The symbols of religion: An analysis of the ideas of Paul Tillich, Mircea Eliade and Janet Soskice for religious education

A significant consideration in designing programs of instruction for religious education, whether it be an education for religion or an education about religion, is the matter of how the religions structure and articulate their understandings. That is, it is important to know what kinds of symbolic "languages" the religions employ and how these "languages" function.;Paul Tillich, Mircea Eliade and Janet Martin Soskice, representing respectively a theological perspective, an historical perspective and a philosophical perspective, have each contributed to the theory of religious symbols. A prominent recurring question to be addressed in their work is how the religions employ common and familiar symbols in meaningful ways to refer to that which is taken to be ineffable and "wholly other.";A critical analysis of their ideas about religious symbols and the assumptions about the reality to which they refer suggests a number of guiding principles for the development of course objectives, the selection of curriculum content and the choice of teaching methods in religious education. It suggests that religious symbols have genuine cognitive content; that they exhibit enormous variety; that their meanings are multi-levelled; that they are often necessarily and irreducibly metaphorical; and that they are rooted, cultivated and matured in human experience.;When "symbol" is understood to be anything which refers, and "symbolic languages" to be organizations of symbols to create meanings, religion is identifiable as a way of understanding which employs a wide range of symbols (words, objects, places, times, artworks, gestures, and much more) and organizes them in many different kinds of "languages" (verbal and non-verbal, literal and non-literal, propositional, representational and expressive).