The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation

Episode 53 - Language’s Eternal Influence on Existence

June 13, 2024 • Paul

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Can language truly shape our reality? Join us in the Christ-centered Cosmic Civilization as we explore the profound theology of language, beginning with the divine act of creation itself. We'll discuss how God's spoken word, as depicted in Genesis 1, brought the universe into existence, highlighting the essential role of language in forming reality. This concept extends to the foundation of the church, where the preached word precedes its formation. Discover the intriguing idea that objects gain their identity through naming and how nothing truly exists until defined by language. This foundational discussion sets the stage for deeper explorations into the cosmic significance of language in future episodes.

Our journey doesn't stop at creation. We also unpack the primal importance of language in everyday life, beyond the realms of numbers, mathematics, DNA, and chemistry. By introducing 15 core truths about language, we emphasize its eternal role in the communication within the Trinity and its unparalleled power in shaping our world. Language, a divine gift, connects us to God, one another, and the cosmos, influencing our experiences, relationships, knowledge, and wisdom. Learn how the words we use daily—whether in conversation or self-talk—hold the power to create life or death around us. By consciously choosing our habitual ways of speaking, we can foster healthier, more positive communication and ultimately, a more harmonious existence. Tune in to grasp the transformative power of language and its indispensable role in our shared journey.

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

Speaker 1:

Well, welcome to the Christ-centered Cosmic Civilization as we begin on a new series of studies, and we're going to look at language, the theology of language and how powerful language is, is and, um, this is much deeper than most of us uh believe or superficially intuit because, um, I suppose we think, uh, there's like reality, and then what language is is a kind of quite superficial thing that can be used to describe reality, and that reality exists prior to or independently of language. But that isn't true, of course. It isn't true at the really primal, foundational sense, because when we go and read Genesis, chapter one, we discover that there is the Trinity, the Father, son and Holy Spirit, who exist in whatever form that they exist in, whatever environment they exist in. All of those are deep questions which we will actually return to in some future studies, that what is the father made of, or the son made of, what is the form, independently of the heavens and the earth that are formed and brought to be in Genesis 1. There is all that, but leaving all that aside for a moment, what we discover is that the heavens and the earth, as they are created, are created by language. The Father speaks his word, and his word is so substantial. It is this person, it is his son, his eternal son. He is ever with the father, always has this son who is his word, who is the expression of who the father is and is the one who accomplishes his will.

Speaker 1:

And this idea that the universe is brought into being not by mere power and not really just as a kind of technical skill, something that's done by hand, something being handmade, is special and we see that humanity is handmade in a way, more than being language made, and that's something that needs examination in and of itself. But the heavens and the earth, fundamentally, are made by language, word, are made by language word and the Father kind of preaches the universe into being. That the word is before being of the universe. The language came before the form and existence and order of the universe and that has huge implications for life, for church life too, like one of the things that sometimes people say I've heard this often said like church came before the Bible. And people want to say that because they want to sort of resist the primacy of the word and they want to sort of assert the primacy of, say, tradition, life, a pattern of life kind of thing. And I understand that, and it's something that we want to examine more closely in a future episode, but it is a fundamentally totally mistaken idea. There has never been church prior to the preached word of God. The universe comes into being by the preaching of the word. Even in Eden is this tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and it is not self-explanatory. Its meaning and the commands attached to it and the significance of it is only known by the preaching of the word. That explains it, defines it, makes it to be what it is. Anyway, there's a lot to be said about that. We will come back to that in a future episode.

Speaker 1:

Digging into here is that nothing simply exists prior to language. Language is most fundamental. Things are only after language, and we experience this all the time in our lives, even if we don't fully appreciate it. One example that someone shared with me just to quickly flag this up as something that we can chew on is like if you see, say you see like um, an object, that let's say it's it like um, it's an object and it is it a hat, is it a bag? Um, is it a bucket? Once if we say that is a bucket, then that's what it is, that's what it is it is a bucket and is used as such. And then, if it is used as a hat, we go, oh no, that isn't a correct use of that thing, it is a bucket. Go, oh no, that isn't a correct use of that thing, it is a bucket. So once we have named something, then it becomes that thing. That's what it is to us? Yes, but isn't it in fact that that, just even in our own experience, once we name something, that is what it is, and until it's named it isn't anything at all. It isn't anything until it's named. You might say, well, it kind of exists, there's something that exists, yeah, kind of, but it isn't anything until it's named. This is something we'll get into more.

Speaker 1:

But language is fundamental and also we also know this how fundamental language is. Because once we expand what we mean by language, you think numbers are a form of language and the universe is described by numbers, binary numbers, all kinds of numbers. Because if language is a way of communicating and setting out information and expressing truth and ideas and forms and so on, maths does that. Dna in our bodies is a language, a complex language that is written into every cell. This huge amount of information is declared in DNA, a description, a linguistic description of how to make us biologically and so on, biologically and so on. So language is written in in a very fundamental way once we become attuned to that.

Speaker 1:

But really we're wanting to talk about language in its true primal sense, because DNA, maths, things like that, or even chemistry as a form of language also and we'll look at that more specifically when we look at chemistry as a series in the podcast but in a way those are kind of superficial derivative forms of language, derivative forms of language. Before all those derivative forms of language, the fundamental thing of language is words. Language as we ordinarily understand it with you know, nouns and verbs and all that sort of thing. That is much more primal than the superficial things that are expressed in chemistry or biology or things like that. Those are secondary, the primal thing. If we go back to the origin of all things or even before the universe begins itself, we're talking about language in the way in which we ordinarily mean it, where it's persons communicating with words. That's really primal, that's really fundamental. And when we human beings do this and speak to one another with words and we have such a range of languages, styles, all of that. That is truly cosmic, that ability of humans to speak with words. Humans to speak with words. That's getting into things that take us into eternal, divine matters.

Speaker 1:

So what I want to do is I'm going to set out 15 sort of truths that we're going to chew on throughout this series on language. I'm going to just set them out, 15 kind of truths, and then we'll dive into thinking about language in general. So I want to set them out first, because the things that I found it's good to have in our minds and you might even set them down on paper, or some of them down on paper to think about, and then we'll explore them. So here are these 15 truths about language. The first is this 15 truths about language. The first is this Jesus has always listened to his father. Secondly, jesus has always praised his father. Thirdly, the father, son and spirit have always used language. Fourthly, jesus is the eternal word, the expression of his father.

Speaker 1:

Five language is a gift from God. Six words connect us to God, to each other and to the world. 7. The meaning of everything was expressed in Jesus before the world began. 8. The Father created the universe by speaking. 9. Jesus is the Father's word and the Spirit is the Father's breath. 10. The Bible has different kinds of language. 11. The devil twists language to make us think, feel and act against Jesus. Twelve false words lead to sin and are still the greatest danger to the church. Thirteen we can speak the truth about God, ourselves and the world because of Jesus. 14. Jesus unites the different languages of the world by the Spirit. 15. In church we can have and should have many different languages if we translate them.

Speaker 1:

Ok, now let's just get into language. Sharing life and talking together is the very heart of life, of human life. Language connects us, language makes us human, language gives us relationships, language gives us knowledge, language gives us wisdom and language gives us. Language gives us wisdom and language gives us experience. By that, just on that last thing, experience we have. Things happen to us. Let's just quickly say a note about this.

Speaker 1:

Things happen to us, but for them to become an experience, something that has meaning to us or conveys to us, makes us happy or sad or whatever, for that to happen, for things that happen to become an experience, something that has meaning to us or an impact upon us, it has to be described, named in a particular way, so you can literally have exactly the same things happen to two different people, to two different people, and for one person it is a joyful experience, or at least an experience that can have tremendous power and value, be highly valued. To someone else, the very same set of happenings might be utter tragedy, horror, destruction, and the difference for them is how they name that experience, how it is described, using language. So our language gives us experience. Language gives us experience. It determines the language we use. The language we have Determines relationships, knowledge, wisdom and experience.

Speaker 1:

And so this idea of sharing life and that can only happen with language, and when we share life with God and each other, that's eternal life, then we have eternal life. When God talks to us, then we are alive, connected, then we have wisdom. Connected, then we have wisdom. So it's connecting to God without language. That's a thing that is a very modern idea that it's possible to, strictly speaking. We'll think about that more later, because we might say no, no, there are groans that cannot be uttered, and so on. Yeah, but all of that is in the context of language, of a named, described relationship, and it's being when God speaks to us. That speech of his creates this connection and that is what it is to have eternal life Then when we try to live alone according to our own ideas, desires and dreams, we fall into death and despair.

Speaker 1:

So if we are speaking only or mostly to ourselves, monologuing with ourselves, that is a broad road of destruction, death and despair. Depression lies that way, inevitably. Now people often say they hate to depend on others, they want independence, and so the way we think of that is. One of the most common dreams is to live on a desert island, far perhaps, but a kind of a tropical island or a, or even like a windswept, isolated island off Scotland or something Whatever. The idea is that to live there's this, it's a common fantasy. It's a common fantasy having a house or a location far away in the country or out at sea or something like that. And then the idea is to pull up the drawbridge and live a self-sufficient life. There's loads of books and YouTube channels and things around this idea of being completely independent of other people and living a completely self-sufficient life.

Speaker 1:

Now, in reality, people find that kind of life very, very difficult. It isn't at all what the fantasy is to be alone kind of, and not have to be connected to other people and so on. In truth, that's an extremely difficult life to live, very, very demanding. And to truly live in isolation from everybody else is, at best, what we might call existence. It isn't life, and what people really want, I guess, is they kind of just want a month off, work in a holiday cottage. That's what they really want or need. They're kind of burned out, overwhelmed, and they're really just wanting a bit of time off without the pressures, because we're not designed to live alone.

Speaker 1:

In fact, when Adam was all alone in a perfect paradise, the Lord God said that that was not good, genesis 2.18. So to live in a perfect sort of tropical or highly fertile garden alone, free from all dangers and pressures, that's not good. That's the Lord God's verdict on that. That's not good. Adam needed Eve to share life with, share life with, and they were told to make lots more human beings so that there would be even more people to share life with. That's were designed to live as church, to live as interconnected families, not defined by blood but defined by sacrament, where we share everything in common and speak to one another and share life through language. That's how we've been designed. So language is how we are connected together. It's how we form church, how we organize as church, how we bring up our children in the faith of Christ, how we hear the living God, how we praise him, how we encourage, rebuke, correct and teach, how we learn about the world, how we share our knowledge with others. It's how we create cultures and civilizations. It's how we are human in the image of God in a deep sense.

Speaker 1:

So let's begin to unpack this the power of words. The Bible takes language far more seriously than we ever do. Our words have the power of life and death. That's what the Bible tells us Proverbs 18, verse 21,. The tongue can bring death or life. Those who love to talk will reap the consequences. Proverbs 18, 21. There's so many verses in the Bible like that, so many Hundreds, hundreds in the law, the prophets, the wisdom, literature, the gospels, the epistles. It's all the way through Proverbs 18, 21,. The tongue can bring death or life. That's a classic example of this theme in Scripture. We'll hopefully be able to see many more of them as we explore language.

Speaker 1:

But our words have the power of life and death because words determine what we think, how we feel, what we do, even what we are Everything, even what we are Everything, and when we speak of language here, we're not just speaking of sophisticated linguistics or complex poetry. It's not that that's powerful like very stylized or very complex or sophisticated forms of language is powerful. No, no. The most basic and everyday use of words that is super powerful. Our just everyday use of words creates life and death around us. So it's not that a person who is skillful with language has great power. All of us, in any use of language, has great power. The words we keep saying to ourselves will shape our whole life, steering our emotions, creating our actions, defining who we are.

Speaker 1:

Everything the words we, the simplest words, we keep saying to healthy, accurate, powerfully, true, powerfully good forms of etiquette in day-to-day life are like little liturgies where we found ways of speaking in a cultural context that are good and safe, and we use these liturgies of daily life because we found that's a safe way, that's a good way to speak. Let's stick to these patterns. Let's use these liturgies of daily life because we know how powerful words are and we want tried and tested patterns that can be safely used and that we all understand how to use them and how to receive them and so on. That's important and we want to discover daily liturgies of speaking and deliberately choose them and use them because of the power of words. So if we keep telling ourselves that we need money or we need sex or we need comfort or we need love however we define that or that we need respect, if we tell ourselves these things I need this and we speak that to ourselves and listen and look at we want to listen to people who tell us those sorts of things. If we do that, we will shape ourselves around those very things and we will perceive life according to those things that we tell ourselves, according to those things that we tell ourselves. So, the daily liturgies we all have daily liturgies things that we constantly say A person might say I don't have any of those.

Speaker 1:

Listen to any person that you know and listen for the repeated ways they speak, the things that they and ourselves listen to it in ourselves. What are the things we constantly say, how we speak, how we define. You know, when we get up in the morning, how we describe our getting up that morning. How do we describe work? How do we describe our family? How do we describe our home? How do we describe the living God? How do we describe church. How do we describe everything? We do everything around us. We fall into certain ways of saying these things, and that has enormous power. No-transcript.