It used to seem rather obvious that the world was full of evidence for God. These days, theologians no longer beat this drum — but some of them still give it soft little taps from time to time.
Such tapping is what Rowan Williams is drawn to, now that he’s free of the obligation to dance around homosexuals and Muslims, so to speak. In this book, adapted from his recent Gifford lectures (a famous lecture series devoted to ‘natural theology’), he ponders the philosophy of language, and suggests that there is a deep affinity between how humans make meaning and how religious language makes sense.
It’s a meticulously restrained and complex performance, as you’d expect — but worth straining to hear. Is he saying that there is some sort of proof of Christianity’s truth in the linguistic structure of reality? No; but he is saying that serious attention to language tells us that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in the crude scientism of the atheists.
He argues that we must get away from the idea that language essentially describes reality, as best it can.
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