There is a certain creature that English people call a cow. French people call it la vache. Doubtless other languages have other words for the same creature.

Now, does it make sense to ask the Frenchman to justify the use of ‘la vache’ to describe the cow? Imagine asking the question (in French, presumably) ‘why do you call it la vache?’!! There is no exterior logical justification for the derivation of the language. There are cows, and this is the language that we use for interacting with them.

So I want to distinguish between two sorts of justification for God-talk (theology). One sort accepts that there is something there to be discussed, and the debate is therefore about what sort of language does the best job in the discussion. Let’s call this the ‘naming God’ debate.

The second sort denies that there is anything there to be discussed at all. As Richard Dawkins puts it (in ‘God Delusion’), theology is simply ‘fairyology’ – there are no fairies at the bottom of the garden, and it’s a waste of time pursuing any conversation involving them. So lets call this the fairy-killing debate.

Now, in a post which will come along soon, I’m going to be talking about conscience, and talking about how God-language interacts with language about conscience, morals and decision making and so on. When this has come up before, eg when discussing my post about ‘what I mean when I talk about God‘ some of the responses have, it seems to me, been akin to asking the Frenchman why he uses the word ‘vache’ to talk about cows. In other words, the reality of what I am describing is not in dispute, simply the merits or demerits of using religious language to describe the phenomena. I have a lot of respect for those perspectives which recognise what is trying to be described using god-language, engages with it, points out its flaws, and then starts being linguistically creative (possibly in atheistic ways) in order to move forward. _Some_ of the discussion around the problem of evil can be like this (but most isn’t).

However, some of the criticisms have ended up obsessing over the question of whether a particular entity exists or not. In other words, the discussion has been about fairy-killing. Now, as I’ve explored elsewhere, I don’t find the fairy-killing discussions all that helpful, not least because it’s part of the logic of faith that God does not ‘exist’ in the relevant way for the discussion to make sense. That is, as the quote from Denys Turner I refer to often puts it, “in the sense in which atheists… say God ‘does not exist’, the atheist has merely arrived at the theological starting point. Theologians of the classical traditions, an Augustine, a Thomas Aquinas or a Meister Eckhart, simply agree about the disposing of idolatries, and then proceed with the proper business of doing theology.”

This distinction corresponds, I think, to the distinction between the sophisticated and the humourless atheists. The sophisticated atheist recognises what is being talked about; the humourless doesn’t.

Anyhow, this was really a ground-clearing post. Consider it a ‘clearing of the throat before speech’.

The Chimp takes me to task here for being too vague about God (or, to be more precise, about sometimes being vague when pressed, at other times being quite concrete).

So: an analogy which may help.

Consider a diesel engine (something I’ve been doing a lot of recently) eg in a car or a boat.

Someone can own a car with a diesel engine and know very little about that engine, save that it requires to be supplied with fuel on a regular basis, and that it can be kicked into motion by turning a key.

Another person might know a little more – might know, for example, that diesel engines don’t require a spark plug, because the ignition comes from compression of fuel; they might also know some rudiments about how to maintain the engine, eg to check the oil, know how to bleed it of air, and so on.

Another person – say a mechanic working in the garage – might know even more about a particular engine. He would be familiar with how to diagnose faults, how to fine tune it to run optimally, perhaps some history of previous engines in the line and so on.

Finally, another person might be the chief engineer and designer of the engine itself. Such a person might not only know all the attributes of this engine to astonishing detail, but also why the engine was made in one way or another, so are aware, for example, of the balances and trade-offs between one feature and another. Any conceivably realistic question about this engine can be answered by the engineer – the engineer has total knowledge of the engine.

Now the point about idolatry, with regard to God (useful summary: God is not a member of any set) is really about setting limits to what we can know or say about God. In other words, what Christians can say about God belongs to the first three categories of knowledge described above. We can never get to a point of total and exhaustive knowledge about God. Because we’re not God – we are creatures, he is creator.

Now it is not, to my mind, a legitimate objection, to say of theology that because it cannot provide the fourth form of knowledge, it is epistemologically inadequate. The first three forms of knowledge are still valid, and don’t require the existence of a person with fourth level knowledge to be valid – in just the same way that the first person to develop the knowledge of flint-knapping didn’t require a masters degree in paleontology first.

Which flags up the division which really lurks behind some of these conversations. At the end of the day, theology is reflection around a praxis. When critics of the reflection say ‘there is no such thing’ I feel that they miss the praxis which makes sense of the words. In just the same way that someone driving their diesel engine might say ‘I’ve got no idea how this engine works but it gets me from A to B’. The lack of total knowledge is an insufficient objection.