Quote:
Originally Posted by tame_deuces
But at the end of the day, even Platinga will have to concede that he needs to language to express his idea of "belief without senses". The mere act of arguing it through books and debate belies an implicit assumption that the notion is one that can be symbolically represented.
And once you accept symbolic representation, it is very hard to argue against materialistic reductionism.
To the last sentence: I'm not sure this is true. Non-materialists don't necessarily argue that there is no representation possible, but that the representation is not the thing represented. For example in the
Mary's Room thought experiment. They are not saying there is no symbolic representation at all, but that in some way all representation is incomplete.
I have not read enough Plantinga to tell you what his response would be to the more general question about using language in theology, but I think a reasonable start would be to say simply that the language is admitted to be incomplete and imperfect in some way.
The way Pannikar develops this idea is an expansion of the ideas of the Trinity (and Advaita) beyond the nature of God but as something about the nature of reality as a whole, and the human capacity for understanding it. Logos and Pneuma become also symbols for these two aspects of the real. The Logos is that which is intelligible, reasonable, rational, conceptualizable, etc. Spirit is a-rational, ineffable, mysterious, etc. The reason this relates to the Trinity is because in the Trinity there is no hierarchy between Logos and Pneuma, nor separation. They are really "not two", despite the fact that the distinction cannot be collapsed. The human logos may speak about the experience of the spirit, as far as such an experience may be spoken of. But the "as far" of the logos does not exhaust the reality of the spirit.
To put it more philosophical language and less religious language, it depends fundamentally on a rejection of the idea the bounds of the Real (of Being) are the bounds of intelligibility, or the bounds of thinking. It is a rejection of Parmenides' "Thinking and that because of which there is thinking are the same thing".
The importance of the advaitic/trinitarian insight is in the avoidance of dualism. The Spirit is not the Logos, and yet the two are not separable. There is a perichoresis. This is not a rational statement. It amounts to saying A and Not-A in a certain sense. That is why the identity of Thinking and Being is rejected. Theology speaks about the Divine, or about the human perception of the Divine beyond the senses and even beyond reason or the mind, and yet that speech does not capture or comprehend the Divine. There is a realm of silence, apophatism.