Abstract

Evans believes that in order to understand how some people can sometimes speak intelligibly and responsibly about God, we need not merely an analysis of theological language, nor even a comparison of theological with other kinds of discourse, but a full-blown, comprehensive theory of language. In quest of such a theory, Evans traces out two "dimensions," the symbolic and the conceptual, that he claims pervade all discourse interacting dialectically. A symbol is defined as "an ‘illuminating', ‘transformational', and ‘pointing’ linguistic sign which, due to its kinship with or participation in the thing symbolized, makes that thing, through an awareness of it, present and manifest to those in a given community who understand and employ the symbol". "Conceptual" means "non-symbolic." But a theory of language, Evans believes, must go beyond language, since "The symbolic is the location of the disclosure of Being and provides authentic awareness and cognitive insight, and the conceptual is the realm of non-symbolic interpretation and provides conceptual information and objective knowledge".