What We Mean (When We Say the Same Thing)

I grew up as a Christian, to some extent I even grew up as, if not an outright Evangelical, at least one who was deeply influenced by evangelical Christianity. Certain words and phrases were internalized so that even when I wasn’t totally sure what they meant or where they originated, I still knew what they meant. Christianity was about individual salvation, about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, about arguing for a literal seven-day creation. There are many instances and appearances of this in our modern form of Christianity and especially within Evangelical Christianity, once again when examined it reveals to us the prevalence of babel even in our Christian language, Christian thought, Christianese (here meaning words or phrases we may say that might mean something entirely different when the rest of the world hears them).

In some cases the words spoken actually have a deeper origin and root in Christian thought than when we see them spoken in our culture-at-large. Understandings of words like freedom or salvation mean wildly different things depending on the era of Christian thought you’re pulling from. We stand confused, we stand in the midst of babel, talking over one another, using the same words but meaning vastly different things. Phrases and words like “God’s Word,” or “redemption,” or “life,” or “Death,” or “Hell,” can mean wildly different things depending on who is speaking them. This, as I’ve noted previously, is the primary tactic of the principalities, to confuse and divide, to render us beholden to babel. We know words, we know their meaning, and so when someone else speaks the words we know, the words we are familiar with, if they speak them in a way that is different or unfamiliar, we become confused, we may even come to lose trust in that person.

What do we mean when we say the same thing?

I can think of dozens of examples, words I read from other Christians, spoken by other ministers, other disciples, words which when spoken make total and complete sense to those speaking them just as they make total and complete sense to me when hearing them; and yet when we go forward with these same words we have the tendency to become confused and disoriented, we might find the words of another as virtually meaningless. One can speak the same sentence within Christian circles (as with any circle) and yet find that the phrase can mean something wildly different, perhaps even the polar opposite.

Take for instance this quote from Carl F H Henry, an American Evangelical Southern Baptist Christian and contemporary to the late Billy Graham, who wrote:

“Our generation is lost to the truth of God, to the reality of divine revelation, to the content of God’s will, to the power of his redemption, and the the authority of His Word. For this loss it is paying dearly in a swift relapse into paganism.”

Now, as a quote, unattached from any of the rest of Carl F H Henry’s theology, this is a statement I can altogether agree with, as I might read it he is referring to the same sort of babel, the same sort of spiritual oppression that I so often communicate, and yet, when I actually begin to dig through his definition of these words, his views and what he means when he says “paganism” or “redemption” or “His Word,” I find myself in disagreement.

The words are the same, the meaning is different.

Carl F H Henry’s understanding of paganism for instance was one, not rooted in the worship of war or other principalities as I might argue, but rather is one rooted in a stance against abortion and gay marriage. His understanding of redemption isn’t one regarding the total reconciliation of God to the creation as I might argue, but rather one centered in personal relationship with Jesus Christ. His understanding of “God’s Word” even isn’t so-much based upon its identity as Jesus, but rather it stands as a code-word for an infallible and inerrant Bible.

The purpose of this post though isn’t one to argue over the differing perspectives of one view or another, rather it is to communicate this difference in language, this inability (or perhaps unwillingness) to communicate and understand. Babel divides, and it is doing it quite well in Christianity.

As I noted there are many examples of this concept of Christian babel, many instances in which we hear words spoken and yet which can mean any number of things. Take for instance the key phrases that are perhaps most central to evangelical Christianity,the phrase “personal relationship with Jesus Christ” and the question, “are you saved?” At its heart both of these questions are rooted in a deeply Evangelical Protestant understanding of Scripture, of Christ. The first is rooted in the idea that one’s relationship with Jesus is what matters, not one’s personal morality or social identity or other allegiances to other principalities (nation, image, money, etc), no what matters is whether or not Jesus is living in your heart and if you are saved. Both of which are unbiblical statements, unbiblical readings that are placed into our readings of the Bible and in turn spoken as biblical truth.

Regardless of what the so-called Romans Road says, a “plain-text” reading of Romans offers us no such plain outline of salvation, it doesn’t even offer us the modern-individual understanding of salvation that Evangelical Christianity hinges upon. Instead Paul offers us his view and understanding of the story of creation, and we place our own modernist ideas of personal salvation upon it. Romans, like the rest of the New Testament, doesn’t offer us a concept of a personal relationship with Jesus, it doesn’t speak of Christ living in our hearts, no it offers us images of encounter, witnesses to the Risen Christ as his ongoing work within the Church and within creation itself.

Other examples include such things as the language of Biblical Truth, an ultimately broad-brush statement that is normally utilized in order to brush aside ethical questions relating to gay marriage, abortion, or sometimes divorce. To (perhaps) speak too generally though, this idea of biblical truth only ever seems to apply to these topics and not so much to things like wealth being an obstacle to overcome (Mtt 19:24), the use of weapons being wrong (Mtt 26:52), or women needing to remain silent in church (1 Cor 14:34), in fact it seems that in some instances there is a willingness to use whatever words necessary in order to permit some “biblical sins” while decrying others.

These instances are constant and while I could spend literal pages identifying examples, instead I turn instead to one of my more recent Facebook “conversations,” one of those “conversations” we all might be too familiar with, the sort where no one is really conversing so much as attempting to convince or argue. Over the course of the conversation the topic of Universal Salvation was touched upon, and I offered the example of Paul’s words in Colossians 1:16–20 to provide a “biblical” defense for the argument,

“Because in [the Son] were created all things in the heavens and on earth, the visible as well as the invisible (whether Thrones or Lordships or [Principalities] or Powers); all things were created through him and for him; and he is before all things, and all things hold together in him, and he is the head of the body, of the assembly — who is the origin, firstborn from the dead, so that he might himself hold first place in all things — for in him all the Fullness was pleased to take up a dwelling, and through him to reconcile all things to him, making peace by the things in the heavens.”

In response and in full seriousness, I then had the following exchange:

Words mean different things. Words mean different things to different people. It is dependent on who is reading them, who is speaking them, who is communicating them. Though the text above from Colossians might, as I suggested, read to some as a promise of God’s Universal Salvation and presence in all things, others might read it merely as a promise of God’s redemption and reconciliation offered to the elect, those saved by God. Which suggests that the Bible isn’t one that gives us much of a plain reading at all, rather it is one that we inherently enter into with our own readings and meanings and influences attached.

In Methodism we use the language of the Quadrilateral, though here I might also name them as principalities in their own right, or at least as pillars influenced by the various principalities. The Quadrilateral is a Methodized system, one commonly identified as Scripture, Reason, Tradition, and Experience. The idea is that each aspect impacts the others, each affects how the other is perceived. It’s one of the things that attracted me to Methodism once I really began to examine my faith as it is at least honest in the way we come to conclusions about the Bible.

Clearly saying what we mean

Perhaps the greatest resistance against babel is an attempt for clarity and understanding, for communication. We all speak different theological languages, the trick is in not merely discounting an entire system because the language game is wrong. In a Facebook page I frequent I am regularly encountering the image of the Evangelical Youth Pastor, and in this world there is always this sort of language game at work, it seems to be a factor in deciding who is in and who is out, who is one of us and who is other.

If we are to truly engage with one another, truly to engage in (at the very least) ecumenical and interdenominational dialogue there needs to at least be the benefit of the doubt, there needs to be an understanding of who the center of our faith is and where our authority is drawn from. There needs to be work towards actually understanding another’s faith tradition, we can’t just say unilaterally, “Catholics believe” or “Baptists say” without understanding the views someone is bringing to the table. And so while I may speak broadly in regards to my experiences in Evangelical Christianity, I recognize that it is a wide tradition with a wide array of flavors and beliefs. And that admittedly complicates conversations, because there has to be a lot more time spent in getting to the what do you mean questions and definitions of spoken words. Yet the heart of the issue has to be recognizing Jesus as the center of our faith, recognizing Jesus as the Word of God. We all disagree on how to interpret the Bible, we all disagree on how we live ethically and morally and humanly in the world, but if we are to truly interact with each other as Christians, if we are to truly work towards the building up of God’s Kingdom, towards seeing, God’s Kingdom come and will done, “as in heaven so upon earth” (Mtt 6:10), then we need to recognize our unity in Christ alone, our shared humanity, our shared vocation as Christ’s Body (1 Cor 12).

Lord, we come to you a people divided and from all outward appearances, leaderless. We’ve allowed the divisions of the world to creep in amongst us, to divide us, to cause us to name friend, “enemy,” and neighbor, “Other.” Restore us to each other. Remind us that we are united in you and in you alone. That you are the one in whom we live and move and have our being. Amen.

Unless otherwise noted the Scriptural quotations use either Robert Atler’s Hebrew Bible translation or David Bentley Hart’s New Testament translation, sources below.

• Atler, Robert. The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, vs 1–3. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2018.
• Hart, David Bentley. The New Testament: A Translation. New York: Yale University Press, 2017.