40 marks 'The best approach to understanding religious language is through the cataphatic way' - Discuss

‘The best approach to understanding religious language is
through the cataphatic way’ - Discuss
40 marks
OCR A-level religious studies




Thomas Aquinas argues that we should talk about God positively through Analogy. He distinguished between
different types of language: univocal, equivocal and analogy. Univocal words are words with only one meaning,
and equivocal words are those that can be used in different contexts. An equivocal approach to describing God
would see God as so different to us that we cannot describe what he is like – this is the Via Negativa. Aquinas
said we cannot speak of God in equivocal or univocal terms. Analogy is where language has a partial
resemblance, so you can compare something to something else, using language that you understand to talk
about something that goes beyond your understanding. He said it is important to recognise the limits of
human language, however we still need to use it to explain God in an understandable way. Therefore when
using Analogy, God is spoken of in an analogical way, not a literal way.