A Word About Words
When I teach my introductory theology course for undergraduate students, one of the first lectures concerns the nature of theology. Since this is an introductory course, I start with the basics. The word “theos” is the Greek word for God. The Greek word “logos” means something like “word” or “discourse” or “reason.” So “theology” is something like “talk” or “words” about God. But we already have a lot of words about God—the Bible. So, why are more words necessary? And if the words of the Bible are God-given, which Christians have traditionally affirmed, why more words? When someone asks a theological question, why not just read for them, or point them to, the actual words of the Bible? Well, sometimes that would be appropriate. Wondering about where the Son was long ago? Well, John 1:1 says that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” But, if we dig around, we find there are numerous texts which might give us insight on the person of Christ and his pre-existence. One option would be, when asked about this or that doctrine, would be just to start in Genesis 1:1 and read through to the last words of Revelation. But that is about a seventy to seventy-five hour exercise, and probably not the best way to try and communicate the truths of the Christian faith.
So, Christians have spent 2000 years reading, thinking, and writing to summarize in words various aspects of who God is and what He does, and has done. In short, Christians have theologized, and this seems like an inescapable and good thing. But it raises a question about words and how words work. And Christians should have a lot to say and think about words. Robert Jenson has aptly written: “We serve a talkative God, who does not even seem to be able to do without a library. In his service, we will be concerned for talk and libraries.”1 As Christians we are Trinitarians, so we believe that from all eternity there has existed three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—who have been relating to each other, loving each other, and “talking.” We should not be surprised that the second person of the Trinity is, indeed, the Word, the Logos (John 1:1, 14).
1. Robert W. Jenson, Essays in Theology of Culture (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995), 168.
Now, it might be the case that when I say above that God engages in “talking,” a reader might have gotten nervous or balked. Surely we cannot say that God “talks,” or that the members of the Trinity “talk” to one another, can we? Surely that is “just” metaphor? We will return to this question. One of the best things in print is Vern Poythress’ In the Beginning Was the Word: Language—A God-Centered Approach.2 Poythress argues that God Himself is a “talkative” God, and thus it is misguided simply to say that language is a “human construct.” Not quite. No doubt humans do create languages, and make new words, etc. But language as language is not a “human construct.” Rather, man is a linguistic being, a “wordish” and talkative being, because man is made in the image of a talkative and wordish God. In short, if we are going to get things right when we speak about speaking of God, we need to start with God Himself—this rather wordish and talkative God.
2. Vern S. Poythress, In the Beginning Was the Word: Language—A God-Centered Approach (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2009). Among other texts, Poythress points to John 16:13.
Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., gets it right:
As our being itself is derived from God (we exist because he exists), and as our knowledge is an analogue of his knowledge (we know because he knows), so, too, our capacity for language and other forms of communication is derivative of his.3
3. Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., “Speech and the Image of God,” in Word & Spirit: Selected Writings in Biblical and Systematic Theology, eds. David B. Garner and Guy Prentiss Waters (Glenside, PA: Westminster Seminary Press, 2023), 336.
Gaffin continues:
We speak because God speaks, because he is a speaking God; that is his nature and so, derivatively, it is ours. In other words, man in his linguistic functions, as in all he is and does, is to be understood as the creature who is the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26). In fact, should we not say that especially in his language man reflects the divine image he is?4
4. Gaffin, “Speech and the Image of God,” 336.
As Christians, we really should not lose our heads when we begin to think about language. I have suggested above that God Himself is a talkative and wordish God, and we echo those realities as His image bearers. But we should not miss the obvious. As I write this essay my study Bible is in front of me, weighing in at over 2700 (!) pages. God apparently likes books and words. But we should also not forget that God creates through words: “And God said . . .” (Gen. 1:3, 5, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26). God ultimately redeems through His Word, the “Logos,” as seen in the Word becoming flesh (John 1:14). The world is sustained through the Son, who is the Word (Col. 1:17). The judgment of God is also rendered in words—”Well done, good and faithful servant . . .” (Matt. 25:21, 23).
Words About God
But can we say that we can use words about God? Is this hubris or arrogance or tomfoolery? At first glance, one might argue that we should not say much about God at all. That way we can avoid error, even the serious error of blasphemy. This is the path that some in Eastern Orthodoxy seem to have chosen. “Apophatic theology,” or “negative theology” is the theological endeavor to only say what God is not. God is not finite. God is not bound by time. God is not bound by physical space. Etc. A more radicalized position would be even less hesitant to speak of God. But the West—the theological stream of Roman Catholicism and then later Protestantism—has long rejected that path.
The West—generally—has been more confident that one must also say “positive” things about God, sometimes called “kataphatic theology.” “Kataphatic” is (or is from) the Greek word “katafatizō,” which means “to declare.” “Kata” is a Greek preposition which means, generally, “down from,” “down,” and sometimes “against.” The term “fatizō” means “to say” or “to speak.” The point is simply that something is said about God, and that something more is being said than simply what God is not.5
5. I am here summarizing the entries from Franco Montanari, The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek, as well as material from Liddell and Scott’s A Greek-English Lexicon.
When we speak about God there is a network of theological assumptions and convictions at work, and that is simply inescapable. A key assumption is that there is an adequacy of fittingness about human language to say something true about God.6 So, our theological starting point should be that words can speak truly about God—in principle.
6. I strongly recommend to the reader J.I. Packer’s wonderful essay, “The Adequacy of Human Language,” in J.I. Packer, Honouring the Written Word of God, vol. 3 in Collected Shorter Writings of J.I. Packer (Vancouver, British Columbia: Regent College Publishing, 2008 [previously published in 1999 by Paternoster Press]), 23–49. Many of the insights from Jenson and Poythress above are echoed by Packer. Another essay along similar lines is John Frame, “God and Biblical Language,” in God’s Inerrant Word, ed. John Warwick Montgomery (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany Fellowship, 1973), 159–77. See also John Frame, The Doctrine of the Word of God, vol. 4 in A Theology of Lordship (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2010).
The Issue of “Analogy” or “Analogical Language”
While not unique to Thomas Aquinas (c. A.D. 1225–1274), his discussion of language about God is worthy of attention.7 Thomas posits three possible ways one might construe how language works when speaking of God. With univocal language, a word means the same thing when predicated of, say, a person, as when predicated of God. So, when we say Bob is loving and God is loving, we use “loving” in the exact same way. This certainly seems inappropriate. With equivocal language, a word means something completely different when predicated of a person as when predicated of God. So, in our example, when we say Bob is loving and we say God is loving, we are using the word “loving” in a completely different sense. If that is the case, we have a quandary. What in the world might we mean when we say God is loving, if the term “loving” has no relation whatsoever to how we use it in everyday language (i.e., when speaking of Bob). The best option, as Thomas sees it, is to think of language about God as analogical. Thus, when we say Bob is loving and God is loving, there is a kind of similitude, a similarity, in how the word works, or what it means, in both statements, but the word “loving” does not mean the exact same thing.
7. Thomas discusses how language works about God in Question 13 (“Names of God”) in Part One (=Prima Pars) of his Summa Theologiae.
Now, overall there is probably a lot of wisdom here. When we say Bob is “good” and God is “good,” there is some sort of “similitude” in our use of the word “good”—even if exactly what is going on is a bit elusive (which should not really surprise us when we are trying to work through what language means when used of God).
For all of Thomas’ brilliance, I suggest that the twentieth century philosopher Cornelius Van Til offers insights on the notion of analogy which pushes things in a theologically healthy and robust direction. Van Til suggests that “in all non-Christian theories men reason univocally, while in Christianity men8 reason analogically.” What Van Til does in An Introduction to Systematic Theology is of a piece with the writings and thought of Packer, Poythress, and Frame mentioned above. We can know because God is the ultimate knower. We can speak meaningfully because God is the ultimate (and first) speaker.
8. Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology: Prolegomena and the Doctrines of Revelation, Scripture, and God, ed. William Edgar (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2007), 31.
As Van Til argues, our knowledge (and ultimately our speaking) is “derivative and reinterpretive,” that is, our knowledge is derived from God, and we can only really interpret reality (including God) rightly when we—in fact—engage in a kind of “reinterpretation” based on God’s revelation.9 Van Til can suggest that in a Christian theory of knowledge, “God’s self-existence and plan, as well as self-contained self-knowledge” is “the presupposition of all created existence and knowledge.”10
9. Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, 34.
10. Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, 42.
Van Til argues that in his pre-fall state, man very much did reason “analogically.” Man properly would have looked at the created order, and would have interpreted and understood all reality in relation to the one true God.11 But now, as fallen, we do not really reason “analogically,” but only “univocally.” And here “univocally reasoning” is Van Til’s way of speaking of fallen man’s tendency “to be the final or ultimate reference point of predication.12
11. Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, 178–79.
12. Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, 178 (fn. 6).
What is Van Til doing? I think he is pushing the reader to consider what it is that makes any sort of predication possible—predication about anything—whether of God, man, or the rest of the created order. What he is really doing is suggesting that not only knowledge (and talk) about God is “analogical,” but all of our knowledge is “analogical.” That is, Van Til is, in a sense, radicalizing and deepening the sense and meaning of “analogical.” He writes:
Men ought to reason analogically about themselves. They ought to reason analogically about their being (ontological argument), about the cause of their being (cosmological argument), and about the purpose of their being (teleological argument).13
13. Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, 183.
Indeed,
They ought to see that the words being, cause, and purpose have no possible meaning when applied to themselves, except in relation to God as their Creator and Judge.14
14. Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, 183.
Van Til (here “channeling” John Calvin, in a hypothetical statement from Calvin), summarizes his own (Van Til’s) understanding of analogy:
If then every fact that confronts me is revelational of the personal and voluntary activity of the self-contained God, it follows that when I try to think God’s thoughts after him, that is to say, when by means of the gift of logical manipulation that this Creator has given to me, I try to make a ‘system’ of my own, my system will be at no point a direct replica of the divine system [which is okay, for Van Til], but will at every point be analogical of the system of God.15
15. Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, 292.
And that is exactly as things ought to be, given the metaphysical distance between God and man (i.e., the Creator-creature distinction). However, Van Til goes on to write:
On the other hand, since the human mind is created by God and is therefore in itself naturally revelational of God, the mind may be sure that its system is true and corresponds on a finite scale to the system of God. That is what we mean by saying that it is analogical to God’s system. It is dependent upon God’s system, and by being dependent upon God’s system it is of necessity a true system.16
16. Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, 292–93.
Conclusion
So, three cheers for the concept of analogy. And three cheers for the medieval insight: distinguish, distinguish, distinguish—it is indeed necessary to make careful distinctions. And three cheers for the theological edifice which has been built over the last 2000 years (albeit with this or that oddity which may need to be set aside). But also three cheers for a more robust notion of analogy, as I think I see in the thought of Cornelius Van Til. Analogical language “works” because it is part of a story or a system in which God is creator, redeemer, and sustainer. Analogical relations and realities and correspondences “work” in the world (and they are something the human mind can see and grasp), because of who God is and what He has spoken, and if we start with who God is and what He has spoken. True “analogical” reasoning and predication are wonderful gifts from God, but they only really work when we play on God’s terms.
