I will develop. That's also the interpretation most Wittgensteinians adopt, so far as I can
tell—though showing this to their satisfaction would get us into complicated issues and
take a long time. It's my further impression that most Wittgensteinian philosophers of
religion are of the view that
end p.256
religious language is not used to make reference to God or anything else
“transcendent”—not even theistic religious language. The Psalmist's exclamation “Bless
the Lord O my soul,” while not an assertion, nonetheless gives the appearance of being
used to refer to God; most of the Wittgensteinians regard that appearance as misleading.^2
For my purposes in this essay, of showing the convergence among Wittgensteinianism,
Reformed epistemology, and Heidegger, it doesn't make much difference which
interpretation we adopt.
In what he himself says about religious language, Wittgenstein does not employ his
concept of a language game. I think his followers are right, though, in interpreting him as
holding that the language of religion, as it occurs among us, can be thought of as
constituting a distinct language game—or better, given the diversity of human religions,
as a number of distinct language games. To understand the force of this claim, we must
be aware that a language game, as Wittgenstein thinks of it, does not consist of a
fragment of language but of a way of using a fragment of language. A given fragment of
language can be employed in distinct language games; when it is, it will typically
function quite differently in those distinct games. Our goal here is to understand how
religious language works when functioning religiously, that is, how it works when it's
being employed in a religious language game. To do so, we must understand how
religious language games function in those forms of life (or aspects of forms of life) that
are humanity's religions. A religious language game makes possible a religious form of
life; it both shapes and gives expression to it.
The most prominent function of religious language, in the thought of the
Wittgensteinians, is the expressive function. Religious language games are expressive of
a certain deep way of interpreting and valuing one's experience. They are “in no
sensebased on hypotheses or opinions. They are not founded on anything, but express
values concerning what is deep and important for the people concerned—birth, death,
hunting, cultivation of the crops, personal relations, etc.” (Phillips 1976, 36). The contrast
with the Enlightenment picture of religion as add-on explanations could not be more
clear! Here's how Wittgenstein puts the point in one place:
Christianity is not a doctrine, not, I mean, a theory about what has happened and will
happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in
human life. For “consciousness of sin” is a real event and so are despair and salvation
through faith. Those who speak of such things (Bunyan for instance) are simply
describing what has happened to them, whatever gloss anyone may want to put on it.
(1980, 28e)
And here is D. Z. Phillips:
Religious beliefs or practices areexpressions of what went deep in people's lives. That
man's misfortunes are said by him to be due to his dishonouring the ghosts of slain
warriors is itself the form that depth takes here; it is an