ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates three significant moments in Christian reflection on the religious use of language. The first is the Cappadocian invocation of the unknowability of God against the Stoicizing correspondence theory of language purveyed by Eunomius. The second is John Damascene’s adoption of a Christocentric in his exposition of the incarnation and his defence of images. The third is the widespread appropriation, especially in Christological debate, of the logical apparatus of Porphyry, which (without pretending to offer a new ontology) furnished the church with principles for an authoritative definition of truths which could not be rationally explained.
