOLOGICALREVIEWVOLUME 58 JULY 1965 NUMBER 3

LANGUAGE AND THEOLOGYSOME RITICALOTES

PAULL. HOLMERYALEUNIVERSITY

THEREhas been much talk in religiouscircles about the conditionof theology. It is frequentlychargedthat its languageis no longerviable; and thus, if for no other reason, the theologianmust seeka more contemporary idiom. Furthermore, with the need ex-pressed over and over again for new translations of everythingold, we seem to reinforce our claim that all of theology must becontinually re-translatedtoo. But words are one thing and con-cepts perhaps another. With the great enthusiasm today for acertain kind of linguistic study on the part of students of theBible and with what looks like a strong growing interest inlinguistic philosophy, there are bound to be a few confusionsgenerated. These notes are intended to head them off.

IMost languages, like French, German, and English, seem totheir users to be relatively stable. Very few of us ever mark anygreat changes in the language which is native to us. Of course,the lexical stock grows a bit, but we are never very clear whethera word is new to the languageor new to us; and it does not makemuch difference anyway if our aim is only to learn the word.Furthermore,we have been taught all kinds of rules of grammar,and these scarcely change. Even if we have not been taughtrules explicitly and clearly, as once was the case with highly

educated people, we have certainly surmised them. The morewe write and the more we talk, the more we conform to certainstandards. If we do not, we use language to little avail. Andthere is a kind of earthy wisdom, whatever else it might be tothe philologist and professional students of language, in gettingrulesclarifiedforourselvesand ourheirs.


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242 HARVARDTHEOLOGICAL EVIEWBut, this stability of vocabulary and grammar is of course

somewhatmisleading. While we trade on a vocabularyand whatseems like a manageable number of habits and words, we cer-tainly also see that educationgoes on. And old teachers speak toyoung children and vice-versa, and understandinggoes on easilyand well. Therefore, our working language, the one that is ourgreatest tool for so many purposes, bridges the generationswhichlive and usually without noticeable strain. In fact, changes inpopular morality are more obvious, if the folk-lore about thesematters can be believed, and are more difficult for the oldergeneration to comprehend,than patterns of speech. Despite ourconvictions about the perpetuity of language, though, it doeschange and that very rapidly. One does not have to be an his-torianof languageto discoverchanges.For, which of us has not read the Bible in the language ofJames I of England and discovered to our surprisehow differentit is? Of course, it may be the other way around. Maybe wehave been taught our religion in King James' English and everyother translation since seems less sonorous, rich and deep. Buteither way, there are big differences. Shakespeare'splays, spokenin the manner of the Elizabethans, would certainly be unintel-ligible to most of us in this day. It is fortunate that the writtenlanguage is still sufficiently recognizable to give us relativelyquick access. But if we push back to Chaucer'stexts, let alonethe pronunciationof his day, we are in the presenceof somethingalmost as strange as a foreign tongue. Yet, there are only a fewmore generations involved. In any case, most of the Europeanlanguageshave changed so drastically that the twentieth centuryreader can not understandthe pages of a man who antedateshimby twenty generations.However,these changesare almost imperceptibleas they occur.John Adams' mother must have believed that her son was learn-ing the same fine English she had learned in her infancy. So toowith most motherssince. And yet the language changed, certainlymore rapidly than popular morals, more slowly than much oflearning (at least until relatively recently), quickly comparedtobiological traits, and sluggishly compared to political fortunes.Oddly perhaps, the thought of Plato, Aristotle, of the Old Testa-


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LANGUAGEAND THEOLOGY 243ment and the New, has survived these losses and gains of lan-guage remarkably well; and this suggests, too, that some things,maybe convictions and beliefs, do not change as often and asradically as does the language. But our point here is only tostress that thoughit appearsthat languageis a repetitionof whatone has been taught, this plainly is not the case. The change isinexorableand also plain.Thus far we can say with confidence that the problem ofreligious language does not arise because of this kind of change.Though the language might add new words while old ones dieaway, thoughsounds will vary greatly and the spellings by whichwe record them even more, still no particulardifficultyarises atthese junctures. Otto Jespersentells us that the English languagegrew very remarkably when missionaries brought all kinds ofLatin expressions into Old English. These were words appro-priate to the Christian church and little else, such as 'church','angel', 'devil', 'priest', 'mass', 'bishop'and many others.' On theotherhand, it is a well-knowncharacteristicthat those who intro-duce something foreign also might give the new phenomenonanative name of a related object. Thus the Germanicpeoples, incontrast to those in the English speech-communities,did not soclearly add words as they did adapt those they already had.Thus, in adopting Christianity,they kept heathen religioustermsfor 'god', 'heaven', 'hell' and 'devil'. And the pagan term 'Easter'is used in English and German whereas the Dutch and theDanes adopted the Hebrew-Greek-Latin term 'pascha' (Danish'paaske').2Our point is only to say that though languages change, bothvocabularyand grammar,plus, of course, the pronunciation,stillmen do manage to say the same things through the centuries.So, the exact locus of the so-calledproblemthat theologianstodaytalk about so freely as the problem of a religious language doesnot arise because of these kinds of changes. When theologiansspeak of a vocabulary failing them, of needing new ways to statemeanings, this sounds like a radical remarkabout language; but

SThe Growth and Structure of the English Language (Oxford, 1954), 41ff.2The above illustrations are taken from Leonard Bloomfield's chapter "CulturalBorrowing" in Language (London, 1935), esp. 455. In turn, the author givesnumerous references for his examples, cf., 'Notes', p. 522.


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244 HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEWin one sense of a "changinglanguage," we can say confidentlythat all languages change in a variety of ways. Furthermore,these changes do not entail major loss or major gain in sayingwhat we have to say; or putting it the otherway around,it seemsthat we can say the same things in modern English as we couldin Old English, just as we can say things in French as well asGerman. Having somethingto say is still moreof a problemthanthere being insufficientwords or wordswhich are too differentall this without binding ourselves to any strange 'mentalism'ornotions of 'silent language' or even to behavioristic theories oflanguage.

IIThe theological issues, and probablysome related philosophicalquestions today, are usually said to inhere in another kind ofshift. It is alleged that many philosophical and religious words

have either lost or changed their meanings. Because of this fact,it is contended, over and over, that communication s no longerpossible. Perhaps this is to say, as a current mild and gentleProtestant piety suggests, there is no longer any community.Thus, it is alleged that the language of the Christianchurch, itsprayers, creeds, Scripturesand formalizedteachings, are almostunintelligibleto men of the twentieth century because there areno longer any sharedmeanings.For the moment, we can let these charges rest. The propor-tions of it are what we are intent upon right now. For the allega-tion is that the issue is not simply one language group versusanother, for example, early Latins versus English-speakingcon-temporaries; nor is it either a question of users of Greek versususers of German. Instead we are told that "modernmen," ap-

parentlywithout regardof which languagethey speak, are simplyunable to comprehend the language of the church, again nomatter what its vernacular. So, if this allegationis at all sensible,the issues of vocabulary and grammar,syntax and phonetics, towhich we earlier referred,are plainly not the most relevant mat-ters for consideration. For whetherthe vocabularyis old or new,the grammar the same or different, is seemingly irrelevant. The


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LANGUAGEAND THEOLOGY 245issue is the meaning; and the meaning is apparentlymore like anidea than a sound, a thought than a rule, and a concept than aphysical thing.Thus, the pertinence of the plea for revising the theologicallanguage! For it seems that language must 'express' something- and the notion of 'expression'is so easy that it is positivelytrite to most of us. Of course, language expresses all kinds ofthings, we say, and best of all, it expresses thoughts and ideas,mental acts andconcepts; and it is in virtue of these that language'means'. To ask what a piece of language means is a sign ofearnestness; and to say that one does not know what somelanguage means, is a sign that something is seriously wrong.The diatribe against the language of the church today is,therefore, extremely serious. I am not here thinking simply ofthose clever philosophic fellows who say: "Metaphysics is mean-ingless; theology is metaphysics; therefore theology is meaning-less." Nor am I particularly concerned here with people whopropose criteria of meaning, and then flail the ways of speakingto separate grains of meaning from the chaff of the meaningless.These moves go on and have their special attractions and appro-priate pitfalls. The chargeabout the languageof the church,andfrom erstwhile sympathizersat that, is that it is simply pointlessas it stands. Apparently its vocabulary is orderly and its gram-mar respectable and though it is in either the King's English ornear-slang,almost as you wish, still it does not communicatebe-cause it doesnot meananything.What does this chargein its turnmean? I submit that this doesnot have to do with linguistic meaningsat all. Therefore, it onlysustains a confusion to ask for a revision of language, as if thiswere the seat of the difficulties. What is at stake is another net-work or scheme, not languagebut actually anotherconvention orview. This is subtle and abstract, somewhat ambiguous andperhapsalso more a matterof pseudo-grammatical nd philosoph-ical doctrine than literary. For the difficulties,if such there be,are described as if men hear the words but do not understandwhat they are about, they read the words but do not comprehendanything appropriate. Therefore, the welfare of religion in ourday, not least Judaism and Christianity, is recounted as though


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246 HARVARDTHEOLOGICAL EVIEWliteracy and readability, attending and hearkeningto the words,is impossible. However, this stratagem of our theologians hasconfused rather than straightened the circumstances. For itsounds as though words were at stake when it is really concepts.The difficultyin communicatingwith 'modern man' (which isa highly regardedcircumlocution n religious circles) lies not inthe language but in the scheme of concepts which ordinarylanguage is supposed to represent. The idiom on this issue is tothe effect that words, and especially big religious words, aresymbols. Supposedly,then, words, spoken or written, are deemedto be audible or visible representativesof something that is in-audible and invisible, namely, thoughts, or ideas, what we willcall simply meanings. Because words 'symbolize'somethingnon-linguistic,words also have meanings.There is one glaringmistake in this, and it seems to have alsopermeatedmuch of the current theological literature oriented tolanguage as symbolic. For there is a defensible use of the word'symbol' to describe the formulating and standardizingof par-ticular visible marks on paper to represent particular forms ofspeech. Therefore, writing a language is largely a matter ofsymbolizing a language. And one can assert rather blandly thatthe writing is not the language itself but a way of recordingthelanguage by visible signs. The upshot is then the symbol. Butto go furtherby insisting that the spoken sound is also a symbolis a mistake. Here the sound is not on all fours with the markson the paper. Of course, there is a sense in which one distin-guishes between the sounds, too, and what one has to say. Itwould be absurd, admittedly, to have someone say that he wastrying "to say" the sounds or the phonemes, when, in fact, hewas using the sounds to say whatever he had to say. But thesounds are not symbols of the meanings in the way marks onpapersymbolizewords.We need to be reminded of this by concrete examples. Peopledo use language widely without writing it down, and it does notsuffer any losses because of that. On the other hand, puttinglanguage into symbols, into marks on paper, has all kinds ofadvantages which one need not recount here. But the languagecan well be the same no matterwhat system of symbols one uses


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LANGUAGEAND THEOLOGY 247to record it. If one admits this much, then there seems littlepoint to saying about writing anything more than that it extendsthe powers of language over periods of time and over distances.But language is here the thing and it can be symbolized in avariety of ways. Does it follow from this that language itself isalways and invariably symbolic? Here our point is simply thata very plausible dogmahas taken over. That dogmacauses us tothink that meanings are kinds of events, objects, persons orthings, lying behind languageand for which languageis supposedto stand.Surely, it is not true that all speech is also symbolic. Some-times the theologiansseem to be saying just that. Then one hasthe anomaly on one's hands of arguing that whether spoken orwritten, language 'qua' language is representative of somethingnon-linguistic, preferablywhat is called a thought, a meaning,oran idea. The point here is not to deny anything so obvious asthe fact that language has meaning but only to ask whether weare sure that it is always meaning first, then speech and/orwritten words thereafter. We have already said that writingsymbolizes the language,but does it follow that the spoken wordsare also symbolizations?The indubitable successes we have in translating from onelanguage to another probably sustain our convictions. For if wesay something in French, English and German,we are stronglyinclined to believe that the "something" s no one of these, thatit is a non-linguistic "something,"only expressedin the respectivelanguages. Thus an inquiry into the languageused seems almosttrivial, especially if one is inclined to think that the propositions,concepts or facts for which the words stand, be they French,Eng-lish or German,are the importantmatter. Thus words, whetherspoken or written, seem to be substitutes for, expressions of,vehicles respecting, the nonphysical stuff which is being trans-ferred or communicated along with the words. Both popularbeliefs and sophisticated reflection coalesce to the effect thatwords are not sufficientin themselves to account for the obviousand normaleffects of speech amongus. The powerfulstimulationeffected by language is deemed inadequate unless the words aresymbols, almost manifestations or at least representative, of the


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248 HARVARDTHEOLOGICAL EVIEWmore spiritual stuff that seemingly guarantees, or even is, ourmeanings.

IIIBut our inquiry might best be served by seeing how we getinto such a predicamentin theology. One example may suffice.It is said that the word 'God' has no meaning for modern men,that it is dead, irrelevant,and thereforequite pointless to repeat.3

Though it is still in the active vocabulary of most people andthough very few people will ever use it in grammatically mis-taken ways, still the meaningis said to be absent. Just what wasthe meaningit once had? It might well be said that once peopletalked about causes of everything and also the cause of every-thing considered together as the world, the universe or even ascreation. Now, the themegoes, there is no authority so to talk inthe modern world. Therefore, 'God' does not get any meaningany longer from scientific discourse or even from commonwaysof summingup things. If this be so, the concept 'God'has almostdisappeared. There is literally no thought-contentbeing fed intothe expression from much of anything. So, the thesis runs, theword'God'has no meaning.Here a familiardichotomyhas come into play, that between aword and a concept. The word, whether spoken or written, au-dible or visible, is taken to be a counterpartto the concept. Un-like judgmentsor what more recent thinkers have called 'proposi-tions',which assert somethingto be the case, 'concepts' only referand do not assert. In the rather long-standinglexicon of logic,'concepts' are taken to be the meaning-complexesby which wemake our references to all sorts of things. 'Judgments'and 'prop-ositions', utilizing concepts to be sure, were and are said to beour meaning-complexes,infinitely more complicated, by whichwe affirm or deny something to be so. These distinctions arerehearsed not to teach them or even to re-inforce them in anyway, but only to give the lie to the difficulty the theologians

8This is the issue for Bishop Robinson in Honest to God, for Helmut Goll-witzer in Die Existenz Gottes im Bekenntnis des Glaubens (Munich, 1964), forPaul van Buren, in The Secular Meaning of the Gospel (New York, 1963) andnumerous others.


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LANGUAGEAND THEOLOGY 249claim to discern. For their argumentseems to rest on this con-ventional bifurcation of physical word and mental concept,meaningand language.In passing, it must be noted that it is not intended here tomake light of the 'concept/word' distinction. For the distinctionoccurs very naturally and appropriately. But the particularproblem is two-fold: whether the concepts ('meaning-complexeswhich refer') have to be conceived as though they are separateor behind the ordinary speaking that goes on everywhere; thismay be described in another way, which makes for the otheraspect of the problem, whether there is a technical conceptuallanguage, a language which is more meaningful, in which theconcepts find their fullest expression. This view causes us toneglect the plain fact that conceptualmeaning is really made bythe way our ordinary language works. Therefore, there is nospecial arena of concepts, consideredapart from words; for con-cepts are among the things that words mean when they are usedeffectivelyand with regularityand in recognizableways. Further-more, there is no special conceptual language, richer and better,than ordinary ways of speaking. This does not say that there isno such thing as a study of concepts, but that language whichdescribes concepts is not necessarily richer in conceptual mean-ing because it describes the way languagemeans.If we revert to 'God' for the moment, it can now be reportedthat language about God, whether theology or the creeds, theBible perhapsor even the liturgy, is said to be of little avail todaybecause it does not mean anything. The theologicalsentences areno longer thought to be either true or false, worthy or unworthy,because no one can take as meaningfulthe propositionsof whichthe sentences are said to be an expression. Why not? Becausethe concepts, the big meaning-complexeswhich refer, are sup-posedly dead. If we remember the duality already alluded to,then we have propositionsbeing expressed in sentences and con-cepts being expressed in words (or combinationsthereof). With-out meaningful reference, theological and religious language hasbecomelargelyvacuous.Some such diatribe as this is leveled against much theologyby some of the radical reformerstoday. Again we reiterate how


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250 HARVARDTHEOLOGICAL EVIEWserious this is; for this charge about concepts themselves makesthe religious language supposedly only noises or marks on paper.All of this has happened, too, because of continuing changes ofa broad cultural and sociological sort, macroscopicmodificationsin ways of thinking and behaving, denominatedby such gran-diose remarks as "the rise of science," "industrialization,""non-mythological thinking"and the like. Whetherthere are still prin-cipalities and powers may be a moot point, but now there are allthese other things. And the proposals to remedy these must beequally bold. Obviously one cannot undo such social changes,but one can, if some reforming theologians are to be believed,do somethingaboutmeanings.Just what is not so clear. It is a little easier to diagnose theillness than it is to heal. But one way to address oneself to suchconfounding issues is to try all over again to ascertain what inthe world was being symbolized. If we still have the religiouslanguagearound and to a surprisingextent it is after thousandsof years - we can do some kind of analysis, a type of theologicalinvestigation, into the meanings. Somethinglike this goes on inthe pages of Paul Tillich, of Karl Rahner, of many interested innew forms of ontology, along with some of the analysts, espe-cially those who do it at a distance. A supple penetration intoconcepts is no easy matter and whatever the skill is, and what-ever one's judgment about that skill, it is quite rare. But wedo have all kinds of proposals being made here. Some are tellingus that the word 'God' symbolizes 'being' in general, others the'ground-of-being',but probably not an existing 'Father-in-heav-en'. The theme is to the effect that 'Father-in-heaven' is puremythology and not a concept which refers at all; but maybe theword 'being' or 'ground-of-being'does refer to something withwhich we all have familiar access already. Some theologian-philosophersseem to think that and are at great pains trying toshow us howit is the case.For the moment, the issue is not the correctness of the newconcepts as much as it is this way of addressing the matter.Otherphilosophicallytalentedwriters have identified'God'other-wise, sometimes by analogy with familiar processes from whichcertain unfamiliar abstractions can be derived, sometimes with


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LANGUAGEAND THEOLOGY 251subtle inquiry into 'necessity' and a host of other logical topics.Again the issue before us is not this resolution or that, but thelegitimacy of conceivingthe issue to make these and other effortseven plausible. Apparently, the inquiry rests on a convictionthat most of us do not suspect is at all arguable. Because we do,as a matter of course, draw a distinction between words andtheir meanings,because we do hear and see words without know-ing what they mean, we are also inclined to conclude that wethink the meanings and that we speak the words. Therefore, wedecide that the warrantabilityfor the speaking rests on the war-rantability of the net of meaningsbe they concepts or ideas,thoughts or notions. When the latter fail, then our speech be-comes vacuous and trivial, words without thoughts signifyingnothing.Professor H. H. Price said almost twenty years ago that thereis a widespread need for "a unified conceptual scheme." Hewent on:

Whenthe ordinaryeducatedman speaksof 'a philosophy',t isa conceptual chemeof this kind which he has in mind. Such ascheme,he thinks,will providehim with the wisdomwhichphilos-ophersare traditionallyupposed o supply. He needs,as it were,a map of the universe o far as our empiricalnformation as dis-closedit; and not a mapof the physicalworldonly,but one whichmakes room for all the knownaspectsof the universe,physical,spiritual,andwhateverotherstheremay be. He needsit nowadaysmore than ever, since for good reasonsor bad the Christianmeta-physical scheme has lost its hold overhim . .4Therefore, the task seems plain: all that is needed is anotherconceptual scheme lying behind, as it were, our ordinarywords.Professor Price's ruminations are very guarded, but his viewcould certainly give promptings to more extravagant views ofmany theologians. For the task of so many theologians today is

spoken of as being 'constructive' rather than simply 'analytic'(just as Price and other philosopherswho agree that clarity isnot enough); and by this is understoodthe sketching of a con-ceptual system that will bring vitality back into the words of'H. H. Price, "Clarity is not Enough," 38. Presidential address to Mind Assoc.,July, 1945, reprinted in H. D. Lewis, ed., Clarity is Not Enough (London, 1963).


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252 HARVARDTHEOLOGICAL EVIEWpreachers. For a variety of reasons, the Christian conceptualbackdrop s now thoughtto be clearly shattered. On the one side,there is the history of criticism - both lower and higher - ofthe Scriptures; there is, too, the decay of metaphysical confi-dences; the rise of sciences has given new contexts for 'sin','creation' and other big religious words. The upshot is that theconceptual backdrop,what Price called "the conceptualscheme"is not there any more. Correlative to this is the fact that peopledo not believe in Christian teachings, but they still want to beethical and religious. The diagnosisof the unbelief is to the effectthat because of the decay of the former,therefore the latter; be-cause of a tattered conceptual scheme, there is little or no beliefamongthe educated.But surely some criticisms are now in order. For one thing itseems strange to say that unbelief is fundamentally caused bythe breakdown in the conceptual scheme. One would certainlyhere have to examine the cases and discuss the respectivepersonsand their inabilities to believe as they arise. Besides the phe-nomenonof unbelief is as old as belief. Also it seems that wide-spread belief in religion is more like widespread political al-legiance, a consequence of convenience, acquiescence and indif-ference, as much as a result of meaningful discrimination andthoughtful decision. Just what religious unbelief is among theeducated today is equally difficult to say. Exactly what thebreakdown of concepts has to do with it is a very complicatedmatter.But the other matter, the argument respecting theologicallanguage restingon this layer of concepts, is anotherkind of issuealtogether. For here there is a dogma at work, a dogma veryclose to most intellectuals, about language and how it is con-stituted. It is so thoroughlyembedded in our habits of thoughtand ways of talking that we think it is simply a matter of com-mon sense. Because our language does pile up - after a whileand amid all its changes- certain speech-forms and meaningswhich maintain their identity, we are inclined to leap to theconclusion that thereis a realmof meanings explainingthese iden-tities and regularities. Speech habits seem pedestrian and meancomparedto mentalistic realms of spirit. And all the useful dis-


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LANGUAGEAND THEOLOGY 253tinctions between words and meanings, thoughts and sounds,ideas and marks on paper seem to feed our proclivity to a meta-physical view of language.Thus, my inclination is to view the current theological desiresfor conceptual systems as largely a consequence of a mistakenview of language. In contrast to the mistaken view, there seemsto me to be no single view of languageeven possible. There are,though, interesting accounts of the meanings of the words. Butthere is no single philosophy of language; no single explanationof how meaningsare bestowed, for there is no conceptualscheme,behind words, which can be grasped by the special tools of ab-stract reflection, dialectic, or subtle inference. This does notdeny that ordinary language or, for that matter, scientific lan-guage, involves concepts, or that religiouslanguage also involvesthem; but our point is that the conceptual meaning is achievedand often even discerned within the science or the religion, notby an outsider, a philosopheror even the theologian.

This being the case, it can be said then that there is no specialscience, be it even philosophy or, for that matter, theology, whichlays hold of these meanings in a primary and underived way.And the thought that somehow a kind of learning, or a kind ofdeclaring of a very abstract sort will do it, is absolutely wrong.Of course, it is possible to describe the word 'God' and, in prin-ciple, this will mean not simply the marks on paper but also themeaning; for words studied without their meanings are as muchan abstraction as meanings without words. Nonetheless, it isfeasible to describe 'faith' as well as faith, 'God' as well as God.Anything said here has not denied a whit the possibility of de-scribing even the concepts indigenous to religions. But it is onething to argueand talk well with such concepts and quite anotherto talk about them. The issue here is that there is no specialaccess to conceptual meanings via the talk about them. The re-flection and languageby which we describe them does not impartmeaning to them. Unless they had that already, there is no par-ticular point to worrying about them and no reason to supposethat meaningis going to be given by furtherdescription.Consideringthis legitimate descriptive role of a kind of studyof language, even its concepts, gives one serious pause respecting


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254 HARVARDTHEOLOGICAL EVIEWthe pretentiouspromiseof so many theological and philosoph-ical - writers who write as though they can confer meaningsif they are just inventive and comprehensive enough. To thecontrary, there is no artificialand extra-territorialway of doingthat. Meanings are an intimate part of the situation in whichlanguage is used, where speakers and writers talk in order tosecure the listeners' and readers'responses. And meanings haveno otherstatus and locationthanthat.But this brings us to what might be called the positive sug-gestion,grantedsome kind of crisis in theological anguage.

IVThere is no doubt whatsoeverthat language can be described,for it is being done continually. Furthermore,it is pertinent torememberthat phonemesand marks on paper, letters and words,can be distinguishedfrom the meanings. Just how meaningsbe-

come connected with linguistic forms is an interesting study initself. The point I wish to make here is that this is not an esotericand odd business at all, though it is many sided and complex.Furthermore,most of us have first-handacquaintancewith theprocesses by which it is done. But the task of describing ex-haustively the acquisitionof meaning for every form of languagehas not been done; and in fact it is extremelydifficultto see howin principleit could ever be done. For the situationswhich causepeople to speak include everything that happens and anythingyou can see and imagine. In order to have an exhaustive anddetailed account of the meanings for every form of speech, wewould also need an absolutely exhaustive and accurate account,not only of everything in the talkers' world but also of thespeaker too,his whims,desires,cares and so on.Because we do not have anything like this, our knowledgelooks fragmentary; and many students of meaning are inclinedto despair of an empirical kind of study. However, this is nocause for leaping to a general philosophical theory, by which wecan declaremattersin one fell-swoop.

On the contrary, there are ways by which we make meaning-ful all kinds of language; and we can know the 'ways' well


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LANGUAGEAND THEOLOGY 255enough. We give meanings to language not by thinkingabstractcorrelatives but rather by putting the language to work as hardand as thoroughly as possible. This is the secret of building avocabulary,as we probably learned to our dismay when we wereyoung. Because so many words on one's list were simply of nouse whatsoever, except to overawe others, it was also easy toforget the definitions and eventually to forget the word alto-gether. But words, even scientific ones, like the highly artificialand contrived latinized words used in elementary biology, cometo life when the occasions for their service are multiple, in lab-oratories, in reading and in discussions. So, too, with our wordsof religion. Most of them get their meanings only when theirrole is pronounced. If there is no role, they too dropaway.The point which the theologiansare addressing has, therefore,several sides. For it is a questionwhichpart of religiouslanguageis really so dead today. Is it the discourse of the metaphysicaltheologians; or is it the languageof the hymn-writer; or is it thelanguage of the Psalmist and other Biblical authors? If we aretalking about certain kinds of elaborate metaphysical theology,I believe it is quite clear that much of this is very dead indeed.Having recently read in great and tiresome detail many Latinpages of Chemnitz and an English version thereof, I feel partic-ular enthusiasm in concurring. This is only to say, of course,that most of the metaphysical concepts, both of remote meta-physicians as well as the recent,have a jading effect upon us anddo not strike us as being particularly illuminating or even asvery relevant to our current inquiries. This does not say thatmetaphysicsas an inquiry is necessarilyabsurd- only that mostmetaphysical proposals are not very compelling. But the themewe are here striking is that this ought not to obtain if what is be-lieved about metaphysics is correct. For the metaphysically-orientedtheologianshave said that the metaphysicalconcepts areactually more compellingand meaningful, more the essence andheart of the matter, than the language of hymns, sermons andScripture.But, we can agree that the metaphysical schemes are nowwidely deemed to be rather void. Because metaphysics has pre-tended to lay hold by a kind of reflection of the meaningsin their


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256 HARVARD THEOLOGICALREVIEWpurest and least sullied form, it has been held that metaphysics,and theology too, discloses the meaning of Scripture,hymns andthe rest of the religious language. We are back to an earlierpoint,where we tried to delineate the argument that says we need an-other theology in order to give meaning to our language if notalso the other activities of religious organizations. If we areright, then the kinds of metaphysics familiar to us as the majorsystematic outlooks are simply not being actively espoused anylonger. And if the diagnosisis correct,then the religious languageof the churches is simply without its meaningwarrants.Of course,this is to supposethat metaphysicssomehow bestowsmeaning to more ordinary expression. But this is certainly anoutrightmistake. Linguistshave long since told us anotherstoryabout how wordsacquire meanings. Descriptive linguistic studiesabout these mattersare very detailed; and even an amateur'spe-rusal of Mencken's The AmericanLanguage,Jespersen'sseveralworks, Bloomfield'sLanguageand the now old work, Words andtheir Ways in English Speech by Greenoughand Kittredge areenoughto give us a feeling for the variety of ways that meaningsaccrueto speech. Suffice t to say that anythingat all which addsto the working and viability of speech, be it behavior, gesture,circumstances, responses, all kinds of accompaniments, refer-ence, also makes language meaningful. And one of the ways wemark the meaningfulnessof language is to see its long-termandpervasive effects. Even language which does not draw anyprompt response may still effect the dispositions of hearers forsubsequentresponses.Theology tells us, among other things, something about Godand the world. It proposes beliefs, along with behavior and acertain refinement and intensification of the human response.However implausible the thesis may be, theology has been con-sidered lately almost as a kind of semantics of religion, a kindof study of meaning. If one neglects words and their uses, whatlinguists call the speech-forms,and studies meanings in the ab-stract, one is really makingof semantics the general study of theuniverse. Something ike that obtainswith those theologianswhoare doing the modern theologies-of-meaning. This finally seems


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LANGUAGEAND THEOLOGY 257to be the appeal, too, of metaphysical theories on the part ofthose who insist that these are the ultimate court of meaning.We are contending,instead, that attentionbe paid to the actualworkings of the speech-forms. When these are put to work intheir appropriate contexts, then the meanings simply occur.Therefore, it is a mistake to treat metaphysics and theology asthough they actually supplied meanings to more ordinary reli-gious discourse. For if we are despoiledof metaphysicalschemes,even grand theologicalschemes, it may be that this is a symptomand not a cause. Meanings belong to words when uses for themare at hand. The task for theologians, then, if they decry thevacuousnessof religiouslanguagein the pulpit and the pew is notto sketch a theory that will impart meaning as much as it is tosuggest the 'learninghow' and all that that involves in the reli-gious life. For the use of religious language, even the Bible andthe hymns, liturgy and prayers, is part of the business of learningto be religious. This is part of the 'how' of being religious.Once the use is gained, words are no longer deprived of theirmeanings. It might be the case that much of the languageof thechurches is simply now a coarse kind of custom, quite withoutjustification and point. Also it may be true that certain gener-alities about it of a sociological sort are justified, namely, that itis trite, a defunct fashion and finally meaningless. But suchgeneralizationsdo little to suggest the remedy if that is what oneseeks. There are all kinds of people who have mastered the useof religious language because they have also learned to be con-trite, forgiving, and long-sufferingand many more things. It isin that 'how', that kind of learning, that religious language alsobeginsto acquirea functionand role.We noted in passing that the decay of theology may be asymptom not a cause. To that issue we return once more. Forthe way concepts are finally achieved, even concepts like 'God','sin', 'grace', 'salvation' and many more, are also by a kind ofinteractionof human responsesand language. And this supposesa religious context of worship, faith and concern. Indeed thereare concepts by which people refer to God and a host of otherthings in profoundly religious ways, but these concepts are


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258 HARVARDTHEOLOGICAL EVIEWachievements constituted in the long pull of educatingthe humanspirit as to what religion is. If the concepts no longer have anylife in them, if they mean nothing,then it must be that all the restthat goes into giving people confidenceand faith that there is aGod, also has disappeared.This is to say that there is no short road to restoring meanings.This is why the contemporaryplea for a new theological schemeis so lamentable it suggests that an artificiallinguisticcontext,abstract at that, is really the best matrix for the very importantwords of faith to come to life, whereas the fact of the matter isthat ordinary life --everyday existence - is that matrix. Theknack is to learn how to handle oneself and the whole world.When that is being learned, certain words, Biblical words, comeinto their own. They become the tools of refiningand intensify-ing one's daily life, and they become increasinglymeaningful asone lives with andby them.If religiouswords come to their meaningsin this way, there isof coursesomethingfor a theologianto study. Then he would notneed to speculate and to invent meanings. He would have quiteenough to help keep the concepts straight and their location inthe intellectual economy as exact as possible. Then his taskwould be a kind of descriptionof what is already achieved ratherthan an attemptto providewhat is missing.Perhaps it is also clear that the contemporaryenthusiasm forlinguistic analysis on the part of theologiansis another vanity ifit is believed that that way of doing philosophy is the newestaccess to meanings. For the point of linguistic analysis is not tosupply the missing meanings by the study of usages or use,whether on one's own part or the part of others. Therefore, therecent shift in philosophicalemphasisis not the better way, ana-lytic instead of speculative, to do the same thing. In fact, Witt-genstein's reflectionson these matters are more in the directionof liquidating philosophyas the science of meaningsthan invent-ing one morepermutationof methods to providethem.It may seem that all technical theological rubrics are herebymade 'tabu'. But this is not the point. The argumentwith whichwe have contendedsays that the technical and abstract languageof systematic thought either is the meaning or that which makes


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LANGUAGEAND THEOLOGY 259clear the meaning of the more ordinary and non-technical kindsof speech which are widely used in liturgies, hymns, and Scrip-ture. Or it is even said that the latter kinds of language containin some involved way that which the technical language makesexplicit. In any case, the theological language is said to makeclear the meanings of the other kinds. But, I have been arguingto the contrary. For the conceptualbasis, the achievement of therich concepts and meanings, that chart and state even the Chris-tian truths, is really that more ordinarykind of speech, the lan-guage of fishermen, tax-collectors and tent-makers, rather thanthe more abstract variety. Therefore, the abstract language,technical theology if you will, if it is now irrelevant,probablyhaslost its connection with this conceptual ground; and the way tomake it significantand appropriateonce again is to return to it.One might discover, thus, that whatever meanings there are intechnical theological discourse,of a highly abstract and detachedsort, is a function of the ordinarylanguage of ordinarybelieversand not the otherway around.One more illustrationmight suffice. The words 'God' and 'sin'and others, distinctive to religiouspeople, have definitemeanings.Such words have acquired their meanings over a long history.Wordswere connected with what was being said and done. Theychangedwhat was being said and done. These words, then, beganto refer to something in virtue of the roles they played in dis-course. But it is also true that many people enter the texture ofsuch discourse, in our churches and our common life, withoutbeing aware of what is involved. Almost without number,peopleuse these wordswronglyor they use them to no point at all. Thisis because most of them do not know the concepts 'God' or 'sin'at all. Is this what the critics of supernaturalismsand the oldertheologies are saying? Maybe so, but there is a small differencethat is the point of these remarks. A concept is learnedby learn-ing the way the word is used- the tissue of reaction, stimuliand responses. The long-term consensus within which the wordhas its place is a concept and, therefore, the concept is more likea rule than a thing, a regular practise than an exceptional object,an exercise in 'concreto' than an essay in 'abstracto'. The the-ologian'stask is primarilyto isolate and articulate these concepts.


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260 HARVARDTHEOLOGICAL EVIEWTo lose the meaningof the religiouswords is not like losing theirdefinitions it is more like losing the practise with which theywere associated. To know the meaningof a word supposes keep-ing with the rule. And concepts are no good- they become justnoises or just marks on paper, when they lose that context inwhich they can be seen to be the rule. But rules are only rules ifthey are kept.5Thus, theologiansare in no position to justify the processes bywhich words have acquired their meanings. For justification isentirely out of orderhere. However sounds have been used in amultitude of circumstances, whether they are French, Greek,English or Latin sounds, the fact is that meanings have beenascribed. These circumstancesof social and religious life werenot invented and neither were the meanings which grew withthem. Because religiouswords made great differences,they werealso very meaningful. But all that was said with those meaning-ful words is another matter altogether. Religious men thoughtthey were speaking truly about a world which was created and aGod who died for the sake of the world. These beliefs, indeed,suppose religious concepts; for they make statements which tellus what is the case, and therefore they must refer. But it is onething to see that language,even religious language,has meaning;it is another thing to see that it is true. A point to remember sthat without the concepts no one could speak at all - for everylanguage must be there before one can say anything. We allspeak a language that is spoken; and it is only within that lan-guagethat ourwordshave theirmeaning.I have admitted tentatively the charge of the contemporarystudents of theology who insist that the old words do not meananything to most persons any more. But words do not 'mean' allby themselves. They are not like some coins which have valuebecause they are made of silver or gold, while also serving asmedia of exchange. Words may mean for one man and not foranother. The question is the way they are used, how the manlives, and what applications the expressions are given. But it

'I am indebted to R. Rhees, "Can there be a Private Language?" for severalsuggestions here; Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. 28 (1954),77-94.


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LANGUAGEAND THEOLOGY 261must be not the words which are at fault, as much as the personsspeaking them. Therefore, the religious words are vain whennothing follows their usage, when the man does not seem toknow anything about the matters to which they refer and theway of life in which they were born. Then we can say sadly thatpeople do not know what they are saying. To teach them that isone of the theologian'stasks.

Paul Holmer - Language and Theology

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