Does the way we talk as human beings tell us anything about God? (ix)

With this deceptively simple question, Anglican Bishop Rowan Williams begins a lengthy philosophical investigation that takes the reader from Augustine to Wittgenstein on the nature of theological language.

This book began as a series of talks prepared for the Gifford Lecture series in 1993. The Gifford Lectures are a series of talks on natural theology—that is, what we can learn about God outside of scriptural revelation. Stanly Hauerwas infamously undermined the intent of these lectures in his With the Grain of the Universe. Williams follows the intent of the lectures by exploring the worldview implicit in the structure of our language.

Williams argues:

Human communication exists in the context of a communicative, meaningful environment which cannot be exhaustively mapped or articulated but can in some sense be ‘represented’, through not by any simple addition to the sum total of representable objects. This has been the model advanced throughout these pages. (167)

By exploring language in various dimensions, Williams does not come to any ‘proof’ of God. Rather, he concludes that the language used in religious contexts aligns with our deepest understanding of what it means to be human.

Such an account does not deliver a ‘proof of God’s existence’; what it does is to map the territory of human speech in a way that enables us to see that what is affirmed in the language of specific religious ritual and reflection – in the language of ‘revelation’, if you will – goes with the grain of what matters most and is most distinctive in anything claiming to be an adequate picture of our human speaking. (184)

As philosophical reflection, this volume demands a lot of the reader, including some significant background in the philosophy of language. Despite the steep learning curve, I found myself underlining and reflecting on many elements of his lecture. The Edge of Words is a heavy yet rewarding meal, meant to be savoured slowly.

Williams, Rowan. The Edge of Words: God and the Habits of Language. London: Bloomsbury, 2014.