Reply to Professor Hick's Comment on "What Characterizes Religious Language?"

Abstract

pROFESSOR Hick's comment on my article What Characterizes Religious Language? is not only extremely kind, but also raises some important issues which I should like to discuss in this brief reply. At the start, I shall try to present my underlying presuppositions from which my study of religious discourse proceeds. (1) It has been my concern to call attention to the many different ways in which language is used in religion, for until we are clear that language functions only in contexts and for various purposes, we are likely to be misled into a too simple bifurcation of language as meaningful or meaningless. My main point is that religious utterances have a meaning in that they have a use in our language. I then attempted to characterize some of these usages. I grant that my list of such usages may not be complete. (2) It was not part of my study to ask in what sense (if any) religious utterances, other than straight-forward empirical ones, could be considered true or false. I do not agree with Professor Hick that this is the central problem of the philosophy of religion; furthermore, on this issue I should want to side with the logical positivists who maintain that only statements capable of being confirmed or falsified are candidates for truth or falsity. Commands, aesthetic and ethical evaluations, as well as most religious utterances, do not lose their significance if one is told that they are not factual, and hence not properly true or false. If my article has any value at all, it is in calling attention to the many ways language is used in religion. To ask then if these usages express true propositions, is to overlook that I suggested that most of them do not suggest or entail propositions at all. (3) I was attempting in my article to characterize the language used by men in religious contexts, as opposed to theological, metaphysical, or philosophical contexts. In this respect I agree with Professor Holmer's distinction between the language of religion and the language about religion.1 It seems clear to me that if one wishes to understand the language of religion one must study the utterances religious people make in the contexts in which they make them. When a believer is praying or uttering a creedal statement, I do not conceive of his asking, Is this true or not? Such a questioning is a second-order inquiry which philosophers and theologians sometimes engage in; and, while not unimportant, it should be distinguished from my attempt to characterize the various usages of language by religious people in religious contexts.