We have made a long journey to the interior of the semantic universe of Christian religious language, both at the level of its contents and at the level of the methods which can be applied to it. We have seen that we are dealing with a universe which is complex but coherent. The structure of this universe guarantees it intelligible meaningfulness and also rationality. As centered in God, its very structure allows even a realistic acceptance of its meanings.

In an age such as ours, powerfully determined on the one hand by an emotional fideism, and on the other by a scientism which is equally emotional, a humble but persistent logical analysis of the faith is not only of critical importance for theology but also for the difficult task of evangelization and catechesis. For such an undertaking the tools of logical-linguistic analysis and phenomenology prove to be quite useful.

The philosophical importance of our analysis of Christian discourse about God consists in the fact that precisely the application of philosophy and its methods to discourse about God keeps us philosophers from making abortive or reductionist moves, and obliges philosophy finally to come to its own proper limits and to think them.

At the same time, discourse about God — and only this discourse — guarantees to language (and in consequence to philosophy) its openness: only if one can speak about "God", if there is a place for "God" in language, is the language open and alive; only if one poses the problem of God can philosophy avoid closing itself off in ideology.

Language is the medium par excellence of both information and communication. In both one says something new. Human progress and creativity also contain novelty. In language however the new can be expressed only if language is open-ended in all possible directions, that is, open infinitely. An openness for progress in certain directions and according to certain predetermined criteria is insufficient. Language can claim an infinite open-endedness only if one can speak also about God.

This can be demonstrated negatively: an exclusion of any kind of discourse about God from language would have to be made according to certain determined general criteria that hold true for all speech. There were attempts to arrive at such criteria through Logical Positivism1  and in the School of Erlangen2 . Similar attempts were made by Marxism and other forms of contemporary theoretical atheism. These criteria, however, would finally impinge upon all linguistic expressions, without which human language cannot function at all. The same is true of any logical rule which would render a religious use of language devoid of significance. Such a rule would also affect all ideologies and utopias, as well as philosophy, especially metaphysics, esthetics, morals, poetry and a good part of mathematics.

As a consequence we see that language cannot be regulated! All such regimentation would deprive us of the multiplexity of our speech. Even a regimentation of language would not exclude a priori all nonsense: the fact that we can say even something that makes no sense is the price for the fact that language is open-ended. Paradoxically one can tell a lie, speak in error, and say something senseless. One can even deny God: "Dixit insipiens: non est Deus!".3  But this itself is possible because language is so open as to offer a place even and also for God. The possibility of speaking God is the guarantee for the logical freedom of the word — even for that of the atheist.

Only if one can then really speak about God does language remain open: where one cannot speak about God, one falls into the banality of chatter which is not communicative, and into slogans of ideology and propaganda that are not informative. To maintain the openness of language in the face of this is an imperative task. This is not to say that we should always and in all contexts be speaking about God — that would be ‘linguistic integralism’. But there is a need, along with other things, to speak also about God. Language must be used also in a religious application. Only then can the openness of language itself be expressed.

1. Cfr. Carlo Huber, Der Ausschluss der Theologie aus den Wissenschaften durch Sprachregelungen in der Erlanger Schule; in Wissenschaftsbegriff und Glaube der Kirche (Dialogsekretariat, 1978, Ms.)

2. Not all the philosophers that are recognized in the School of Erlangen — which for its logical and linguistic constructionism merits considerable attention — arrive at the conclusions of M. Gatzmeier, Theologie als Wissenschaft (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1974 and 1975).

3. Psalms 13, 1 and 52, 1. Cfr. Anselm, Prosologion II.