Wittgenstein's Notion of ‘Theology as Grammar’

Abstract

In the wake of Kantian and positivistic critiques of metaphysics and theology, one group of philosophers and theologians has attempted to reconstrue the meaning of religious discourse without making ontological commitments to a mind-independent reality. Another group has refused to abandon such commitments: they remain convinced that religious language is meaningless without them, because it cannot otherwise be ‘about’ anything objectively real; it merely becomes an expression ‘of’ religious piety, sentiment, or emotion.