I ran across Professor Ramsey’s book Religious Language by accident as I perused the latest books on religion in my college’s library back in 1961. I was immediately interested because the book landed right in the center of my current interests then, even though I had not yet heard of this book. I was so taken with the line of argument in the book that I wrote to Professor Ramsey at Oxford to thank him for his insights. I found his approach to religious language to be very creative and sound.
Much to my surprise just a few weeks later I received a letter from Professor Ramsey thanking me for my interest in his book. As it turned out he was then teaching in the Summer Session at the University of Southern California in L.A. and wondered if I could make a visit there from my home base in Seattle, WA. I informed him that I was currently teaching summer school and could not get away. Boldly I invited him to visit me and my family on his way back to England by way of Canada. Surprisingly he was quite delighted with the idea and we set a date a few weeks later.
Because my family and I lived in a very small house we asked our best friends who lived two doors down if we cold spend a couple of nights with them so the Ramseys could have our house to themselves. Then I wrote to a dozen or so of my students who would be taking my course in philosophical theology in the fall in which we would be using Ramsey’s book asking them to show up for a weekend meeting in which to meet him. It was soon all set up and the event went off smoothly. We drove the Ramseys to Vancouver, B.C. a few days later and they returned home from there.
We all spent a delightful evening with Professor Ramsey discussing his book and other related ideas. In the fall our course using his book went very well. Along the way I had asked Professor Ramsey if I might be able to study with him at some point in the near future. He straightway invited me to do so as part of my doctoral studies at Duke University which I was scheduled to begin one year later. So, as it turned out, I went to Oxford to study with Professor Ramsey and also was able to take courses with Professors Gilbert Ryle and Peter Strawson, two other famous Oxford Professors, as well.
The stay at Oxford was wonderful and crucial for my future investigations in the philosophy of religion field. A couple of years later I was able to return to England directing a group of students on a Semester Abroad program and was able to reconnect with Professor Ramsey. Unfortunately, during that semester my friend and mentor died of a heart attack. By then he had been elevated to the post of Bishop of Durham and the extra workload had worn him out.
Ian’s graduate studies had included work in mathematics and the sciences so his insights into how theological language might be better understood were quite fresh and solid. In addition, he had been strongly influenced by the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein in the philosophy of language. All of this helped make his understanding of the workings of religious and theological discourse especially rich.
His main idea was that we should be sensitive to the more subtle aspects of religious language, that in expressions like “Heavenly Father”, for instance, while the term ‘father’ might be taken rather straightforwardly analogicaly, the term ‘heavenly’ ought not be taken as such. Rather, it and others like it, might be seen as “logical directives” which are meant to suggest that they are not to be made to “walk on all fours”, but are rather meant to suggest some sort of different, even unique, way to read the expressions involved.
In physics or basketball, for instance, the terms used do not always designate what they might normally, but rather they might suggest yet another, more suggestive, way to interpret them. A “force field” or a “screen pass” respectively, may have to be seen as something of a metaphor rather than as a physical description. Ramsey’s works are full of suggestions for how to read theological language in ways that do not lead to dead-ends religiously speaking. Professor Ian Ramsey was definitely a very creative thinker, as well as a very wonderful person.
In addition to Ramsey’s Religious Language, readers might be interested in my Ian Ramsey: To Speak Responsibly of God.

Here is a little-known letter in the New Testament which carries many important messages from the early church. Traditionally the author is said to be Jesus’ brother James, one of the Apostles, but the scholars’ dating process seems to make such an early authorship unlikely. In addition, the author does not in any way mention or imply any special connection with Jesus. Nonetheless, there is much to be learned from this letter which was obviously written by an early church leader.
The “possible” facts are that if this letter was written by James the brother of Jesus then not only was he an early disciple, but early on he became the head of the New Testament Church in Jerusalem, as is documented in the fifteenth chapter of the Book of Acts. It is both interesting and somewhat surprising that we are not told much if anything about how this leadership position came about. In addition, we hear nothing more about James a brother of Jesus and leader of the Church in Jerusalem.
It was James, we should remember, who announced the Church’s ruling in Chapter 15 that: “We should impose no strict restrictions on those of the Gentiles who are turning to God” (Acts 15:19), thereby accepting Gentiles along with Jews into the newly formed Christian fellowship. A powerful announcement, indeed.
It is not certain but likely that the reference to “James,” in the opening salutation of the letter of Jude is meant to link that author to both James and Jesus. These possible connections are thin but yet strongly possible. They matter, of course, because they possibly shed light on both the author of the Letter of James and that of Jude. The whole question of the relationships between and among the members of Jesus’ family in relation to the birth of the church is complex at best.
What really matters here, of course, is what it is that the Letter of James has to say to us today. There are, to be sure, many detailed observations and directions given in James five short chapters. I only want to focus here on a couple of these. Most importantly there is the crucial distinction that James draws between faith expressed in actions and faith simply uttered in word. Embodied faith is the only faith that is real. We are all familiar with the expression “Faith without works is dead.”
James states the distinction this way: “Prove to me that this faith you speak of is real though not accompanied by deeds, and by my deeds I will prove to you my faith.” (2:18) The key distinction here is between faith expressed merely in words and faith expressed by deeds. Or: “As the body is dead when there is no breath in it, so faith divorced from deeds is lifeless as a corpse.”(2:26)
The tricky thing here is that words, too, can count as deeds. When we give a promise, for instance, or answer a question, we do so in statements which are themselves words unaccompanied at that time by any additional actions. And even deeds which seem to make one’s intentions and commitments clear, can be deceptive. Words too are actions. So the most real answer to this seeming paradox is that there must be harmony between what we say and what we do.
James goes so far as to claim that “Faith that does not lead to action is itself a lifeless thing.” (2:17), which would seem to reiterate the line “Faith without works is dead.” Yet sometimes a strongly held silence itself constitutes a deed, while a great deal of action wrongly placed can itself amount to nothing. Sometimes speech is a deed and sometimes deeds themselves are also speech. In all of his wrestling here James pretty well covers all the bases.
The main take-away is that simply saying or thinking one is being faithful (church going, saying the creed, voting for conservative candidates, etc.) is not really FAITH. Faith involves living a life characterized by the same qualities that we see in Jesus: humility, love of ALL neighbors, helping others, etc. Walking the talk.