Church Voices

Attacks on language…
Without a doubt Christianity depends on revelation. A central belief of Christianity is that God has communicated to mankind. H.G. Wood said, “God would not be God if He could be fully known to us, and God would not be God if He could not be known at all.”

God has to reveal himself to us because…
(1) His transcendance demands it. Because God is transcendent (different from creatures) and thus beyond our knowledge, any knowledge we have of him must depend upon His initiative and disclosure.
(2) Our finitude and sinfulness requires it. Genesis 3:8 tells us that man in his sin tries to hide from God. Therefore revelation from God is crucial to keep the lines of communication open. It is also important to provide truth now that man has a sinful tendency to prefer falsehood (Romans 3:8).

Scripture teaches us that God reveals himself in two ways to mankind. One way is through general revelation, which by nature is limited because its ambigous and non-verbal.

The other way is through special revelation (I prefer specific revelation). Special revelation from God comes in many forms such as historical events, miracles, theophanies, the incarnation. Protestant Christianity has especially favored one type of special revelation over these others: Word revelation.

The reason for this is that of all the forms of revelation, word revelation is less ambigious and we dislike very much ambiguity when it comes to God. Jack Cottrell writes, “Words are the most natural form of communication for intelligent beings. Through the use of words, ideas and concepts are transformed from one mind to another. This is exactly what is required when something has to be explained something as profound as the plan of salvation. Signs, gestures, symbolic acts, miracles do not explain themselves. They need explaining and explanation is only accomplished through words.”

The problem for the post-structuralist (post modernist) is that he or she believes that language itself is not adequate to communicate universal truth. Even if there was universal truth there is no way of knowing because of the inadequacy of language. In other words, (excuse the pun) language (words, speech etc.) is ambigious and arbitrary.

Let me explain. Since language is arbitrary and since ideas require language (signs) all ideas are arbitrary. You see, words name ideas, not things and since words are merely human designations to represent ideas in the “world” there is no agreed upon reality. Reality, if that’s what you want to call it, is simply a text, a language without universal meaning. (There is nothing in nature nor in logic that requires that English speakers use the word “dog” for dogs. We could as easily assign the word “cow” to the idea of a dog. Since our ideas are as arbitrary as the language they are communicated in, all is arbitrary.)

Jean Paul Sarte said, “Existence precedes essence,” but the poststructuralist would insist that there is no “existence” only “essence.”

This creates a problem for Christians if we are dependent upon word revelation. Or does it? Do we open ourselves up for criticism by preferring word revelation over other revelation? How do we solve this problem? Any ideas?