Clothing the Invisible Man

Clothing the Invisible Man

Words are to thoughts what clothing is to the Invisible Man. They give invisible concepts shape and texture so that people can catch glimpses of ideas and ponder them. When clothed in words, thoughts become communicable. In one way or another, words seem to be responsible for the way humans understand every question of any importance at all. The assumption, then, is that words (or language) and truth are tied to one another. But are they really? Can words tell the truth about things? What about invisible things? What about God? Of what value is language to religious thought and experience?

All religions, as they use words to communicate, provide some way to understand the connection between language and truth. The question of language may be one of the most important questions a religion answers, possibly because religions themselves are Invisible Men which require words to make sense of them. Or perhaps the essence of religion lies in what cannot be verbalized.

In this essay, I will try (by making use of language, of course) to compare the Zen Buddhist and Christian positions on the relationship between words and truth. Are their views compatible? Are their understandings roughly the same or irreconcilably different? After describing the Zen and Christian understandings of this question, I will argue that despite extensive similarities, Zen and Christianity differ on essential points.

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