Henry of Ghent on Teaching Theology

This paper aims to explain Henry of Ghent’s views on what kind of language is appropriate in theology, and why. It concentrates on a number of questions of the Summa quaestionum ordinariarum, which are devoted to his take on how theologians should explain their discipline to students, and to the meaningfulness in general of theological language. The paper delves into the technical terms sensus and insinuare, and compares Henry’s account with H.P. Grice’s views on (speaker-)meaning and his notion of ‘conversational implicatures’, thus showing that Henry emphasises the performative features of linguistic use.