This article deals with the basic models of philosophical understanding of religion, those constitutive characteristics of it that determine its specificity in relation to other forms of human existence. The article outlines several approaches to the description of religion: Kantian, Hegelian, phenomenological, and analytical. The special character of religious thinking is defined by its participation in faith: religious thinking is like a meeting with an object of thought that reveals itself for the thought and thereby determines our thinking. The article also focuses on the role of metaphor in modern religious thought and shows that the metaphorical language of modern theology becomes an alternative to conceptual language. The author proposes a new methodology for dialogue between science and religion, which is based on the understanding of their fundamental otherness. The possibility of substantive dialogue is to explore the situation of human existence in the world.