MEANING: THE SEMANTICAL PRECONDITION
Christianity makes truth claims. It asserts that a theistic God exists (see chapter 2), that Christ is the Son of God (see volume 2), and that the Bible is the Word of God (see part 2). These truths are held to be objectively (rather than merely subjectively) true; that is, they are true not only for me but for everyone (see chapter 7).
However, all true statements must be meaningful—they must make sense. Nonsensical statements are neither true nor false (e.g., “Zuplops cadlure gugemonts”). Likewise, emotive statements (like “Ouch!”) have no cognitive meaning; they also are neither true nor false, but are simply an expression of our feelings.1 Yet both true and false statements are meaningful statements. For example, “The capital of the United States is Canton, Ohio” is meaningful, but it is false. So, by definition, in order to be cognitively meaningful a statement must be either true or false.2
Now, if all true statements are meaningful, then all objectively true statements (as Christianity claims to possess) must be objectively meaningful. Thus the objectivity of truth is dependent on the objectivity of meaning. Unfortunately, the dominant view in the contemporary world is opposed to an objective embrace of meaning. This dominant view is called conventionalism.
CONVENTIONALISM VS. ESSENTIALISM
Conventionalism is the theory that all meaning is relative. Since all truth claims are meaningful statements, conventionalism necessarily holds that all truth is relative. But this is contrary to the Christian claim that there is absolute truth—truths that are true at all times, in all places, and for all people (see chapter 7).
Conventionalism: A Reaction to Platonic Essentialism
Conventionalism is a reaction to essentialism, which (following Plato) claims that all language has an unchanging essence or form. By contrast, conventionalism maintains that all meaning is relative to changing situations; meaning is arbitrary and varies according to its context. According to conventionalism, there are no forms of meaning that transcend time and place (transcultural forms). Language (meaning) has no form or essence; linguistic meaning is therefore derived from the changing, relative experience on which language is based.
Essentialism: Plato’s View of Absolute Meaning
Plato (c. 427–347 b.c.) defended a form of essentialism in his dialogue titled Cratylus. Augustine (a.d. 354–430) did also in his Principia Dialtecticae (384), De Magistro (389), and De Trinitate (394–419), although Augustine apparently did not hold to Plato’s picture theory of meaning (the idea that language pictures meaning),3 which Ludwig Wittgenstein critiqued in his famous Tractatus.
Simply stated, essentialism (also called naturalism)4 insists that there is a natural or essential relation between our statements and what they mean. Language is not arbitrarily related to meaning; rather, there is a one-to-one correspondence between them.
Conventionalism: Challenging Platonic Essentialism
Three names loom large in the modern relativization of meaning: Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913), Gottlob Frege (1848–1925), and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951). Their presentation of conventionalism is widely accepted in current linguistic philosophy.
Ferdinand Saussure
The forerunner of modern conventionalism was the famous Swiss linguist Ferdinand Saussure. His Course in General Linguistics is still a standard in the field.
Gottlob Frege
Although Frege wrote relatively little, his teachings, put together from the notes of his students, have had a strong influence on the adoption of conventionalism by modern linguists. These teachings are found in Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Leaning on the works of his predecessors, Ludwig Wittgenstein is credited with making conventionalism the predominant view in philosophical and religious thought. His mature perspective is expressed in his Philosophical Investigations; section I presents a critique of “a particular picture of the essence of human language,” which contains the following theses:
(1) The function of language is to state facts.
(2) All words are names (the referential theory of meaning).5
(3) The meaning of a name is the object denoted.
(4) Meaning is taught by ostensive definition.6
All of these theses are rejected by Wittgenstein as being either an oversimplification of language (theses 1 and 2), or, in the case of thesis 4, mistaken (“an ostensive definition can be variously interpreted in every case,” PI, 1:28), or, as in thesis 3, shown to be absurd by giving examples (e.g., exclamations, PI, 1:27; PI, 1:39).
Other theses that are closely connected with the picture theory of meaning and that come in for criticism are the following:
(1) Meaning is a matter of producing mental images.
(2) Analysis of propositions = Clarification of propositions (PI, 1:60).
(3) Words have a determinate sense.7
Wittgenstein offers an alternative view of meaning that employs:
(1) family resemblances (PI 1:67);
(2) language games (PI 1:7);8
(3) forms of life (PI, 1:19, 23, 241; II, 194, 226).
Since Wittgenstein rejected both univocal9 and analogical language10 (see chapter 9), he held an equivocal view11 reflected in family resemblances and based on changing experience. As such he is one of the strongest proponents of conventionalism.
Wittgenstein and Religious Language
In Wittgenstein’s earlier work Tractatus, religious language was placed in the realm of the inexpressible. He ended Tractatus with the famous line, “That of which you cannot speak, speak not thereof.” It is alleged that religious discourse has no factual meaning, and there is an unbridgeable gulf between fact and value.12 Thus, according to consistent conventionalism, God-talk is nonsense.
It is clear from Wittgenstein’s Notebooks that such feelings as dependence, as well as the recognition that “to believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter” (T, 11), are elements that Wittgenstein “knows” but that are not expressible in language. They are supposedly outside the limits of language and thought.
That the higher and transcendent are inexpressible does not say they are totally incommunicable, for they can be shown yet not said. This is called the doctrine of “showing and saying.”13 An apparent contradiction in the Tractatus is found in that although propositions about language are employed, nevertheless they are, strictly speaking, nonsensical because they are not propositions of natural science. Wittgenstein acknowledges that they are nonsensical and thus can only serve as elucidations (T, 6:45). The fairest interpretation to put on this is to treat the Tractatus as an example of the doctrine of showing and saying. Otherwise, it is inconsistent.
Later, in Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein does not directly speak about religious discourse, but seems to indicate that praying and theology are legitimate and meaningful linguistic activities. (Praying, in particular, is mentioned as a language game.) Since stating facts is only one of a multiplicity of meaningful linguistic activities, there is no a priori bar against the meaningfulness of religious language. This also means that since language games have an intrinsic (internal) criterion of meaning, and since religious language is a language game, religious language must be judged by its own standards and not by standards imposed upon it, which is a form of fideism.14
In Wittgenstein’s Lectures and Conversations religious language is portrayed as having the possibility of being meaningful (as a language game). But it is clear from this work that Wittgenstein is a religious acognostic,15 meaning that he rejects any cognitive knowledge in religious language. He recognizes the legitimacy of a form of life that could “culminate in an utterance of belief in a last judgment” (Wittgenstein, LC 58). He believes that it would be impossible to contradict such a belief or even say that it is possibly true.
The only sense in which such a belief might be a blunder is if it is a blunder in its particular system (ibid., 59), that is, inside of a given language game. Such beliefs are not based on evidence—they are purely a matter of (blind) faith. However, Wittgenstein would not ridicule those who have such a belief—only those who claim it is based on evidence, e.g., historical apologetics. Belief in these cases is used in an extraordinary way (not in an ordinary way). He wrote,
It has been said that Christianity rests on an historical basis. It has [also] been said a thousand times by intelligent people that indubitability is not enough in this case. Even if there is as much evidence [for Christianity] as for Napoleon. Because the indubitability wouldn’t be enough to make me change my whole life (ibid., 57).
Religious beliefs have commissive force; that is, they orient our lives. However, says Wittgenstein, they are not informative about reality. We are allegedly locked in a linguistic bubble, and while religious language is meaningful as a language game, it tells us nothing about God or ultimate reality. God-talk is experientially meaningful, but God-talk is not real talk about God; God is still the inexpressible. Human language is not capable of making any objectively meaningful statements about God, whether these statements are univocal or analogical (see chapter 9). All meaning is culturally and experientially relative—thus says conventionalism.
Distinction Between Conventional Symbols and Conventional Meaning
There is an important difference between a conventionalist theory of symbols and a conventionalist theory of meaning. Other than natural symbols (like smoke to fire) and onomatopoeic terms (like crash, bang, and boom),16 whose sound is their meaning, virtually all linguists acknowledge that symbols are conventionally relative. That is to say, the word bark has no intrinsic relation to the sound of the canine mammal to which it may refer; it can also mean the outer coating of a tree. Indeed, different languages have different names for the same referents. And this is true of most such words.
However, admitting that most words in a sentence are conventional or relative is not the same as claiming that the meaning of a sentence is culturally relative; it means only that the words used to convey meaning are relative. That is, individual symbols change in meaning, but the meaning of a sentence (a unit of thought composed of words) does not change.
Critique of Conventionalism’s Theory of Meaning
As a theory of meaning, conventionalism suffers from some serious faults. Several can be briefly noted.
First, conventionalism is self-falsifying. If the statement “All linguistic meaning is conventional” were true, then this statement itself would be relative, for it claims to be an objectively meaningful statement affirming that there are no such objectively meaningful statements. It offers itself as a nonrelative statement affirming that the meaning of all statements is relative.
Second, if conventionalism were correct, then universal statements would not necessarily translate into all languages as universal statements, but they do. For example, “All triangles have three sides” translates as universally true, everywhere, all the time. So does “All wives are married women.” If meaning were only culturally relative, then no such universal, transcultural statements would be possible.
Third, if conventionalism were true there would not be any universal truths in any language, but there are. For instance, mathematical statements, such as 4+3=7, are universally true. So also are the basic laws of logic, such as the law of noncontradiction (see chapter 5). In fact, no conventionalist can even deny these first principles of thought without using them. The very statement “The meaning of all statements is relative to a culture” is dependent for its meaning on the fact that there are laws of logic that are not relative to a culture but that transcend all cultures and languages.
Fourth, if conventionalism were true, we would not know any truth independent of and/or prior to knowing the conventions of that truth in that language. But we know 2+1=3 before we know the conventions of a language. Mathematics may depend on relative symbols to express itself, but the truths of mathematics are not dependent on any culture.
Fifth, the laws of logic are not based on human conventions; they are true apart from all linguistic conventions. Logic is not arbitrary. We do not choose its laws; rather, we are ruled by them. We do not create them but merely discover them. They are logically prior to and independent of the culture in which they are expressed; cultures do not think them up or even think them up differently. Without them, people in a culture could not even think. People in every culture must use them before they think about them.
Sixth, conventionalism confuses the immediate source of meaning with its ultimate grounds. The source of learning that “all bachelors are unmarried” may be social; for example, one may have learned it from his parents or teachers. But the grounds for knowing this are not social but logical, for, like other first principles, the predicate is reducible to the subject. It is true by definition, not by acculturation.
Seventh, if conventionalism were correct, then no meaning would be possible. If all meaning is based on changing experience, which in turn gets its meaning from changing experience, etc., then there is actually no basis for the meaning. An infinite series is no more possible in meaning than it is in causes. Forever putting off the basis for meaning is not the same as finding the basis for it. And a statement without any basis for its meaning is a baseless affirmation.
Eighth, conventionalism has only an internal criterion for meaning, such as coherence. But internal criteria cannot adjudicate conflicts in meaning regarding the same statements from different worldview vantage points. For example, the statement “God is a Necessary Being” can be interpreted either pantheistically or theistically. Mere internal criteria, such as coherence or logical consistency, cannot determine which of these is correct.
Ninth, conventionalism involves a circular argument. It does not justify its claims; it simply asserts them. When a conventionalist is asked for the basis of his belief that all meaning is conventional, he cannot give a non-conventional basis, for then he would no longer be a conventionalist. But if he gives merely a conventional basis for his conventionalism, i.e., a relative basis for his relativism, then he argues in a circle.
Tenth, conventionalists often distinguish between surface and depth grammar17 to avoid certain problems, such as those just given. But such a distinction assumes they have a vantage point independent of language and experience in order to make such a distinction, and conventionalism by its very nature does not allow such a vantage point outside of one’s culture. Hence, the very distinction they make is not possible on the theory they espouse.
Eleventh, no truly descriptive knowledge of God is possible in a conventionalist view of language, since in conventionalism, language is simply based on our experience. It tells us only what God seems to be (to us) in our experience but not what He really is (in Himself). This reduces to self-defeating agnosticism (the claim that we know that we cannot know anything about the nature of God). Thus conventionalism reduces the meaning of “God” to a mere interpretive framework rather than an extra-cosmic Being beyond the world, which theism shows Him to be (see chapter 2).
REALISM: AN ALTERNATIVE TO ESSENTIALISM AND CONVENTIONALISM
The conventionalist’s view of meaning is clearly an overreaction against platonic essentialism. There is a third alternative that avoids the rigidity of essentialism and the relativism of conventionalism: realism. Realism contends that meaning is objective, even though symbols are culturally relative, for meaning transcends our symbols and linguistic means of expressing it. Meaning is objective and absolute, not because a given linguistic expression of it is, but because there is an absolute Mind, God (see chapter 2), who has communicated it to finite minds (human beings) through a common but analogous means of human language (see chapter 9) that utilizes transcendent principles of logic common to both God and humans (see chapter 5).
A Framework for Understanding the Meaning of Meaning
The traditional six causes will help explain the point. Following Aristotle, scholastic philosophers distinguished six different causes:
(1) efficient cause—that by which something comes to be;
(2) final cause—that for which something comes to be;
(3) formal cause—that of which something comes to be;
(4) material cause—that out of which something comes to be;
(5) exemplar cause—that after which something comes to be;
(6) instrumental cause—that through which something comes to be.
For example, a wooden chair has a carpenter as an efficient cause, to provide something to sit on as a final cause, its structure as a chair as its formal cause, wood as its material cause, its blueprint as its exemplar cause, and the carpenter’s tools as its instrumental cause.
Meaning Is Found in the Formal Cause
Applying these six causes to the meaning of a written text yields the following analysis:
(1) The writer is the efficient cause of the meaning of a text.
(2) The writer’s purpose is the final cause of its meaning.
(3) The writing is the formal cause of its meaning.
(4) The words are the material cause of its meaning.
(5) The writer’s ideas are the exemplar cause of its meaning.
(6) The laws of thought are the instrumental cause of its meaning.
The meaning (formal cause) of an intelligible expression, such as a writing, is not found in the “meaner”; he is the efficient cause of the meaning. The formal cause of meaning is in the writing itself. What is signified is found in the signs that signify it; verbal meaning is found in the very structure and grammar of the sentences, in the literary text itself (formal cause), not in its purpose (final cause). Note that meaning is not found in the individual words (material cause).
Words in themselves have no actual meaning; they have only potential meaning. Words have usage in a sentence, which is the smallest unity of meaning. To go back to an earlier example, the word bark has no inherent meaning, but it has several different usages (in sentences) that do have meaning, such as in the example below for the word board:
(1) The board came from an oak tree.
(2) The board member came from New York.
Words are only the parts of a whole (the whole sentence), which does have meaning. Likewise, pigments have no beauty but are the parts of a whole that does have beauty in a painting. Meaning, then, is found in the text as a whole, not in the parts independently.
The Locus of Meaning
A text’s meaning is not found beyond the text (in the author’s mind), beneath the text (in the mystic’s mind), or behind the text (in the author’s unexpressed intention); rather, it is found in the text (in the author’s expressed meaning). In the same way, the beauty of a painting is not found behind, beneath, or beyond the painting; rather, it is expressed in the painting.
All textual meaning is in the text. The sentences (in the context of their paragraphs in the context of the whole piece of literature) are the formal cause of meaning. They are the form that gives meaning to all the parts (words, punctuation, etc.).
The Unity of Meaning
Since the meaning of Scripture comes ultimately from an objective Mind (God) and is found in an objective text that uses terms with the same meaning for both God and human beings (see chapter 9), it follows that there is only one meaning in a biblical text—the one given to it by the author. Of course, there can be many implications and applications—indeed, it can be expressed in different ways in the same language. This is made possible because there is an objective meaner, an objective means of meaning (logic), and a common medium (language) between meaner and meanee that is capable of expressing this meaning (see chapter 9). This objective meaning is found in the formal cause (language), which provides the structure or form of meaning.
Thus the meaning of God’s revelation, whether in Scripture or nature (see chapter 4) is found in an objective expression of the meaner. Thus, while the sensus unum (one sense) view is correct when it affirms only one meaning to a text, there is, however, a sensus plenior (full sense) in terms of implications and applications. For example, Einstein (1879–1955) knew that e=mc2 (energy equals mass times the speed of light [constant] squared) and so does an average high school science student. However, Einstein knew many more implications and applications of this than the average high school student.
Likewise, God, inasmuch as He inspired the text (2 Tim. 3:16), knows infinitely more about the topic and sees more implications and applications in a biblical affirmation than does the human author (1 Pet. 1:10–12). But He does not affirm any more meaning in the text than the human author does, for whatever the Bible says, God says; whatever the Bible affirms is true, God affirms is true. Both the divine and human authors of Scripture affirm one and the same meaning in one and the same text. There are not two texts, and there are not two meanings of the text.
The Objectivity of Meaning
Human languages vary, but meaning does not. The same objective meaning can be expressed in widely diverse language.
Unlike essentialism, which insists on a one-to-one correlation between the meaning and the expression, and unlike conventionalism, which contends there is a many-to-one correlation between the meaning and the expression, realism affirms that there is a one-to-many correlation. That is, one meaning can be expressed in many different ways in many languages and even in the same language. Thus language can and does change, but the meaning it expresses does not. The usage of a word changes from time to time, but the meaning of that word in a sentence does not change. For example, in the King James Version of 1611 the word let (cf. 2 Thess. 2:7) meant to “hinder.” (Today it means the opposite.) But the meaning expressed by the New King James Version (1982) when it renders it “restrain” is the same as that of the old King James Version (1611). Usage of words change, but meaning does not.
Another example of the same point is mathematical meaning. Whether one writes “Two plus two equals four” or “2+2=4” the meaning is the same, even though the mode of expression is different. Further, the meaning is objective, even though the mode of expression is relative.
CONCLUSION
The objectivity of truth that Christianity embraces is based on the premise that meaning is objective. This objectivity in meaning is rejected by much of contemporary linguistics; the prevailing conventionalist theory of meaning is a form of semantical relativism. However, in addition to being an overreaction to platonic essentialism, conventionalism is self-defeating, for, as we have seen, the very theory of conventionalism that “all meaning is relative” is itself a nonrelative statement. “All meaning is relative” is a meaningful statement intended to apply to all meaningful statements; it is a nonconventional statement claiming that all statements are conventional. As such, it self-destructs, for in the very process of expressing itself it implies a theory of meaning that is contrary to the one it claims is true of all meaningful statements. The usages of symbols and words do change, but the meaning properly expressed by them does not.
SOURCES
Augustine. De Magistro [The Teacher].
———. De Trinitate [On the Trinity].
———. Principia Dialtecticae [Principles of Dialectics].
Frege, Gottlob. Uber Sinn und Bedeutung (“On Sense and Reference” by Peter Geach in Translations From the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege).
Gilson, Étienne. Linguistics and Philosophy.
Howe, Thomas. Objectivity in Hermeneutics. Dissertation; Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. May 1998.
Plato. Cratylus.
Saussure, Ferdinand. Cours de Linguistique Generale [Course in General Linguistics].
Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Lectures and Conversations.
———. Notebooks.
———. Philosophical Investigations.
———. Tractatus.
1 Of course, statements about our feelings (e.g., “I feel warm”) are objectively true or false (see chapter 7). But strictly emotive statements are not statements about one’s feeling but expressions of one’s feelings.
2 Questions and exclamations are meaningful, but in a noncognitive way, since they do not affirm or deny anything.
3 The picture theory of meaning is the idea that language is a picture of reality, corresponding to it as does a photograph to its object. Many believe that the relevant passage in Augustine’s Confessions (1.8), which Wittgenstein critiqued, was not embraced by Augustine but only offered for consideration, since he rejected it elsewhere (in De Magistro).
4 “Naturalism” as used here, in a semantic sense, should not be confused with antisupernaturalistic naturalism, in a metaphysical sense.
5 The referential theory of meaning is the idea that meaningful statements have objects to which they refer.
6 Meaning that is ostensive is meaning that is readily apparent or easily demonstrated.
7 That is, words have a definite meaning.
8 That is, language is like a game that is played with a certain set of rules. Meaning is based in life experiences and has no essence, but merely family resemblance to other experiences.
9 Univocal language can have only one meaning.
10 Analogical language is based on similarity or analogy.
11 Equivocal language is ambiguous, having two or more meanings.
12 Ethics and religion are matters of value, while science deals with facts.
13 The doctrine of showing and saying holds that language can point to the higher and transcendent but cannot describe it.
14 Fideism is “exclusive or basic reliance upon faith alone accompanied by a consequent disparagement of reason” (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary).
15 An acognostic is one who believes there is no cognitive meaning.
16 “Onomatopoeia” is “a formation of words in imitation of natural sounds: the naming of a thing or action by a more or less exact reproduction of the sound associated with it” (Webster’s Third New International Dictionary).
17 Surface grammar is here defined as one that is obvious in the linguistic structure, while depth grammar is defined as one that is hidden beneath it.
Geisler, N. L. 2002. Systematic theology, volume one: Introduction, Bible (98). Bethany House Publishers: Minneapolis, MN
