Wittgenstein and the Possibility of Religious Belief

Contemporary philosophers of religion delimiting their field\ud often distinguish between belief in and belief that, and then\ud focus on the latter as more pertinent to a philosophical\ud investigation of religious belief. The believer's relationship\ud to a proposition, and the relationship between that proposition\ud and reality is of primary concern. The epistemology\ud of religious belief has thus tended to be approached as a\ud species of justification theory; its task is to provide a satisfactory\ud account of our acceptance or rejection of various\ud religiously relevant propositions. It is against this background\ud that some of the more well-known discussions of\ud Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion have taken place.\ud Hence one much belabored question has been whether\ud standards for the justification of religious belief can only be\ud determined within the context of the language-game\ud played by the community of religious believers; another\ud has been whether religious beliefs are even the kind of\ud thing open to justification, for it may be that the language\ud in which they are framed is expressive rather than propositional