Journal of African Studies and Sustainable Development

The paper examines the age-long problem of religious language which centers on the propositions that words used for finite creatures cannot adequately apply for infinite being without apparently making such a being less than whom he truly is; and that human language is anthropomorphic and as such cannot be used to describe the supernatural world without apparent difficulties. The philosophical school that favours this argument is logical positivism which faults religious language for lack of the principles of verifiability and falsifiability. Other approaches such as: pragmatism, human-moral, contextual, symbolism, equivocal, univocal and analogical argue in favour of the meaningfulness of religious language. The paper strongly argues for the latter. To achieve this, a discursive and analytical approach is used in analyzing data gathered through practical life experiences and reading of philosophical texts. The paper argues that religious language like any other field of human endeavour is a specialized language of religion that serves for purpose of effective communication and dissemination of religious thoughts, ideas and messages. Hence, its meaningfulness or otherwise should be based on its psychological, moral and socio-economic significance and not on the principles of verifiability and falsifiability. It also argues that the meaningfulness or otherwise of any religious assertion does not depend upon the utterance itself but on the hearer because the state of mind of the individual in terms of whether he is a believer or unbeliever also counts.

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