Richard Swinburne on analogy

The question of how human language, primarily designed to speak about objects of empirical experience, can be used to express truths about God is one of the central questions in the philosophy of religion and theology. The idea of analogical predication has been and remains an important resource for addressing this question. British philosopher Richard Swinburne proposed his own concept of analogy, according to which analogy is an extension of the ordinary meaning of a word in such a way that it becomes applicable to a greater number of objects than before. The aim of this article is a critical analysis of this concept. The article consists of five sections. The first section provides a brief overview of the main approaches to the problem of religious language and analogy in contemporary analytical philosophy of religion. The second section discusses the basic elements of Swinburne’s general language concept, necessary for understanding his concept of analogy. The third section is dedicated to his concept of analogy. The fourth section uses examples from science and theology to illustrate how analogical predication works according to Swinburne’s thought. The fifth section offers a critical assessment of Swinburne’s proposed concept of analogy. In conclusion, a hypothesis is proposed to explain why this concept is unsatisfactory, suggesting that the reason for its unsatisfactoriness lies in the fact that Swinburne, like most contemporary analytical philosophers of religion, starts from the assumption that human language is primarily intended for talking about things given in everyday experience, and only secondarily about “otherworldly” religious objects, whereas it seems more correct to understand analogical use of a word as a gradual “purification” of its true meaning from distortions that arise when it is applied to empirical objects.