I have a friend who is a stockbroker, one of the most matter-of-fact and
practical people I have ever known. One day Harry, for that is his name, took
me to the Stock Exchange in Throgmorton Street, London, to show me how it
worked. This was before the “Big Bang” of computer dealing.
“‘Jobbers’ who specialize in certain stocks and shares have
their own ‘pitch’ on the floor of the Stock Exchange”, Harry
explained to me. “The jobbers ‘make’ prices for each share by
offering a buying and selling price. Brokers strike a deal when the price is
right for the investors they are representing.”
As Harry was talking, I noticed that his attention was drawn to excitement in one corner of the Exchange. We got nearer and looked at the huge tables displaying the trend of buying and selling. Suddenly Harry‘s face grew pale. “My God”, he said. “Lighthouse Aluminium [or some such firm] has fallen thirty pence!” As we watched, the price fell even lower. “Oh dear God, stop this!”, I heard him murmur. “Please, don’t let it happen. . .” It turned out that he had bought thirty thousand shares for a client on the previous day, in the firm conviction that it was a secure investment.
Later in a nearby pub I challenged him. “I heard you say a prayer”, I stated. “‘Dear God, stop this!’, or something to the same effect. Do you really think God will listen to such a request?”
He looked thoughtful for some time. “In my work I need God, you know”, he said. “But it is difficult to see what I really meant. I wasn’t asking for a miracle really. It was some expression of worry, I suppose; of dependence. I believe prayers like that should not be taken on their content value, but on what they express in another way.”
He paused a while and then said: “I suppose it’s like money. A banknote is just a piece of paper with little intrinsic worth. But it’s worth a lot by what it can do.”
Judging things by what they can do is characteristic of functional thinking. And that, for better or for worse, is the kind of thinking we have become used to today. Before we can discuss the effect this has on our concept of God, it may well be necessary to reflect on the origin of this manner of thinking: survival in urban surroundings.
Modern technology has changed the township of former centuries into the city of today. Urbanized society is not just different from township society in the number of people living together or in other quantitative aspects. The quality of life and the inner structure of human relationships have been profoundly altered. (1)
The secular city of today is not a “community” but a network of functional relationships. In a township society people had different professions, but these professions were not the basis on which relationships in the community were built. In urbanized life the opposite is true. An urban citizen meets hundreds of people every day, but mainly in their professional capacity: the ticket collector, the waiter, the clerk in the bank, the customer, the policeman. He could not possibly have a deep personal acquaintance with them. He does not need to know their name, their home background or their religion. Social life in the city will only work if these many relationships are maintained on a strictly functional level. Of course, a city man will have some personal friends, but the very structure of city life makes it necessary to restrict their number. He could not possibly begin close acquaintance with all the persons attending his school or working in his factory or travelling with him on the Underground.
In urbanized society communication too has taken on new dimensions. It is manifold, fast and public. In townships, people used to pick up rumours at the local teashops, on the market or at unofficial gatherings. News was carried by word of mouth. Contacts were made face to face. Communication was with people one knew. The citizen of today is constantly speaking to people he cannot see— by telephone, by the microphone or by correspondence. He is continuously being addressed by persons who do not know him—through the newspapers, the radio, the film and television. He knows what is going on in society and he is in unceasing and multiple contact with it. But communication tends to be functional and not addressed to him as an individual.
City life is extremely mobile. It is enough to watch traffic in the peak hour between eight and nine in the morning to see the implications. Everyone in the city is constantly on the move—to one’s place of work, to shopping areas, to one’s home, to places of entertainment. The whole commerce and traffic of the city are constructed to allow for this multiple interchange of places, for this moving of crowds in all directions at the same time. City life presupposes adaptability. If one shop is closed another will be open. If one job is lost, another job in some other firm must be accepted. The traditional pattern of the stable home with the inherited trade cannot survive.
Urbanized society is achievement-orientated. What counts for survival and making a living is not one’s own likings or beliefs, but success. The article that is bought by many people proves to be a good product: factories and shopkeepers will model their trade to supply it. Skills in demand are rewarded with good salaries; however praiseworthy in themselves, talents that are not experienced as useful will find no means of subsistence. The houses, shops, banks, work places and schools are designed to afford the maximum output of utility. The outlook of city people is necessarily pragmatic. The question is not: What is the intrinsic value of this or that? but: What is its use? Will it work? Is it practical?
Another feature of modern society is that it is secularized. What we mean by this is that in the various aspects of its organization the causality of religion is consciously and on principle excluded. When treating patients in a hospital the doctor is not supposed to do faith healing or recite mantras: he has to diagnose the disease and give medical treatment as if God did not exist. The policeman who is investigating a murder may not spend his time in a temple praying for a divine revelation. He is expected to gather evidence and pursue the criminal as if God did not exist. The same applies to all other professions: the nurse, the mechanic, the schoolmaster, the bus conductor, the accountant. All have their own specific tasks which they have to fulfil in accordance with professional and scientific norms. To the modern citizen his or her allegiance to a particular religion or personal belief does not enter one’s function or profession in society. Whatever people may believe as individuals, society as such is organized as if God does not exist. (2)
The process of changing from a township to a secular society is still going on. It is further advanced in some countries, retarded in others. The important thing for us to note is that the changeover also implies the new way of thinking which has been called functional thinking. It can be called a “new way of thinking” because it entails a fundamental difference in the understanding of life and reality. The philosopher of past ages tried to see how persons and objects fitted into some kind of totality of truth. The pragmatist of secular society tries to understand how persons and objects function in the immediate context of his world. This is not an attempt to deny the larger reality or to reduce objective truth to subjective utility. It is simply that the citizen of today has come to realize the relativity of general concepts and the necessity of tackling problems within a manageable scope.
An example may illustrate the difference in approach. A traditional Christian who lived, let us say, in 1900, found it difficult to join a Muslim colleague in a prayer service. The underlying reason was the approach of “total truth” implied in metaphysics. The Christian felt that he could not join the Muslim without first checking on the whole faith of Islam. He felt that the condition of error which he had to hold the Muslim to be in, somehow affected everything the latter did. Also, the Muslim’s prayer was the prayer of an “unbeliever”. Moreover, his own participation in the Muslim service would to some extent involve the whole Christian Church, he thought. It seemed impossible to him to join his colleague in prayer unless some fundamental principles and general truths had first been agreed upon.
We see here how universal concepts dominated his thinking: error, the whole Church, heresy, Christianity, Islam, etc. The secular, functionally thinking Christian will exclude such general concepts as irrelevant to the particular problem of his joining the prayer service. Whether Christianity or Islam is the right religion has no bearing on this problem. What other beliefs the Muslim has does not concern him here and now. In fact, it seems of little importance whether he is a Muslim, a Buddhist or a Hindu. For this particular, limited problem of whether he should pray together with his colleague, the urbanized Christian feels he only needs to consider if it has a function and if it is justified in the immediate context of their relationship. Probably he will find that the proposed common prayer is extremely meaningful, and will then decide to join without feeling the need of settling many questions of theoretical truth and general principle.
To express what we think we use language. In the past it has been taken for granted that our words correspond to concepts and these concepts to objects. Truth meant that the statement in human language and outside reality agree; falsehood that they do not agree. All language was taken in an objectivistic sense. In fact, philosophers of the past simply forgot about language, just as writers today do not think it worthwhile to reflect on the pens they hold or the typewriters or word processors they use.
In our time we have discovered that language is a much more complicated tool than this. If I say: “Prabhat Singh is your opponent”, it gives a different message in different circumstances. It could be that I am sportsmaster and hereby telling you that I appoint Prabhat Singh to oppose you in a game of tennis. It may also be that I am giving you information about who your opponent is in an election campaign. I may also be a police instructor who is presenting an imaginary case to pupils in a detective school. The precise meaning of what we are saying can only be determined from a knowledge of the activity we are engaged in. Linguistic analysts call a whole set of human actions taking place in a particular context and having its own specific symbols and expressions a language game. (3)
The businessman, the journalist, the politician, the scientist, the housewife, the college student: each uses his or her own “language game” with its specific rules and meanings. For judging the truth and validity of a statement we have to judge it within its own language game. When the farmer says: “Bob is my shepherd”, it has decisively a different meaning than in the believer’s prayer: “The Lord is my shepherd.”
Linguistic analysis was taken up first by English scientists. On account of their empirical training they were inclined to take scientific object-language as the norm of relevance. Ordinary language, they maintained, can be verified or falsified by direct observation. Only such object-language as “There John comes riding a bicycle” is obviously meaningful. The metaphysical use of language falls outside empirical observation, and was therefore ruled out as having only secondary meaning. The word “God”, they said, was an artificial and meaningless word, because it could not be verified.
At first sight it looks as if the advance of knowledge proves these linguists right. God is not a causality within the world. It is nonsense to think of God as one doctor among so many others, or of his blessing as a healing drug competing with penicillin in effectiveness. Within the science of medicine God does not exist: it is not correct to ascribe illnesses and cures to some kind of miraculous intervention by God in human life. God does not belong to the language game of science.
But this does not mean that the word “God” is not very meaningful in other spheres of human language. Many valid aspects of our human existence fall outside the immediate scope of scientific observation. The scientist who makes a new discovery may be jumping with joy in his laboratory. But the experience of joy or sadness are typically human experiences that cannot be defined in descriptive scientific terms. Science can analyse the inner composition of sound in a spectrograph—but it cannot judge the beauty of a melody, it cannot appreciate paintings, sculpture and architecture, as an intelligent person can do. Most of all, science cannot judge the moral value of its inventions. Science can produce nuclear explosives, but it requires responsible human beings to decide in what circumstances they may be used. Human beings are persons, and as such much greater than science. They show in their lives an involvement in reality that goes beyond descriptive object language.
Some theologians have explained the meaningfulness of God in terms of ethics. According to them “God” is part of the human language game of moral responsibility. By speaking of God the creator of all and supreme judge of all our actions, we are expressing our dependence on other beings and the need to subordinate our aims to the common good. The kind of language we use when we speak of God is the language of “parable”, they say. We speak of God as if he is our “Father”, who “sees us”, who “leads us on the right path”, etc. When employed in religious language these expressions do not have their face value, but express some other reality in a transferred sense. (4)
If this is understood as though the reality of God is nothing else but human ethics, the approach is obviously inadequate. We have then reduced God to a mere fiction. He would have no reality apart from his role in human society, and thus he would exactly be the opposite of what we want to express by the term “God”. But many philosophers speak of religious language as the language of parable in a much more positive sense. They are convinced that God is a true reality, even though he is not an object in the world in which we live.
As our human language is based on this object-world, we can only apply its terms to God in a transferred sense. In religious “language of parable” we employ every-day terms, but remember that they have a different meaning when applied to God. When I say: “God sees me and watches over me every moment of the day”, I know that these terms are not true of God in the object sense of the words. God has no eyes, he does not move through time, and he is simply not like any other object or person in our world. But I know that the statement expresses something valuable to me. It is like a parable. It conveys God’s relationship to me in the image of a watchful father.
As these developments in linguistic philosophy are rather recent, it is difficult to survey them accurately. Moreover, it is not easy at this moment to discern what is passing and what will be of lasting value. One thing seems certain: many philosophers are making the discovery that the language game of religion has an objective basis. From among the various new lines of thought I would like to single out two that seem to me of special importance.
Linguistic analysis shows that human communication is taking place at more levels at the same time. There is a communication of contents and a communication of relationship. The second is called meta-communication. If I say: “Please have lunch with me tomorrow”, I am inviting someone to lunch (the contents), but by the words I choose, by my attitude and facial expression, I am at the same time conveying that this invitation is an expression of friendship (relationship). Sometimes we also express meta-communication in words, for instance when we say: “It would mean a lot to me.” Underlying this second level of communication there is again a deeper level by which we express our general attitude to ourselves and to others (e.g. “I try to understand others; I like people”). And below this over-all relationship level there is a fourth level, closely related to the fundamental position of our personality regarding existence as such (in the line of “I’m OK. I’m happy to exist”).
Each of these four levels of communication is real. Human language, however, developed particularly in view of first-level communication. It is geared to be useful in the accurate transfer of informational messages. Using human language to explicate what is going on in second-, third- or fourth level communication is progressively more difficult if not utterly impossible. Language simply cannot do the job. Religion, these linguists point out, lies on the fourth- level of communication as it concerns our basic attitude to ourselves, to existence and reality. The difficulty of religious language arises from our attempt to express our real experience of fourth-level communication in terms of first-level content language. (5)
Other philosophers start from the reality of religious experience itself. The essence of a genuine religious experience, they say, is a flash of insight and commitment by which we are brought face to face with ultimate reality. Religion makes use of descriptive language in which people talk about God and realities related to him, as if they are objects of our day-to-day world. But these “words about God” are only the launching pad from which our religious experience can take off. In genuine religious language the descriptive meaning of the word is transcended by a “cosmic disclosure” in which a person suddenly understands an aspect of ultimate being and surrenders himself or herself to it. If I exclaim: “God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, I am using descriptive language (complaining like a child left by his father), but through these words I may experience a “disclosure situation”, a break-through to the reality of God. (6)
In recent years science itself has made unexpected discoveries about the nature of the world. The new questions raised seem to touch religion almost directly in their search for meaning. How do space, matter and existence relate? What existed before the Big Bang? What will exist after the universe collapses? How can consciousness influence physical entities? How come that “the uncertainty principle”, quantum jumps, and the anthropocentric thrust of evolution agree with mystic and religious views? Many scientists are searching for a more functional approach in their own discipline that would allow for a holistic understanding of reality and thus include God . (7)
Language is an instrument, a tool, a means we use for a variety of purposes. To understand what is happening we should go beyond the obvious, external impressions created by words and ask: “What is their function in this particular context?” Speaking about God and religious values is extremely meaningful. It need not in any way contradict the use of object language in other spheres of life.
1. The features of today’s city life are described in: P.K. Hatt and A.J. Reiss (Ed.). Cities and Society, Free Press, New York 1957; N. Anderson, The Urban Community: A World Perspective, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York 1959; E. Mayo The Social Problems of an Industrial Civilization, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1959; C.F. Stover, The Technological Order, Wayne State University Press, Detroit 1963; T. Burns (Ed.), Industrial Man, Penguin 1969.
2. On the consequences of urbanization for Christianity: P. Albrecht, The Churches and Rapid Social Change, Doubleday, New York 1961; G. Winter, The New Creation as Metropolis, Macmillan, New York 1963; P. van Buren, Theological Explorations, SCM, London 1968.
3. L. Wittgenstein was the first to distinguish “language games” clearly. Read esp. his Philosophical Investigations, Blackwell, Oxford 1968. Other good introductions: J.L. Austin, How to do things with words, Oxford University Press, London 1970; J.R. Searle (Ed.), The Philosophy of Language, Oxford University Press 1971.
4. For “God-talk” explained as ethics, see R.B. Braithwaite, An Empiricist’s View of the Nature of Religious Belief, Cambridge University Press, 1955. A more acceptable presentation of it as the “language of parable” is given by T.R. Miles in Religion and the Scientific Outlook, Allen and Unwin, London 1969.
5. Meta-communication and its implications for belief in God are explained by P. Watzlawick et al., Pragmatics of Human Communications, Norton, New York 1970.
6. A good theological discussion of the linguistics of “God-talk” has been provided by I. Ramsey in Religious Language, SCM, London 1957; Christian Discourse, Oxford University Press, London 1965.
7. P. Davies sketches the new developments in God and the New Physics, Penguin 1984. A much more daring integration is proposed by F. Capra, The Tao of Physics, Fontana, London 1976 (updated edition in 1983); F.A. Wolf, Taking the Quantum Leap, Harper and Row, San Francisco 1980.