[7]

This is usually not done, but there is no possible understanding of the relation of culture^a and religion ^bwithout an understanding of language ^cand religion. Much unnecessary funda- mentalism^d could have been avoided, in the history of Christianity^e, if the theologians^f and philosophers^g (the ones from the one side, the others from the other side) would have realized that language is present in religion as much as in any cultural human creativity^h, in spite of the fact that religion in its essence is not a part of man's cultural creativity, but in a similar relationship to it as man is to his world: belonging to it, and not belonging to it. This is the first consideration. After we have finished the fundamental analysis of the concept of religion and its relation to culture, and especially a section which is very important for me, some description of the way in which our present-day, 1955, Western cultureⁱ, these two realities, are related to each other. I don’t want to speak "in the air." I have learned a little bit, I hope, from those groups who know that all cultural creativities have roots in the social, economic and political situation. But after we have discussed this I will come (as the first concrete discussion) to the relationship of religion and language.