What important difference, if any, does it make whether a referring practice is primarily
direct or descriptive? Here are two. (1) It makes a difference as to what is and is not
negotiable. If reference is primarily fixed by descriptions, then the attributes there
specified define what it is to be God. And so, if an alleged referent turns out not to have
such an attribute, that shows that it was not God to which we were referring. It's the
attributes that call the shots. Whereas if it is experiential encounter that primarily fixes
the reference, the order of priority is reversed. If what one was experiencing turns out not
to have some features one believes God to have, there is at least the option of denying
these features to be necessary for divinity. If descriptive reference is basic, we set the
requirements for being God; if a referent doesn't live up to them, it isn't God. If
experiential reference is basic, then what is thus experienced is God whether he lives up
to some favored description or not (so long as we continue to fix the reference by
experience[s]). (2) Experientially based reference makes possible a wider commonality
between religions. Even if different world religions have radically different views on the
nature of Ultimate Reality, they could all be worshipping the same Reality. This would
just be a particular example of the general truth that people can disagree, even radically,
about the nature of something, even though they are all aware of, and referring to, the
same something.
One final note on referring to God. Consider a person or group whose reference to God is
both descriptively and experientially based. Which of these is more fundamental? We can
explore this by considering (actual or possible) situations in which the two bases give
conflicting results. Say that, although one initially takes the being encountered in prayer,
worship, and so on to conform to the account of divine nature in classical Christian
theology, one comes to doubt that the being so encountered is like that in some important
respects. (Process theology is in this situation, denying that the God encountered in the
Christian religious practice is omnipotent, the source of all being for everything else, and
timeless; see Hartshorne 1941; Griffin 2001). Which will give way? Which takes priority
in such conflicts? I can't see that there is a resolution to this problem that fits every such
case. It all depends on how deeply rooted each of the contenders is in the person or group
in question, and on how unambiguous each of them is on the issues. Because religious
experience is notoriously subject to a variety of interpretations, while theological systems
are more clear-cut, this tends
end p.231
to favor the priority of the descriptive. But the first factor, degree of rootedness, can go
either way. I have given much more extensive treatment of the issues aired in the prior
two paragraphs in “Referring to God” in Alston (1989).
6. Differences in Predicates Applied to God and to Creatures
Having examined the subject term of statements about God, we can now turn to the
predicates. How are they to be understood? Remember that we are discussing this
question in the light of the rejection of the thesis that there are no genuine religious truth