528 - Vapor Theologicum

Vapor Theologicum
By John H. Hick

I AM afraid that the brief comment which I am about to make on Robert P. Scharlemann's article, "Concepts, Symbols, and Sentences," will strike a negative and critical note. For the article illustrates to me the way in which even a marked theological ability can be largely wasted through neglect of the more elementary intellectual virtues of clarity and logical propriety.

Scharlemann's thesis is that "the sentence form in which concepts and symbols are united … itself contributes a content to thought that is distinct from and additional to the contents of the parts of the sentence." At first glance this sounds intelligible. But at a second and third look I find that I do not know what it means. The only things that are united in a sentence are words. Certainly the meanings of words are often determined by the sentences in which they are being used. (Compare chair in "Please take the chair back to the store" and "Please take the chair this afternoon whilst the Dean is away"). This is so evident as to be a truism. But Scharlemann is apparently saying something much deeper, something about being and non-being, about "the subjectivity in my object which objectifies me," and other matters that remind one of a German Hegelian writing English.

To take up each mysterious phrase and express bewilderment at it would be tedious. Let me instead pick out one phase of Scharlemann's discussion, and comment on it. The argument contained in the discussion near the beginning of the article runs as follows:

Infinitely many different kinds of thing exist.
Existing is an activity.
Therefore infinitely many different kinds of thing act.
Therefore there is "an infinitely variable action."
Is there an infinite doer of this action? Yes, God.

If, as Scharlemann says, Tillich did not deal with this aspect of the question of being, one can only congratulate him. For it is a

529 - Vapor Theologicum

tissue of confusions of the sort that the influence of the analytical movement in contemporary philosophy should have taught us all to avoid. One source of confusion is the phrase "an infinitely variable particular subject" as the value of x in "x is." If we follow the lead of modern logic and treat "x is" as a propositional function with an unlimited range, i.e., a proposition which can be completed by substituting the name of any particular thing for x, we are not tempted to hypostatize the x as a very special and metaphysical entity which has the remarkable property of being infinitely variable. However, having performed this hypostatization, Scharlemann invokes the scholastic notion that existing is a mode of acting. (This is an extremely interesting as well as venerable idea, and it would be very valuable if Scharlemann or someone else would undertake to explain what it means. Does it express more than the linguistic circumstances that to exist is a verb?) Bringing together these two positions-that there is an infinitely variable particular subject, and that to exist is to act-Scharlemann arrives at the thought that there is "an infinitely variable action." We are now far gone in metaphysics in the bad sense of making assertions which are systematically unverifiable and unfalsifiable. For how do we tell whether there is an infinitely variable action? What difference does it make whether there is one or not? Scharlemann does not consider such ungracious questions, and the inevitable suspicion is that he is spinning phrases which have no extra-linguistic referent and which merely envelop writer and readers alike in a needless verbal fog.

The vapor will seem particularly malodorous beyond the theological circle, because God is produced out of it like a rabbit out of a hat. If there is a universal action, must there not be a universal doer of the action, traditionally called "God"? The suggestion is that the idea of God can be reached by analysis of "x is." But the philosophically critical reader will be quick to see that what is taking place is not analysis at all but the ancient self-delusion of the human mind in hypostatizing words.

It will no doubt be retorted that this criticism steins from "logical positivism," and is therefore wrong! It steins, however, from the return to common sense in philosophy that was initiated above all by G. E. Moore. Its motive is to avoid building unexamined words upon words and creating empty metaphysical castles in the air. Among most philosophers this is now a methodological commonplace. Would that it were equally a commonplace of theological method!