The paper contains a critique of the postromantic theory of religious symbol. A main claim of the paper is that the notion of „religious symbol” is a compensatory nation, which serves to absorb the costs of the secularization process. This claim is supported by an outline of the original semiotics of religious language from works of St. Augustine. In accordance with this semiotics the religious language is (1) semantically defined, (2) syntactically coherent and (3) used in the pragmatic context of religious discipline. This features distinguish the religious language from the system of romantic symbols, which have the undefined meaning, constitute the loose structure and are used in the coercion-free pragmatic context. There is one reason both for the fact that postromantic „symbol” is an important notion of the modern religious discourse and the fact that „symbol” unfits to describe the original religious experience: „symbol” bases on the redefinition of original structure of religious language.
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