Pure Speech
W. Carl
Ketcherside
On March 1, 1711, a British journal called The Spectator was introduced to the reading public by Sir Richard Steele. Associated with the Dublin-born essayist was Joseph Addison whose writing style was acclaimed for its polish, grace and elegance. The journal lasted but two years, and during that brief span carried 236 articles by Steele and 274 by Addison. Today, in literary circles, Addison is remembered chiefly because of the Sir Roger de Coverly Papers. I remember him because of his suggestion that authors must remain in the flames of purgatory until the influence of their evil writings has disappeared. For some that would mean forever.
I have been long fascinated by the power of speech, the faculty by which human beings can take abstract ideas and put them into words, and utter them in such a manner that others hearing the sounds in combination can grasp the idea which flits through the mind of the speaker. The physical organs which make speech possible are proof of the majestic design and creativity of God. The palate which acts as a sounding-board for projection and the teeth which play a role in the formation of certain sounds are contrived in such a fashion that the tongue can use them for its proper function.
Man was created as a social being. As such, he must be able to communicate with his fellows. I happen to believe he was so made that he might also converse with his creator and receive communications from him. I have long argued that man's ability to speak is proof that he was made by an intelligent being who possessed the power to speak prior to man's creation. Speech is an imitative and repetitive process. No one has ever spoken who was not first spoken to.
A baby, taken at birth from all human association, and reared by animals, would not speak but would whine or growl in animalistic gutturals. The idea that sophisticated human speech developed from such animal sounds through millions of years of snapping and snarling, is a little bit absurd, and would require faith in a much greater miracle than that of creation by a beneficent personality in the beginning. It is my conviction that the first man began speaking only after being addressed by God and thus being taught by him. Man heard speech before he began to speak. The record of this transaction in the book we designate Genesis, is accurate so far as I am concerned.
While all of this is most interesting, I am now chiefly concerned with our use and abuse of words selected by the Holy Spirit to convey the thoughts of the divine mind. I have not the least doubt that God is, and that he has spoken to man. I am fully persuaded that he employed words already in use by man and that the meaning of these words can generally be ascertained and understood in the same manner as we may understand other communications in the same time and place and among the same people to whom the divine revelation was given.
When Alexander Campbell was requested to formally state what he believed to be the essentials requisite to produce a reformation, he gave top priority to recapture "the vocabulary of the Holy Spirit." Succeeding generations, hooked on slogans, thought they were being true to this when they glibly recited, "We speak where the Bible speaks, and remain silent where the Bible is silent." In many cases they were like a person seeing a banana for the first time, and eating the peel while throwing the fruit away. In actuality our brethren often did neither of the the things in the slogan. It became a catchword to be reeled off as an escape from responsibility to study.
In this instance the slogan was originally adopted by men as an approach to the goal of unity, which so many had sought so seriously and died without achieving. But before long it was being quoted to exclude those who could not conscientiously conform. It was used as a divisive weapon rather than as a unitive instrument. A great many who claimed to speak where the Bible speaks dis so without speaking as the Bible speaks. They parroted the words and memorized proof-texts with no genuine concern for their true implication.
My style of writing indicates no abandonment of my intention to promote the unity of the Spirit among all who acknowledge Jesus as the Lord of their lives. In a fragmented and fractured world I know of no greater task to which one can address his feeble talent than to encourage the saints to have a common mind for unity. We must somehow find the solution which will enable us to labor together for him "whom having not seen we love." Bertrand Russell declared that "we must find a moral alternative to war." I paraphrase that statement by saying that we must find a moral alternative to division among God's blood-bought children.
I believe that a disorderly and indiscriminate form of speech contributes to a deranged and perplexed body of believers. We can never restore peace and harmony in the Spirit if we do not know what the Spirit revealed, and we can never know what the Spirit revealed if we use the terms he employed in a sense which he never intended.
I think that most of our brethren are sincere. They recognize that the present disturbed and dislocated state of affairs is not the will of God. It denies the prayer of Jesus for unity and makes our plea a farce in the eyes of a contemporary society. We have victimized by tradition. We have inherited partisan pride. This results in only one approach to unity and one strategy for peace, the verbal bludgeoning of everyone who differs with us into submission and conformity as the price of our acceptance. One grave problem is that, along with the rest of the religious world, we have been handed a "theological jargon" which promises peace and always ends in producing polemics.
On March 312, 1819, John Adams wrote to J. H. Tiffany, "Abuse of words has been the greatest instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society." George Santayana said in Obiter Scripto, "Words are weapons, and it is dangerous in speculation, as in politics, to borrow them from the arsenal of the enemy." That may be a true observation but I think Satan has infiltrated the ranks of the believers and captured much of our vocabulary and turned it against us. Our aim will be to re-take it and use it for that cause which means more to me than life itself.
God has demonstrated the power of confusion of tongues to divide and scatter a people. It is amazing to recognize the perversity of the human race. When God commands them to scatter they insist upon remaining together, and when he commands them to unite they insist upon scattering. After the deluge it was the divine intention that the earth be divided among the progeny of Noah who were to be dispersed abroad and inhabit and populate it.
There was one factor which operated against the dispersion. "The whole earth was on one language, and one speech" (Genesis 11.1). They were thus encouraged to remain in proximity to each other because of mutual understanding. As men journeyed from the East they came to a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. They resolved to construct a city as a dwelling-place and a tower as a landmark and rallying enter, as they said, "lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." This was the very opposite of God's will and instruction.
But in dealing with the rebellion God acknowledged the power of a unified language. He said, "Behold, the people are united in purpose, and speak the same language, and they have begun this undertaking, and nothing can thwart their plans while this is the case." "What a divine tribute to the power and force of unity! It required heavenly intervention to contravene their design and scatter them so the earth would be populated. The instrument chosen for dispersing the rebels was confusion of language so they would not understand each other.
It would seem that if men can be "scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth" by the mere act of confusing their tongues, it would require a unity of language to unite them. The confusion would have to be dissipated, the dissonant and distracting elements eliminated, and a sense of understanding restored before they could be gathered together. To this a statement in Zephaniah 3.9 gives assent, "For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may call upon the Lord, to serve him with one consent." The Revised Standard Version renders it "Yea, at that time will I change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call on the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord."
This is important! It shows that God, who confused the language in order to scatter the people, recognizes that he must change the speech to an unmixed or pure speech, before all can call upon his name and serve him in unity. The Hebrew root form rendered "one consent" or "one accord" is literally "with one shoulder." We still speak of the need of putting a shoulder to the wheel. We talk about "pulling together" although the prophet used a term which meant "pushing together." In any event we need a pure speech to be able to accomplish this.
WORDS AS WEAPONS
It is an adage among us that "the pen is mightier than the sword." In The Anatomy of Melancholy Burton wrote, "A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with the sword." Joseph Conrad wrote in Lord Jim, "A word carries far, very far, and deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space." Jeremiah declared of his people, "Their tongue is a cruel arrow, their mouths speak lies. One speaks amicably to another, while inwardly he plans a trap for him" (9.8).
Throughout the old covenant scriptures words are compared to a sword, and in the new covenant scriptures the word of God is called "the sword of the Spirit." All of this points up the fact that if Satan captures the vocabulary and turns it against the saints irreparable damage may result. I am quite convinced that he has stolen a lot of the arsenal and spiked a good many guns he has not carried off. It is my intention, God willing, to point up a lot of the problems which have been caused in the whole religious realm by a surrender of the weapons provided by heaven.
Perhaps you will indulge me if I take a little space to suggest some of the ways which the truth can be obscured and made to appear indecisive. It is expected that not all of you will agree with my emphases or conclusions, and that is not necessarily to be deplored. It is out of brotherly exchange that all of us learn. We all need critics who challenge our finite views.
No two of us would edit a paper alike. All of us have varied opinions about the relative importance of things. Some of you will wonder why I spend time with the matters we will be considering, and others of you will hail what we say as the greatest blessing in print. That is why we never try to pleas our readers. I am not writing verse for greeting cards, but editing a journal which reflects my honest convictions. If you do not agree with what I write, well, praise the Lord anyhow!
1. One way by which uncertainty is created is by taking terms which have a specific application in God's word and giving them a general scope. The wrong here is "invalid expansion" which creates new concepts never intended by the Spirit. Making a universal application of a specific not only invents and licenses novel ideas, but clouds the value of the specific by spreading it too thin. Does that sound a little confusing? Then let me cite an example.
Look at the word "church" as an illustration of what I am saying. If this word is to used as a translation of ekklesia, and a considerable number of good brethren think we are stuck with it for the duration, it should certainly be employed as the Holy Spirit used it. In God's word it refers to the called out ones who are called together in Christ. In whatever area it embraces it includes every person in that area who has responded to the call and who has been born from above. We use terms the Spirit did not use when we talk of "the church universal" and "the local church." But is we must use these terms we have invented and sanctified by our usage, we certainly ought to be true to the original which we render by "church."
The "church universal" must include every saved person on this whole wide earth. If it does not include even one person whom God has accepted and in whom the Holy Spirit dwells, it is incorrectly used, and is not sound speech. To talk of "the church universal" and mean only a clump of congregations here and abroad which are bound together in defense of or in opposition to some issue which has nothing to do with our entrance into God's grace, is to act from sectarian motives and to project a sectarian image.
If I do not mean by the term "local church" every child of God in that locality I am partisan and sectarian in my meaning. The church in Saint Louis embraces every saved person in this metropolitan area. If I use it in any other manner to embrace fewer than that, my usage is sectarian. If I speak of "the church of Los Angeles" I must include every saint in that city who has been adopted into the wonderful family of God, every person who is enabled to cry "Abba, Father" by the indwelling Spirit.
It is silly to talk about a Methodist Church, a Baptist Church, a Lutheran Church, a Presbyterian Church, or even a Home Church! There is only one church, and there never was but one. It is the body of Christ and is a divine creation. God only created one church through the Spirit because he is not the author of confusion, but of peace. Men cannot create a divine organism, and God did not create a human organism. When men adopt the word for the divine organization and apply it to a legion of human organizations they confuse and confound the sacred and profane.
Let me hasten to add that such confusion of tongues only confounds men. It has no bearing or effect upon the purpose of God. He has never been in a dither as to who constitutes his family. "The foundation of God stands firm, having the assurance that the Lord know who are his." Men may not be able to identify all whom God has accepted, but he know them. In our human predicament we must be constantly aware of our need to "discern the body" and resolve never to be confined by traditional walls erected in partisan fear by our fathers.
I am resolved to be true to the "ekklesia of God" as the Holy Spirit used that majestic term. Wherever God has a son I have a brother; wherever God has a daughter I have a sister. I praise God for delivering me from the narrow confines of a partisan clan into the glorious freedom of the kingdom of his dear Son. And I am not going back to the dark depths of a factional cave.
2. The opposite to what we have said is also a problem, for the taking of general terms and restricting them to certain specific things defeats God's purpose in revelation. Here the mistake is "unjustified limitation." This is what occurs when a word like ministry, which applies to every form of service to God or man, is used to apply only to the work of a preacher, and generally to one hired to serve a particular congregation. If every child of God is a minister, and most of us pay lipservice to that concept, to call one man "the minister" is to do serious injury to the ministry of all of the other saints. Our gradual drift toward Rome, in this respect, has led us into all kinds of verbal error, which tends to be far more serious than we think.
No one who is committed to restoring the ancient order should ever be guilty of speaking about someone "entering the ministry" who has been a Christian for a number of years, or even a few months. If one does not enter the ministry when he is baptized into Christ, whatever he enters later will not be too important. One does not go away to "study to become a minister" although one who is a minister may go away to study. If a "school of the ministry" does not prepare saints of all kinds to serve, it is not a school for the ministry at all, but for professionals unknown and unrecognized in the word of God revealed by the Holy Spirit. May God help us as we seek to recover a pure speech so that we may serve the Lord with one accord, and not seek to be served by one man.
