Philosophy of religion: Religious language — AQA A-Level Religious Studies
Philosophy of religion: Religious language explained
Philosophy of religion: Religious language covers 11 specification points, including The issue of whether religious language should… and The challenges of the verification and….
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Open a point below for its explanation and revision guidance.
The issue of whether religious language should be viewed cognitively or non-cognitively.
This topic asks whether statements such as 'God is loving' or 'God exists' make factual claims that can be true or false. A cognitive view treats religious language as propositional: it asserts something about reality, so it can be assessed for truth. A non-cognitive view treats it as expressing attitude, commitment, emotion or a way of life rather than describing facts. Learners should be able to define both positions, attribute them to thinkers such as Aquinas and Hick on the cognitive side and to Braithwaite, Hare and Phillips on the non-cognitive side, and weigh strengths and weaknesses. A strong answer explains what difference the distinction makes to how religious claims are verified, and applies it to a concrete example rather than listing names.
The challenges of the verification and falsification principles to the meaningfulness of religious language.
This topic examines whether religious language can be shown to be meaningful or meaningless by two related tests. The verification principle, associated with the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle, holds that a statement is meaningful only if it is analytic (true by definition, such as 'all bachelors are unmarried') or empirically verifiable through sense experience. On this test, claims such as 'God exists' or 'God loves us' appear neither definitional nor testable by observation, so they are dismissed as cognitively meaningless. The falsification principle, developed by Antony Flew, shifts the test: a genuine factual claim must be capable of being shown false by some conceivable evidence. Flew uses John Wisdom's parable of the invisible gardener to argue that believers who qualify away every possible counter-evidence leave their claim with no factual content.
Responses to these challenges:
This topic covers the main responses offered to the verification and falsification challenges to religious language. R. M. Hare introduces the idea of a 'blik', a basic, unverifiable interpretive framework through which a person sees the world; he argues that religious belief is such a blik and that bliks are meaningful because they shape how someone lives, even though they cannot be verified or falsified. Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his later work, treats religious language as a distinct 'language game' with its own internal rules and criteria of meaning, so judging it by scientific standards is a category mistake. John Hick offers eschatological verification: he argues that claims about God will be verified in an afterlife, so religious language is in principle verifiable even if not verifiable now.
eschatological verification with reference to Hick
Hick answers the logical positivist challenge that religious language is meaningless because no experience could check it. He proposes eschatological verification: statements such as 'God exists' are factually meaningful because they are verifiable in principle, even if not now. After death, Hick argues, the religious believer may enter a post-mortem existence in which the divine is directly encountered, so the claim is confirmed. Crucially, Hick presents this as a one-way confirmation: the process can verify the belief but does not provide a symmetrical test that would decisively disconfirm it. The idea rests on Hick's soul-making theodicy and his claim that the universe is religiously ambiguous now.
language as an expression of a Blik with reference to R.M.Hare
R. M. Hare introduced the term 'blik' to describe a fundamental, unverifiable interpretive framework through which a person sees the world. A blik is not a factual belief that evidence could confirm or refute; it is the lens that governs how evidence is read at all. Hare's example concerns a paranoid student convinced that all dons want to kill him: however kindly the dons behave, the student reads their behaviour as cunning concealment. Hare argues that religious language expresses such a blik rather than making empirical claims, so disputes between believer and atheist are not settled by ordinary evidence. For the exam, explain what a blik is, show how religious language functions as its expression, and evaluate whether this account protects religion or empties it of factual content.
religious language as a language game with reference to Wittgenstein.
Wittgenstein's later philosophy compares language to a set of games, each with its own rules, purposes and criteria of meaning. A 'language game' is a form of life in which words gain their sense from the practices and community in which they are used. On this view, religious language is not a failed attempt at scientific description; it belongs to a distinct language game with its own internal logic. Meaning is found in use, so critics who judge religious language by scientific standards misunderstand it. For the exam, explain the language game idea, apply it to religious language, and evaluate whether it successfully defends religious discourse or instead isolates it from rational criticism.
Other views of the nature of religious language:
This heading introduces the alternatives to the verification and falsification debates that AQA groups under religious language. Learners should be able to place each view on a spectrum from realist to non-realist and to explain what each claims language is doing. The main alternatives are religious language as analogy (Aquinas), as symbol (Tillich), as myth (Bultmann's demythologising), as a language-game with its own rules (Wittgenstein and followers such as Phillips), and non-cognitive or expressivist readings that treat religious utterances as expressions of attitude or commitment rather than factual reports. A multiple-choice question will typically ask which view a short description matches, or which thinker is associated with a claim. Learn the distinctive marker of each view and the thinker attached to it, then check the option against both.
religious language as symbolic with reference to Tillich
Tillich holds that religious language is symbolic rather than literal or merely analogical. A symbol, on his account, participates in the reality it points to, opens up a level of reality otherwise closed, and unlocks depths in the person who uses it; it also grows and dies with the culture that carries it. The symbol points beyond itself to the unconditioned, which Tillich calls Being-itself or ultimate concern, and no finite symbol can capture it adequately. This differs from Aquinas's analogy, where language about God is stretched from creaturely perfection, because the symbol is not a comparison but a participation. A multiple-choice question may ask what distinguishes a symbol from a sign, what a symbol does for Tillich, or why he prefers symbol to literal statement about God.
religious language as analogical with reference to Aquinas
Aquinas holds that words such as 'good' or 'wise' apply to God neither univocally nor merely equivocally. Univocal predication would make creatures and God share one meaning, collapsing God's transcendence; pure equivocation would make talk of God empty. His solution is analogy: the term is used of God and creatures in related but not identical senses, grounded in a real causal relation, since God is the cause of creaturely perfections. Aquinas distinguishes the analogy of attribution, where a term applies primarily to God and derivatively to creatures, from the analogy of proportionality, where the proportion of creaturely perfection to the creature is compared with God's perfection to God. Learners should explain both, show why analogy is offered as a middle way, and evaluate whether it genuinely conveys knowledge of God or merely regulates religious language.
the Via Negativa.
The Via Negativa, or apophatic way, holds that God transcends all human concepts, so positive statements about God are inadequate. Instead of saying what God is, the approach denies finite predicates: God is not limited, not changeable, not composite. Learners should connect this to the idea that language drawn from the created world cannot capture a being who exceeds it, and should be able to explain how negation is meant to lead the mind beyond inadequate images towards God. They should also evaluate the approach: it preserves divine transcendence and avoids crude anthropomorphism, but critics argue it risks leaving talk of God empty, since a series of denials may tell us nothing positive. Some thinkers, such as pseudo-Dionysius, are associated with the approach, and it is often contrasted with the kataphatic or positive way.
The strengths and weaknesses of the differing understandings of religious language.
This topic asks you to weigh up competing accounts of what religious language is doing and whether it can convey truth about God. Cognitive approaches, such as analogy (Aquinas) and symbol, hold that statements about God make genuine claims, so they preserve realism but face the problem of how limited human words reach an unlimited God. Non-cognitive approaches, including verification and falsification challenges and Wittgensteinian language-games, stress use, context and meaning-within-a-form-of-life, which explains diversity of religious talk but risks relativism. Weigh each view's explanatory power, coherence and consequences, using examples such as 'God is good', and reach a justified judgement rather than listing views.
Your focus
- Define cognitive and non-cognitive views of religious language.
- Explain how each view treats a religious statement such as 'God is loving'.
- Evaluate a strength and a weakness of each position.
Show all 33 objectives
- Explain the verification principle and its implications for religious language.
- Explain the falsification principle and apply it to a religious claim.
- Evaluate the challenge that these principles pose to the meaningfulness of religious language.
- Explain Hare's, Wittgenstein's and Hick's responses to the verification and falsification challenges.
- Apply each response to a religious claim to show how it defends meaningfulness.
- Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these responses.
- Explain the verification principle and why it challenges religious language.
- Describe Hick's eschatological verification and its one-way confirmation.
- Evaluate whether verification in principle after death makes religious language meaningful.
- Explain Hare's concept of a blik and its role in interpreting experience.
- Apply the blik account to show how religious language functions.
- Evaluate whether describing religious language as a blik protects or undermines religious truth claims.
- Explain Wittgenstein's concept of a language game and meaning as use.
- Apply the language game idea to show how religious language functions.
- Evaluate whether the language game view defends religious language or isolates it from rational criticism.
- Identify the thinker associated with each named view of religious language.
- Distinguish realist from non-realist accounts of what religious language does.
- Select the option that correctly matches a described view to its claim and thinker.
- Explain what Tillich means by calling religious language symbolic.
- Distinguish a symbol from a sign and from an analogy in Tillich's account.
- Select the option that correctly represents Tillich's view of how symbols function.
- Explain why Aquinas rejects univocal and purely equivocal predication of terms to God.
- Distinguish the analogy of attribution from the analogy of proportionality.
- Evaluate whether analogical language gives genuine knowledge of God.
- Explain the method of the Via Negativa and why it denies positive predicates of God.
- Illustrate the approach with examples of denied attributes and contrast it with the kataphatic way.
- Evaluate whether the Via Negativa succeeds in speaking meaningfully about God.
- Explain at least two cognitive and two non-cognitive understandings of religious language.
- Assess the strengths and weaknesses of each understanding with reasons.
- Reach and justify a reasoned conclusion about the differing understandings.
Philosophy of religion: Religious language exam tips
Marking Points
- Defines cognitive religious language as language that makes factual, propositional claims about reality which can be true or false.
- Defines non-cognitive religious language as language that expresses attitude, commitment, emotion or a form of life rather than stating facts.
- Explains how a cognitive reading allows religious claims to be assessed for truth, for example through evidence or verification.
- Explains how a non-cognitive reading treats religious statements as guiding action or expressing commitment rather than describing reality.
- Applies the distinction to a specific example such as 'God is loving' and shows what each view would say about it.
- Weighs a strength and a weakness of each position rather than merely describing them.
- Explains that the verification principle treats a statement as meaningful only when it is analytic or empirically verifiable.
- Identifies that religious claims such as 'God exists' fail the verification test because no sense experience can confirm them.
- Explains that the falsification principle requires a factual claim to be capable of being falsified by conceivable evidence.
- Applies Flew's gardener parable to show how religious believers qualify away counter-evidence until the claim loses factual content.
- Assesses whether the two principles succeed in showing religious language to be meaningless, for example by noting that the principles themselves are not empirically verifiable.
- Explains Hare's concept of a blik as an unverifiable framework that nonetheless guides a person's life and is therefore meaningful.
- Explains Wittgenstein's view that religious language belongs to its own language game with internal criteria of meaning.
- Explains Hick's eschatological verification, arguing that religious claims are verifiable in principle through a future afterlife.
- Assesses the strengths and weaknesses of these responses, for example whether a blik can be meaningful if it is entirely unfalsifiable.
- Applies a named response to a specific religious claim to show how it defends meaningfulness.
- Explains the verification principle as the logical positivist test that a statement is meaningful only if some possible experience could confirm it.
- Identifies Hick's eschatological verification as the claim that religious statements are verifiable in principle in a post-mortem encounter with God.
- States that Hick treats this verification as one-way confirmation rather than a symmetrical test that could decisively disconfirm the belief.
- Links the proposal to Hick's claim that the universe is currently religiously ambiguous and to his soul-making context.
- Evaluates whether verification in principle after death is sufficient to make present religious language meaningful.
- Defines a blik as a fundamental, unverifiable interpretive framework through which a person interprets experience.
- Explains that a blik is not a factual belief open to empirical confirmation or refutation but a lens governing how evidence is read.
- Uses Hare's example of the paranoid student who reads kindly behaviour as concealment to show how a blik resists counter-evidence.
- Shows how religious language expresses a blik rather than making empirical claims, so believer and atheist do not settle disputes by ordinary evidence.
- Evaluates whether treating religious language as a blik protects religion from falsification or instead empties it of factual content.
- Defines a language game as a form of life in which words gain meaning from their use within a community and its practices.
- Explains that meaning is found in use rather than in a fixed correspondence between words and objects.
- Applies the language game idea to religious language, showing that it has its own internal rules and criteria rather than being failed scientific description.
- Evaluates whether treating religious language as a language game defends it from criticism or isolates it from rational scrutiny and cross-game debate.
- Identifies the thinker associated with a described view of religious language, for example linking analogy to Aquinas.
- Distinguishes realist views that treat religious claims as about a reality from non-realist views that treat them as expressing commitment or a form of life.
- Explains what a named view claims religious language is doing rather than only naming it.
- Rejects an option that confuses two views, such as attributing symbol to Aquinas or analogy to Tillich.
- States that for Tillich a symbol participates in the reality it points to, whereas a sign merely points to something else.
- Explains that symbols open up levels of reality and depths of the self that would otherwise remain closed.
- Links symbolic language to Tillich's claim that finite language cannot describe God, who is Being-itself or ultimate concern, directly.
- Distinguishes Tillich's symbolic account from literal description and from Aquinas's analogy of attribution or proportion.
- Explains that Aquinas rejects univocal predication because it would make God and creatures share one identical meaning of terms such as 'good'.
- Explains that Aquinas rejects pure equivocation because it would leave religious language without any real content about God.
- Identifies analogy as the middle way in which a term applies to God and creatures in related but non-identical senses.
- States that the relation is grounded in God as cause of creaturely perfections, so the creature's goodness derives from God.
- Distinguishes the analogy of attribution, where the term belongs primarily to God and derivatively to creatures, from the analogy of proportionality.
- Evaluates whether analogy secures genuine knowledge of God or only an ordered way of speaking about the divine.
- Explains that the Via Negativa denies positive predicates of God because God transcends finite human concepts.
- Illustrates the method by denying limited, changeable or composite attributes rather than affirming positive ones.
- Connects the approach to the aim of moving the mind beyond inadequate created images towards God.
- Contrasts the apophatic way with the kataphatic or positive way of speaking about God.
- Evaluates the strength that it safeguards divine transcendence and avoids anthropomorphism.
- Evaluates the weakness that a chain of denials may leave religious language without positive content.
- Explains how analogy holds that religious language is partly cognitive, using the distinction between univocal and equivocal predication to show how 'God is good' can be meaningful.
- Assesses the strength that cognitive accounts preserve religious realism against the weakness that finite language may fail to describe a transcendent God.
- Explains how verificationist and falsificationist challenges question the factual content of religious claims and evaluates whether they succeed.
- Evaluates Wittgensteinian language-games as explaining the internal logic of religious discourse while weighing the charge of relativism or fideism.
- Reaches a sustained judgement about which understanding best accounts for the strengths and weaknesses identified, rather than merely describing each view.
Examiner Tips
- 💡Define both terms precisely before applying them to an example.
- 💡Name a thinker for each side and state their specific claim in one sentence.
- 💡Link the distinction to verification or falsification to show why it matters.
- 💡Define each principle precisely before applying it, so the examiner sees you understand the test being used.
- 💡Use a concrete religious example, such as a claim about God's love or God's existence, to show how each principle operates.
- 💡When evaluating, consider whether the principles are self-defeating, since neither can be established by its own criterion.
- 💡Name each thinker clearly and link the response to the specific challenge it answers.
- 💡Distinguish the responses from one another, since Hare, Wittgenstein and Hick each defend meaningfulness in a different way.
- 💡Evaluate each response, for example by asking whether Hick's appeal to an afterlife is itself verifiable.
- 💡Define the verification principle briefly before explaining Hick's response, so the contrast is clear.
- 💡Use the word 'asymmetry' or 'one-way confirmation' to show you understand the direction of Hick's claim.
- 💡Evaluate in a short concluding judgement whether future verification is enough for present meaning.
- 💡Define 'blik' precisely in your first sentence before applying it to religious language.
- 💡Use the paranoid student example to illustrate how a blik resists counter-evidence, then link it explicitly to religious belief.
- 💡In evaluation, weigh whether the blik account protects religion or reduces it to non-factual expression, and reach a supported judgement.
- 💡Define 'language game' and link it to 'form of life' before applying it to religion.
- 💡Use a concrete example, such as prayer or worship, to show religious language operating by its own rules.
- 💡In evaluation, weigh whether the language game view protects religious discourse or insulates it from rational criticism, and reach a supported judgement.
- 💡Read the stem for the key marker word, such as symbol, analogy, myth or language-game, before looking at the options.
- 💡Eliminate options that name a thinker whose view does not match the description in the stem.
- 💡Check whether the option describes a realist or non-realist position and confirm it fits the rest of the description.
- 💡Look for the word participate in an option about Tillichian symbols, since participation is the distinguishing feature.
- 💡Rule out options that describe a symbol as a straightforward literal description of God.
- 💡Check whether the option keeps Tillich's non-literal claim while still treating religious language as about ultimate concern.
- 💡Define univocal and equivocal predication briefly before explaining why analogy is offered as the middle way.
- 💡Name both kinds of analogy and give a short example of each to show the distinction.
- 💡In evaluation, weigh whether analogy delivers knowledge or merely regulates religious language, and reach a supported judgement.
- 💡Give a concrete example of a denial, such as saying God is not limited, to show the method in action.
- 💡Contrast the Via Negativa explicitly with the positive or kataphatic way.
- 💡In evaluation, balance the protection of transcendence against the charge that denials leave language empty, and reach a judgement.
- 💡Plan by pairing each understanding with one strength and one weakness before writing, so evaluation is built in.
- 💡Anchor abstract points in a concrete example such as 'God is loving' to show what each theory claims.
- 💡Reserve time to state and justify a final judgement, since the question demands assessment, not description.
Common Mistakes
- Confuses non-cognitive with untrue; correct this by explaining that non-cognitive language is meaningful in a different way, not simply false.
- Treats all religious believers as cognitive; correct this by noting that some thinkers, such as Braithwaite, read religious language as commitment.
- Lists thinkers without explaining their position; correct this by stating what each thinker claims about religious language.
- Assumes cognitive language must be empirically verifiable; correct this by distinguishing factual claim from scientific testability.
- Confuses verification with falsification; keep them distinct by stating that verification looks for confirming evidence while falsification looks for what would count against a claim.
- Treats the verification principle as proven true; note that the principle cannot itself be verified empirically, which is a standard objection.
- Assumes all religious language is treated identically; recognise that the challenge is aimed at factual or cognitive claims rather than at expressions of attitude or commitment.
- Restricts the responses to Hare and Wittgenstein only; include Hick's eschatological verification as a distinct response.
- Treats a blik as a factual claim that can be tested; recognise that Hare presents it as an unverifiable framework rather than an empirical assertion.
- Assumes Wittgenstein's language games make all religious claims true; note that he addresses meaning and use, not truth.
- Claims that eschatological verification allows the belief to be disconfirmed after death; correct this by explaining that Hick presents it as one-way confirmation, not a symmetrical test.
- Treats eschatological verification as an empirical test available now; correct this by stressing that it is verification in principle, located after death.
- Confuses Hick's proposal with a proof of God's existence; correct this by noting it addresses meaning, not proof.
- Ignores the verification principle that prompts Hick's response; correct this by outlining the challenge first.
- Treats a blik as an ordinary factual belief that evidence could confirm or refute; correct this by explaining that a blik is the framework governing how evidence is read.
- Confuses Hare's blik with Flew's falsification challenge; distinguish Hare's unverifiable interpretive framework from the demand that claims be falsifiable.
- Asserts that a blik is simply irrational; correct this by noting that Hare presents it as a reasonable, if unverifiable, way of seeing the world.
- Omits the paranoid student example; include it to show concretely how a blik resists counter-evidence.
- Treats a language game as a trivial pastime rather than a form of life with its own rules and criteria of meaning; correct this by explaining its role in shaping sense.
- Assumes Wittgenstein claims all language games are equally true; correct this by noting he describes different criteria of meaning, not equal truth.
- Judges religious language by scientific standards without acknowledging that the language game view denies such standards are universal; apply the internal criteria instead.
- Ignores the implication that language games may be mutually unintelligible; address this in evaluation.
- Treats all the listed views as versions of the same claim that religious language is meaningless; separate the verificationist challenge from the constructive alternatives.
- Attributes a view to the wrong thinker, for example crediting the language-game approach to Tillich; match each thinker to the view before choosing.
- Assumes a non-realist reading denies that religious people are sincere; recognise that it relocates meaning to practice and commitment rather than factual description.
- Treats a Tillichian symbol as a mere sign or label; recognise that the symbol participates in what it signifies.
- Assumes symbols are fixed for all time; recall that Tillich says symbols grow and die with their cultural setting.
- Confuses symbol with analogy and credits Tillich with Aquinas's account; keep the participation claim separate from the analogy of being.
- Treats analogy as identical to univocal predication; keep the two distinct, since analogy denies that the meaning is exactly the same.
- Treats analogy as pure equivocation with no connection between uses; keep the causal link that grounds the relation.
- Confuses the analogy of attribution with the analogy of proportionality; keep the primary-derivative structure separate from the proportion-based comparison.
- Asserts that analogy gives complete comprehension of God; keep the claim to partial, ordered likeness rather than full knowledge.
- Treats the Via Negativa as simply saying God does not exist; keep it as a method of denying inadequate predicates, not denying God.
- Assumes negation produces no content at all and so is worthless; weigh the claim that it removes false images and orients the mind towards God.
- Confuses the apophatic way with the kataphatic way; keep the negative and positive approaches distinct.
- Claims the approach gives full positive knowledge of God; keep it as an acknowledgement of the limits of language.
- Lists several understandings of religious language without weighing strengths against weaknesses; balance each view's merits and limits explicitly.
- Treats the verification principle as an established truth rather than a contested claim; assess its own coherence and self-application.
- Confuses analogy with univocal language; distinguish clearly how analogy claims partial similarity rather than identical meaning.