Quotes (Theme 4)

Question 1

What quotes support the functions of symbols from John Randall?

Answer 1

• Religion demanded “careful observation and description, explanation, reflective understanding, and intelligent criticism”
• “All ideas of God, like all other religious beliefs, are without exception religious symbols”
• A sign “stands for or represents something other than itself: it is always a sign of something else”
• “It is important to remember religious symbols are not signs; they belong rather with the non-representative symbols which function in various ways in both intellectual and the practical life”
• “Religious symbols are commonly said to reveal some truth about experience”

Question 2

What quotes support Paul Tillich?

Answer 2

• “Mans ultimate concern must be expressed symbolically, becuase symbolic language alone is able to express the ultimate”
• “The reason for this transformation of concepts into symbols is the character of ultimacy and the nature of faith”
• “Whatever we say about that which concerns us ultimately, whether or not we call it God, has symbolic meaning”

Question 3

What quotes support the consideration of how these two views can be used to help understand religious teachings?

Answer 3

• “They are imaginative and figurative ways of conceiving the relations of men and their ideals to the nature of things and to its religious dimensions”
• “Faith is not the belief in such stones, but it is the acceptance of the symbols that express our ultimate concern in terms of divine reactions”

Question 4

What quotes support the complex form of mythical language that communicates values and insights into purpose of existence?

Answer 4

• “A myth is a story, imagined or true, that helps us make sense of reality… without a myth there is no meaning or purpose to life. Myths do more than explain. They guide mental processes, conditioning how we think, even how we perceive”

Question 5

What quotes support creation myths?

Answer 5

• “Myths are always present in every act of faith, because the language of faith is the symbol…it puts the stories of the Gods into the framework of time and space although it belongs to the nature of the ultimate to be beyond time and space”
• “Let us make mankind in our image…and let them have dominion…over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth”

Question 6

What quotes support Language games?

Answer 6

• ‘philosophy may in no way interfere with with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot give it any foundation either. it leaves everything as it is’