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God and Language1

Ver n S. Poy t hr ess

C an G od speak to us? Does he? The twenty-first century

intellectual environments in the Western world promote suspicions
about language. Unbelievers sometimes reason that language is
merely human, and therefore incapable of expressing the nature
of the divine or the transcendent. They would say that we are just
talking to ourselves, and everything we say about the transcendent
realm falls short of truth.
When we read the Bible, we know better. The Bible is the Word
of God, God’s own speech to us. God does speak to us, and he
speaks effectively.
We recognize the character of the Bible because the Holy Spirit
has opened our eyes to realize that it is God who speaks.2 But can

1. This article is a summary of some of the ideas from Vern S. Poythress, In

the Beginning Was the Word: Language—A God-Centered Approach (Wheaton, IL:
Crossway, 2009).
2. WCF 1.5 expresses it well: “We may be moved and induced by the testimony of
the Church to an high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture. And the heavenliness

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we respond directly to the arguments of those who are skeptical?

In the long run, we need to appropriate what the Bible has to say
about language if we are to respond to unbelievers and to protect
ourselves and other believers from the inroads of skeptical think-
ing about language.

Language and the Trinity

We can begin with John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In this
context, “the Word” is a designation for the second person of the
Trinity, but it also naturally suggests an association with language.
But what is John 1:1 actually saying? The phrase in the beginning,
as well as the continuation in John 1:2–4, alludes to Genesis 1: “In
the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1).
The rest of Genesis 1 indicates that God performed his creative
work by speaking:

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. (Gen. 1:3)3
And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters.”
(Gen. 1:6)
And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered
together into one place.” (Gen. 1:9)

Psalm 33:6 sums up the work of creation:

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made,

and by the breath of his mouth all their host.

of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all
the parts, the scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God), the full discovery
it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies,
and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence
itself to be the Word of God: yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance
of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the
Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts” (emphasis added).
3. Any italics within biblical quotations are my own addition.

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 God and Language

In Genesis 1 God also addresses human beings in speech:

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and
multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over
the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every
living thing that moves on the earth.” (Gen. 1:28)

John 1:1, by alluding to this background, indicates that God’s

own Trinitarian nature lies behind the particular words that he
spoke, both words to create the world and words addressed to
human beings. Language runs deep. It is deeper and older than
humanity. God spoke even before there were any human beings.
Genesis 1 records God’s “Let there be light” speech and his
other utterances in Hebrew so that we can understand them. But
we do not know what language God used when he did his work of
creation. In the utterances recorded in Genesis 1:3 and 6, God was
not addressing man directly, but issuing commands for the world
itself to come into being. We can have confidence that he did say,
“Let there be light.” But we do not know the details of the language
in which he spoke. Since his utterances were not addressed to us,
they may not have been in any human language. They are neverthe-
less accurately represented by the Hebrew rendering (and of course
a later rendering in English or some other language into which the
Hebrew can be translated). It is proper for us to say that God spoke,
and that he used language, though we do not know all the details.
We may make analogous observations about John 1:1, which
refers to God’s eternal speaking. “In the beginning was the Word.”
The phrase in the beginning indicates that the Word always existed.
This Word did not come into being at all, but always was. “The
Word was God.” So the expression “the Word” in John 1:1 cannot
be simply identified with the words that God spoke to create the
world in Genesis 1. This eternal Word comes before them all and
remains forever. He always is. He is the original speech of God. We
can see that John points out an analogy between the one eternal
Word on the one hand and, on the other, the many particular words,
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that is, creational words, that God spoke according to Genesis 1.

The many particular words rest ultimately on the involvement of
the eternal Word in God’s acts of creating the world:

Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things
and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through
whom are all things and through whom we exist. (1 Cor. 8:6)

For by him [God the Son] all things were created. (Col. 1:16)

The eternal Word is the archetype, the original speech of God.

The words God spoke to create are derivative, but still in harmony
with this eternal Word, who was active in creation. The Holy Spirit
was active as well, as we see from Genesis 1:2: “And the Spirit of
God was hovering over the face of the waters.” God’s speech has the
deepest possible roots, namely, in God himself, in his Trinitarian
nature. The Trinity is a mystery to us. But this mystery guarantees
that God’s speech has depth. God says more and speaks more richly
than what we are able to comprehend as creatures.
God’s speech to human beings begins, as we noted, in Gen-
esis 1:28–30. This speech, we conclude, is in harmony with the
speeches he made to create the world. And it is in harmony with
his eternal Word. It is empowered by the presence of the Spirit.
Speech to human beings is therefore Trinitarian speech, and in
harmony with the eternal speech of God. Interestingly, God speaks
to human beings before there is any record of human beings speak-
ing to one another. Human language is not merely human. It is not
there merely as a practical, prosaic tool for human communication
to other human beings. God is the originator. We should thank
God for language; it is a gift. In addition, we should observe that
this gift of language is designed by God for divine-human com-
munication. God speaks to us in languages that he has already
designed for that purpose. And we might say that such commu-
nication from God is more central even than communication
among human beings, one to another. God addresses us. And, as
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 God and Language

we can see fairly soon in Genesis, human beings address God in

return (Gen. 3:12).

Knowledge through Language

This biblical view of language differs radically from modern
views, evolutionary or otherwise, that treat language as a mere acci-
dental or convenient tool for this world. Many people who imbibe
a modern worldview are suspicious of language. They say, “How
can we presume to talk about God? How do we know that language
will work effectively for such a purpose? Is God beyond language?”
This kind of skepticism can be answered most effectively only if
we realize that non-Christians, with hearts in rebellion against God,
have a different view of the world than Christians, whose hearts
are regenerated by the Holy Spirit. Non-Christians are engaged
in suppressing the truth about God (Rom. 1:18–23). Among other
things, they suppress the revelation of God in the very texture of
language. Language derives from God, yes, from God in his Trini-
tarian character. It is a constant witness to him. And it is a vehicle
through which he speaks. God as master of language can speak
just as he pleases. Language is no inhibition for him. Moreover, it
does take God speaking for us to know him. Knowledge that we
claim to have about God is not true knowledge if it is merely the
invention of our own minds or of our own would-be autonomous
speech about God. We need to attend to God as he speaks to us
in the Bible. Through the work of the Spirit he overcomes, among
those whom he draws to himself, the suppression of the truth that
Romans 1 delineates. Through the Spirit he creates receptive hearts
so that we can hear what he says, and we know him (2 Cor. 4:4–6).
The Bible speaks boldly about the fact that we can know God
through what he says:

“And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God,
and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)

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“I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me

out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and
they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that
you have given me is from you. For I have given them the words
that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to
know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that
you sent me.” (John 17:6–8)

The words Jesus speaks originate from the communion among

the persons of the Trinity. Those words result in knowledge of God
among those whom “you gave . . . to me” (John 17:6).
The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy by the Interna-
tional Council on Biblical Inerrancy sums it up:

We affirm that God who made mankind in His image has used
language as a means of revelation.
We deny that human language is so limited by our creatureliness
that it is rendered inadequate as a vehicle for divine revelation. We
further deny that the corruption of human culture and language
through sin has thwarted God’s work of inspiration.4

We may now consider how a biblical view of language affects

some particular issues about language and meaning.

Metaphor and Analogy

First, what about metaphor and analogy? We call God
“Father.” This use of the word Father is analogous to, rather than
identical with, the use of the word for human fathers. Does the
use of analogy destroy the truth of what is being said? A non-
Christian view of language might claim that it does. According
to such a view, the only “true truth” is literal, scientific statement

4. “The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy,” International Council on Bibli-

cal Inerrancy, 1978, Article IV, accessed May 24, 2011, http://www.alliancenet.org
/partner/Article_Display_Page/0,,PTID307086_CHID750054_CIID2094584,00.html.

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 God and Language

about facts. Everything else is a kind of improper stretching of

language.
But this view is at odds with the Bible’s view of language. Lan-
guage as a gift from God has the capability for metaphor and anal-
ogy built into it by God. We can see this capability by considering
the language for “father.” The original Father is God the Father in
relation to his Son. God makes man in his image, and then we see
that Adam becomes the first human father in analogy with the
pattern when God created Adam:

When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male
and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them
Man when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years,
he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named
him Seth. (Gen. 5:2–3)

The language about “likeness” and “image” in Genesis 5:3 obviously

picks up on similar language describing God’s creation of man in
Genesis 1:26. But now it is used to describe Adam fathering a son.
The creation of man in the image of God gives a foundation for acts
on the part of man that are analogical to the original acts of God.
Moreover, the language about “image of God” has an even
deeper basis. We find in Colossians 1:15 that Christ is called “the
image of the invisible God.” Christ is the original image. The cre-
ation of man in Genesis 1 imitates this original imaging. Christ is
being described in his role as Creator, so he is the divine image. We
as creatures are creaturely images. The two are not identical. But
they are analogous. God designs us to know by analogy with his
knowledge. We speak by analogy with his speech (see Gen. 2:19–20).
But the original analogy is divine rather than human: Christ is the
image of God, and as such shows the character of the Father. He
is the archetype for analogies that God ordains within this world.
So God has in his wisdom built analogy into the world itself. And
accordingly it is built into language. In fact, God’s language gov-
erning the world specifies all analogies.
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Thus analogy is not alien to language. It is built in. When rightly

used, it expresses truth. We do know God the Father through the
revelation of the Son in his words, as John 17 has indicated. We
know what it means for him to be our Father through the Spirit’s
teaching (Rom. 8:15–17).

History and Interpretation

A second skeptical strain within modern worldviews concerns
history and reports of events in history. Can a report in language
be faithful to what actually happened? Once again, non-Christian
worldviews can interfere with a proper conception of the function
of language. These views obscure the character of reports about
events. In non-Christian thinking, it may be claimed that the
events have meaning tacked onto them by human narration. The
events have no meaning until human beings narrate them. And
then, since there are multiple possible narrations, the meaning
belongs to each human interpreter rather than to the event itself.
All historical reporting is “biased” by the input from a human
reporter.
By contrast, in a Christian worldview we know that God has
a plan for history. His plan precedes the events. The events have
purpose and meaning in the mind of God even before they take
place. This meaning is infinite, since it coheres with God’s entire
purpose for the whole of history. Our human minds are not infinite,
but we are made in the image of God. Made in God’s image, we
can access “true truth” about events as God reveals truths that are
in his mind, either through special revelation in biblical accounts
of events, or through general revelation, as we ourselves observe
events or hear the reports of other fallible interpreters. Fallibility
does not mean universal skepticism. God has made a world in which
our minds are in fundamental coherence with the world, because
God has made both our minds and the world after the pattern of
his will. We can really know, though we know finitely.
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 God and Language

Because God’s mind is always richer than our knowledge, we

can also account for why there may be more than one true account
of the same event. All true accounts given to human beings are
partial and selective, which, it is worth emphasizing, does not make
them less than true. We are constantly having to oppose the non-
Christian view of knowledge, which often insists that unless we
know everything (by autonomous mastery), we can know nothing.
The Gospels are a good example of rich accounts of events. The
Gospels differ in their selectivity at some points, but each account
expresses the mind of God. All the accounts together are in har-
mony and express more of the mind of God than we would access
through only one account.
We can of course say that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as
human authors, are each giving his own “interpretation” of the
events of the life of Jesus. But such interpretation is not falsification.
Interpretation, especially when guided by the Spirit who inspired
the Evangelists, draws out and re-expresses aspects of the purpose
and meaning that God had in the events from the beginning. The
human authors are not “creating” meaning, but expressing God’s
meaning, meaning that he already had. The events have always had
meaning; there are no “bare” events with no meaning, because God
controls all of history.
We can see this principle working in an obvious way with
respect to the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ. Old
Testament symbols and prophecies lay out beforehand aspects
of the meaning of the crucifixion and the resurrection. Jesus
predicts these events and comments on their meaning before-
hand (e.g., Mark 10:45). The Evangelists, inspired by the Spirit
of Christ, then re-express the meaning after the events are
accomplished. Both the differences among the Gospels and their
commonalities are meanings known by God before the founda-
tion of the world, and now expressed to us in time through the
process of inspiration. God is speaking his meanings, which
are definitive for the events.
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Stability of Meaning
A non-Christian worldview may also create difficulties with
respect to stability of meaning. On the one hand, non-Christians
secretly aspire to be gods. They want to be the ultimate masters of
meaning. So any flexibility in the range of meaning of a word or a
sentence threatens to overthrow their mastery. They do not merely
want stability, such as is guaranteed by the faithfulness of God to
his own meanings, but godlike mastery. So they may overreach in
claims about their understanding of this or that text of Scripture.
But in the cultures of the West today, people have reacted to
this rationalistic extreme by going into postmodern irrationalism.
A non-Christian worldview of this type admits that it falls short of
absolute mastery. It then goes to the opposite extreme of ambiguity.
Words, it might be claimed, may mean almost anything. And sen-
tences may be reinterpreted indefinitely, with no visible boundaries
for the endeavor. What do we say in response?
We need to avoid merely answering a non-Christian on his own
terms. We must think biblically. To begin with, God’s standards
give us obligations. We have moral responsibility, which includes a
responsibility to respect meanings from people made in the image
of God. Above all, we respect meanings coming from God’s own
mouth, that is, the meanings in Scripture. The moral standards of
God, which are absolute, give us reason for rejecting manipulative or
fanciful interpretations, whereas an unbeliever, who cannot admit
to absolutes, may feel free to multiply interpretations without limit.
God also provides contexts that eliminate many “theoretical
ambiguities.” The contexts—including the larger literary context
of a biblical book, the context of the full canon of Scripture,
the context of the human author, his purposes, his situation in
history, and so on—all come to bear and enable us to discern
that a word or a sentence is used in one way rather than another
that would theoretically be possible in other circumstances. We
trust God who controls all contexts, and enables us to receive
his word with understanding.
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 God and Language

We may take a particular example. Exodus 13:21 says,

The Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead

them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them
light, that they might travel by day and by night.

What is the meaning of the word light? The context of guidance

through the wilderness indicates that a physical light is in view,
coming from the supernatural phenomenon of the pillar of fire.
Now compare this use of light in Exodus to John 8:12. Jesus
says, “I am the light of the world.” The context, in which Jesus is
talking about himself, and the larger context of the Gospel of John,
where “light” is a repeated theme, indicate that the verse is talking
about Jesus’ role as revealer of God the Father, and by implication
his role as guide to redemption and to eternal life. We can also see
that the passage in Exodus and the passage in John 8:12 are related
by analogy. In Exodus God used the physical light for physical
guidance, intending it as a symbol for the larger role that he had
in guiding the people spiritually and morally. The word light when
viewed apart from any context whatsoever has the capability of
designating physical light, moral light, spiritual light of revelation,
blinding light, and so on. The contexts enable us to appreciate what
meaning belongs to a particular occurrence. And the context of
the whole of the canon can enable us to appreciate relationships
between analogous meanings, such as the relation between Exodus
and John 8:12.
We do understand. We understand truly. But we do not under-
stand comprehensively, that is, in the way that only God can under-
stand. When Jesus says that he is the light of the world, he makes a
stupendous claim that we do not fathom completely. His statement
is, among other things, one of the “I am” sayings in John. He also
says, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35); “I am the good shepherd”
(John 10:11); “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25); “I
am the true vine” (John 15:1). We suspect that all these statements
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resonate with the “I am” in John 8:58, where Jesus claims to be eter-
nally existent and uses a form of speech that expresses the meaning
of the Tetragrammaton (the “I am” of Ex. 3:14).
God is light (1 John 1:5). The ultimate anchorage for the word
light is in God himself, who is light. God by his own character
and faithfulness gives ultimate stability to meaning in this world.
He shows himself to us in speech, including speech about light.
He makes definite claims. Only God knows himself perfectly and
exhaustively. But we do not need to be God in order to know him
truly by receiving his speech in the Son through the power of the
Holy Spirit.

The One and the Many

Still another difficulty arises in a non-Christian approach to
language. How can words like horse apply to a multitude of horses?
How do we know what we are talking about? The difficulty can be
generalized to apply not only to language but also to the world about
which we speak. Why are there many horses with one common pat-
tern, belonging to one species? This difficulty is called the problem
of the one and the many. How does the one, namely, the general
category of horse, relate to the many, namely, the many horses?
Darwinian naturalism thinks it has an answer in unguided
Darwinian evolution. Evolution produces both a species and the
members of the species. But Darwinian naturalism does not give
us an answer to the deeper difficulty: why is there order at all?
Naturalism depends on the concept of scientific law, which provides
a foundation for the unity of the species and the unity of species
behavior. Why does law have the character of unity (a single law)
and diversity (applying to many individual instances)? And why
does human language express this unity and diversity? Is language
adequate to the world?
A Christian view of language, as usual, traces meanings back
to God. It is God who has established both the one and the many
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in the world by his speech. And his speech coheres with himself.
God is one God in three persons. God himself offers us the ultimate
instance of one and many. Out of this one and many in God, he
creates a world with one and many according to the specifications
of his word of command. God’s language specifies one and many.
Human language, which reflects God’s language, also is capable
of interacting with one and many. That is why we have one word,
horse, that we can use to designate many horses as well as the spe-
cies horse.
By contrast, modern non-Christian worldviews are typically
nominalistic. Words are names (“nominal”) that we humans invent
(out of thin air?) to produce unity. Is the unity then a humanly
imposed illusion? Immanuel Kant came near to this idea by argu-
ing that the categories of time, space, and causality were imposed
on phenomena by the human mind. In this view, human beings
virtually “create” the world of experience. But this kind of view
threatens a radical subjectivism. And once we lose the conviction
that all human minds are basically the same, we can arrive at a post-
modern skepticism about both the unity of meaning and knowledge.
Meaning and so-called “knowledge” are alleged to be “created”
by human societies by their conventions. And differences among
different societies threaten the unity of meaning and knowledge
for humanity as a whole.
According a biblical worldview, God has created the world
and human beings. He has given us as human beings language
in analogy with his language specifying the one and many in
the world. The harmony in God’s plan leads to a basic harmony
among language, human beings, and the world—in which radi-
cal skepticism has no place.

Conclusion
In sum, assumptions about language do have an influence when
people consider the claims of Scripture. Many modern thinkers
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assume that human language is merely human, merely a pragmatic

tool for managing a world of bare or “brute” facts, facts with no
intrinsic grounding in language. The Bible presents us with a very
different picture. God made the world and governs it by the wisdom
of his providence. Moreover, he governs by speaking. The world in
its overall structure and in the details of its history is the product
of language—God’s language. Human beings are creatures, not
God. But we are made in the image of God, and the language that
God has given us as a gift is designed by God. So it matches both
the world and the nature of God as he reveals himself when he
speaks in language.
This biblical conception of language provides responses to vari-
ous objections and skeptical theories about language. “God-talk,”
language about God, is not intrinsically problematic. It is not a
“stretching” of language beyond its design, but a use according to
its design. People can of course use language to express heretical
or blasphemous thoughts about God. But this is a difficulty created
by the fall and by sin, not a difficulty intrinsic to the metaphysical
character of language as given by God.
Skeptics also doubt whether historical events can be adequately
described in language, whether language provides stable meanings,
and whether language is problematic because of the problem of
the one and the many. A biblical basis for understanding language
provides coherent responses to these objections. The Bible is still
the Word of God, and still expresses truth about God, truth about
history, truth about meaning, and truth about the one and the
many. In these and other questions, we are not supposed to follow
in our thinking the way of the world, but the way of Christ, as he
has taught us by speaking in Scripture (2 Cor. 10:5).

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