Talk about Religious Talk: Various Approaches to the Nature of Religious Language

Abstract

The response of the theological world to contemporary developments in empirical and language philosophy is beginning to take on a more definite and active form. Books and articles are now appearing which deal with everything from the semantics of the Old Testament1and the Church Fathers2to parallels between language analysis and Karl Barth's theology.3In addition, anthologies in the philosophy of religion are now including a section on ‘The Nature of Religious Language’.4As the quantity and quality of this response increase there arises a need for a survey and classification of the various approaches of which it is composed. It is the purpose of this article to provide such a survey, and to make some evaluational comments and suggestions. It should be mentioned at the out-set that it is impossible completely to classify approaches; and yet there are similarities and dissimilarities among these approaches which enable one to point out ‘family resemblances’.Obviously, such a survey cannot come close to being exhaustive, but certain tendencies can be noted. Moreover, an effort will be made to classify the various approaches according to a continuum. Those that are dealt with first tend towards maintaining the autonomy of religious language, while those that are discussed further along in the article would prefer to relate religious language to empirical experience. In between there are those who would advocate something similar to an eclectic view.