Problems of axiomatizing religion

The paper discusses problems which arise in attempts to axiomatize parts of religion or religious belief systems. Besides those problems already investigated by Bochenski, like that of the propositional content or the meaning of religious discourse there are several further ones. This paper deals with the question whether full Classical Logic is suitable, whether one universe of discourse is sufficient, how to use definitions and analogous concepts and whether justifications satisfy credibility criteria. In this paper, I shall discuss some problems coming up if one applies logic to religion in such a way as to axiomatize a part of religion.

As is well known, Bocheński was the first to write a whole book in which he describes in a detailed way the idea of a logic of religion.Footnote1 This book contains a lot of interesting observations of how a formalization or axiomatization could be done. In this sense, Bocheński has worked out several important preconditions for an axiomatization. They are distributed among the three main topics of the book: (1) Investigating the structure of religious language; (2) Investigating the semantics of religious discourse; (3) Investigating the justification of religious statements.
This paper is divided into the following chapters:

1.
Certain facts concerning the structure of religious language established already by Bocheński

2.
Difficulties when applying the usual classical logic to religion

3.
Problems of the Universe of Discourse

4.
How to use definitions?

5.
Analogous concepts and operations

6.
The justification of religious statements