Plato denies that the empirical world is ultimately real
on account of the transience (Vergaenglichkeit) of its phenomena.
He postulates an ideal realm of absolutes
above and beyond the phenomenal world.
The ideas which he postulates as ultimate reality
are suggested by the consistence and durability,
by the unchangeableness (Unveraenderlichkeit) of our concepts.
Plato overlooked the circumstance
that our concepts also undergo changes, transformations,
but and if these changes are inapparent,
this is the case
because in our concepts and their definitions
we are forever asserting and reasserting our selves,
our wills (as Schopenhauer would have said).
What is constant is not the world,
not our concepts,
but our subjective, assertive elan vital.
.PP
We may, however, go a step further to examine
those concepts whose immutability makes
us secure in the interpreted world.
Our cancepts are reflexes (patterns) of thought,
fixed habits, (reactions) of cogitation
which appear to be inseparably coupled to language,
to the words in terms of which we think.
.PP
It is certainly true that out intuitions are
not (necessarily) bound to words. 
Appetitive experiences: hunger, thirst, pain, desire,
affection, anger, fear, hate ...
there is a whole host of experiences
prior to any verbal expression;
experiences, indeed, for which we may have difficulty
in finding or devising a verbal expression.
.PP
It is for purposes of communication with others
that we require language;
and language grows from the interaction 
of our minds with those of others.
It is a consequence of our biological makeup,
that although we enunciate words as individuals;
we define them so as to be understood by others,
and we address them to others so as to create understanding;
so as to create a conceptual community.
It is, incidentally, the community of concepts
which makes modern science so powerful
by facilitating (enabling, making possible)
the large-scale cooperation of mankind.
And the correctness or incorrectness of the concepts
of our scientific knowledge
is not its correspondence to an hypothetical ideal
or Ding an sich, but its functional value (power)
Wirksamkeit, effectivenss in facilitating
the integration of human effort.
.PP
I touch here upon a very subtle relationship 
between the knowledge itself,
the object which is known,
and the (physical and mental) characteristic of us humans
who purporatt to know.
(die zu wissen beanspruchen.)
I have in mind for example
the optical definitions of point and line,
the geometry of spheres,
circles and planes ...
The validity of these constructs,
it seems to me,
is anchored not only in social consensus,
but also in certain characteristics
of our cognitive (nervous) system.
Notions of time, now, past, future, present,
of space, here beyond,
of within and without,
would seem to me to have a similar fundamental basis.
The question then becomes,
how to distinguish the social aspects of (conceptual) knowledge
from the basis (anchor)
which such knowledge has
in the physis (nature) of us all.
.PP
An important consequence and corollary of conceptual knowledge
(as communication) is the confirmation
that it provides for our own thinking.
It is as if one had need of language
also to talk to oneself,
to solidify, festlegen,
to anchor ones intellectual experience to words
in order to be able to "process" it.
The elaboration (Verarbeitung) of thought,
thinking is a proccess
that extends over time,
and as such is vulnerable to forgetting,
misunderstanding, fabrication, ...
In this respect, communication with oneself
is comparable to communication with others.
.PP
It is probably appropriate to say,
that language expresses more or less adequately
the experiences that men have in common;
but that it is notably inefficient
if not indeed incapable of expressing
the experience (das Erleben) of the individual.
Language tends to mask or suppress
the expression of individual experience;
for language equates my experience (feeling) with yours 
and that of everyone else.
.PP
To the extent that religious experience is individual experience,
is isolation from ones fellow man (Isaiah 53) language is incompetent,
incapable, insufficient to express that experience,
but distorts and adulterates it.
Given the reliance on language,
the indispensability of language,
in consequence of our social nature,
we seek to dissolve to rescind its assertions.
(Wir sind bestrebt sie rueckgaengig zu machen,)
we seek to vitiate or invalidate language,
to cause it to repeal itself - sich aufzuheben, -
to reach beyond itself,
and that is one function of paradox
and of dialectic in theological writing.
.PP
We may now, in the light of this recognition
of the insufficiency of language
reinterpret the function of contradiction,
of inconsistency, of paradox.
Whatever the motivation
that brought about (led to)
the invention of miraculous stories,
their preservation,
and the demand that one "accept"
or believe them,
may have a different explanation.
Such belief marks the transition
from the realm of public, "objective"
historical knowledge,
to an inward, subjective, mystical world
in which our religious experience may receive its due,
may be donejustice and may flourish.
.PP
What is religious experience,
or what experience is religious? 
What is meant by Gottesbeziehung, Gotteserlebnis?
The experience which is beyond the objective,
the experience for which objective criteria
or characteristics are no longer adequate.
Perhaps it is better to speak of non-objective experience
rather than to speak of subjective experiences;
inasmuch as there is much uncertainty about subjectivity.
The privative non-objective has some analogy,
perhaps closer than appears on the surface,
to the privative concepts of negative theology.
.PP
It is not strictly true to distinguish
subjective experience as being "inward".
since objective experience may similarly be inward,
indeed must be inward "innerlich",
in order to be experienced at all:
but the characteristic of objective experience is
the social control to which it is subject
(which underlies it.)