Theology’s Method and Linguistic Analysis in the Thought of Langdon Gilkey

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORS: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS OF THE PROVINCE oF ST. JosEPH Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington, D. C. 20017 VoL. XXXVI JULY, 1972 No.3 THEOLOGY'S METHOD AND LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS IN THE THOUGHT OF LANGDON GILKEY I. Introducing the theme: the issues linguistic analysis raises for contemporary theological method. LKE ANY SIGNIFICANT thinker, Langdon Gilkey owes much to an historical legacy. In his case it is clearly to the classical Protestant sources that he owes most. But intimately bound up with these theological sources is a philosophical heritage also. One sees this latter in his work on Whitehead for his doctoral dissertation, his continual use of language analysis throughout his writings, in his espousal of some of the main principles of phenomenology, and in his latest interest in science's philosophical methodology. Linguistic analysis , however, clearly seems to be his main interest, and through its use he has tried to enable contemporary theology to become " contemporary" again. Convinced, like Gilkey, that the analytic method has real relevance for theology, and convinced, too, that Gilkey's particular use of that method has more relevance, this essay will attempt to situate wherein that relevance lies. 363 364 WILLIAM THOMPSON It is probably safe to say that, if we wish to understand linguistic analysis, we need to know something of the British empirical tradition. In fact, linguistic analysis is largely a result of the vicissitudes of that tradition.1 Passmore begins his classical history of the movement with John Stuart Mill but adds that, although Mill probably never studied Hume, he clearly follows in the latter's tradition. Undoubtedly the increasing importance of science and the Industrial Revolutionhad a great deal to do with British philosophers' insistence on the senses as knowledge's starting point, but they were also clearly reacting to what they considered the dead end of Idealism, as exemplified by Bishop Berkeley. Hume clearly insists that the senses are our only real access to knowledge. Any expression, then, which is to be meaningful, must result from sense perception. Our ideas are copies, albeit less vivid, of sense impressions, following Locke's unum nomen, unum nominatum. If we cannot ultimately trace our knowledge back to sense impressions, or at least to a comparison of ideas derived from sense impressions, then our knowledge must be fraudulent. Experience alone, then, is the key to knowledge, and not reason. For example, this means with respect to the principle of causality that we cannot know by reason a causal relationship between X and Y but only by experience a temporal and spatial sequence in which X and Y appears. Mill follows in Hume's tradition, although his predecessors differ. He came to accept a form of empiricism through his study of associationism, utilitarianism, and Comte's positivism. And his System of Logic, an attempt not just to describe but to justify the methods of science, clearly reflects these schools of thought. The key to his thought, consequently, is that knowledge is not a matter of intuition but of observation and experience, and he attempts to prove this in his study of logic, the science of evidence. Naturally enough he develops a theory 1 We will rely here on J. Passmore, A Hundred Years of Philosophy (1957), esp. chapters 1, 3, 6, 9, 15, 16, 18; and B. Gross, Analytic Philosophy: An HiBtorical Introduction (1970), introduction. THEOLOGY'S METHOD AND LANGDON GILKEY 865 of connotation, according to which propositions derive their meaning from the regular association of certain experiences; and a theory of inference, according to which man always reasons from the particular experience to the universal, and not vice versa, as was commonly thought of syllogistic reasoning. Against this developing empiricism the Idealists reacted, especially in the person of F. H. Bradley.2 He criticizes the empiricists on two counts. First, their theory of thinking is too psychological. It is not enough to say that our experiences in some way "picture" experience. We must know, in addition, what those pictures mean. Secondly, though our experiences may seem separate, their reality is a united whole internally. Later linguistic philosophers were to accept Bradley's first criticism...