end p.257
expression of what the dead mean to him and to the people amongst whom he lives. That
a man says that God cares for him in all things is the expression of the terms in which he
meets and makes sense of the contingencies of life. Of course, there is nothing inherently
deep in the form of words in which a magical or religious utterance is expressed. The
depth comes from the lives of the people in which such utterances play a part. The same
words in the mouth of another person or in a different context might simply be trivial.
(1976, 114–15)
To speak of language as functioning expressively in religious language games is to invite
the thought that first the religious person arrives at the valuational interpretation, and
then, in order to express that, utters the words. That in turn invites the thought that the
same valuational interpretation might in principle have been expressed in other words.
The truth is that it is by the totality of one's religious practices that one valuationally
interprets one's experiences in a religious way, and one's participation in the relevant
religious language game is to be counted among those practices; it's a component of
them, albeit, then, an expressive component. The person who exclaims with the Psalmist
(103:1), “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless God's holy name,” is
not thereby just expressing her religious way of valuationally interpreting experience; she
is thereby actually interpreting and valuing experience in a religious way. Perhaps, says
another prominent Wittgensteinian, Rush Rhees, “we could put the matter by asking
whether the connexion between religious language and religious life is an external or an
internal one. And if it is put like that, I would say that it is an internal one. And to your
question of whether it makes sense to say that a person's life might be different in that sort of way' without using any of the language of religion, I would on the whole say,No,
it does not make sense'Reverence and devotion and exaltationwould not be what they are
without the language of them” (1969, 120–21, 125).
To the suggestion that religious language games are expressions and enactments of value-
laden interpretations of what we experience, Wittgenstein added another suggestion—
though to this other he gave less prominence. Religious language games also function
regulatively. They provide us, for example, with pictures whereby we orient our lives.
For me, says Wittgenstein, to believe in the Resurrection would be for “a certain picture
[to] play the role of constantly admonishing me” (1966, 56). In another passage he says,
“It strikes me that a religious belief could only be something like a passionate
commitment to a system of reference. Hence, although it's belief, it's really a way of
living, or a way of assessing life. It's passionately seizing hold of this interpretation.
Instruction in a religious faith, therefore, would have to take the form of a portrayal, a
description, of that frame of reference, while at the same time being an appeal to
conscience” (1980, 64e).
It's important to add that a religious language game is the game of a community with a
tradition. One learns to use language thus; one learns what is right
end p.258