ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that ancient philosophers and the early Christian Fathers were aware that religious language has peculiarities, and does not function in precisely the same way as ordinary language. The radical rejection of anthropomorphism meant that the problem of religious language certainly did not go unrecognised. The possibility of religious language has thus been denied not just in the context of modern empirical scepticism, but as an assertion of the profoundest religious faith. Origen, though sharing many of Clement's philosophical presuppositions, was perhaps more successful in providing a basis for religious language. Gregory grounds his theory of religious language in a general theory of language: all language depends upon created human speech and the existence of different languages is a clear indication that God allowed men the freedom to invent and develop linguistic expression. Gregory's discussion appears in the context of Eunomius' attempt to reduce the names to one essential definition entirely expressive of God's being.
