Ian Ramsey - Theological Contributions

Theological Contributions

Ramsey approached a number of philosophical problems concerning twentieth century theology. One of the significant topics concerned "God-talk" or the soundness of theological language. Much of this had been prompted by the philosophical writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein and also by philosophers such as Alfred Ayer who were involved in the mid-twentieth century movement known as Logical Positivism. The implications of Ayer's argument in Language, Truth and Logic (1936) were that religious or theological language was deemed to be analytically unscientific. Religious statements were considered to be technically meaningless as it was argued that claims such as "God exists" were observationally unverifiable.

Ramsey was concerned in his writings to argue that traditional theological language was empirically meaningful. His arguments were developed on a model of religious language grounded in personal experience and personal disclosure. As humans communicate with each other personal disclosure occurs. Ramsey used this point to argue that humans come to encounter God also by way of personal disclosure and so Ramsey offered an argument from analogy. Ramsey's theological work thus re-emphasized the traditional theological view that all religious language is analogical, and the religious words that humans create are always involving the language of analogy.

He was particularly effective in communicating with experts from a wide range of disciplines, inspiring them to work together on the problems raised for theology and ethics by developments in science, technology and medicine. As a result of his experience he became convinced that a permanent centre was needed for enquiry into these interdisciplinary areas, and it was in response to this that the Ian Ramsey Centre for the study of religious beliefs in relation to the sciences and medicine was set up in 1985 in the University of Oxford.

Bishop Ian Ramsey Primary School in Consett, County Durham, Ian Ramsey Church of England Comprehensive School in Fairfield, Stockton-on-Tees and Bishop Ramsey Church of England Secondary School in Ruislip in the London Borough of Hillingdon are also named after him.