Greetings - this is my new blog. For many years I have had a website www.trikeshed.com but I have not been that good at keeping it up to date.
It may be a while before anything interesting appears here. Watch this space!
Mike
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We shall not cease from exploration
Hi Mike,
ReplyDeletedo you think there's a connection between your thoughts on nature and those on language? Perhaps nature (and the natural sense of human language) need to have a sense of autonomy from God? I think this is something that has been downplayed by the platonic influence on Christian thinking - your first paragraph sounds like you're reacting against a platonic view of nature as a mere shadow of true transcendent reality, something quite alien from the earthy traditions of the Hebrew Bible. I think Ockham is good on this because he allows nature to be properly understood in its own particularity without reference to God. Hence he ditched the medieval 'universals' as anything but mental concepts. Likewise, Ockham allows language to be fully meaningful in its own particular uses. We don't need to look to God to know what 'goodness' is for example. But I think he is too negative about the ability of human language to refer meaningfully to God. I think Karl Barth is right to say that the only reason we can use human language to refer to God is that God uses it of himself. In Jesus, God has spoken in ordinary language of himself - a wonderful affirmation of our language. Because of this affirmation, God can be known by anyone who uses such ordinary language - not just the intellectuals or mystics who might seek to escape ordinary language. I think because of this we need to accept that our language will be open to polysemy - but isn't it anyway? I'm sure we all understand particular words differently.
Hope you don't mind my interest.
Ben
This is a test
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