Religious Language

I present and discuss recent work in analytic philosophy of religion on apophaticism and divine ineffability. I focus on three questions: how can we call God ineffable without contradicting ourselves? How can we refer to an ineffable God? What is the point of talking about an ineffable God?

My second academic monograph (2018; the introduction gives a thorough overview of the argumentation of the book; its translation can be found at my Academia.edu account) explores some central aspects of “culture of faith” (worship and language of faith, gospel and reformation, theology and dialogue). The term “culture of faith” is a reflection on how culture is seen from the religious perspective, as well as on the way religion itself is a particular manifestation and “mechanism” of culture. The objective of the book is to focus on the logic of creation of meaning in religion and to improve the understanding of the grammar of religious reasoning. Thus, the book also attempts to broaden our understanding of the guiding power of faith. A semiotic understanding of culture as “semiosphere” (J. Lotman) constitutes the background and horizon of the book. On the one hand, the culture of faith is a thing (object) studied by theology. On the other hand, theology itself is a specific manifestation of the culture of faith.  Thus, theology – like semiotics or cultural theory – can be described as auto-communication or self-consciousness of the culture of faith. The book contains studies on the interpretation of the culture of faith (or on theological thought) and further developments in interpretation of the culture of faith (or in theological thought). I examine the past approaches to thinking about the culture of faith and about some of its core elements and dynamics (this represents the “thought history” dimension of the book), and I attempt to develop and shape culture-of-faith thinking in our present-day Estonian-speaking context (this is the theological-constructive dimension of the book). These two dimensions, historical and constructive, are distinguishable but they are inevitably and necessarily interlinked in a discussion of the culture of faith.

In this article, I will examine St. Edith Stein’s theory of religious language. Stein, who was both a professional philosopher and a mystic, and deeply rooted both in the tradition of negative theology and early phenomenology, held a peculiar version of univocity with regard to religious language. On the one hand, our concepts have something objectively in common with the thing they signify. On the other hand, our concepts are merely representations of the real. Therefore, when mystics say that God can be addressed “without words or images,” this does not entail anti-realism or non-cognitivism. Instead, according to Stein, this only means that words are not needed when the thing itself is present without mediation in the mystical experience.

عبدالکریم سروش در سال‌های نظرورزیِ خود نظراتی در باب دین و معرفت دینی پرورانده که هریک معرکه‌ی آراء بوده‌اند و مخالفان و موافقانی باشدت و حدّت از آن سخن گفته‌اند. در یک نگاه کلی، می‌توان آن‌ نظرات را در سه گام اصلی دسته‌بندی کرد: ۱) نظریه‌ی قبض‌و‌بسط تئوریک شریعت، ۲) نظریه‌ی بسط تجربه‌ی نبوی و ۳) نظریه‌ی رؤیای رسولانه. در این نوشتار به نظریه‌ی رؤیای رسولانه می‌پردازم و تلاش می‌کنم با معرفی ابزاری فنّی در حوزه‌ی زبان دینی، امکان موشکافی بیش‌ترِ این نظریه را فراهم کنم.
در این راستا، در گام نخست تصویری کلی از «نظریه‌ی رؤیای رسولانه» ارائه می‌کنم. در گام دوم، یکی از ابزارهای حوزه‌ی زبان دینی را معرفی می‌کنم. این ابزار، که تقسیم نظرات به دیدگاه‌های بازنگرانه و غیربازنگرانه است، در ارزیابی دقیق‌ترِ نظریات حوزه‌ی زبان دینی به ما کمک می‌کند. در گام سوم، این تقسیم را کمی بسط می‌دهم و آن را به تقسیمی با چهار حالت اصلی تبدیل می‌کنم تا با نظریه‌ی رؤیای رسولانه متناسب‌تر باشد و امکان تدقیق و تحلیل بیش‌تری را برای‌مان فراهم کند. هریک از حالت‌ها ویژگی‌های خاصی دارند که باعث تفاوت‌هایی در روش ارزیابی‌شان می‌شود. اگر این نوشته موفق باشد، نهایتاً این سوال در مطمحِ نظرمان می‌نشیند که نظریه‌ی رؤیای رسولانه ذیل کدام یک از این حالت‌ها قرار می‌گیرد و به تبعِ آن، کیفیت ارزیابی آن چگونه است. در پایان و از باب اشاره نشان خواهم داد که در هر یک از این حالت‌ها، سروش با تبیین‌خواهی مواجه است که در تبیین‌شان به‌ مشقت می‌افتد. بنابراین، از آن‌جا که بنیان نظریه‌اش بر «استدلال از طریق بهترین تبیین» استوار شده، این تبیین‌خواه‌های سخت‌تبیینْ نظریه‌اش را به دردسر می‌اندازند.

The question of the relation between religious experience and Christian belief in God is addressed in radically different ways within contemporary theology and philosophy of religion. In order to develop an answer which avoids the pitfalls of the ‘analytic perception model’ (Alston, Yandell, Swinburne) and the ‘overlinguistic’ model for interpreting Christian religious experience (Lindbeck), this thesis offers an approach which combines a phenomenological study of feelings, conceptual investigation of Christian God-talk and ‘belief’-talk, as well as theological, sociological and anthropological perspectives. At the centre of the interpretation developed here is the phenomenological category ‘existential feelings’ which should be seen, it is suggested, as a theologically and philosophically central aspect of Christian religious experiencing. Using this contemporary concept, a novel reading of F. Schleiermacher’s concept of ‘feeling’ is proposed and several kinds of Christian experiencing interpreted (like the experiences of ‘awe’, ‘miracle of existence’, ‘wretchedness’, and ‘redeemed community’). By way of a philosophical understanding of Christian believing in God, this study offers a critical interpretation of the later Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘religious belief’, combining Wittgensteinian insights with Paul Tillich’s notion of ‘dynamic faith’ and arguing against Wittgensteinian ‘grammaticalist’ and ‘expressivist’ accounts. Christian beliefs about God are normally life-guiding but nevertheless dubitable. The nature of Christian God-talk is interpreted, again, by combining the later Wittgenstein’s insights into the grammatical and expressive roles of God-talk with Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on linguistic innovation and Roman Jakobson’s perspective on the functions of language. Finally, the claim which connects phenomenological, conceptual and theological strands of this study is a recognition of a ‘religious belief-inviting pull’ of the relevant experience. Christian religious belief-formation and concept-formation can be seen as stemming from ‘extraordinary’ existential feelings, where the resulting beliefs about God are largely but not completely bound by traditional meanings.

Introduction
1. Phenomenology of Existential Feelings Within a
Broader Philosophical Context
2. Schleiermacher’s ‘Gefühl’ as Existential Feeling
3. Wittgenstein, Belief-Attitudes, and ‘Hinge-
Certainty’
4. Beyond the Wittgensteinian Grammaticalist View
of Religious Belief
5. The Expressive Among the Functions of Language
6. God-talk, Feelings and Beliefs
Conclusion

Online: https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/10262

This book is an introduction in a double sense. It is intended to introduce beginners in philosophy to the idea of philosophical nonsense and the problems it raises. But it is also addressed to professional philosophers, most of whom seem virtually unaware of the issue.

Certain philosophers, here called ‘nonsensicalists’, believe that much philosophy (philosophical questions as well as assertions) is simply nonsense in the strict sense of being meaningless. They proceed as though it were an established fact that there is such a thing as philosophical nonsense and the notion were quite unproblematic. By contrast, many other philosophers proceed as though either they had never heard of it or it were quite obvious that there is no such thing.

There can be little doubt that what the nonsensicalists are saying is of great importance – if they are right. But there are at least eight questions that must be addressed before anyone is in a position to start hunting down philosophical nonsense and they have all been woefully neglected.

The idea of philosophical nonsense goes back to Thomas Hobbes at least and yet its history remains largely unresearched.

In view of the neglect of the problems raised by the notion of philosophical nonsense, even by professional philosophers, it is not unduly optimistic to suggest that it is a topic to which relative newcomers to the subject might make a contribution.

Ludwig Wittgenstein thought that good philosophy unties the knots in our thinking that bad philosophy has put there and must make movements as complicated as the knots it unties. Is the notion of philosophical nonsense an essential aid to this – as Wittgenstein himself thought – or just another knot?

The purpose of this paper is to analyze two contemporary theological positions on the matter of naming the triune God. Robert W. Jenson argued that the traditional masculine name of "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" is God's proper name, which is revealed through God's own self-identification in the history of Israel and the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore, any replacement or revision of the triune name violates the revelation of God as attested in Scripture and tradition. Elizabeth A. Johnson argues that the exclusive use of masculine language for God violates the incomprehensibility and inexhaustibility of God and legitimates gender oppression. Johnson proposes the enrichment of the Church's liturgy and theology with a diversity of language, including female metaphors. What's at stake for both theologians is the integrity of the gospel of God and the witness of the Church in the world.

Redemptive suffering is one of the religious responses to the problem of evil and suffering within certain religious traditions such as Christian faith and an interpretation of Shi'i thought in Islamic faith. This paper firstly explores redemptive approach to human suffering, and critically evaluates its projection in Shi'i thought in contrast with the Christian doctrine. The issue discussed here is cosmic redemptive suffering rather than personal one. The assertion of the paper is that redemptive suffering in cosmic sense has no doctrinal basis in Islamic faith and is far from resolving the problem of evil and suffering in philosophical sense.

This work will lay stress on the religion as a linguistic enterprise, and that language is a principal tool for understanding a religion, in this case Islam. The relationship between Islam and Arabic leads us to the relationship between English and Islam. There is some distortion through transliteration and spelling of Arabic words, and distortion through  translation of Arabic terms, so there is a need of standardization.
Key words: religious language, Islam, Arabic, Islamic English, loanwords, translation, distortion

Analysis of kilisiw incantations used among the Mande people (West Africa) leads to a critical review of anthropological theories of the effectiveness of ritual speech. The analysis concludes with a demonstration of the specificity of this speech, whose meaning  depends upon its sound and the speaker’s bodily engagement in its production rather than the conventional association of the signified and signifiers.

L’étude des incantations kilisiw, employées en pays mandé (Afrique de l’Ouest), conduit à la révision critique des théories anthropologiques de l’efficacité de la parole rituelle. Elle se conclut par la mise en évidence de la spécificité de cette parole, dont le sens ne s’explique par une association conventionnelle des signifiants et des signifiés mais est à chercher du côté de la sonorité des mots et de la mobilisation du corps de l’énonciateur.

For reference: Wittgenstein’s example of the Last Judgement and the resulting “gulf”
Suppose that someone believed in the Last Judgement, and I don't, does this mean that I believe the opposite to him, just that there won't be such a thing? I would say: 'not at all, or not always.'
Suppose I say that the body will rot, and another says 'No. Particles will rejoin in a thousand years, and there will be a Resurrection of you.'
If some said: 'Wittgenstein, do you believe in this?'  I'd say: ‘No.' 'Do you contradict the man?' I'd say: 'No.'
If you say this, the contradiction already lies in this. Would you say: 'I believe the opposite', or 'There is no reason to suppose such a thing'? I'd say neither.
Suppose someone were a believer and said: 'I believe in a Last Judgement,' and I said: 'Well, I'm not so sure. Possibly.'  You would say that there is an enormous gulf between us.
If he said 'There is a German aeroplane overhead,' and I said 'Possibly I'm not so sure,' you'd say we were fairly near. It isn't a question of my being anywhere near him, but on an entirely different plane, which you could express by saying: 'You mean something altogether different,
Wittgenstein.'
The difference might not show up at all in any explanation of the meaning. Why is it that in this case I seem to be missing the entire point?

Such that:
Putnam’s introduction to “7: Wittgenstein on Religious Belief” in Renewing Philosophy
-“The fundamental reason that I myself stick to the idea that there are right and wrong moral judgments and better and worse moral outlooks, and also right and wrong evaluative judgments and better and worse normative outlooks in areas other than morality, is not a metaphysical one. The reason is simply that that is the way that we—and I include myself in this "we"—talk and think, and also the way that we are going to go on talking and thinking.” (135)

And
Diamond’s introduction:
-Towards the beginning of his 'Lectures on Religious Belief', Wittgenstein asks us to consider someone who says 'I believe in a Last Judgment'; and he asks us to imagine himself responding 'Well, I'm not so sure. Possibly'. He goes on ‘You would say that there is an enormous gulf between us’. I shall discuss some of the gulfs that may lie between us: the gulfs about which Wittgenstein speaks in the first lecture, and also the gulf between Wittgenstein himself and Smythies, a gulf that appears to open up between them in the third lecture.” (99)

There are passages in Wittgenstein where he compares his method to psychotherapy and one or two where he seems to suggest that the ‘patient’ has the last word on his ‘illness’ and ‘cure’.  This paper tries to take these seriously, especially in connexion with the idea that victims of philosophical confusion talk nonsense.

Philosophical accusations of talking nonsense made in a polemical spirit are bound to fail, since the only way one can effectively criticise another’s utterance is by attaching some meaning to it.  But if the other acknowledges the possibility that his puzzlement arises from his having been taken in by nonsense, then perhaps a co-operative investigation of this suggestion might be fruitful.  Indeed self-diagnosis ought in principle to be possible.  Ought it not to have happened at least once in the history of philosophy if philosophical nonsense has ever been exposed? 

But there are difficulties.  For example:
a) We must ask whether or not philosophical nonsense, when exposed as such, is supposed to lose all appearance of meaningfulness.  Either answer is problematic.
b) The acknowledged similarity of the methodology under investigation to that of psychoanalysis exposes it to many of the familiar objections to the methodology of psychoanalysis, especially those that draw attention to the misleading influence of suggestion by an authority-figure.
c) The proposal that relentless cross-questioning of a suspected nonsense-talker will eventually lead her to ‘dry up’ (if she really is talking nonsense) seems to involve a version of the so-called Socratic Fallacy.

I originally entitled this paper ‘Why are there no uncontroversial examples of philosophical nonsense?’, but since this seemed apt to provoke rather superficial responses, I decided to re-title it.  In it I ponder the fact that, not only are there no uncontroversial examples of philosophical nonsense, there are no uncontroversial examples of what one might call ‘analogue philosophical nonsense’.  These would be non-philosophical cases of someone’s believing he means something when in reality he means nothing.  (Someone’s saying, ‘It’s 5 o’clock on the sun’ is sometimes offered as an example.)  I ask what conditions such cases would need to satisfy.  What would count as a compellingly clear case of an illusion of meaning?  Why has no one described one?

Studying Old Tibetan (OT) documents can help us to unravel and thus better comprehend particular stages in the development of a lexeme that at first view gives the impression of having been coined in its ultimate form in only one step. Using the oldest extant sources on written Tibetan I will attempt to puzzle out the history of the compound mya ngan and to demonstrate the influence a multilingual and multicultural environment of Central Asian oases could have wielded on the formation of Tibetan language. The paper also endeavours to trace the origins of one of the most important Buddhist terms in Tibetan: mya ngan las ʼdas pa. It is perplexing and indeed rather uncommon that a nominalised verbal phrase of five syllables was chosen to render a simple Sanskrit lexeme – nirvāṇa.

This article investigates the implications of the ancient nomos/physis debate to Trinitarian theology. While the Cappadocians, countering Heteroousians, eventually demonstrated that naturalist understanding of naming did not work for Christian theology, Hilary still assumed that it did. Hilary is usually grouped with naturalists who held that names were not arbitrary and conventional impositions, but that they corresponded to the nature of what they designated. Yet, there are several complications with such a grouping, because not all naturalists (e.g., Cratylus, Stoics, Origen, Eunomius) say the same thing, focus on same issues, have theological interest in names, or agree with Hilary. Accordingly, this paper will argue that Hilary can be called a “naturalist” only in a qualified sense.

Saying that x is ineffable seems to be paradoxical – either I cannot say anything about x, not even that it is ineffable – or I can say that it is ineffable, but then I can say something and it is not ineffable. In this article, I discuss Alston’s version of the paradox and a solution proposed by Hick which employs the concept of formal and substantial predicates. I reject Hick’s proposal and develop a different account based on some passages from Pseudo-Dionysius’ Mystica Theologia. ‘God is ineffable’ is a metalinguistic statement concerning propositions about God: not all propositions about God are expressible in a human language.

The author looks at the God image experience as an attachment relationship experience with God. Hence, arguing that the God image experience is borne originally out of a parent–child attachment contagion, in such a way that God is often represented in either secure or insecure attachment patterns. The article points out that insecure God images often develop head-to-head with God concepts in a believer’s emotional experience of God. On the other hand, the author describes God concepts as indicators of a religious faith and metaphorical standards for regulating insecure attachment patterns. The goal of this article, however, is to highlight the relationship between God images and God concepts, and to provide a hermeneutical process for interpreting and surviving the God image experience.

This study takes as its starting point the consensus in research on the relationship between divine attributes and suffering in Psalm 89 which holds that some of the beliefs expressed in verses 39-52 contradict those in 1-38(53). In an attempt to address a related gap in the research in a new and supplementary way, a comparativephilosophical perspective is offered regarding the reasoning operative within the Psalm's associated religious language. As counterpart, the so-called "Logical Problem of Evil" (LPE) in analytic philosophy of religion was identified. Conceptual and correlation-relations in Psalm 89 are clarified through correlation and contrast. The study argues that the logical status of the beliefs involved, as contradiction, makes more sense if interpreted as part of the protocol when prayer and poetry have to satisfy the conditions of a possible atheodicy. Thus, restating the Psalm's associated content on its own terms, even if not in them, contributes to our understanding of why certain states of *

It can be said that the debates about "renewal of the religion" are inevitably coming into the present day when the potential of religion to answer the modern and post modern challenges is questioned. This debate is naturally driven by beliefs and thought-based theological assumptions, although it has emerged more visibly in the practical life of the individual and society. Therefore, the issue concerns the individual's direct perception of God, and the "deism", "agnostisism" the debates seem to have reached such dimensions that it can not be easily transposed by discourses such as "religious fatigue". Limitation of the religious field that started with Renaissance and Reform in the West has led to the idea that the idea of putting a new religious approach out of purpose over time has led to the degeneration of the theological structure and consequently the surgical intervention resulting in the loss of the patient. Muslims today are feeling more of a challenge to their religious understanding. What we need to do in our view is a similar rationale for the move from Western experience, but a different approach and method to reintegrate the language of religion, but to embark on a re-reading and understanding struggle, including the theological dimensions of the issue not to be confined to the slogan. We hope that this end result; will reveal a new understanding of religion in the language of religion including understanding, make-sensing, humble, endearing, liberating, empathetic, relistic, labourer, kind and respectful apart from exclusionist, marginalizing, frightening, enslaving, and dull, cold, elitist, rude. The work we think is going to aim to discuss the theological foundations and possibilities of this.

This paper examines the classification and formal features of prayer in a Korean Protestant church from the perspective of the ethnography of communication. The purpose of this research is to describe and analyze the knowledge that people should know in order to communicate appropriately in church. First, I found that there are eleven subgenres of prayer in a formal setting in church, and my analysis indicates that they are differentiated by three dimensions of contrast: vocality, plannedness, and authorship. The genres are classified into five categories, whose spectrum shows that decrease in formality of text and situation corresponds to an increased degree of socialization to the church community and the religious beliefs. Second, these genres are grouped into two encompassing categories, according to the poetic features of prayer. Written text, or planned discourse, shows the dominant use of parallelism and literary styles of speech tone, and plays a significant role in a more formal service. Oral text, or unplanned discourse, exhibits prominent use of repetition and fluency, which is mainly used in a more informal service. The coexistence of the fixed prayer and the spontaneous prayer is based on the same Christian value that human agency competes with spiritual power. In other words, extreme formality of prayer in a more formal service and extreme improvisation in a more informal setting are both given the high sacredness or religious significance, since both are regarded as exhibiting the absence of human manipulation or authorship. By integrating formal features and situational aspects of prayer, this paper demonstrates how a religious value reinforces the religious world through the elaborate use of prayer in Korean Christianity. [Prayer, Christianity (Protestantism), Ethnography of Communication, Componential Analysis, Ethnopoetics, South Korea]

با ظهور فلسفه های زبانی با آراء راسل و ویتگنشتاین، مساله معناداری گزاره ها محور توجه قرار گرفت. با نوع نگاه تجربیِ آنها، معناداری گزاره های دینی، اخلاقی، هنری و مابعدالطبیعی محل تردید شد. پس از ایشان، پزیتیویستهای منطقی همچون آیر گزاره های دینی را با ملاک تحقیق پذیری و سپس ابطال پذیری بی معنا (نه کاذب) دانستند. در این مقاله به طرح شبهة معناداری گزاره های دینی توسط آنتونی فلو و پاسخ های ریچارد هیر، بازیل میچل، جان هیک و یان کرومبی پرداخته می شود. سپس سعی خواهد شد از منظری دیگر شبهه و پاسخ ها ارزیابی گردد و در نهایت پاسخی جدید به شبهه از منظر فلسفیِ اسلامی ارائه گردد. در این پاسخ به برداشت های غلط از رابطة خدا و عالم و صفات او که منشا این نگاهها شده است و تعمیم نابجای تجربه گرایی پرداخته می شود. نهایتا دیدگاه نویسنده با توجه به منظری فلسفی اسلامی که دیدگاه جدیدی است ارائه خواهد گردید که پاسخی مناسب برای برون رفت از این ایراد و تبیین نحوه معناداری گزاره های دینی است ارئه خواهد شد. و در نهایت مزیت دیدگاه خو.د را نسبت به دیدگاههای رقیب بیان خواهد کرد.

This study pioneers the use of philosophy of religion in the study of the Hebrew Bible. After identifying the need for a legitimate philosophical approach to Israelite religion, the volume traces the history of interdisciplinary relations and shows how descriptive varieties of philosophy of religion can aid the clarification of the Hebrew Bible’s own metaphysical, epistemological, and moral assumptions. Two new interpretative methodologies are developed and subsequently applied through an introduction to what the biblical texts took for granted about the nature of religious language, the concept of deity, the properties of Yhwh, the existence of gods, religious epistemology, and the relation between religion and morality.

Abstract
Various expression styles of religious terminology have been extracted from human literature to address holy cretaures. Choosing arguments based on human experience enabling expression on "holy/sacred" has been suggesting a good point of criticism for those having problem with holy, therefore, with the transcendental reality. Positivists that have been maintaining increasing influence to mid-20th century from the 1 8 th century capitalized this aspect to harshly criticize religion and its utterance. However, the religion, the other products which belonged to the human, is a component pertain to society culture. Thus religious utterence has a comprehensible, credible and acceptable dimension. Collectivist, mono perspective and regular logic rejection is not a appropriate approach. In order to overcome such a status quo favoured, shallow perspective and in order to understand the language of a religion of any kind, one has to refer to the life styles within the society's culture which this language of religion uses and from there to refer to the different paradigms of use, consequently to refer to its detailed grammar.

Aquesta obra està subjecta a una llicència Reconeixement 3.0 de Creative Commons. Se'n permet la reproducció, la distribució, la comunicació pública i la transformació per generar una obra derivada, sense restricció sempre que se'n citi el titular dels drets (Universitat de Girona).

Since the demise of logical positivism accusations of talking nonsense in philosophy have mainly been made by Wittgensteinians.  But some of these latter are as free with words like 'nonsense', 'senseless' and 'meaningless' as any logical positivist.  One such is Rupert Read, who is prepared to write off the whole of metaphysics as nonsense.  Condemnations of this sort have in recent years largely been ignored by other philosophers, which is surprising in view of their apparent importance.  It is equally surprising that the evident problems with accusations of talking nonsense have been largely ignored by those who are still prepared to make them.

A number of philosophers and theologians have argued that if God has knowledge of future human actions then human agents cannot be free. This argument rests on the assumption that, since God is essentially omniscient, God cannot be wrong about what human agents will do. It is this assumption that I challenge in this paper. My aim is to develop an interpretation of God’s essential omniscience according to which God can be wrong even though God never is wrong. If this interpretation of essential omniscience is coherent, as I claim it is, then there is a logically consistent position according to which God is essentially omniscient, God foreknows what human agents will do, and yet it is possible for human agents to do otherwise. Thus, the argument for theological fatalism fails.

The article critically examines whether, and how, mystical insights can be conveyed in language. First, the problem of mystical ineffability is briefly presented: How, if at all, is it possible to express the supposedly transrational and transconceptual (non-dualistic) mystical experience in rational and conceptual (dualistic) linguistic terms? Second, drawing on the Wittgensteinian distinction between “pointing” and “saying”, it is demonstrated that language not only speaks (describes), but also acts (performs). In this sense, it is wrong to interpret mystical utterances as discursive utterances, because they don’t refer to the mystical, but enact it. Yet unlike ordinary (negative or positive) performatives, which remain embedded in the conceptual framework, mystical utterances function as absolute negative performatives, i.e. as instances of radical de-conceptualisation. Finally, several means for expressing the inexpressible are outlined: two non-linguistic (silence and bodily act), and four linguistic (evocative non-sense, paradox, negation, and scriptural metaphor). The individual expressive forms are classified according to two mutually exclusive criteria: The criterion of consistency discloses whether, and to what extent, a given form is compatible with the original mystical experience, while the criterion of suggestivity shows how successful a given form is in addressing its recipient. It is argued that the two criteria form an elementary matrix for a better understanding of how mystical experience, despite its fundamental transrationality, can be coherently expressed in language.