On the Names of God: Notes on the Construction of Interpretive Frames for Religious Language.

VÍCTOR GUSTAVO ZONANA

Metaphor and God-talk.

Peter Lang

Lugar: Frankfurt; Año: 1999; p. 45 - 62

The recognition of the figurative character of religious language, particularly in the Holy Scriptures, has constituted a crucial episode in western culture. Not only are its effects felt in the sphere of theological speculation, but they are also verified in the birth of aesthetic doctrines -such as On the Sublime by the pseudo Longinus- and in the development of Romance literatures. In the sacred text, certain expressions are binding with regard to the readers’ or the listeners’ beliefs and actions deriving from them. Whether figurative or proper, those expressions induce the believer to adhere to a determined truth of faith or to meet a determined moral standard. The capacity of religious language to act on the beliefs and the actions of man is related to the assumed frames of interpretation offered by the corpora dogmatica et theologica. That is why this study endeavors to analyze the manner in which a frame of interpretation is constructed, and how this manner guides the understanding of the expressions of religious language referring to God. In order to do that, a position is taken from the standpoint of Catholic thought as voiced by Saint Thomas Aquinas and his commentators. The fulfilment of the proposed objective comprises the development of the following plan: 1-the consideration of the inevitable character of theological presuppositions in the interpretation of religious language; 2- the recognition of the manner in which Thomist religious presuppositions establish interpretive clues in relation to: a) the author of the sacred text and the author’s levels of enunciative projection; b) the condition of the sacred text, the “proper” or “figurative” character of the names of God and their cognitive value; c) the context of reception of the sacred text; 3- the final synthesis permits the identification of the way in which the theological presuppositions have a bearing on the determination of the metaphoric character of the names of God, the construction of the strategies orienting their comprehension, and the understanding and possibility of creation of new metaphors.