Musings on the mystery of God

✍ Scribed by William L. Power

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1976
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 601 KB
• Volume: 7
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0020-7047
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00137199

✦ Synopsis

There is a recurring thesis in the history of theology as well as in contemporary theology which maintains that God is a mystery and that we can neither conceive of him in our thoughts nor describe him in our language. In this paper I want to explore this thesis in its various manifestations, uncover its basic assumptions or axioms, and evaluate its warrants. In so doing I hope to show that this thesis is based on an unsound theory of the informative function of language, and, as such, is not adequate to the task of doing systematic theology. The heuristic or analytic tools which I will employ are those of contemporary formal logic and semiotics, especially in the form developed by Richard M. Martin. 1