That’s an extremely helpful parallel. People like Scot McKnight don’t think it’s okay to reduce the gospel to the soterian gospel. He’s written books like The King Jesus Gospel to combat that idea. He won’t argue that it doesn’t happen, or that it’s grammatically incorrect, or that it’s a recent shift. But he still pushes against this redefinition, even if he’s well aware that he won’t entirely unseat it.
To use another example, many people use heaven to refer to where we go when we die. Some even capitalize it as Heaven so it looks even more like a place name. And people like N. T. Wright have written books like Surprised by Hope to counteract this longstanding contracted definition that ends up shifting how we read the Bible’s words about heaven.
So I do think this issue matters. When a word or phrase in the Bible becomes shorthand for something different – something smaller than what it biblically means – it’s problematic. The Gospel reduces to salvation and/or Jesus’ death, Heaven reduces to where we go after death, the Word of God reduces to the Bible. Then when we go back to the Bible and read about the gospel or heaven or the word of God, it’s natural to carry the contracted definitions with us, especially when the immediate context doesn’t directly contradict them.
On the linguistic argument, of course I agree that these contracted definitions are pervasive, grammatically correct, and ancient. But I still don’t see them as fine. I wouldn’t presume to try and change the vocabulary of others, especially when some of those Christians have a vibrant faith that absolutely does not need some cultural foreigner telling them they’re speaking wrong. But in my own cultural background in fundamentalism, the Word of God = Bible language was a key rhetorical ploy used to misread passages about the word of God, to claim too much about the Bible, and to distance all other revelation (especially in the natural world) from God.
Thank you for outlining your evidence. It is great to have it all in one place.
Regrettably, all you have demonstrated is that you are arguing against propositions that Christy is not making. As I said in my last post:
Look, I really hate to do this, but I don’t see another choice. Please understand, this is NOT personal:
Arguments 1-3 are disqualified as they are arguing against theological positions not language meaning and usage. The argument put forward by Christy (and others) is not about theological accuracy.
Argument 4 can be pastorally and apologetically debatable ad nausium. In reality, it is an admission that English speakers do use the phrase Word of God to refer to the Bible, if they didn’t why would you be concerned about the phrases effects?
Argument 5, appears to be an appeal to authority. Either way, it is an admission that English speakers do use the phrase Word of God to refer to the BiblE. If they didn’t why would you be concerned as to whether they had the right to do it.
I agree with all of this. Conversations with people about what they mean by “the gospel” or how they view the Bible, or what they think heaven is all about can be very productive. But telling people that they can’t or shouldn’t use certain words that communicate just fine in their context is just obnoxious and not productive at all. It also almost always involves telling people what they mean instead of asking what they mean, which is not a good dialogue strategy.
You don’t address people’s misconceptions about the Bible, the gospel, or heaven by policing their word choices, because the problem is mostly at the conceptual level, not the level of the linguistic label. Words do matter and do shape our views to a certain extent, but picking a different term or avoiding a widely used term for the Bible is not necessarily going to change people’s concept of the Bible in any meaningful way.
You can see that at work in the continual effort to come up with non-pejorative PC words. We have changed our accepted labels for people with limited cognitive capacity from moron, to mentally retarded, to mentally handicapped, to intellectually disabled, to “a person with atypical cognitive development,” but if you don’t change people’s concepts of the worth of people with cognitive differences, whatever label you pick will become pejorative over time and take on the exact same meaning as the label you replaced.
You keep insisting that using the term Word of God is somehow ideologically motivated, but you have provided zero evidence that this is actually the case. It’s not. I gave you links to Catholics, mainliners, black Protestants, Pentecostals, JWs, and Evangelicals all using it to mean the Bible. I gave you links to people using it in the 1800s, long before inerrancy was a thing. I guarantee that these groups have a great diversity of views on inerrancy, the suffiicency of Scripture, God’s revelation, inspiration, and even the divinity of Jesus. Using the term Word of God is not the same thing as “declaring the Bible the Word of God.” I think that has been made abundantly clear, and you have offered no actual arguments to support this assertion, you just keep re-asserting it.
I disagree with your characterizations of my arguments, which you reclassified as “evidences.”
As for linguistic accuracy, a topic which I see as much less than what Christy has expressed, I will note that calling the Bible the “Word of God” because it some of it are words of God is like calling the newspaper the “Word of Obama” because some of it are Obama quotes.
I don’t recall insisting that. Rather I am emphasizing that the term “Word of God” as a substitute for the term “Bible” is inconsistent with the scripture itself and that it is misleading.
On the other hand, it is difficult to visualize a preacher holding up his Bible and shouting “this is the Word of God” without pushing his ideology. Then when an honest, interested congregant finds an error in the “Word of God,” or even notes the books don’t claim to be God’s Word, his faith can be shaken.
I heartily agree that this thread is strange, but it is also disturbing, because it shows that Christians are still so enamored by semantic details that they lose track of the essence of what God is trying to convey to us, which is : How to live a virtuous life, a life that conforms to His Purpose. IMHO this thread is just further proof that, so far, theology and philosophy by themselves are NOT going to untangle this Gordian Knot. So maybe Science can help. And this is why I recommend reading Churchland’s new book, “Conscience”.
We Christians believe that God wishes to contact us humans through the Words of inspired Scripture. Churchland presents a readable scenario of the progress that has been made through neuroscience in determining what occurs in the synapses of the ‘reward centers’ of the brain in processing the meaning of any word or phrase–a meaning that has evolved during that individual’s previous experience. The summation of all the words any human has read has a great influence in forming his/her conscience, which may differ from the ‘collective conscience’ of the society he/she lives in. Which virtues (or vices) ends up predominating in such a conflict (personal vs. collective conscience) is often unsatisfying. At any rate, I believe that quibbling over whether the words: “Bible = Word of God?” is, to a great extent, a distraction.
This is why we should treat our Conscience as a most precious Gift from God, at least when virtuous behavior results in maximizing the brain’s reward function. Churchland’s book gives the correct ‘agnostic’ interpretation that neural science will never prove that it is God who choses this method to accomplish His purpose of creating a creature ’ in His Image’, but it certainly does not discount that belief.
If you don’t buy the book, the Introduction is worth reading, because it reiterates the way that science can, more often, support and strengthen religion, rather than attempt to displace it.
Al Leo
Hm. Good question. I sympathize with the emphasis that the Bible is not as great as Christ, but even Muslims (I grew up on a Muslim area of West Africa) can consider both Christ and the Qur’an to be the word of God. Thus, a Christian evangelist used the Islamic quote, “The prophet Jesus, the son of Mary, the word of God, the spirit of God,” and discussed how a message from God such as a letter or written word; or God’s representative, Christ–are to us as God–because that is what we see of Him. Does that help at all?
Thanks.
In math, and @LM77 set this up as a math equation, if a + b = x and c + d + x, then a + b = c + d = x. Or if 3 + 4 = x, and 5 + 2 = x, then 3 + 4 = 5 + 2 = 7
If Jesus Christ = the Word of God, then the Bible or the Book of God, cannot also be the Word of God, because the Bible is Not Jesus Christ.
Right. Because words follow mathematical rules now? These kind of distractions are what people resort to when they realize the assertions they have been making are not really defensible and the “other side” made all the good points.
The = in the thread title stands in for “have equivalent meaning” not “be numerically identical.” Words do not have numerical identities, and you know that. Plus your logic completely fails. If woman = human, than man can’t also be human, because man is not woman.
Men and women are not the same, but they are both human. 1 woman + 1 man do not equal 2 women or 2 men, but using the highest common denominator it does make 2 humans. The Bible is Holy and Jesus Christ is God. There are similarities, but no common denominator.
The issue is logic, and Jesus Christ is the Logos. Entities that are different in nature are not the same, and truthfully cannot be called by the same name.
Sometimes two different entities share the same name. There is a Paris in Texas and one in France. It is not untruthful to call both entities the name Paris. Same with Word of God. It can name both the Bible and Jesus. That in no way means the Bible is Jesus. It means you have to look at the context to understand which referent the word has. This is not hard. It is not unusual.
I think there is confusion here. We are not discussing nature (in this argument) since we are not discussing ontology, but use of words. If you are after logic, perhaps, a simpler argument will help clarify this:
English people call Jesus the Word of God
English people call the Bible the Word of God.
Therefore, both Jesus and the Bible are called the Word of God by English people.
If I am incorrect, please provide evidence that proves that people do not use the phrase in these ways.
Except that Paris (Texas) and Paris (France) are both Paris.
The Bible, however, is not the Word of God. It is a compilation of documents that are, for the most part, the words of people.
And to call the Bible the Word of God is to disagree with the meaning of the term Word of God found in the Bible. And to call the Bible the Word of God is to mislead others.
So I take it that if you meet any people from Crete you’ll be sure to refer to them as … ‘liars, vicious brutes, lazy gluttons’ then? Because in Titus (1:12) Paul affirms that this is what they are. Once you find a label in the Bible - no changing of that label is allowed, I take it?
That’s your opinion. I have shown you multiple examples that for the majority of the English speaking community, Word of God is a name used to refer to the Bible, and that use of the term does not “mislead” people to insist on inerrancy, be confused with Jesus, or think the Bible is divine. You can deny that this should be reality, but it is still reality.
Your reasoning about how language and translation work is fundamentally flawed.
In the Bible, ekklesia refers only to the assembly of believers, never to a building. We translate ekklesia as ‘church’ in English. In English ‘church’ can also refer to a building where the assembly of believers meets. You usually can tell easily from context whether someone is referring to a group of believers or a building where they meet.
By the logic you keep advocating about how English speakers must use the label Word of God, no one should in English, ever refer to the building where Christians meet as a ‘church,’ because in English translations of the Bible, ‘church’ never refers to a building, it only means an assembly of believers, and that is therefore the only biblical use of the word, and anything else is misleading. Do you see how this argument fails? It refuses to acknowledge the reality that the English language allows for the word ‘church’ to name two completely different kinds of referents with the same name, ‘church.’ You refuse to acknowledge that the English language allows word (Word) of God to name Jesus, the Bible, and God’s message or revelation. That is a fact of the language. The Bible has no authority over how English works and does not in any way determine the semantic range of the English words that are chosen to translate the Greek.
. Genuine question, when did I do that?