‘Religious language in general’ does not exist. Religious language is found only in a concrete and historical form, whether Greek, pagan, Buddhist, Islamic, Jewish, or, as in our case, Christian discourse. The generalized ‘religious discourse’ referred to by philosophers of religion is an abstraction performed upon the material of concrete instances of religious discourse. The question arises whether this abstraction takes all religions into account or rather has been based upon certain religions selected according to certain criteria. And it is also possible that the abstraction has been constructed — an ‘ideal’ religious or pseudo-religious discourse along humanistic, illuministic or idealistic lines, possessing a certain number of similarities with concrete religious discourse. Moreover, the term ‘religious language’ is sometimes used to refer to the ‘meta-language’ in which one speaks about diverse forms of concrete religious language.

But here we are concerned neither with the variety of concrete extant or historical religions such as Buddhism. Islam, Hebrew, Greco-pagan, etc., nor with ‘religious discourse in general’, but rather with the form of religious language in which Christians, and specifically, practicing Roman Catholic Christians, express themselves.1  This is by no means intended as an exclusion of the way in which religious discourse is used by other Christian confessions or denominations. Between the language of Catholics and, for example, Lutherans, there are interesting differences of style, of argumentation, and of historical-cultural connections. From a logical and structural point of view these differences are minimal when compared with the differences which occur between the religious speech of Christians and the religious speech of non- Christians. Nevertheless they do make themselves felt.

Religious discourse consists in that which Christians say both institutionally and de facto about God. We can ‘deduce’ neither philosophically nor theologically what religious speech is or what is its essence. We don’t even want to propose a definition. We will not say, "religious language should be this way . . .", or: "One ought to speak thusly. . . ." Here we want simply to see how people, and specifically how Christians, use language in the context of their faith, i.e., when practicing their religion. (This does not of course exclude the ‘normativeness’ imparted by the rules of a specific religious discourse, especially Christian discourse – a normativeness which in any event is essential to any language.)

We have to ask: "What is a ‘religious’ use of language? What is a religious practice? What is a religious context?" In this case we are asking Christians how they use the word ‘religion’, the word ‘faith’, or other terms that refer to the same thing. What for them makes a situation, a context, a practice ‘religious’?

When a Christian speaks, he does not always use the language of his faith, though he might well make the claim that his entire life is, or ought to be, a life of faith, a life of testimony to the faith, etc. But linguistically this faith does not make itself continuously apparent, anymore than it does behaviorally. It can be the case that the daily language of a Christian is more or less colored by his being Christian. Nonetheless, not all daily speech can qualify as religious discourse. In particular, scientific speech and technical discourse — engaged in of course also by Christians — are wholly free of any religious shadings; it is simply illegitimate to import elements of religion into a strictly scientific or technical discourse. To be sure, there are borderline instances, but the man or woman forever giving a religious coloration to any and every subject of daily speech is generally considered strange, bigoted, boring and perhaps fanatical.

It is an easy matter to tick off some typical cases of the religious use of language on the part of a Christian: to preach and to listen to a homily, to make a profession of faith, to participate at the Liturgy, to pray publicly with others or privately, aloud or in silence, to teach religion and to take a course in religion, to speak of the faith and discuss it with others, also with non-believers, to study or teach theology, and so on. It is also an easy matter to list some typical cases which no Christian would spontaneously classify as ‘religious’: to go over one’s accounts, to teach mathematics, to ask the time, to play ball. . . .

However there are the borderline cases. These include expressions originally Christian but absorbed into the general linguistic-cultural baggage and now used not only without thinking about the origins, but often without even knowing them: local place-names (San Francisco), names of persons and of things, farewells (God be wi’ye = good-bye), curses. Indeed, borderline cases exist precisely because the borders of the various linguistic games are not fixed, and even the borders themselves depend on use. The words: religion, faith, etc., like the majority of words in fact, do not have a unique and ‘fixed’ meaning, but rather a certain ‘fuzziness’ around the edges. Thus even the significance of ‘religion’, ‘faith’, ‘Christian’, ‘language’, ‘religious language’, ‘Christian discourse’, etc.,2  is to be determined by the institutional use of these words within a given linguistic community,3  and not by means of a definition of their singular ‘essences’. We can for the moment then leave aside the question of whether and how far the word ‘religion’ is applicable to Confucianism, Buddhism, or to a religious ‘feeling’ purely interior and private, to a conviction of the existence of God which is purely philosophical ("natural religion"), to humanitarian and socialistic ideologies, etc.4  It has to be said that their respective discourses bear a resemblance among each other and also with the discourse that is used in the context of the great religions, including Christian discourse. However there are also noteworthy differences, of which we will speak in Chapter 3.

Every method, every reflection, every type of philosophical endeavor must have a datum to which it is then applied. In our specific case the datum to be considered consists in the social and historical reality of the religious linguistic behavior of the Christian, i.e., in the language actually used and spoken by Christians in the context of their faith. This behavior is describable and analyzable not only by sociology but also by philosophy — which is to say, by logic, phenomenology, and existential analysis.

But we need first to pose a preliminary question here. Who engages in Christian religious discourse? Who are the Christian Catholics? This question too is to be treated in the same way as our preceding question, ‘What is religion?’ In other words, how are the words ‘Christian’ and ‘Catholic’ used in our language?

Normally it is clear that one is a Christian when one acts and speaks as one. And it is quite evident that the amplitude of the terms ‘religious’, ‘Christian’ and ‘Catholic’ gradually narrows. One cannot legitimately use the term ‘Christian’ without a historical reference to Christ. Moreover the term "Catholic" is employed almost exclusively today to refer to an organized and institutional group of Christians which is called the "Catholic Church."5 It would appear to be legitimate also for this group to declare in a normative way: "This person has (or does not have) the right to call himself ‘Catholic’; this doctrine or behavior is Catholic (or is not)." Of course here too we encounter fuzziness around the edges. Whether or not a ‘Christianity without religion’, an ‘atheistic belief in Jesus’, a ‘Catholicism without the power structure’,6  are still to be called ‘Christian’ or ‘Catholic’ is a question of linguistic use and therefore a question of convention, and thus often a pedagogical, polemical, and political matter of no small importance.

Thus it is clear that the datum of Christian discourse about God is a positive, historical, socially shared, institutional and in some way supernatural datum. This fact is the subject of our linguistic analysis here.

The datum ("that which is given") of any philosophical reflection always precedes the philosophical reflection itself, and the same holds with regard to an analysis. If nothing is ‘given’ to me, then I have nothing to analyze, nothing on which to reflect, nothing to order, organize or systematize. The ‘data’ of philosophical reflection as such are not the product of that philosophical reflection. In this sense, philosophy, of whatever branch, always and necessarily begins a posteriori.7 

A language or a speech form, in our case, religious/Christian/Catholic speech, is a reality that is born and develops historically. It is not developed according to logical rules, nor according to a project conceived of a priori, nor within the Divine Mind.8  In a philosophical analysis we must accept Christian-Catholic discourse in its accidental and historical concreteness. Perhaps it might have developed differently, but in fact it developed as it did. This actually-existing speech is the only speech which interests us because it is the only one which is ‘given’ us. Considering that its existence is historically contingent, there is always the possibility that in the future it will take another direction,9  but to us it is ‘given’ in the form in which it has developed to date. What ‘could be’ or ‘will be’ is not yet given to me, and therefore I am not able to analyze it.

For the analysis of a particular form of discourse, especially of the religious-Christian kind, one must take into consideration the way in which this speech form arose and how it developed historically. Nevertheless the meaning of a linguistic expression consists not in its origin, nor in its development, its history or its etymology, but in its actual use. (And here, in the comprehension of its actual use, the history of a linguistic expression can be of considerable assistance.)

For an understanding of religious-Christian discourse, we need to recall that this discourse has its ‘normative’ origin in scriptural speech – in the Old and, even more to the point, the New Testaments.

One additional point in the context of the historical givenness of Christian-Catholic discourse: the normative truth of the dogmas of the faith is to be understood according to the historical linguistic usage of the times in which a particular dogma was formulated.

No language, no speech form, no mode of speaking is purely personal. The use of a linguistic expression — that which determines the expression’s significance — is its use in the language.10  i.e., how an expression is used, and not how I use it. This applies not only to a natural language but to every type of speech form — to the terminology of physics, of mathematics, medicine, of logic, and of philosophy itself. The religious/Christian/Catholic forms of speech are among the speech forms especially determined by their history, insofar as there is no possibility of indicating the objects which they are to signify, i.e., God, grace, etc.; in addition, Christians, and especially Catholics, in using their religious language, understand one another as a community, as ‘Church’. This is to say that they understand one another insofar as they practice their religion and communicate in their religious language.

This point merely amplifies the preceding one.11  The different languages, and especially the various forms of discourse, which differ historically, culturally and socially, are a reality which institutionally precedes the actual use to which a speaker puts them. Indeed a given speaker creates neither his language nor his various speech forms but learns them — because they are already spoken. The individual learns not only his mother tongue but also a variety of special forms of discourse – Christian-Catholic discourse, for example in a process of linguistic socialization. These tongues and speech forms already exist, which is to say, they are already spoken. The individual human being acquires these languages precisely in the manner in which they are already spoken. Only as a consequence is it possible to make of this learned speech form a personal use, given that human speech is fundamentally open and elastic.

The human being cannot speak if not by using languages and speech forms already existing actually, and using them in the way in which these are institutionally used. This is to say that the human being cannot speak, giving a significance to what he says such that others can understand and such that he himself knows what he says, except by using the language according to its particular common rules. Anyone can of course speak in a personal fashion, in an individualized style, even inventing new words. But this very individualized speech is possible only in dependence upon an institutional language already existing. Personalized speech is something that must be acquired in the using of a language.

At the same time, a speech form is clearly not an immutable reality. Language changes, develops and is transformed. Human beings themselves change it – but in the plural. An individual, separated from all others, divorced from the linguistic community, could never introduce a linguistic change. Moreover, even the evolution of a language takes place according to rules.

Christian discourse about God is a ‘supernatural’12  given

For a Christian, not only does Christian religious discourse have a historical origin but this historical origin is determined by the specific intervention of God, who is the causa principale. Certainly, the biblical and therefore ‘supernatural’ aspect of Christian discourse regards its contents, and not so much its expression or semantics, nor its logic. But here again, the border between these two aspects cannot be very sharply drawn.

We can say this much: in applying ourselves philosophically to a datum which is, theologically, a supernatural datum, we are not committing a methodological error. It is indeed rare that the datum of a philosophical analysis is itself a philosophical datum. On the other hand, we cannot presuppose that Christian discourse is in fact a supernatural datum, nor can we ‘take it on faith’ that that which Christians say about God is true, and we certainly do not intend to demonstrate it. We must however take into consideration as simply a fact, that Christians consider that which they say about God as true, because that is a part of the ‘givens’ of their discourse, of the significance of what they actually say.

1. Here, ‘‘practicing Catholics" means specifically: those who attend Mass regularly, pray regularly, and attempt to deepen their faith. This is not without significance, for simple baptism and a childhood aquaintance with the catechism do not at all guarantee a competent use of religious language and, without continual practice, can lead to linguistic deformations.

2. See Chapter 3.

3. Cfr. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (PU), n. 43.

4. We can recall here the ‘religion of Reason’, proclaimed by the French Revolution, the ‘positive religion’ put forth by Comte, and the ‘Positive Christianity’ of Hitler and Rosenberg.

5. Originally, and until the Protestant Reformation, the term ‘Catholic’ meant simply ‘universal’.

6. Cfr. Carlo Huber, S.J., ‘‘Christianismo senza Dio," in Christiano oggi, ed. Paoline (Rome 1977), pp. 91-118.

7. For this reason philosophy was known as the ‘scientia verspertina’.

8 We must be careful not to think of the Divine Intellect as a computer or a Super Brain!

9. The specifc limits upon the possibility of developement and change in Christian/Catholic discourse are considered in K. Huber, Critica del Sapere 8.313, pg. 155f.

10. Cfr. Wittgenstein, PU 43.

11. Cfr. However, Huber, Critica del Sapere, 8.3, pp. 153-159.

12. ‘Supernatural’ here is not intended to signify ‘miraculous’ nor does it refer to one of the many theological theories of ‘the supernatural’.