Abstract

This book consists of a long introductory essay by the editor followed by a wide selection of essays. In the Introduction, Charlesworth first surveys and assesses the problem and assorted proposed solutions, dividing his attention between "descriptivist" and "non-descriptivist" accounts. Examining appeals to religious experience to underwrite descriptivist analyses, he concludes that this approach is laden with difficulty. As he sees it, the meaning of religious language cannot typically be given by reference to religious experience because first, the conceptual possibility of what the experiences are alleged to be of is at issue; secondly, direct experiences of the Holy are deemed to be "extraordinary and privileged," so that they could in no circumstances be the normal basis of belief, and finally, analogical predication is vitiated by our inability to know what such predicates mean as applied to God. Regarding the principle of verification, Charlesworth observes that whatever may be said about its logical status, "a lot of high sounding theological nonsense would be shown up for what it is if this simple rule of method were rigorously applied." On the non-descriptivist side, he considers some of the reductionist attempts—reduction to moral language or to an expression in terms of some secular practical commitment is criticized.