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Silentium, or aphasia? Dual attitude words. Epistemological status of speaking about God

Publication at Catholic Theological Faculty |
2013

Abstract

The problem how to speak on God today doesn’t pose the difficulty to choose appropriate words which it is currently talking about God with. There is a deeper question, if ever a speech dealing with God does comply with human beings.

This paper therefore deals at first with the speech act of human beings wich reveals its inner spiritual structure. That to show the human being is as a speech and cognitive entity in the spiritual movement in which the process of both cognition and speech goes on.

This movement is twofold: analogical and catalogical. Both of them describe a human being truthful.

In the first, analogical, man comes to know God and can talk about Him on their own experience and reflection. In the second, catalogical, movement a person is involved in the initiative wich God communicates himself in, i.e.

God's revelation. The cognition of God represents for man a discontinuity, a hiatus, therefore will be made to express human knowledge of God both as spoken word and as in silence (silentium).

In both movements can occur moment of dumbness, i.e. aphasia, reflecting a defect in the cognition of God. However, the apophatical dimension, which is not dumbness, the knowledge of God and talking about it belongs.