The Analogy Of Signs

Utilizing the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, Rory Misiewicz argues for a new approach to the problem of theological language in Christian theology. This approach, the "analogy of signs," serves as a critical alternative to influential models of theological language based upon an analogy of being, grammatical analogy, or analogy of faith.

Years ago a primary teacher told me about a great series of lessons she had just had. The class had visited rock pools on the seashore, and when she asked them about their observations they talked about: it was like a factory, it was like a church, it was like a garden, it was like our kitchen at breakfast time, etc. Each student’s analogy could be elaborated, and these analogies provided her with strongly engaged students and a great platform from which to develop their learning about biological diversity and interdependence. In everyday life we learn so many things by comparing and contrasting. The use of analogies and metaphors is important in science itself and their use in teaching science seems a natural extension, but textbooks with their own sparse logic, do not help teachers or students. David Ausubel in the 1960s had advocated the use of ‘advance organisers’ to introduce the teaching of conceptual material in the sciences, and some of these had an analogical character. However, research on the value of this idea was cumbersome and indecisive, and it ceased after just a few studies. In the 1980s research into children’s conceptions of scientific phenomena and concepts really burgeoned, and it was soon followed by an exploration of a new set of pedagogical strategies that recognised a student in a science class is much more than a tabula rasa.

In 1746 the French philosophe Condillac published his Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, one of many attempts during the century to determine how we organize and validate ideas as knowledge. In investigating language, especially written language, he found not only the seriousness he sought but also a great deal of frivolity whose relation to the sober business of philosophy had to be addressed somehow. If the mind truly reflects the world, and language reflects the mind, why is there so much error and nonsense? Whence the distortions? How can they be remedied? In The Archeology of the Frivolous, Jacques Derrida recoups Condillac's enterprise, showing how it anticipated--consciously or not--many of the issues that have since stymied epistemology and linguistic philosophy. If anyone doubts that deconstruction can be a powerful analytic method, try this.

Robert Rollock is best remembered today for the role he played in the development of Reformed covenant theology, a role defined especially by the uniquely mature treatment of a pre-fall covenant of works discovered in his thought. However, scholarship on Rollock's covenant thought has until now been based almost entirely on an early modern English translation of Rollock's Tractatus de vocatione efficaci (1597), and has overlooked discussion of the covenant of works found both in Rollock's 1596 Quaestiones et responsiones aliquot de Foedere Dei, deque Sacramento quod foederis Dei sigillum est and his 1593 Romans commentary. This volume offers the first complete English translation of Rollock's 1596 catechism as well as English translations of relevant sections from his Romans commentary that deal with the subject of God's covenants with man. Thus this volume stands to offer students of Reformed covenant theology a better understanding of Rollock's thought and the contribution he made to the evolution of Reformed theology, particularly on the matter of God's covenant with humankind before the fall.