Our Language About God

First of all, human language is incapable of comprehensively describing or extolling God. Therefore, we need to understand the nature of human speech that befits our description of God. There are three senses in which we use language. First, we find language used in an ordinary or literal sense, where the word means what it signifies in common parlance (use of wheat in Gen.30:14). Second, we can use it in a technical or scientific sense, where the word takes on a particular connotation (use of wheat in Ezra 6:9). Third, we can employ a poetic sense where by employing adjectives and other descriptive elements, we find language used in a metaphorical fashion (use of wheat in Songs.7:2).

Ordinary literal sense is foundational to the other two usages, while the poetic sense gives us more than just cognitive information, as in the case of the scientific sense. Poetic language, though oriented towards our experiential appreciation of the thing described, is nonetheless true in its communication of truth. The language of Scripture, when it comes to describing God, is cast in the experiential acquaintance of God by its inspired authors. Hence, we have to realise that the language of Scripture concerning God, all the while being accurate, is nonetheless accommodated for our understanding. It is in this theological sense, metaphoric.

Second, regarding our methodology, we as finite creatures are limited in our knowledge of God. Our knowledge of God is ectypal and not archetypal, meaning we only know God by means of His revelation, which is sufficient but not exhaustive. We derive our knowledge of God from what He has deemed to be sufficient to be revealed to us in Scripture. Hence, as Bavinck says, we can only apprehend God and not comprehend Him,

"agnosticism, suffering from a confusion of concepts, sees here an irresolvable contradiction in what Christian theology regards as an adorable mystery. It is completely incomprehensible to us how God can reveal himself and to some extent make himself known in created beings: eternity in time, immensity in space, infinity in the finite, immutability in change, being in becoming, the all, as it were, in that which is nothing. This mystery cannot be comprehended; it can only be gratefully acknowledged." ^[1]

Third, in our method of describing God’s perfections, we have to maintain the unity of God’s being and His perfections. His perfections are neither ingredients that compose His being nor are they parts that constitute His being. Hence, we should avoid proposing any ontological or economic hierarchies in the analysis of His perfections. In other words, the statement "God is love" is no more essential to God than the statement, "God is holy". For according to the Scriptures, God is a simple being (Deut. 6:4), both in His numerical and ontological unity. Numerical unity refers to His singularity, whereas His ontological unity refers to His simplicity. So God is simple means He is a being with no parts. It is because God is simple that we can assert that His perfections are neither ingredients nor parts of His being. Simplicity also helps us to understand the complex language of predication employed by Scripture. For example, John, in his gospel and his epistle, makes statements like, “God is spirit” (Jn. 4:24), “God is light” (1Jn. 1:5), and “God is love” (1Jn. 4:8). However, these positive statements of God do not mean we can import Greek notions of being and doing in our analysis of God and imagine His attributes as constituent parts of a compound being, rather God is what He has.

To summarise our methodology concerning our language of God, as Aquinas asserted ^[2], we can speak of God neither univocally nor equivocally, but only analogically, as the nature of correspondence between our language and His reality is a product of divine accommodation and condescension.