Words About God: The Philosophy of Religion ed. by Ian T. Ramsey (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Words About God: The Philosophy of Religion. Edited by IAN T. RAMsEY. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. Pp. ~44. $3.95. This book is one of the latest additions to the Harper Forum series designed to present students with reliable resources for the study of religion. Words About God is subtitled The Philosophy of Religion, but the book is concerned solely with the logical uses of religious language. Moreover, except for the first section, the essays are limited to contributions of British philosophers of this century. This is, of course, a parochial view of the problem, but it is also the case that in recent years British philosophers have given special attention to these issues. It is clear that Ramsey, now Bishop of Durham, makes no pretense of inclusiveness. He wants to illustrate the evolution of the discussion of the logic of religious language in British empiricism from the early work of Russell, G. E. Moore, and Wittgenstein to A. J. Ayer and the Verification Principle and on to the broadening of empiricism and the implications of this development for more recent explorations of the logic of theological discourse. Ramsey fulfils this intention very well. I must remark, not entirely gratuitously, how heartening it is to see a Bishop so at home in the intricacies of contemporary philosophical analysis! The editor's Introduction gives an excellent brief over-view of the issues. This is followed by a section of classical passages on the problem by Plotinus, Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas, Mansel, and R. Otto. These essays should impress the student with the fact that theologians have long been aware of the necessity of reserve or reticence in speaking about God. I found the lesser-known selections (perhaps for that reason) from Lotze and Bradley on the personality of God especially interesting. Parts Three and Four include numerous selections from ~Oth century British philosophers on the analysis of language--from Russell's distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and by description and Ayer's Verification Principle to Weismann's discussion of "language strata," Ryle's " category mistakes," Strawson's " logic of persons," Austin's " performative utterances," and Max Black's analysis of the cognitive role of metaphor, among others. Part V of the book illustrates how these newer insights into the uses of language are now being applied to the logic of religious discourse . This section contains essays by R. W. Hepburn, Donald Evans, and the editor. The last section of the book is not entirely satisfactory. One is led to see how philosophical analysis has presented theology with new tools and 150 BOOK REVIEWS 151 a new opportunity for fruitful exploration of the peculiarities of its language, but the selections chosen to illustrate the application are few and, in this reader's view, not among the best in what has become an extensive and richly diverse body of literature. Two points can be made in the editor's defense: He was apparently required to pare down his original selection of essays considerably, and he was no doubt mindful of the fact that numerous collections of essays on religious language have appeared in the past few years-many of them containing the best journal articles in the field-indeed, some of them duplicating essays already reprinted more than once. Does this collection of readings serve the purpose for which it was designed? As indicated, Ramsey illustrates the development of language analysis in this century with a perceptive and economical choice of basic essays. However, the book offers the student a limited exposure to the theological uses of language analysis. It will have to be supplemented with the now well-known collections of Flew and Macintyre, Basil Mitchell, Dallas High, and others. Scholars in the field will be familiar with the literature condensed into this volume. On the other hand, students with limited philosophical training will find much in this book too difficult for them. The book will, then, be of primary use to students with some philosophical sophistication -advanced undergraduates and graduate students. The book should do good service in advanced courses in the philosophy of religion. The publisher has priced the book too high for a paperback edition of...