“Language as a gift from God makes it adequate for the tasks he has given us and the goals he has for communicating with us. This gives theology an appropriate place in human knowledge and makes it equal to the other sciences as valid human knowledge even though its basis is in God’s self revelation and not in human senses or reason. Beware of saying, “Words cannot express…” While this is true to some extent, God still chose to reveal Himself to us. Ours is not a mystical, experiential, or immediate religion. Words are adequate, though not exhaustive.”
– Tim Miskimen, ABTS Systematic Theology Lecture 2008, Sydney Campus.
A favourite childhood educational TV show that we used to watch at primary school was called “Words and Pictures”. It was all about building basic comprehension skills using illustrations and, of course, words!
Words are fundamental to our understanding the world around us, because they point us to things in real life and enable to interact with those things. But, as John Sailhamer points out in chapter 4 of The Meaning of The Pentateuch, “… words are not the things themselves. The words only point to those things. You cannot smoke the word pipe.”
He further emphasizes his point by referring to a painting by Belgium artist René Magritte:
Magritte painted a realistic picture of a pipe. A caption on the painting reads, “This is not a pipe.” Magritte’s point, of course, was that the pipe was a painting of a pipe and not the pipe itself.
When the Bible describes “things” in the outside world, like pipes, it does so with words. The biblical authors did not draw pictures. They “wrote” pictures using words, much like an artist uses paint and brush strokes. Each word is an author’s brush stroke. … words point to real events, and they tell us about those events. To experience the events, all we need to do is read the Bible. It is the next best thing to being there. It is the closest we have to being there. To experience the biblical events as the author intended, one must keep a close eye on the author’s words. We would miss his point if we tried to find out about those events apart from his words.
“Language as a gift from God makes it adequate for the tasks he has given us and the goals he has for communicating with us. This gives theology an appropriate place in human knowledge and makes it equal to the other sciences as valid human knowledge even though its basis is in God’s self revelation and not in human senses or reason. Beware of saying, “Words cannot express…” While this is true to some extent, God still chose to reveal Himself to us. Ours is not a mystical, experiential, or immediate religion. Words are adequate, though not exhaustive.”
– Tim Miskimen, ABTS Systematic Theology Lecture 2008, Sydney Campus.
