In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
- Genesis 1:1
“Words cannot express how I feel.” Many of us have probably said this or something like it. I know I have.
But as common as it is to hear people say that words cannot express this or that, this is a mistake. Words are entirely adequate to express all thoughts.
One lesson in the adequacy of language is found right in Genesis 1, where we see God speak the heavens the earth and all that is in them into existence. If words are adequate to bring about the creation of the universe, by implication words are certainly capable of expressing whatever occurs within the universe. This seems like an obvious point, yet for those of us who live in the irrational and emotional 21st century, it’s a point that must be emphasized.
And God said, Let there be light….
It was mentioned earlier in this series that the Westminster Shorter Catechism provides a brilliant definition of the work of creation. Question 9 asks, “What is the work of creation?,” the answer being, “The work of creation is, God’s making all things of nothing, by the word of his power, in the space of six days, and all very good.”
It was by the “word of his power” that God spoke the world into existence in Genesis. That same expression “the word of his power” occurs in the New Testament, where the Author of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is, at this very moment, “upholding all things by the word of his power.” The term “the word of his power” sounds a bit unusual in English. In his commentary on Hebrews, John Owen makes the point that one can change the order of the words from “the word of his power” to “the power of his word” with no difference in meaning. Owen notes that one can even express the same idea by saying “his powerful word.” Regardless of how one states the idea, in her Trinity Review “Linguistics and the Bible,” Marla Perkins Bevin noted that one implication of Genesis 1:1-3 is, “that what God says happens.”
Language, Neither Evolved nor Created
Most of us are familiar with the Darwinian explanation of the origin of the various forms of life we see. Sometimes called “molecules to man” evolution, Darwinism posits that all life has evolved over billions of years through a process called natural selection.
But while Darwinism’s influence in biology is well known, less well known is its influence in other fields of study. Modern linguistics – linguistics is the analysis of language – use Darwinist assumptions when discussing the origin of language.
In Wikipedia’s entry “Origin of Language,” we read that famed linguist Noam Chomsky holds that language arose from a single chance mutation in one individual about 100,000 years ago, and that the language faculty was installed in perfect or near-perfect form. It’s almost as if Chomsky is saying that the ability to use language was installed into a specific individual as one would install a program onto a computer. In this respect, Chomsky is closer to the truth than some of his linguist colleagues who hold that language developed slowly over time from animal grunts and squeals.
According to Bevin,
Language was not created and did not evolve from animal grunts or mews. God eternally has language as part of His rationality. Human beings have language because it is part of the image of God. Thus, God's use of language is an exemplar for human use of language, and it can be used to provide information about human language (“Linguistics and the Bible”).
Language is eternally part of God’s rationality, and men use language because by virtue of their rationality they are the image of God. Language is neither the result of evolution nor creation but precedes creation itself. “When God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light, the word (and therefore the idea) chronologically and logically preceded the visible light. God's idea of light and God's language about light preceded visible light.”
The Origin of Different Languages
Just as the origin of language itself is an impenetrable mystery to those who deny the Word of God, so too is the origin of the multitude of languages that now, and for some time past, exist in the world. That some languages are related to one another more closely than others is evident. For example, there are many cognate words between English and German. On the other hand, some languages have nothing in common, compare Chinese and English for one such example.
Where do all these languages come from? As the Newsweek article “Why Are There So Many Different Languages in the World?” conceded, secular linguists struggle to answer this question. “Why is it that humans speak so many languages? And why are they so unevenly spread across the planet?,” asks the article. As Newsweek puts it, “we have few clear answers to these fundamental questions about how humanity communicates.”
Now if the author of the Newsweek article had said, “I have few clear answers to these fundamental questions,” then this would have been a true statement. But such is not the case for everyone. For some of us know very well the origin of the multitude of languages that are spoken in the world. But the establishment intellectuals of our day will not hear it.
As with all other knowledge, Christians know the origin of the multitude of languages because it is, as all other knowledge, revealed to them in the Word of God. In Genesis 11 we read God’s account of the origin of the multitude of language, that it was punishment for the disobedience of the men who built the Tower of Babel.
Of course, if one were to present this argument in an academic setting, he would be immediately denounced as a quack and a fool and given the bum’s rush out of the ivory tower. I remember one of my Latin professors in college dismissing the Tower of Babel preemptively before anyone even brought it up in class. He was a brilliant man and gifted teacher, holding a Ph.D. from Cambridge. But on this fundamental question about language, not only did he not know the truth, but he was actively hostile to it.
As Christians, we need not be embarrassed of the truth revealed to us in the Scriptures. As Paul wrote, “But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty.” There was a time in the West when arguing from the Scriptures was respected among academics. Not anymore. There’s probably no way to be dismissed faster by academe than by accepting the Bible as inerrant and true. But then, that’s the world’s problem, not the Christian’s.
Our Words Matter
Somewhere in one of his lectures, I don’t have the reference handy, John Robbins made the point that people today tend to dismiss words as unimportant. Indeed, they do. One can see this in the way many politicians breath lies as easily as most of us breathe air, or in the crude insults some people wield so casually on social media platforms.
But the Bible says our words, the words you and I use, matter in eternity. This may seem shocking to some, focused as we are in our time on actions and material things rather than words. But given that it was words that created the material things around us, and not material things that created words, it should come as no surprise that words matter to God.
Said Jesus, “But I say to you that for every idle word that men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matthew 12:36-37). Why is this? Because our words show what we are in our hearts. In another place Jesus said, “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks (Luke 6:45). Our words are revealers of who we are. They show whether we are wise men or fools. Whether we are saved or lost.
God prohibits lying and went so far as to list bearing false witness as one of the Ten Commandments. Wrote Bevin,
God's abhorrence of lying makes sense because when God speaks, He describes or creates reality, and when people speak, God commands that human language should express the truth. God did not capriciously decide that human beings should not lie; He objects to lying because He is Truth itself, and His own use of language is truthful. If anyone fails to understand the pragmatics of first-words-then-things in Genesis 1, the significance of "Thus says the Lord" and God's abhorrence of lying might also be missed (“Linguistics”).
Jesus told his hearers that liars have the devil as their father. “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it” (John 8:44).
Words matter. It was words that God used to create the heavens and the earth. It is our words, spoken and unspoken, by which we will be judged. Let us take care to respect the power of words, both those of others and our own.