Grace Theological
Journal 9.1 (1988) 21-43
[Copyright © 1988
Grace Theological Seminary; cited with permission;
digitally prepared for
use at Gordon and
THE VALIDITY OF HUMAN
LANGUAGE: A VEHICLE FOR
DIVINE TRUTH
JACK BARENTSEN
Doubts have arisen
about the adequacy of human language to
convey inerrant truth
from God to man. These doubts are rooted in
an empirical
epistemology, as elaborated by Hume, Kant, Heidegger
and others. Many
theologians adopted such an empirical view and
found themselves unable
to defend a biblical view of divine, inerrant
revelation. Barth was slightly more successful, but in the end he
failed. The problem is
the empirical epistemology that first analyzes
man's relationship with
creation. Biblically, the starting point should
be an analysis of man's
relationship with his Creator. When ap-
proached this way, creation (especially the creation of man in God's
image) and the
incarnation show that God and man possess an
adequate, shared
communication system that enables God to com-
municate intelligibly and inerrantly with
man. Furthermore, the
Bible's insistence on
written revelation shows that inerrant divine
communication carries
the same authority whether written or spoken.
* * *
As
a result of the materialistic, empirical scepticism
of the last two
centuries,
many theologians entertain doubts about the ade-
quacy of human language to convey divine truth (or,
in some cases,
to
convey truth of any kind). This review of the philosophical and
theological
origins of the current doubts about language lays a
foundation
for a biblical view of language.
THE CONTEMPORARY PROBLEM
One recent writer stated the problem of the
adequacy of religious
language
in these words:
The problem of religious knowledge, in the context
of contemporary
philosophical analysis, is basically this: no
one has any. The problem of
22
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religious language, in the same context, is
this: can we find an excuse
for uttering these sentences we apparently have
no business saying?1
The
writer highlights two important aspects of the debate on the
adequacy
of language. First, the problems of religious knowledge and
language
arise primarily in the context of contemporary philosophical
analysis.
Second, the problem of religious language is inherent in the
current
skeptical view of religious knowledge: if we have no knowl-
edge
of transcendent realities, how could we speak about them in any
meaningful
way?2 What philosophical currents have led to such a
bleak
view of the possibility of religious knowledge and language?
PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND
Hume's Empiricism
David Hume (1711-1776) believed that all
knowledge is derived
from
our sensations, referring to vision, hearing, feeling, smelling,
and
tasting. Experience alone is the key to understanding one's
environment.
Hume elevated experience as the measure of truth and
held
that ideas or thoughts could be valid only if they have their roots
in
experience.
This premise has important implications for our
understanding
of
intangible concepts such as cause and effect, theistic arguments, or
ethics.
For instance, no one has ever seen a
cause or an effect. All we
have
seen is a succession of events that has been repeated several
times
so that in our minds we come to
connect them as cause and
effect.
Since nobody can observe cause or effect in a literal sense, it is
impossible
to know whether such concepts are
true. One may only
suggest
or speculate that such concepts are true about his experience.
Knowledge is thus strictly limited to experience.
It does not
include
speculation about experience. Concepts like cause and effect
are
thereby relegated to the realm of speculation rather than to the
realm
of knowledge.
Hume applies the same argument to Christianity,
theistic proofs,
ethics
(especially when dealing with absolute standards), and other
related
concepts:
If we take in our hand any volume--of divinity
or school metaphysics,
for instance--let us ask Does it contain any abstract reasoning con-
cerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental
1 D. R. Broi1es, "Linguistic Analysis
of Religious Language," Religious
Language
and Knowledge (ed. R. H. Ayers and W.
T. Blackstone;
Georgia
Press, 1981) 135.
2 Cf. L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (trans. O. F. Pears
and B. F.
McGuinness;
BARENTSEN: THE VALIDITY OF HUMAN LANGUAGE 23
reasoning
concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then
to the flames: for it can contain nothing except
sophistry and illusion.3
This position is called "empirical skepticism":
any concept that
does
not immediately rest on experience cannot be the subject of our
knowledge.
Hume would not actually deny such intangible concepts.
Cause
and effect are helpful categories in discussing our experience,
but
the closest we come to knowledge is to assert that such categories
are
probable.4 And while the concept of probability can be helpful, it
cannot
be described as settled knowledge.
Though it may be helpful
to
digest the weatherman's nightly predictions, one grants them little
status
above that of informed speculation.
Kant's Metaphysical
Dualism
The problem with Hume's philosophy is that
knowledge is not
just
limited; it is, in fact, impossible. How could knowledge arise
from
sensations? Our perception of a chair is no more than various
impressions
like the color brown, a particular shape, and a hard or
soft
feeling. These impressions are combined into the image of a
chair.
But what makes us select only those sensations that pertain to
our
perception of the chair rather than one of the dozens of other
impressions
we are receiving, such as the room being stuffy, the smell
of
food, the phone ringing, etc.? It would seem that the mind has an
important
part in arranging all these sensations so that our world
becomes
intelligible. "Knowledge presupposes the recognition and
comparison
of causal, spatial and temporal relations, and much
more.
None of this, however, is provided by the senses. They give
only
tastes, odors, color patches and so on.”5
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) attempted to resolve
this difficulty
by
appealing both to the human intellect and our experiences. His
basic
conclusion was that the mind had certain innate categories, such
as
space and time, by which the sensory data could be organized and
arranged,
and which thus made knowledge possible.6
This theory does not escape all of the
difficulties of Hume's
empiricism.
Concepts like causality and necessity are now part of the
mind's
makeup and help us to explain our world. But Kant's cate-
gories of the mind only help to organize and arrange
the sensory
data;
they are of no help in thinking about the metaphysical world.
3 D. Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (
Merrill,
1962), sec. 12, pt. 3, quoted in G. R. Habermas,
"Skepticism: Hume," Biblical
Errancy: An Analysis of its Philosophical Roots (ed. N. L. Geisler;
Zondervan, 1981) 32.
4 Habermas,
"Skepticism: Hume," 32.
5 D. W. Beck, "Agnosticism:
Kant," in Geisler, Biblical Errancy, 57.
6 Ibid., 59.
24
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THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL
Consequently,
a concept of God is beyond our sensations and ex-
periences as well as beyond our mind's makeup.
Even though knowl-
edge
of experience is now possible, we are still unable to have
knowledge
of metaphysical realities.
Kant, however, pursued the issue further. Being
a religious man,
he
wished to establish a rational place for God in his system. For
ethics,
this insistence on rationality meant that any acceptable ab-
solute
standards had to be derived from the following maxim: "Act
only
according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will
that
it should be a universal law"; that is, you should do as you want
everyone
else to do. This is called the "categorical imperative." From
this
kind of reasoning, Kant envisaged that one could arrive at all
other
great metaphysical ideas, like freedom, God, and immortality.7
These
concepts, though, cannot be known; they are speculations in
considering
the practical way of life.8
For Kant, then, reason was sufficient to
discover all the vital
truths
that orthodox Christianity derived from revelation. Revelation
became
superfluous. Kant's insistence upon the rationality of ethics
and
religion left no place for divine revelation. Even so, reason could
only
speculate about metaphysical realities, but it could not attain
absolute
knowledge in this area.
Kant's philosophy, like Hume's, has no room for
religious knowl-
edge
beyond that of speculation. But Kant, unlike Hume, found a
place
for religion in his system through his categorical imperative. His
religion
is not a revered religion, but an ethical one.9
THEOLOGICAL
IMPLICATIONS
Nineteenth Century
Liberalism
Many nineteenth century theologians, following
Hume's skeptical
views,
rejected the supernatural. God, Christ, angels and many other
concepts
of the supernatural are not immediately subject to our
senses
of hearing, vision, touch, taste or smell. Therefore, so these
theologians
reasoned, we cannot really know anything about the
supernatural;
all we have is speculation. These men came to see the
world
as a closed continuum without any supernatural beings or
events.
Naturally, the idea followed that we have no
divine revelation. In
a
closed continuum God could not have intervened to create any
7 Ibid., 6l.
8 Cf. C. van Til,
The Protestant Doctrine of Scripture
(N.p.: den Bulk Christian
Foundation,
1967) 54.
9 In biblical exegesis a corresponding
shift has been noticed, "from Luther's explicit
christocentrism to ethicocentrism"
(Beck, "Agnosticism: Kant," 67).
BARENTSEN: THE VALIDITY OF HUMAN LANGUAGE 25
written,
revealed record. "In a closed system. . . any idea of revela-
tion becomes nonsense."10 The
emphasis shifted accordingly from
God's
Word to human witness. The Bible became only a record of
man's
experiences of the divine; and rather than revealing God, the
Bible
dealt with man's reactions to what he perceived to be divine.
Although
man's experience with the divine is important, it is inade-
quate to serve as the basis of a theistic worldview.
The next logical step was to forsake the Bible
altogether. How-
ever,
theologians generally avoided this radical step by rejecting as
authoritative
any human influences in the Bible while holding on to
what
traces of divine influence they could find. The Historical-Critical
school
represents this movement. The focus of exegesis became God's
activity
in history rather than his word about these activities. Doc-
trine
was inferred from the historical record rather than being derived
from
God's statements about that record. Although God was not
conceived
of as intervening directly in history (as witnessed by the
denial
of miracles11) he apparently could still have some effect.12
Barth's Neo-Orthodoxy
It seems that one of Karl Barth's
main concerns has been to
recover
a biblical concept of God. In order to do so, he returned to
some
concept of revelation; although it was not in agreement with the
biblical
concept. He also recovered a sense of God, in that God was
supposed
to speak through the Bible.
Yet, his effort was crippled from the beginning,
because he
founded
his theology on the Kantian and Humean premise that
knowledge
is derived from experience.
We cannot conceive God because we cannot even
contemplate him. He
cannot be the object of one of those perceptions
to which our concepts,
our thought forms and finally our words and
sentences are related.13
Furthermore,
under the ban of Kantian metaphysical dualism, he
stated:
"God cannot be compared to anyone or anything. He is only
like
himself."14 That is, God is wholly Other, totally different
from
10 F. A. Schaeffer, He Is There And He Is Not Silent (
1972)
63.
11 Habermas,
"Skepticism: Hume," 31.
12 S. Obitts,
"The Meaning and Use of Religious Language," Tensions of Con-
temporary Theology (ed. S. N. Gundry and
A. F. Johnson;
13 K. Barth, Church Dogmatics
(
references
to Barth's Church Dogmatics
as given are cited in G. H. Clark, Karl Barth's
Theological Method (Philadelphia:
Presbyterian and Reformed, 1963). The number in
parentheses
refers to this work.
14 Ibid., II, 1:376 (146).
26
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ourselves.
He is completely removed from the sphere of sensory
experience.
Consequently, man cannot attain to a true knowledge of
God.15
Barth's view of language
proceeds from this emphasis on experi-
ence. Language, he argues, as sinful and perverted
man uses it, is
limited
to this world.16 Any attempt and intention to speak of
God is
impossible,
because "God does not belong to the world. Therefore he
does
not belong to the series of objects for which we have categories
and
words."17 And, of
course, without concepts and words, we
cannot
speak of God.
Despite his heavy emphasis on the limitations of
language, Barth
makes
a desperate attempt to allow language to speak of God.
Theological
language, "whatever the cost, must always speak and
believe
that it can speak contrary to the natural capacity of this
language,
as theological language of God's revelation.”18 How can
language
on the one hand be so limited that it cannot possibly speak
of
God, while on the other hand the theologian must believe that,
"whatever
the cost," this language can speak of God? The answer
seems
to lie in a mystical view of language. In its normal use,
language
refers to the objects of our experience; but in its theological
use,
it points to some greater reality beyond itself. A dogma seems to
refer
to an inner meaning that is not itself a proposition, although
this
inner meaning is referred to by a proposition. Barth
most
emphatically
refuses to identify the inner meaning of a dogma with
the
plain meaning of the proposition, which is considered merely an
impersonal,
objective truth-in-itself.19 The Bible no longer contains
propositional
truth, but rather becomes the vehicle through which
"the
prophets and apostles and he of whom they testify rise up and
meet
the Church in a living way.”20
Barth's attempt to move toward
a more biblical religion than
what
liberal theology offered was noble. However, by granting some
of
the premises of liberalism, he compromised his position from the
very
beginning. What we have left is not a biblical religion of
15 0n this basis Barth
later denied that man was created in the image of God (G. H.
16 Barth, Church Dogmatics,
I, 1 :390 (119).
l7 Ibid., I, 2:750 (117).
18 Ibid., I, 1:390 (120).
19 Ibid., I, 1:313 (135). See also
logical Method, 129.
20 Ibid., I, 2:582. See also J. W.
Montgomery, "Inspiration and Inerrancy: A New
Departure,"
Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological
Society 8:2 (1965) 63-66. Note the
similarity
to Kierkegaard's rejection of objective divine truth in favor of subjectivity,
discussed
by N. L. Geisler, "Philosophical Presuppositions
of Biblical Errancy," in
Inerrancy (ed. N. L. Geisler;
BARENTSEN: THE VALIDITY OF HUMAN LANGUAGE 27
revelation,
but a system of religious beliefs that contrasts to an
extreme
degree man's finitude and God's transcendence. As a con-
sequence,
man cannot really know God in the traditional sense, so
Barth takes recourse to existentialism; rather than
choosing for
revealed
religion, he chooses the path of irrationalism.21
Some Twentieth Century
Developments
Barth's idea of revelation is
closely related to Kierkegaard's idea
of
truth as subjectivity instead of objective knowledge.22 It is the
idea
that
there can be "no absolute expression of truth in propositional
form.”23
In contemporary theology this idea takes various forms.
Some
would hold that revelation is not incompatible with proposi-
tional truth but that the most important aspect of
revelation is "God
giving
himself to us in Jesus Christ.”24 But for most writers the choice
is
between the person of God and propositions about him.25 Yet
others,
repulsed by the idea that our speech makes God into an
object,
hold that any speech about God is illegitimate.26
The separation of the subjective understanding
of truth from the
objective
reality to be understood gives rise to a similar dichotomy
between
God's words and his acts. God's words, we are told, do not
convey
information either about the world or about himself, pri-
marily because supernatural words cannot occur in an
experiential
type
of knowledge.27 The attractive suggestion is made that the Bible
is
"not propositional and static, but dynamic and active; its focus is
on
acts, not assertions.”28 While there is an element of truth here
(that
the Bible is dynamic, cf. Heb
21"It is not surprising that Dr. Karl Barth's slogan Finitum non capax infiniti [the
finite
cannot comprehend the infinite] went together with a denial. . . of any
rational
understanding
of revelation" (E. Mascall, Words and Images: A Study in Theological
Discourse [
Theology [
22G. H. Clark, Religion, Reason, and Revelation (
Reformed,
1961) 76.
23 See
24 J. H. Gill, "Talk About Religions
Talk," New Theology No. 4 (ed.
M. E. Marty
and
D. G. Peerman;
25 See Geisler,
"Philosophical Presuppositions of Biblical Errancy,"
330.
26 H. Ott,
"Language and Understanding," in Marty and Peerman,
New Theology
No.
4, 142. Yet another form of the objection is that language cannot express
absolute
truth,
because it is "conditioned by its historical development and usage"
(see
gomery, "Inspiration and Inerrancy," 53; see
our discussion later in this article).
27 See. C. F. H. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority (6 vols.;
1976-1982),
3:248.
28 See
the
influence of this thinking when he states, "At the core of the biblical
conception is
revelation
as divine activity" (Biblical
Revelation [Chicago: Moody, 1971] 31).
28
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minimize
God's statements while exclusively emphasizing his acts in
history
.29
Bultmann and Brunner have
further developed Barth's mystical
view
of theological language. Language about God is not merely
propositional
truth but is instead symbolic of the greater reality to
which
it refers.30 Their program of demythologizing biblical language
would
presumably bring one closer to God.31
Heidegger's Irrational
Mysticism
Heidegger takes the concept of knowledge based
on experience
to
its logical extreme. For him, any kind of language is mystical, not
just
theological language. Kant had argued that knowledge of reality
was
only possible through the categories of the mind. Since we
cannot
know things apart from these categories, Heidegger maintains
that
we cannot know things as they are "in-themselves." So no true
knowledge
of reality as it is "in-itself" is possible.
The result of Heidegger's philosophy is that not
only are meta-
physical
realities beyond the scope of our knowledge, but so are
physical
realities. Earlier, divine realities constituted the ineffable
reality
that is encountered rather than heard or understood, but now
everything
we see and experience is really ineffable. To put it in more
Heideggerian terms,
language becomes mystical message from the
ineffable voice of Being.
The unsayable cannot
be said, only felt.32
Or,
according to Van Til's interpretation, "there is
a kernel of
thingness in every concrete fact that utterly
escapes all possibility of
expression.”33
Thus, all of language, not merely theological language,
is
reduced to a function other than conveying cognitive knowledge.
At
least two important corollaries of this philosophy should be
mentioned.
First, as we hinted, knowledge is no longer the organiza-
tion of empirical data into true propositions. This
would only amount
to
"substituting a small segment of verbalization for experiential
29 R. K. Curtis, "Language and
Theology: Some Basic Considerations," GordRev
1:3
(1955) 102.
30 See N. L. Geisler,
Philosophy of Religion (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 1974) 230.
31 A. Dulles, "Symbol, Myth, and the
Biblical Revelation," in Marty and Peerman,
New Theology No.4, 41.
32 See H. M. Ducharme,
Jr., "Mysticism: Heidegger," in Geisler, Biblical Er-
rancy, 223.
33 C. van Til,
"Introduction," in B. B. Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of
the Bible (Phillipsburg, NJ:
Presbyterian and Reformed, 1948) 19.
BARENTSEN: THE VALIDITY OF HUMAN LANGUAGE 29
knowledge.”34
So, while propositional knowledge may be public since
many
people can agree with it, the new concept of experiential
knowledge
is private since each person's experiences differ, if ever so
slightly,
from the experiences of others. "No two people see anything
alike
in every respect.”35
A second corollary of this thoroughgoing
relativity in language is
that
the study of a text no longer needs to be a consideration of the
intentions
of the author as expressed in the affirmations of the text;
rather
the text is one object among many in our environment. The
text
now becomes autonomous and its meaning depends on the needs
of
human existence at any particular time.36 A multiplicity of mean-
ings results which cannot be checked except by the
existential truth
each
meaning carries for a particular person.37
EVALUATION
Following empirical philosophies, theologians
have often con-
sidered truth more and more as a subjective
event. This has dan-
gerous consequences. If propositions merely point to
some greater
reality
which itself cannot be expressed in propositions, then how can
we
know anything about that reality? If we can have a genuine
experience
of that reality, it would seem that we could assert at least a
few
objective truths about it in propositional form.
A more serious problem is this: since experience
cannot be
expressed
in propositions, how can we know whether it is true or
false?
This seems impossible to determine.38 We seem to have no
means
by which to distinguish an experience with a greater, evil
reality
from a similar experience with a good reality. Clearly, the
theory
that knowledge is based on experience is not a very satis-
factory
solution to the philosophical problem of knowledge.
With
regard to theological language, the proposed choice be-
tween the person of God and propositions about him is
a false
dilemma.
It is not a question of either/or but rather of both/and.
Revelation
is God revealing himself--sometimes in propositional
34 Curtis, "Language and
Theology," 99.
35 Ibid., 100.
36 Ducharme,
"Mysticism: Heidegger," 212. Note the similarity with the distinction
sometimes
made between devotional Bible reading and biblical exegesis.
37 At this point a brief analysis of Ayer's
Language, Truth and Logic and some of
Wittgenstein's
writings could be helpful, but it exceeds the scope of this article. Suffice
it
to mention that the basic problem remains the same, an epistemology that wants
to
derive
all knowledge from experience alone.
38
30
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truth,
sometimes in personal acts (e.g., Isa 6:l-8)--but
always for the
purpose
of our trusting the person of God.
The disjunction between faith in a person and
belief in a creed is a
delusion. . . . Trust in a person is a knowledge
of a person; it is a
matter of assenting to certain propositions.39
As
long as propositions take us beyond dry creedal conformity into a
relationship
with a living person, there is no real person/proposition
disunity.
One may well conclude, then, that the attempt to
explain theo-
logical
language in terms of empirical knowledge theory is an utter
failure.
Without reference to the biblical concept of divine revelation,
theological
language will either crash on the rocks of rationalism or
evaporate
in the mysteries of irrationalism.
TOWARD A BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE:
PRESUPPOSITIONAL
APPROACH
The failure of modern philosophy to defend even
the possibility
of
theological language reinforces an important principle: that "Chris-
tianity is based on revelation, not experience.”40
Therefore, instead of
refuting
sceptics on their own grounds or building a
philosophy of
language
on their philosophical premises (as theologians have tried
and
failed), biblical data will be used to paint a biblical picture of
religious
language.
It may be objected that such a presuppositional approach in-
volves circular reasoning.41 But the choice
is not between one ap-
proach that is circular in its reasoning and another
that is not. It
should
be evident from this review of modern philosophy that once
one
assumes knowledge to be exclusively experiential, he will not be
able
to defend propositional revelation. This in turn implies that
knowledge
is only experiential--which is circular reasoning. The
choice
is, rather, between sets of presuppositions.
EXPLORING BIBLICAL DATA
The Bible never directly addresses the question
of whether God
can
meaningfully speak to man. It is assumed as self-evident that God
39 Ibid., 102. Notice also that the Bible
rules out the concept of existential or
subjective
truth, because it frequently refers to "hearing" or "understanding”
terms
which
would be irrelevant on the modern view, according to W. J. Martin, “Special
Revelation
as Objective," in C. F. H. Henry, Revelation
and the Bible (
Baker,
1958) 66.
40
41 M. E. Taber, "Fundamentalist
Logic," The Christian Century,
BARENTSEN: THE VALIDITY OF HUMAN LANGUAGE 31
can
intelligibly communicate with the human beings he created.
Likewise
it is assumed that man can understand and interact with the
God
who made him.42 As these assumptions are uncovered exegeti-
cally, we will address the issues often discussed
under the heading of
"philosophy
of language. "
The Starting Point of a
Biblical Philosophy of Language
As has been suggested, one of the Bible's
assumptions is that
God
can speak to man because he created him. In other words, God
must
have endowed man with adequate faculties to respond to and
interact
with his Creator. One of the most prominent features of the
creation
of mankind is that God created them "in his own image"
(Gen
1:27). This text (and related ones) brings out some important
guidelines
for a doctrine of the image of God in man without directly
defining
it.
Gen
likeness,"
uses the two terms Ml,c, and tUmD;. It appears that both
refer
to
a visible image or at least something that can be visualized, while
tUmD is the more abstract of
the two.43 The Hebrew construction is
most
likely a hendiadys and would therefore function as a form of
parallelism,44
so it is best to take the latter term as intensifying the
former.
Thus, we should not distinguish rigidly between the two
terms.45
The resultant meaning is that "man, the end point, can be
recognized
as being an adequate copy of the God who made him, the
starting
point.”46
It would be hard to make much of the different
prepositions
used,
- B
and - K.
While the clause in Gen 1:26 reads vntvmdk
vnmlcb it
reads
vmlck
vtvmdb, in Gen 5:3; the prepositions remain in place,
but
the
nouns have changed positions. The difference in the use of these
42 See J. I. Packer, "The Adequacy of
Human Language," in Geisler, Inerrancy,
208-11
for a brief analysis of the kind of language the Bible uses. He shows that
biblical
language is a normal language, no different from daily speech except in the
topics
it deals with.
43 T. Craigen,
"Selem and Demut: An
Exegetical Interaction" (unpublished term
paper,
Grace Theological Seminary, 1980) 5, 11.
44 P. F. Taylor, "Man: His Image and
Dominion" (unpublished Th.D. dissertation,
Grace
Theological Seminary, 1974) 62-63.
45 L. S. Chafer, Systematic Theology (8 vols.;
2:161;
C. L. Feinberg, "The Image of God," BSac 129 (June-August 1972) 237;
C. F.
Keil and F. Delitzsch, The Pentateuch, vol. I (trans. J.
Martin, in Biblical Commentary
on
the Old Testament;
Genesis, vol. I (Grand Rapids:
Baker, 1942); and Taylor, "Man: His Image and
Dominion,"
71.
46 Craigen,
"Selem and Demut: An
Exegetical Interaction," 24.
32
GRACE THEOLOGICAL
JOURNAL
prepositions
is negligible.47 Both of these prepositions can mean
"after,"
but it would be clumsy to interpret this as if man is the copy
of
an image of God, "after our image and likeness." Rather we should
take
this to mean that man himself constitutes the image of God.48
Furthermore,
Gen
man's
dominion in one single breath. This should not, however, lead
us
to conclude that dominion is part of this image:
Man must exist before dominion can be invested
in him and. . . man
has authority because of the truth that he is
made in the image or
likeness of God. The authority is not the cause
of the image or likeness,
but the image or likeness is the ground of
authority.49
The
next two verses (vv 27-28) identify the image as part of man's
essential
makeup, whereas dominion is an office conferred upon him;
the
image is created, the dominion is commanded. The image is the
foundation
of man's dominion.50
Thus, according to Gen 1:26-28, man himself is
the image of
God
in the sense that God is the pattern after which man was made;
God
is the archetype and man the ectype. As a result man has been
granted
dominion over the earth.
In light of this, it would be erroneous to
follow the common
procedure
of determining the content of the image of God by
discerning
what characteristics differentiate man from animals. If
God
is the archetype, then a more biblical approach is to examine the
divine
image in relation to God, not in relation to the rest of
creation.51
Accordingly, a biblical philosophy of language
(as well as a bib-
lical epistemology) should begin by analyzing the
Creator-creature
relationship
and only secondarily the relationships between creatures
and
with the rest of creation.52 This is strikingly different from the
philosophies
of Hume and Kant which began by analyzing man's
relationship
with created things and sought to explain any relation-
ship
with the supernatural in terms of the observable relationships
between
man and things.
47 Ibid., 19. Cf. also L. Berkhof, Systematic
Theology (
1941)
204; J. Calvin, Commentaries on the First
Book of Moses Called Genesis (trans.
and
ed. J. King, reprint ed.;
Pentateuch; and Leupold, Exposition
of Genesis.
48
49 Chafer, Systematic Theology, 2:162.
50 Feinberg, "The Image of God," 239; Keil and Delitzsch,