tween what he is trying to say here and what Witt-genstein said in his Tractatus. McPherson evencompares WittgensteinTs notion in that book toRudolf OttoTs Ideas of the Holy. In the Tractatusthe only questions about the world that can beraised and answered are those about how the worldis. These sorts of questions fall within the do-main of the sciences. However, the theologian isasking a different kind of question. As Wittgen-stein says: oNot how the world is, is the mystical,but that it is.� (And strangely enough, Wittgen-stein sounds a great deal like Heidegger at thispoint.) Wittgenstein goes on to say that whereofone cannot speak, one must be silent. However,this writer would disagree with him here and saythat whereof one cannot say anything literalthereof, one must not try to say anything literal.But that does not mean that one cannot use wordsto opoint toward� the omystical.� He may notsay anything but he has the possibility of showingsomething. That is, oneTs language may be non-sense, but it is extremely important non-sense.There must, certainly, be some kind of criteriafor one to use in determining just what symbolshe shall use in attempting to opoint towardT�T theomystical.� One criterion which he might pro-pose is that the symbols should come out of hisown time. That is he would be erring if heattempted to point with a symbol which had norelation whatsoever to the contemporary man withwhom he is speaking. Some examples of this maybe seen in certain schools of Christian theology.Many theologians continue to use, for instance,the symbol of the slain lamb and its blood in con-nection with some kind of interpretation of thecrucifixion of the Christ. This symbol bore deepmeaning for the early Jews who were well ac-quainted with the full existential meaning of theslaying of a lamb in sacrifice to the God whomthey feared. Contemporary man has little, if any,comprehension whatsoever of this. One is at aloss as to how we could possibly use the symbol ofthe ~Lamb of God shedding his blood for our sins�in any kind of meaningful way at all in our time.This is not to say that there is no possibility forsuch a symbol to call forth an oinsight,� but thelikelihood of its doing so is very small.Perhaps a much better symbol in connectionwith this particular event would be to speak of itin terms of a Word spoken into oneTs existencefrom the omystical�? which lies both within andbeyond oneTs existence. Granted that this symbolsays nothing literal whatsoever. Neither does theone of the lamb. But one has more chance ofgrasping an inclination of what is being shown24when he speaks in terms of a Word because helives in a world of great communication in whichone speaks to another in all types of conversation,whether it be face to face or by long-distancetelephone. However, in the midst of all his fren-zied talking, he seems to communicate very littlethat is deeply meaningful. To say to one of the20th century, who knows something of the innerfeeling of aloneness and darkness, that there hasbeen a Word spoken to him into his darkness,which proclaims to him that there is the possibilityfor him to live in this world is much more signifi-cant than to say to him that the Lamb of God shedhis blood for his sins.Another criterion which one might propose isthat the symbols used should be coherent with oneanother. That is, to attempt to use symbols whichadmit of no correlation whatever between one an-other is a practice that will get one into great dif-ficulty. For instance, it seems to be a mistake ifone attempts to unite the symbols of the philosophyof history of the Eastern religions and those of theWestern religions. The Western religions (Chris-tianity and Judaism) conceive of history as astraight line, purposive, with a beginning and anend. The Eastern religions conceive of history asa cycle with no beginning and no end, much lessany purpose. To attempt to use both these sym-bols in pointing toward the omystical� in historywould confuse more than illuminate the listener.Of course, a final criterion might be whether ornot the symbol actually does its job. That is, doesit work? Are persons listening to discourse car-ried on in terms of a particular set of symbolsreally coming to ~o~see� what it is the symbols arepointing toward?This paper comes now to the second use of re-ligious language: the interpretative.Religious language omakes sense out of life.�That is, in light of the oinsight�? which the reli-gious persons claims to have been part of, and,what is more, claims to, in some sense, continuebeing a part of, life now takes on a new olight,�a new perspective. Crombie points out that onemay learn much from the writings of Kafka andHuxley, not in a literal way, but in a way whichmakes us see life differently. o. . . what we learnfrom Kafka or Huxley is not that the real worldis like the world they create; rather, having trav-elled in imagination to a very different world,when we come back to the real world we see it alittle differently and the difference seems to begain. The unlifelike element in the fictional worldis a device which makes us see things which arepresent but overlooked, in ordinary experience.�THE REBEL