From the Superstitious worldview, Language and words were viewed as potentially magical and powerful. The Modernist perspective had the concept of language as meaningful as the primary form of communication, and the Postmodernist perspective viewed language as a medium of art where it means different things to different people. What does the Bible tell us about the concept of language?
John 1:1-5
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
Genesis 1:3
“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”
Genesis 2:19
“And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.”
Genesis 11:6-8
“And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city”
. Exodus 20:7
“You shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His Name in vain.”
Psalm 119:11
“Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against Thee.”
Several years ago, Bill Maher released a mocumentary entitled “Religulous” in which he interviewed various people of faith asking scoffing questions to belittle them and ridicule their beliefs. One of the many questions he asked was “Do you believe that a snake talked?”
In point of fact, this is not a new criticism of the Genesis account. But why is the idea that a snake could talk so laughable? The simple answer is that we have never observed snakes to be capable of speech. In fact, apart from a few cases of clever mimicry, no animals are capable of speech. This begs the questions, why are people able to speak?
In fact, from Bill Maher’s perspective, where humans are simply evolved animals who have developed speech as part of adaption, it makes more sense to have a talking snake. Any animal has the potential to evolve speech. It is only from the Biblical perspective where God placed a clear separation between humans and animals that makes a talking snake so absurd.
Bill is, in essence, borrowing from a Christian worldview in order to mock the Christian worldview.
The Bible starts almost immediately by showing us a God that uses language to create. The apostle John refers to Christ as the Word that proceeds from God. The third commandment instructs us to treat God’s name with the same reverence in our speech that the first commandment tells us to give to God himself in our worship, and the second commandment tells us to treat God’s image.
In fact, the scriptures give us every indication that language is actually part of God’s very nature. This may seem strange at first, especially if you don’t have a particularly high view of language, but studied further, it makes sense. Consider the following facts about language.
First, that language can communicate complex ideas with simplicity. Take a look at Genesis 1:3. “God said ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” That sentence is one that any child could comprehend, but imagine the volumes of mathematical formulas that would be necessary to show the creation of light. Take a moment to consider the immense truth that this tells us about God’s nature, that light was the first thing he created, that he spoke it out of darkness.
When God closed the cannon of Scripture he left us with 66 books, roughly 800,000 words, which can be collected together into about 1,000 pages. This is paltry considering the volumes of work written ABOUT the Bible. Clearly God was able to use a finite amount of space and text to communicate all He needed to give us in order to find salvation and revelation of His nature.
Secondly, language is intensely personal. No one ever read a math book and felt as if a loving person were speaking to them. But God gave us language as a way to communicate not just ideas but also our personalities to the hearer or reader. If we have any doubt about the personal nature of language, we need only look at what the scriptures call the Word of God, that is, His Son.
When God gave Moses the tablets of the Law, He opened the cannon of Scripture. He did so by carving words into stone atop a flaming mountain that rumbled and struck fear into the hearts of those who beheld it. When God gave us His Son, the fulfillment of the Law, He came as a person who physically touched us and healed us and washed our feet. There is no more personal example of the Word than Jesus Christ.
Thirdly, we see that Man was given access to Language as a method of expressing his creativity righteously. God spreads creation before Man and instructs him to name things. Adam was then given the freedom to make new words, which God imbued with meaning. This is a very exciting thing to learn from scripture, because unlike the laws of physics, the laws of language are plastic, allowing man to actually interact with God through lingual communication.
Finally, we see that the Scriptures as we presently possess them are the sole source of revelation that we are to rely on in order to inform our faith in and knowledge of God. While God chose different methods to communicate to mankind in the past (and all of these methods involved the use of language) in the latter days it is the Scriptures, the written collection of prophecies, history, and eye witnesses to God’s work, that is our final source of instruction from God.
The Tower of Babel
If language is responsible for creation and, indeed, part of God’s nature, why are there so many languages, and why do languages change over time?
The Bible does us the courtesy of answering this question early. As a result of man’s rebellion, languages were “confused,” at the Tower of Babel. This is a very instructive story against both modernism and postmodernism.
First of all, in direct disobedience to God, humanity decided to unify as a single culture, building a city and a tower as the center of their new culture. They wanted to build this tower to the heavens from the ground up. When God sees this, he says something very interesting: “now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.”
In essence, with a single language, man could make the fatal mistake of beginning to change the meaning of words, destroying any truth behind language. So what God did by confusing their languages was a preservative of truth. How? If Robinson Crusoe is trapped on an island with a native, Friday, and they don’t speak the same language, how do they communicate? They will need to start labeling things with the words from their languages. By finding commonalities, they can then communicate. The act of translation forces words to refer to the higher truths that lie behind them. Thus, by confusing language, God preserved its integrity.
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