The Plausibility of Religious Language in Religious Experience

Abstract

Abstract: This article aims to contend that religious language can refer to God. In terms of the relationship between religious experience and religious language, one of the main issues is whether the language used about religious experience can refer to God who is ontologically distinct from the human condition. There is a difference or a gap between the world and God simply because God is transcendent and therefore incomprehensible. The incomprehensibility of God may point to the limitations of human language in a sense that language tends to fail to articulate what is incomprehensible. Yet, one of the key categories through which the world may refer to God is that of experience itself. It is through the dynamic of experience that a person can encounter God, and human language may be able to represent what is absent as well as present. Accordingly, this article is going to show how religious language may signify God by discussing the importance of tradition and community, the nature of religious language, and the transformative power of religious language.