Evaluating Analogy

Positives:

Avoids the pitfalls of anthropomorphism and agnosticism.

Hick comments that analogy enables us to make some statements about God yet still preserve mystery present in christian theology. He also states that when God was incarnated as Christ, his character and attitudes can be seen and so we can make some meaningful statements of God.

Analogy is good because it means that religious language is not just limited to those within the religion.

It is also good because it allows for us to understand God even though he is not considered knowable due to the connection and the suitable point of reference.

Analogies mean that we have a clear way for accessing a meaningful context to begin to come to terms with the spiritual realm.

Ramsey's models help to disclose divine attributes and his qualifiers make sense of how improbable it is to define God. This provides believers with the ability to understand God that would be impossible without the pint of reference.

NEGATIVES:

Hume: 'Dialogues concerning Natural Religion', an analogy is only good if the two things that are being compared are similar.

Vienna Circle: How do we know what we mean when we talk about God? God may not be what we think, that is wise, powerful. How do we know (in the sense of being able to empirically quantify what we are talking about) what constitutes God?

Both Aquinas and Ramsey assume God's existence. Without the existence of god, there can be no point of comparison.

Even if we do accept what God is like, our empirical knowledge is restricted.

Ramsey's qualifiers only shows that we don't fully know what we mean when we talk about God. Even thought Ramsey said 'they disclose but do not explain a mystery' to a non-believer looking for answers, this is not enough.