of Christ, who spoke in human language, using parable; and so we too speak of God in
parable—authoritative parable, authorized parable; knowing that the truth is not literally
that which our parables representtrusting, because we trust the source of the parables, that
in believing them and interpreting them in the light of each other, we shall not be misled,
that we shall have such knowledge as we need to possess for the foundation of the
religious life” (122–23). This is an extended use of “parable,” in which anything we say
of God, even something so simple as “God wants us to have loving communion with
him,” counts as a parable. Though the words do not strictly apply, we have the authority
of Christ (God incarnate) for taking them to be close enough to the strict truth about God
to be an adequate guide to our relations with God and with our fellows. Note that this
resolution of the problem holds, at best, only for those who accept the authority of Christ;
it is an account of the meaning the statements have for those within the Christian
community. As such, it is of narrower application than the views of Aquinas and Barbour
on this topic. But within those limits it is worthy of careful consideration.
end p.241
10. My View of Talk about God
The essay up to this point, and that is almost all of it, is focused on an exposition and
critical discussion of various views on the topics with which it deals. Though I have,
from time to him, dropped some hints as to where I stand on these issues, it may not be
amiss, in conclusion, to put together a brief statement of my take on the field. First of all,
as made explicit in section 2, although there is much nonstatemental speech in the
practice of religion—petition, confession, thanksgiving, expressions of feelings and
attitudes—there are also statements about God that can be assigned (at least approximate)
objective truth values. And the statements have a foundational role in the religious life,
since they make explicit the rationale for petitionary prayer, confession, thanksgiving,
worship, and so on. Second, to refer back to section 8, in opposition to pan-
metaphoricism, I hold that many statements about God use (at least some of) their terms
literally rather than metaphorically or in any other figurative way. Third, I believe that in
some of these cases these terms, all of which are taken from our talk of creatures or
derived from terms that are, are used in just the same sense as that in which they are used
of creatures. This is fully the case only with very abstract terms like “exists,” “powerful,”
and “not dependent on anything.” But with more concrete terms, like action terms, and
conative terms, like “intends to bring about his kingdom on earth,” we are not left with a
supposition of a divine-human analogy that we cannot make fully explicit, as the thinkers
discussed in the previous section suppose. On the contrary, as I illustrated in section 7,
such terms can be analyzed into an abstract component that can be applied univocally and
that goes some way toward specifying the relevant analogy, and a more concrete part that
is not strictly appropriate to God. This partial univocity gives us a secure foundation for
the less determinate and explicit portions of our talk of God.
I want to be careful not to claim too much for this partial univocity position. Even where
we can find an abstract univocal core, as in my suggestion of a functional account of
psychological predicates, that falls far short of saying as much as we would like to be