A Clear and Present Word

Having given a talk on hermeneutics at TGF I have been reading about it. One excellent book I cam across on the clarity of Scripture was Mark Thompson’s book ‘A Clear and present word’, The book is full of valuable insights here are just a few that I found helpful.

In response to the accusation that language is a human construction and therefore unable to give a clear revelation of God, Thompson writes:

A regular objection to such a picture of God and his dealing with creation is the prominence is affords to human language, which appears self evidently as a creaturely phenomenon governed as much as anything else by social convention. Even if we can establish that God is a speaker, is there not some difficulty associated with his use of our words?…Communication with words is difficult, all the more so when the communication is about transcendent realities….

The first word spoken in Genesis are spoken by God and the narrative proceeds on the basis that these words can be – and are – understood by those God has recently created. Human language should be viewed as a gift of God rather than as a human achievement.

Pg 65-66

Thompson then quotes Richard Gaffin:

As our being itself is derived from God (we exist because he exists), and as our knowledge  is an analogue of his knowledge (we know because he knows), so, too, our capacity for language and other forms of communication is derivative of his. We speak because God speaks, because he is a speaking  God, that is his nature so, derivatively, it is ours.

Pg 66

More to come…