Religious language as natural-sacred language

Abstract

The article offers a different interpretation of Antony Flew’s views about the problem of religious language. This interpretation shows that Flew’s ideas can be perceived as a critique of belief in the content of religious statements, rather than a critique of their meaning. By interpreting his thought in this way, it is clear that Flew’s approach is not new and we can find similar ideas in the history of theological thought. In connection with this interpretation, the authors analyze prevalent theories related to this problem in order to identify the principal doctrines used to find a new solution. In this regard, the new potential solution is assessed in order to complete the approach previously undertaken. The main idea is to merge two distinct and also contrasting concepts found in the literature: “natural” and “sacred”. Such a merging can begin with the concept of natural language as a theory drawn from the literature on the philosophy of language. According to the principles of the philosophy of language adopted by this article, religious language is rooted in natural language, but it is distinct from other forms in that it is the customized use of natural language by the saints of a particular religion. By offering an explanation to natural language, it is possible to view saints as the ones who used natural language in order to talk about the divine sacred realm. Similar to previous thinkers who spoke about religious language, the authors offer their own analogy. This analogy is compared and contrasted with previous ones to reveal the advantages of the proposed new view of the problem of religious language. The authors propose a new type of natural language with the special characteristic of being sacred.