247 - Language, Logic and God

Language, Logic and God
By Frederick Ferré
184 pp. New York, Harper & Brothers, 1961. $3.50.

Dr. Ferré's book is to be warmly welcomed as a successful introduction to a subject concerning which public interest has spread more rapidly than accurate information, namely, contemporary analytical philosophy and its relevance to theology. In his preface the author (professor of religion at Mount Holyoke College) indicates that he has written with the needs in mind of the college philosophy and religion student; and his book will indeed fill an important gap in the material available both to this constituency and to other readers. It is based upon a thorough acquaintance with the body of writings produced during the last fifteen years or so in which theological concepts and doctrines have been studied from the standpoint of philosophical analysis. Dr. Ferré's

248 - Language, Logic and God

own writing reflects the manner of the literature with which lie is dealing; he has a straightforward, workmanlike style which aims at clarity of content rather than rhetorical momentum. The book is not so preliminary as to be merely tantalizing; nor on the other hand does it go into technicalities and complexities beyond the range of the average or average-to-good student.

What is variously styled analytical philosophy, or philosophical, linguistic, or conceptual analysis, is not a fixed body of philosophical doctrines. The name refers rather to a point of view, a characteristic intellectual ethos and style, and a certain arsenal of methods. Ferré aptly employs Wittgenstein's notion of the family resemblances amongst concepts to illuminate the similarities and differences between the participants in the analytical "movement."

This contemporary and increasingly flourishing philosophical family has two parents, the features of one of which appear more clearly in some members of the family and of the other in others. One parent is the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle, and the other consists of a trinity of influential Cambridge thinkers, G. E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, and that strange philosophical genius who looms ever larger on the philosophic scene, Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Ferré separates out these two strands and treats them in different sets of chapters. This procedure is legitimate and helpful for purposes of introduction; but it also carries with it possibilities of misunderstanding which are not entirely guarded against in this book. Ferré names the stand which began in Vienna "verificational analysis" and the more Wittgensteinian strand "functional analysis," and treats them as though they constituted two distinct and rival schools of thought. In a sense no doubt they do: early logical positivism and contemporary linguistic analysis, if set side by side, certainly present a marked contrast. But to contrast them is like comparing prehistoric man with his now living descendants. It is true that surviving specimens of the philosophical species positivus logicalis, extinct in Europe for a generation, have been reported in the mid-Western prairies and far-Western mountain regions of North America, and have even been photographed by Time magazine. But Ferré is not referring to these eminent but lonely survivors from the Vienna Circle. He does not mention Carnap, Feigl, or Hempel, even in his bibliography. Almost all his references are to the "British analysts," and it is a characteristic of their work that verificational analysis is integrated within functional analysis as one device amongst others for exposing the manifold uses and vagaries of language. The conclusion which Ferré reaches concerning the limits of verificational analysis-that it does not provide a valid test of meaning as such, but is

249 - Language, Logic and God

rather a way of distinguishing between factual and other kinds of meaning-is axiomatic amongst most contemporary analysts; and the effect of it has not been to close the door upon verificational analysis but rather to open the door between the two procedures and so make possible a more comprehensive and flexible attack upon the problems of language. For example, C. B. Martin's discussion of "a religious way of knowing," which Ferré treats under the functional rubric, makes central use of the notion of "tests and check-up procedures." This is an appeal to a verification criterion, and well illustrates the interaction, rather than opposition, between verificational and functional analysis. Again, in the work of both Crombie and Wisdom we see the two methods working together in productive harmony. Thus whilst the distinction between verificational and functional analysis offers a useful organizing principle, and is used as such to good effect by Ferré, it should not be hardened into a picture of incompatible alternatives or opposing schools. The only general criticism that I have to offer of the book is that this caution is not sufficiently observed, and that as a result the contrast between the two types of analysis is somewhat overdrawn.

Under the heading of functional analysis Ferré treats the attempts that have been made to explicate the "logic" of theological language by means of the notions of analogy, faith-obedience, and encounter, and the contrary attempts to show that theological language serves no proper function. The following chapter describes and criticizes the views of R. B. Braithwaite, R. M. Hare, and John Wisdom, who in different ways assimilate religious to moral or aesthetic discourse. As Ferré points out, these theories clarify the nature of theological language only by stripping it of its distinctively theological character. He then examines the attempts of Willem Zuurdeeg and Ian Ramsey to bring out the unique function of religious language, and finds that neither gives an adequate account of the reference of religious talk to its divine Object.

In the final chapter, which contains his own constructive contribution, Ferré distinguishes helpfully between three sets of questions which arise with regard to theological discourse. These are syntactic, concerned with the relations between the verbal symbols used; interpretic, concerned with the relation of the speaker to his language; and semantic, concerned with the relation between language and reality. This threefold distinction points to a truer account of the relation between verificational and functional analysis than the neat disjunction offered in the main exposition. For Ferré notes that these two types of analysis are concerned with different types of question, verificational analysis with semantic questions, and functional analysis with syntactic and interpretive

250 - Language, Logic and God

questions-an insight which suggests that they complement one another rather than presenting mutually exclusive alternatives.

The basic and unavoidable question concerning theological language is whether or not it makes factual claims. Ferré holds that it does. It refers, he says, to metaphysical facts. There is however a puzzling ambiguity in Ferré's discussion of this important question. Many of his criticisms of other philosophers, in earlier chapters, presuppose the traditional conception of God as a transcendent personal reality, the creator of the universe, a Being other than and independent of the mind of man. And the reference in this final chapter to metaphysical facts agrees with that presupposition. But when Ferré explains what he means by such facts his position appears to shift. He equates these facts with metaphysical concepts or organizing ideas. Metaphysical facts, he says, are relative to a particular metaphysical system: "A 'metaphysical fact,' therefore, is a concept which plays a key role within the system, without which the system would founder" (p. 161). Is God, then, as a metaphysical "fact," only a concept in the minds of some metaphysicians? Does Ferré, after criticizing the philosophers who reduce religious beliefs to symbols illuminating our human experience but having no valid reference beyond it, end up in their camp? At this point Ferré imprints a question mark on the reader's mind; and this fact, in conjunction with the high quality of the book as a whole, prompts the hope that Dr. Ferré will write again on these topics, taking them up where he has left off in the present work.

John Hick
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey