The Examination and Criticism of Swinburne’s Theory About Meaningfulness of Theological Propositions

The question examined in this article is one of the most important issues in the contemporary philosophy of religion: If the sentences and propositions used in the scriptures of religions and denominations have the same meaning of the common language or entail a specific, novel meaning.  With the advent of positivistic thought in the modern era, a new perception appeared in this regard, which came to be known as the meaninglessness of religion language. Richard Swinburne is a contemporary religion philosopher who believes that the meanings of theological propositions are the same as common language. In addition to criticizing the positivist view, Swinburne bases his view on logical coherence. In this article, we examine and criticize Swinburne’s logical coherence theory. Our results show that the discussion on the meaningfulness/meaninglessness of the religion language – especially from a positivistic view – revolves around understanding/lack of understanding rather than logical coherence. In other words, in the positivistic view, the claim is that we cannot have a true understanding of the content of religious propositions, and without understanding, we cannot discuss coherence. Of course, we do not intend to defend the positivist approach here, but rather we maintain that the meaninglessness theory cannot be responded via the logical coherence theory.