Religious Language

In the apocryphal text of the Letter (Epistle) of Jeremiah (Ep Jer), a long list of reasons is given by the implied author as to why certain entities alleged to be gods are not in fact such. Brief summaries of the author's various points characterise scholarly perspectives thereon. What has been overlooked in the research, however, and the topic of this article, concerns the converse fact that, in the construction of a negative identity for divinity, the text also assumes a lot about what a god must actually be like. Moreover, what is implicit in these " meta-theistic " presuppositions has never before been identified; hence the need for an attempted inferential reconstruction of what, according to the polemics of Ep Jer, makes a god divine.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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?

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.

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?

This paper examines how Heidegger’s view that language is poetry provides a way of conceptualising religious language. Poetry, according to Heidegger, is language in its purest form, in that it reveals Being, whilst also showing the difference between word and thing. In poetry, Heidegger suggests, we come closest to the essence of language itself and encounter its strangeness and impermeability. What would be the implications of viewing religious language in this way? Through examining Heidegger’s view that poetry is the purest form of language, I suggest that it would also be possible to view religious language as ‘poetry’ in this way, in that it also shows the transcendence of what cannot be brought to presence in language, except as concealed. Such a view of religious language leads to the view that it is not a special, unique or distinctive category of language, but rather a mode of language that, like poetry, can draw our attention to the inarticulable relationship between word and world that Heidegger argues pervades all forms of language.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Most everyone has heard the old saying “it’s best to leave religion and politics at the doorstep”, usually because both topics evoke passionate responses as most people hold their political beliefs and/or religious beliefs dear. Yet, often times, both are intriguing topics of conversation, especially when the speakers involved hold opposing beliefs or when one speaker holds very strong beliefs while the other speaker holds little to no beliefs on the subject at hand. The fact that these conversations have the ability of eliciting similar reactions from the speakers is a sign that the language used to express political beliefs is very similar to the language used to express religious beliefs. In this paper, I will focus on the case of the words used by the speakers in the conversation on a particular religious belief or set of religious beliefs show the incommensurability of religious language in everyday discourse, especially given the diversity of possible speakers, due to the very nature of religious belief and utterances about religious beliefs. Thus, I believe that, particularly for the question of the discourse on religious beliefs, the question what form does this discourse assume? is a very interesting one and one worth investigating further.

As such, in this paper, I strongly urge the acceptance that the discourse involving religious language and utterances about religious beliefs between the pious (the serious, genuine religious believer), the conformist (the lackadaisical yet genuine religious individual), the masquerader (the apparent yet nominal religious non-believer) and the atheist (the decidedly non-religious individual) is a clear case of incommensurability. In particular, the discourse which employs religious language where and when used by speakers who hold different beliefs represents an incommensurability between the speakers, such that there does indeed exist a “enormous gulf between [them]” (Putnam 143).

In order to situate this discussion,, I will first provide a broad definition of religious language and the four types of speakers. Following, I will discuss incommensurability and religious language as understood by Thomas Kuhn, Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, and Wilfrid Cantwell Smith. (1) I will discuss Thomas Kuhn’s conception of incommensurability. (2) I will discuss the relation between religious belief and its significance in the use of religious language in religious discourse, as Wittgenstein understood it, as contained in his students’ notes in the “Lectures on Religious Belief”. (3) I will discuss Putnam’s “Wittgenstein on Religious Belief” to consider his analysis of Wittgenstein's representation of religious belief in language. (4) I consider an analysis from comparative religion provided by Smith regarding the conversation held between the pious (the serious, genuine religious believer) and the masquerader (the apparent yet nominal religious non-believer) to present the distinction of speakers wherever religious discourse transpires. (5) Having done so, I return to consider Wittgenstein’s argument of the “un-shakeability” (Putnam 144) of religious beliefs for the pious (the serious, genuine religious believer) and his claim that no contradictions are present in the discourse (Putnam 147) between, as I will term them, the pious (the serious, genuine religious believer) and the masquerader (the apparent yet nominal religious non-believer).

In doing so, I then turn to consider Putnam’s interpretation. (1) Having introduced the doctrine of incommensurability, I aim to pinpoint and depict how the different types of speakers present wherever religious language is used in discourse (between the pious (the serious, genuine religious believer), the conformist (the lackadaisical yet genuine religious individual), the masquerader (the apparent yet nominal religious non-believer) and the atheist (the decidedly non-religious individual)). (2) I consider then the special case of a speaker who experiences a change in religious belief, namely the convert. I explore the type of speaker that a convert is before and after his or her conversion by analogy to the Gestalt switch from psychology. Importantly, for the purpose of this discussion, the convert will represent the person who transitions between the four types of speaker, whether into or out of genuine belief. (3) Having introduced the four main speakers and the convert between the types, I illustrate an analogous case of incommensurability by focusing on the language of boredom. In doing so, I will highlight the similarities contained by the sentences “[I believe] I am in a state of boredom”, which is to say “I am bored”, and “I believe in a given set of religious beliefs, Ω”, which is to say “I believe in Ω”. I will also highlight the similarities contained by the sentences “[I believe] I am not in a state of boredom”, which is to say “I am not bored”, and “I do not believe in a given set of religious beliefs, Ω”, which is to say “I do not believe in Ω”.

Having illustrated how conversations between different types of speakers using religious language are cases of incommensurability, I investigate the alternatives. (1) I discuss Pope Saint John Paul II’s Encyclical Letter on the Relationship between Faith and Reason (Fides et Ratio), where he expresses that faith and reason are not mutually exclusive but rather compatible and essential in humankind’s search for the absolute truth. This is to say, if faith and reason are compatible due to the absolute truth, then any and all conversations, including those of religious language, must be commensurable. (2) I then consider The Dialectics of Secularization (2004), which follows a conversation between Jürgen Habermas and then-Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), where Habermas concludes that there exist both secularized uses of language and religious uses of language, where believers and non-believers should simply expect disagreement while Pope Benedict XVI concludes that there is an absolute truth to be aimed towards. (3) In detailing these, I will identify how their failures strengthen the need of the acceptance of “doctrine of incommensurability” (Putnam 152) as descriptive of as it is truly the case for the discourse between the pious religious believer and the masquerader.

Ultimately, I will show that the first interpretation of the “doctrine of incommensurability” (Putnam 152), as suggested by Putnam, is a plausible claim that should be accepted as the sole answer to the question what form does the discourse between the pious religious believer and the masquerader assume?, because the between the pious (the serious, genuine religious believer) and the masquerader (the apparent yet nominal religious nonbeliever) hold conversation despite the presence of an “enormous gulf” between them (Putnam 144) which causes them to “talk past one another” (Putnam 143), rendering their statements of religious belief as incommensurable.

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.

This article deals with complex religious texts, which not only differentiate themselves from everyday language, but also challenges academic interpretative models. They are myth-like forms, related also to displace forms of the myth. In order to discuss such kind of expression we have adopted a working definition, which allows us to handle with visual forms as well as oneiric mode of narration and articulation of images. To address this kind of text we have adopted two sets of theoretic approaches. The first one is the dream theory of Ernest Hartmann, that takes into account the dream, above all the REM-dream, as a kind of consciousness (within the broad spectrum of consciousness) with intense neuronal activity, articulated by means of images and guided by emotions. In other words, it is in dreams that imagistic and narrative context are given to the subject’s emotions. Because in REM-dream thought is lateral and hyper connective, there is more space for textual creation. According to Hartmann, that is the kind of consciousness that predominates in mystics and poets. The second concept we use for understanding the dense religious expressions is the grotesque. It is a kind of text and image that articulates disparate, contradictory and even excluding elements in a whole. The grotesque not only deals with contradiction; it does pursue it. It not only articulates contradiction but leaves it unresolved. The kind of expression of the oneiric mode of narration and articulation of images is potentially appropriate for rendering realities of suffering, alienation and violence. Maybe that is reason why popular religiosities tend to express themselves by means of it. Finally, the article also points to the limits of the representational systems of the culture.
Keywords: myth, grotesque, dream, the complexity of religious language, narrative, image.

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.

„Zeitgemäß sprechen“ ist das Thema dieses Vortrags. Zeitgemäß sprechen von dem, woran wir glauben. Also das, was uns im Innersten bewegt, so in Worte fassen, dass es andere Menschen anrühren kann, bewegen kann, so dass sie vielleicht selbst zum Glauben oder doch wenigstens zum Nachdenken kommen. Wie kann unsere Sprache das leisten?
Deswegen werde ich kurz die Frage beleuchten, wie es um die religiöse Spra­che in unserer Gegenwart bestellt ist. In einem zweiten Schritt geht es darum, wie unser Spre­chen von Gott gut gehen kann, welche Sprache sinnvoll und angemessen ist, wenn wir über unse­ren Glauben sprechen. Und im dritten Teil werde ich einige Vorschläge dafür machen, was es heißt, heute „zeitgemäß“ vom Glauben, von Gott, vom „dreifaltigen Gott“ zu sprechen.

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This paper argues that a new genre of therapy has appeared in the arena of contemporary spiritual alternative healing, which expresses an outlook never-before-seen in the history of medicine: postmodern therapy. Postmodern therapeutic methods (PTMs) express a popularization of postmodernist philosophy in regards to language's role in the therapeutic process, expressing a novel cosmology. These methods are illustrated in the paper, and then analyzed in comparison to two other groups of methods: traditional/occult magic, and modern medicine. Finally, PTMs are characterized as neo-magic, bearing features similar to modernistic outlook on the one hand, and features similar to pre-modern magic outlook on the other hand. Thus, these new outlook demonstrate a double appropriation and rejection of perceptions viewed as contradictory – traditional magic and secular science.

The article considers whether, and to what extent, mystical experience, which is supposed to be transrational (non-dualist) and therefore ineffable, can be conveyed in language. The article consists of two parts. First, drawing on the Wittgensteinian distinction between “pointing” and “saying”, it is suggested that language not only speaks, but also acts. Mystical utterances are thus not on par with discursive utterances, in that they don’t refer to the mystical, but embody and enact it. Second, different means of expressing the inexpressible are outlined: from silence and bodily act, through evocative non-sense and paradox, to negation and scriptural metaphor. The expressive forms are analysed according to two mutually exclusive criteria, namely according to how consistent they are with the nature of the experience, and how suggestive their internal mechanisms are, i.e. how successful they are in approaching and addressing their recipient. It is suggested that the two criteria are inversely proportional to one another: the more descriptive and suggestive a given form, the less evocative and consistent it is and therefore open to grave misinterpretation.

In this paper, I argue that there are indispensable and irreducible metaphors in religious language and that this does not threaten a realist interpretation of religion. I first sketch a realist theory of religious language and argue that we cannot avoid addressing the problems metaphor poses to semantics. I then give a brief account of what it means for a metaphorical sentence to be true and how metaphors can refer to something even if what they mean is not expressible in literal terms. Finally, I discuss how this realist theory of metaphor influences our understanding of negative theology and gives a new perspective on religious pluralism.

This paper explores two prominent metaphors, “deepness” and “heat,” which are located at the intersection of language structure and ideology in Korean Christian prayer. Drawing on four months of fieldwork in a Protestant church in Seoul, South Korea, I argue that the metaphors associated with formal linguistic features across subgenres of prayer are closely linked with concepts of agency and sincerity in church. “Deepness” can be associated with decrease in formality that is shown as a spectrum across a classification of the genres, as Korean Christians consider decrease in human manipulation upon forms indexes a “deep” reliance on supernatural agency. Also, “heat” can be associated with an intense paralinguistic feature that is one of the major poetic devices differentiating the genres, as Korean Christians conceive intensity in voice iconizes “heat” in inner sincerity inspired by the Holy Spirit. Although they serve different functions in Christian practice, both metaphors are not only compatible but also mutually reinforcing, based on the same Christian language ideology that language is a performative act susceptible either to spiritual or human intentions. The complementary recursivity between “deep” prayer and “heated” prayer is explained by the logic that spiritual agency depends on human agency which denies one’s power, and human sincerity depends on spiritual agency which motivates one’s heart. By analyzing metaphors that connect language structure to ideologies across genres of Korean Christian prayer, this paper illuminates the multiple agentive processes in the Korean Christian cultural model of “susceptible intentionality.”

This article examines religious language in a contested public sphere by analyzing performances of linguistic creativity among creationists in the United States. The public creation-evolution debate has been a central speech event in the development of modern creationism, and functions as a key site for claiming cultural legitimacy. Focusing on three creation-evolution debates spanning 33 years, I advance the concept of "creationist poetics" to capture how framing, stance taking, and speech play define the performance repertoire of creationists in the debate context. In particular, I illustrate how creationist speakers work to create a conspiracy-populist frame and a revealer stance. Together, these strategies sketch a lifeworld that envisions elitist "secular" actors suppressing scriptural authority and creationists as humble, clear-eyed people exposing the conspiracy through scriptural fidelity. I argue that this system of poetics is a key expressive resource in the ongoing struggle to wrest authority away from evolutionary science and claim it for biblical fundamentalism. Ultimately, this analysis of creationist poetics informs our understanding of how authority as a contingent social process is discursively mediated, a central theme in the study of both religious and political language.

The nativization of Modern Hebrew at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth is one of the most commonly cited examples of language planning and (possibly) revival. The Hebrew Language Committee, which was the main body responsible for Hebrew language planning in the formative years 1890–1953, held numerous discussions about the desired pronunciation, grammar, orthography and lexicon of the evolving language. The present study looks into one intriguing trait in the discourse of the Committee: the inclusion of numerous religious expressions drawn from Jewish religion, mysticism, and law. The paper examines these religious references and attempts to discover whether the Hebrew planning discussions included in the Committee’s Proceedings were a continuation of Jewish scholarly, halakhic deliberations, or whether the use of Jewish imagery and allusions was just a façon de parler. Using a language ideologies framework (Blommaert in Language ideological debates. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, pp 1–38, 1999; Irvine and Gal in Regimes of language: ideologies, politics, and identities. School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, pp 35–83, 2000; Woolard in Language ideologies: practice and theory. Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, pp 3–47, 1998), it suggests that while the overt intentions of Hebrew language planners were most predominantly secular, there is enough evidence to support the claim that the language planning of Hebrew was not fully secularized.

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