ABSTRACT

I want to think about the nature of religious language against the background of secularization. If secularization is understood as bound up in the evolution of modernity, and Christianity viewed as bound up in traditional society, then the language of faith falls into disuse, not for contingent reasons to do with restricted access or state repression and principled neglect, but because it is an archaic residue. That being the case, my attempt to characterize Christian language bears directly on the issue of secularization, because it attempts to exhibit religious speech as an irreducible mode, a manner of speaking which is sui generis, not a failed and inadequate version of realistic language.