# 371. Essence is expressed by grammar.
#373. Grammar tells what kind of object
anything is. (Theology as
grammar.)
This is a
startling remark of Wittgenstein`s. How is one to understand it? He is not referring to the declination of nouns and the
conjugation of verbs in this remark.
It looks as if he is connecting theology with the study of language in
some important sense. In what
sense?
How is
Wittgenstein using the word ``grammar`` in this remark? The essence of something is expressed
by its grammar. We learn this from
#371: ``Essence is expressed by
grammar.`` If we take essence to
mean not the unique common characteristic of the concept but the set of remarks
which would serve as a good explanation of the concept, then that is its grammar. The grammar of something is a
description of the ways in which we employ a word. Wittgenstein was concerned with the misleading picture of
the meaning of a word which would lead one to elevate some generalization to
the false status of the essence, and hence the meaning, of a word. The idea of grammar was his way of
avoiding this temptation.
Describing the grammar is describing the uses of a word. This is a factual matter. It is a
matter of fact, that is, that a word is used in such and such a way. Philosophers have been known to dispute
these factual matters sometimes when some particular use runs counter to a
generalization of how the word is used.
But describing the grammar is an activity which is meant to call the
philosopher back to the facts. ``Remember,
this is how the word ``____`` is used . . . . These expressions and actions fit with its use . . ., but
these others do not . . . .`` The
word ``know`` is used in connection with ``can`` and ``is able to.`` It can be used properly to describe my
knowledge of your mental status, i.e. ``I know you are in pain.`` But it is not used to describe myself,
i.e. ``I know that I am in pain.`` I neither know nor not know any such
thing. The grammar of ``know`` is
connected to that of ``finding out,`` and there is no finding out or
discovering or investigating my own pain.
This is one of Wittgenstein`s exercises in grammar.
Grammar tells
us the essence of a thing. It tells us what kind of object the
thing is -- and if it is a thing at all.
What kind of object is knowledge?
``Well, it is not an object in the sense that one could find it on the
table when one has emptied out one`s pockets. But it is an object in the sense that it can be the object
of a study.`` And this is a
grammatical observation about both the words ``knowledge`` and ``object.`` The word ``God`` and other key words of
theology are like this as well.
God can be the object of thoughts, but not an object one will find on a
table. Nor will God be studied in
the manner that some hidden object in one`s pocket could be studied, i.e. by
formulating hypotheses and collecting evidence. About God we do not say, ``He might be as large as a pen
knife but not too much larger for he wouldn`t fit in my pocket.`` This is a remark based upon our
acquaintance with the grammar of ``God.``
We do not talk of God as an object having size -- any size. The grammar of ``God`` is different
from the grammar of physical objects.
It is more like the grammar of a person named by a proper name -- ``Napoleon,``
for example, but different from this too.
Napoleon fought at Austerlitz; he owned and mounted a horse and gave
orders from central command to soldiers ready and willing to obey. God gives something like orders to
people who are sometimes ready and willing to obey, but he owns no horse, and
it is difficult to say whose side he was on at Austerlitz. Is it not amazing that I can speak with
such confidence about God? I have
never found God on the table nor on some battlefield. And yet, I can toss off these remarks about God`s being unlike
a physical object -- like and unlike a person, etc. Plato believes that I saw God in another life, and this
knowledge has stayed with me. But
Wittgenstein`s explanation is that my ability to make these statements is based
on my grasp of grammar. Can I know
if God actually exists? No. The grammar does not tell me that. Can I believe that God actually exists? Yes. The grammar allows for that. Can I know that God is not a physical object like those one
can find in one`s pocket? Yes. That is grammatical knowledge. Can I know that God can speak to
individuals and give them orders -- holy orders -- for the direction of their
lives? Yes. He has done so in the cases of Moses,
Isaiah, St. Paul, and others recorded in the Scriptures. That is grammatical knowledge.
How is that
which is recorded in Scripture the basis of grammatical knowledge? It would seem that what is in the
Scriptures -- if it were to be called ``knowledge`` -- would be historical
knowledge. It describes or tells
of what happened long ago. But as
historical knowledge, it should be subject to the ordinary scrutiny of those
who develop historical knowledge, namely those we call ``historians.`` Immediately, certain differences begin
to emerge which tell us that this -- what the Scriptures tell of -- is not
historical knowledge in any ordinary sense. The accounts of miracles cannot be assessed in the same way
that the accounts of other spectacular events are measured by historians. And how does one assess the story of
the birth of Jesus to Mary or the resurrection? What is it like in parallel historical categories to give an
account of the presence of God in human form? ``Can an
eternal happiness be built on historical knowledge,`` Kierkegaard asks? A moment of reflection will allow the
differences between the accounts of the Scriptures and historical knowledge to
come to the surface. This is not
to say that there is no historical knowledge in the Scriptures nor that the
accounts of what God has brought about are not historical accounts. But the knowledge of such things as the
presence of God is not the knowledge of the historian -- the means of study and
the methods of discovery being so different.
How then is
the record of Scripture grammatical knowledge? Let us think of the Scriptures
as the writings of an early community of people who had faith in God. Notice that I have already identified
the community in Israel. Had I
said ``Allah`` or ``Atman`` or ``Zeus,`` I would have identified a different
community. These writings of the
early community of faithful people range in form from accounts of the creation
of the world by this God to stories of personal and public encounters with him
to the presentation of ten basic moral imperatives and a host of local
procedural and prudential guidelines. I have been describing the Old Testament to this point. The New Testament continues in this
tradition with the significant addition that this God appeared in human form
after centuries of speaking through others: judges, prophets, kings, etc. The community of faithful people has
continued to talk and write over centuries, but this continued discourse may be
seen as the development of what was recorded in these earlier writings, which
are now called the ``Scriptures`` or ``Holy Bible.`` I have no uniquely Protestant nor Roman Catholic view of what
the basic voice of the Church is in giving this account of the Scriptures. I mean to be giving a description in
such a way that one may come to see them as the primary source for the
discourse about God. The sources
of the Church councils and creeds, etc. all coming later, are based in an
essential way on these earlier writings.
One does not
have the option of conducting an investigation into this God independent of
these Scriptures and their related sources. Whatever it is about God that one would be investigating will
be located there. One may discover
there that this God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He has certain characteristics by which
he is identified. These
characteristics of God are known by studying the accounts of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob. There are no mountains,
lakes, or deserts which one can study in order to find out who this God is. There are no remains of any kind which would
indicate his presence or who he was. Only the study of these Scriptures will tell of this God and
who he is. What do we find there? We find words, words, and more words --
the stuff of which grammar is made. ``In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth . .
. After these things God tested
Abraham . . . Take your son . .
. And Isaac prayed to the Lord for
his wife, because she was barren, and the Lord granted his prayer . . . And the Lord went before them by day in
a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way and by night in a pillar of fire .
. . You shall not kill; You shall
not commit adultery; you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor . .
. Lord, thou hast been our
dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth ... thou hadst formed
the Earth, thou art God.`` These
are the words which one studies in order to learn of the God of this community.
In learning to speak them one is
becoming a member of the community. Learning how to speak them is acquiring their grammar.
What I am
trying to do is to instruct the reader of Wittgenstein`s remark, ``Theology as
grammar,`` on how to understand it. The word ``grammar`` may give us some difficulty here unless
we understand it as the rules for the use of the word ``God.`` How we use such a word is illuminated by
reflecting on how we were taught or came to use it. This discussion of Scripture as the primary source of the
earliest talk of God is aimed at shedding light on how we have come to use this
language.
I am also concerned
with a possible misunderstanding of the expression, ``Theology as grammar.`` It is that one may suppose that theology
is only some sort of word game with no reference outside of itself. Just as the king in the chess game is
understood solely in the terms and rules of the game, it has no reference to
anything outside of the game. Wittgenstein
himself has written: ``Grammar is
not beholden to any reality; the grammatical rules are what determines the
meaning . . . `` (Philosophical
Grammar, p. 184). Such a remark might be easily
misunderstood. God might be
thought to be a concept understood within a community but have no objective
reality outside that community. This
worries contemporary philosophers of religion, as well it should. If, in addition to making clear what one
means by the word ``God,`` the theologian also concludes that this is simply one
way of talking among others, then that suggests that the whole of theology is
creative make-believe or hallucination. God, that is, is no more than the talk of God. This sort of thinking amounts to a
troubling relativism that denies the very object necessary for belief in God to
be believable. Surely belief in God is only thinkable to the believer if he is
able to think God independently of the words of the human community.
I want to
reflect on why this interpretation is a misunderstanding of Wittgenstein`s
remark ``Theology as grammar.`` The
potential for this misunderstanding lies in the fact that God is unseen and not
investigated in the way that ordinary visible objects in the world are. If we were studying apples, we might
pick up an apple and turn it over in our hands. We might slice it open. We could find the seeds, the core, the meat, and the stem. We could taste it. If one were to consider this against
Wittgenstein`s remark that grammar tells what kind of object anything is, one
would probably not be puzzled about whether he meant that objects such as
apples did not exist outside of our language. Remember that children may learn of apples, and certainly do,
by means of acquiring the grammar of ``apple.`` ``Apples grow on trees.`` ``Apples have seeds.`` ``You may eat the meat and throw away the core and the seeds.``
Etc. A child learns of apples by hearing such talk often in the
presence of apples. It is the
latter fact --the presence of apples -- which should inhibit one`s inclination
to interpret Wittgenstein as a relativist or anti-realist with respect to
apples (although some interpreters have even found ways of doing this). But with regard to God being known by
grammar, God, who cannot be picked up or found with the help of a National
Science Foundation Grant, this relativism or anti-realism seems plausible, if
not obvious.
Let us turn to
the grammar of God for help in this matter. That grammar includes the idea that God is invisible (not an
ordinary sort of object) and that he makes himself known to those whom he
chooses. He makes a covenant with
Abraham, and speaks to Moses from a burning bush. He sings through David, and he flashes a light about Saul,
blinding him. In these revelations
God is not presented as an object among the other natural objects of the world.
But neither, notice, do they
present any sort of relativist or anti-realist philosophical theories. To Abraham he makes the promise that in
return for faithfulness (which includes the trust that he is not
hallucinating), that Abraham will be the father of generations of faithful
people -- real people. To Moses he
gives the Ten Commandments -- not a relativist document! ``I am the Lord your God . . . You shall have no other gods before me
. . . You shall not . . . .`` Through David he sings, ``The fool says
in his heart `there is no God.` The
Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there are any
who act wisely . . . .`` In this
grammar there are lumps of
something indigestable for the relativist and anti-realist. With Saul, who was it that flashed the
light and spoke? And so on. The Scriptures are full of God`s
revelations to humans, and in fact are themselves presented as God`s
revelation. The concept of
revelation is a part of the grammar of God. The concept of revelation includes the concept that God --
the invisible, the unknown -- makes himself known through individual faithful
people, the people of Israel, and the Holy Bible itself. The grammar of ``God`` itself precludes
the kind of relativist and anti-realist interpretations which some might place
on the reading of Wittgenstein`s remark, ``Theology as grammar.`` ``Grammar
tells what kind of object anything is.`` And the grammar tells that this object, ``God,`` is the sort
of thing that those who believe in him do not believe in him as a make-believe
object or as one existing only by means of their community or as one which has
one set of properties in their community but another in another community, etc.
There are
different gods in different communities of speakers. This fact should not be overlooked. They -- Jaweh, Allah,
Atman, Zeus -- are described very differently in certain aspects. One must study the sacred texts and the
language of the priests and practitioners of those communities in order to
grasp the concepts of those gods. There
are different theologies for different grammars. One, troubled by this thought of different gods for different
communities, might look for the common elements of these gods in order to
discover the true God revealing himself through the various world religions. I would not want to preclude this,
though it must surely be a difficult task to distinguish what is common and
what is peculiar to a given tradition. But, setting this difficulty aside, is there not still an
unidentified presupposition in this task? Would one not still have to assume that God was the one true
God behind the masks of the gods of the world`s religions? This very assumption is a part of the
grammar of ``God`` in the Judeo-Christian tradition. ``I am the Lord your God . . . you shall have no other Gods before me . . . `` The Sermon of St. Paul on Mars Hill
presents the same grammatical point. ``You have seen the marker to the unknown god. I have come to make him known.`` The one true God -- there is only one --
has manifested himself to the people of Israel, but he has also manifested
himself to others in other ways and also through the moral law which all people
share (Romans). This idea of one
true God is a part of the concept or grammar of ``God.`` An objective study of world religions is
still presupposing the grammar of ``God`` as it comes to us from the Holy
Bible. If one could show that this
grammar was not unique to the Bible but shared by other religious communities
and sacred texts, then this would only show that the idea of theology as
grammar is reconfirmed for those other religious communities as well.
I want to
return to my explanation of the remark ``Theology as grammar`` (P.I. #373). The full remark is, ``Grammar tells what
kind of object anything is (Theology as grammar).`` It is preceded in #371 by ``Essence is expressed by grammar``
and is immediately followed in #374 by, ``the great difficulty here is not to
represent the matter as if there were something one couldn`t do, as if there really were an object from which I
derive its description, but I was unable to show it to anyone. And the best that I can propose is that
we should yield to the temptation to use this picture but then investigate how
the application of the picture
goes.`` I want to consider the collective
advice in this set of remarks. Grammar
tells us what kind of an object anything is. But God is not an object like an apple or a steam engine. One cannot study God in the way one can
study apples and engines where descriptions will depend on what is seen. God, Wittgenstein has observed, will be
studied grammatically. (One should
not overlook the fact that one must also know the grammars of ``apples`` and ``engines``
to study their parts and functions.) Nevertheless, God is not an unqualified object, and so
Wittgenstein continues his thought about theology as grammar appreciative of
the differences between God and other objects. ``The great difficulty here is not to represent the matter as
if it were something one couldn`t
do, as if there really were an object from which I derive its description, but
I were unable to show it to anyone . . . .`` So the situation is that the difference between God and
ordinary objects is such that it seems that I could not describe him, because I
am unable to show this object to anyone, including myself. Then comes the advice, ``and the best
that I can propose is that we should yield to the temptation to use this
picture [i.e. one should go ahead and attempt to describe God as if he were an
object that one could not see] but then investigate how the application of the
picture goes.``
I take it that
Wittgenstein means by this that one should go ahead and attempt to describe God
as if he were just such an object that one could not show to anyone. But then as one gave the description,
which one is after all able to do, one should pay attention to how it is that
giving such a description is possible. This happens by means of a dependency upon the learned
grammar of ``God`` from the tradition basing itself on the Scriptures. Investigating how the application of the
picture goes reveals that theology -- how we know what to say of God -- comes
from the recollection of the grammar of ``God.`` ``Theology as grammar.``
At the risk of
belaboring the point, I will conclude with this analogy. The word ``mind`` involves an object
much like ``God`` in the respect that the same point about its being an object
of grammatical study applies to it and in the same way. Grammar tells what kind of an object it
is. One feels as if giving a
description to mind is something one could not do because one is unable to show
the object to anyone. Yet one is
able to describe a mind. The
telling question is: How is one
able to do this? The answer
is: By examining the grammar
of ``mind.``
What is a
mind? A brain is an object one can
see, but a mind is not the sort of object one may see nor show to anyone. What color is a mind? A mind does not have a color. But I may recognize a good mind when I
see one. Rex has a good mind. He graduated near the top of his class
and then went to Harvard. Harvard
accepts only the best young minds. SAT scores show which minds are the most eminently trainable.
These minds go to Harvard. How quickly Rex`s mind does a math
problem! While most minds are
setting up the problem, Rex is on to the next. And his vocabulary is impressive, too. The words come quickly. He is fluid, and his memory is like a
computer`s. His mind retains every
detail. He remembers how the radio
in his room is wired, what Lee and Longstreet argued about at Gettysburg, the
words to a song that he heard once, and the birthdays and telephone numbers of
his friends. It is no wonder that
Harvard wants Rex. It wants minds
like that! The professors will have
less work to fill up such impressive minds as Rex`s once he gets there. This is
a cost efficiency program on Harvard`s part. In any case, is it not surprising that I am able to talk of
minds when I have never seen one? No,
it is not. It is only surprising
if someone, in thinking that one could not describe what could not be shown to
another, were to forget that we are all really quite conversant about minds. (Psychology as grammar.) Likewise of God, I really do know how to
speak of God in some measure -- if I have learned the English language and have
had the rudiments of training in the hands of the Church.