The Use of Language and Biblical Interpretation

Abstract

"Ayer's extreme suggestions concerning the place of metaphysics, ethics, and theology have already been thoroughly and repeatedly criticized', and Ayer himself has somewhat modified his earlier thought. Rather than whip again a dying horse, let us assume that the logical positivist school has offered no sufficient grounds for holding that theological statements are "meaningless". Yet assuming that the Biblical statements concerning God have some significance for men, we are still left with the problem of determining how these statements are to be taken. If Chris- tian theism is to reap the full benefit of its supernatural revelation, a safe course must be steered between the Scylla of complete literalism and the Charybdis of a symbolism which not only divests all Biblical statements of any precise, literal intention, but also denies the possibility of any direct knowledge concerning God. It is in the plotting of such a course that an analysis of the way in which that revelation uses language is needed"