are true of God. It is, no doubt, psychologically possible for someone to apply terms to
God in exactly the sense in which they are true of human beings. But if that makes it
impossible for the resulting statements to be true, that does not give us what we are after.
Second, our decision as to whether a term in a given sense could be true of God depends
on what God is like, and there are, notoriously, many theological disagreements about
this. In the ensuing discussion I presuppose a position on the divine nature that is widely
shared in classical Christian theology.
The most obvious reasons for lack of complete univocity concern the fact that we are
embodied and God is not. This prevents action terms like “speak” from being univocally
applied. To say that I spoke to you has as part of its meaning that I made sounds by the
use of my vocal organs. But because God has no vocal organs, that cannot be part of what
it means for God to speak to someone. In saying I parted the waters, part of what that
means is that I moved parts of my body, for example, arms, in certain ways that resulted
in waters being parted. But, again, because God has no arms or other bodily parts, that
cannot be even part of what is meant by “God parted the waters.” To be sure, it is not
always clear exactly what belongs to the meaning of a term, as contrasted with what we
unhesitatingly believe about its denotation. Far from it. And it could be reasonably denied
that movement of bodily parts is involved in the meaning of “He spoke” or “He parted
the waters” where we refer to a human agent. Although it is
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indubitable that bodily movement is required for human overt action, that may not be any
part of what is meant in asserting it. But it is at least plausible that this is part of the
meaning.
There are many other reasons for denying complete univocity. Thus, if part of what is
meant by Jones knowing that Smith is discouraged is that Jones has a belief that Smith is
discouraged that meets certain further epistemic conditions, and if, as I argued in Alston
(1989, ch. 9), God has no beliefs, it follows that “know” is not univocally applied. But
this conclusion depends not only on a controversial thesis about God's cognition, but also
on a controversial thesis about human knowledge. For a final example, consider the even
more controversial position that God is timeless, that he does not live through a
succession of moments but exists “all at once” in an eternal now. We, by contrast, are
very much immersed in time. What it means for us to have and carry out plans, purposes,
and intentions, and what it is for us to perform acts of forgiveness, judgment, and
bringing things into existence essentially involves moving through a temporal series of
stages. Hence, if God is atemporal, talk of God's purposes, intentions, and activities
cannot be univocal with talk of human purposes, intentions, and activities.
7. Partial Overlap in Meaning
Thus, there will be some differences in the meaning of at least many predicates in their
human and divine applications. But what differences, and what implications does this
have for our ability to speak meaningfully and appropriately of God? In the rest of this