Remarks on Religious Language

Tom Gates
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
July 21 , 1999

My role today is to introduce the topic of religious language, to put it into a Quaker context, and hopefully to lay a foundation that will promote our dialogue as the week continues. I propose to do that by providing for your consideration four observations, four starting points for discussion. No doubt many of you will find one or more of these observations problematic, but I think that taken together they do provide a fair overview of the issues which trouble us. These observations come out of my experience over the last ten years of crossing many boundaries within Quakerism, boundaries both geographical and theological, where differences of religious language were often the crux of my experience.

The first observation is this: that our words should be humble. All religious language is "an attempt to talk about what we do not know how to talk about'. In talking about what we do not know, all we can do is compare it to that which we do know. Thus, religious language is like a metaphor: a word that is known and familiar, but used out of context to describe something unknown. Like any metaphor, religious language therefore is not a complete and literal description of reality, but instead partial, indirect, and less than adequate ­­ sometimes enlightening, but sometimes obscuring. Isaac Pennington gave the classic Quaker expression of this when he wrote, "The end of words is to bring us to the knowledge of that which is beyond what words can utter." Quakers have always been wary of mistaking words for the Truth: thus our ancient testimony against creeds.

Given this understanding, Quakers have sometimes been tempted to dispense with words altogether. But our testimony against creeds was never meant to be a testimony against words. Early Quakers understood this ­­ they were never at a loss to translate their beliefs into words. And this brings us to the second point: that words are necessary. However inadequate our religious language may seem, words are nevertheless the only way we have of expressing our faith, sharing our spiritual experience, inspiring and teaching one another, and passing along our tradition to others. When we are asked to articulate our faith, if the best we can is to say that it is beyond words, then is it any wonder that the world seems disinclined to hear our message?

But beyond these pragmatic considerations, we need to remember that religious language doesn't just describe our spiritual experience; in a very real sense it shapes that experience. Most of us do not see God with the naked eye, but only through the lens of our metaphors and language. If we allow that lens ­­ the language of our spiritual tradition ­­ to atrophy, then sooner or later will we also lose our capacity to see, in the spiritual sense?

The third observation: we need the courage to speak our truth in the language and the metaphors through which we have come to understand it. Too often we seem to put the burden on the speaker to find.' words sufficiently bland to offend no one. But our metaphors will be most compelling when we speak from the heart, from our own experience of God, from what we know, as Fox said, "experimentally". There are two important corollaries to this. First, because we cannot know God in the abstract, but only on the level of our own individual experience of relationship with the divine, then our religious language will work best on that level. Thus, the many words we use for God should be understood not as abstract definitions, which are mutually exclusive, but as descriptions of our experience, which can be mutually enhancing. A second corollary: it is important for us to say more about what we can affirm, what we have experienced, what we know experimentally ­­ and correspondingly less about what we don't believe, cannot accept, or find offensive. A vocal ministry that never rises above these negatives is not helpful to the community.

So, we need the courage to speak our truth, but we also need, and this is the fourth point, we need the courage to listen. It is comfortable and reassuring to go to Meeting and hear others use words that we like, to tell us things we already believe. But hopefully we come together in worship not just to hear about things we already know, but instead with the expectation of being challenged, confronted, even transformed by the presence of God, which may come to us through the words of another. The courage to listen sometimes means that the very words that are hardest for us to listen to, are the ones we most need to hear. As listeners, we must be willing to take the risks of truly hearing each other ­­ of being willing to be made uncomfortable, to be stretched and challenged in new ways, both by the rediscovered power of the old metaphors, as well as the transforming potential of the new. This I hope is where the religious language of Quakerism will always be found.

So these four things: words that are humble, but words that are necessary; the courage to speak, but also the courage to listen. Let these be guideposts to point us in the right direction as we begin to listen to each other throughout the week.