A taxonomy of religious concepts

Abstract

(v) Summary The rather complex argument of this paper may be summarized thus. To give the ordinary pupil an account of religion, in particular Christianity, and to enable him to explore it, he must be equipped to understand and to use kerygmatic language. That we define as a minimum articulation of what this faith is. Maybe in some cases we also have to extend the child's knowledge into the wider domains of what we have called the descriptive or theological types of language. For this,the child requires religious concepts, and the task of religious education is aided if these are identified and classified. After some discussion of what it is to have a concept and of the key distinction between that and having always the correct term for it, we introduced our taxonomy and later analysed its application to examples. T-concepts of second-order reflection were set aside; among those employed in theistic statements, I are needed but are learnt outside religious education through commonsense or by general education. Some religious concepts were found to beunnecessary for initiation into what Christianity essentially is (type Rb) and these are not required in religious education. We are left with a minimum of concepts essential in religious education, those distinctive of theistic statements and indispensable to keryg-matic language (type Ra); and with those few notions that represent the sacred, transcendent dimension, which logically and ontologically underpins religion of the Christian type and its characteristic form of understanding. Concepts in the latter category we call C and to introduce them could almost be described as the central task of religious education. Maybe to explore what is involved in this crucial enterprise of introducing to children the Christian idea of God will bring in many or most of the other essential theistic notions (Ra) and lead to identifying the conditions for acquiring them. Finally we add an appendix to illustrate the taxonomy.