Religious Language 1 Notes

Religious Language: negative, analogical or symbolic


Key Terms:


 Agnosticism: the view that there is insufficient evidence for God, or the
view that God cannot be known

 Truth-claim: a statement that asserts that something is factually true

 Apophatic way (via negativa): a way of speaking about God and theological
ideas using only terms that say what God is not

 Cataphatic way (via positiva): a range of ways of speaking about God and
theological ideas using only terms that say what God is

 Univocal language: words that mean the same thing when used in different
contexts

 Equivocal language: words that mean different things when used in
different contexts

 Analogy: a comparison made between one thing and another in an effort to
aid understanding

 Symbol: a word or other kind of representation used to stand for something
else and to shed light on its meaning