In his new book, “The Good Name: The Power of Words to Hurt or Heal” (New Growth Press), Samuel T. Logan, Jr., provides specific guidelines about how to defend Scripture biblically, and by doing so bring honor to “the good name” of Jesus Christ. Logan applies these guidelines to a variety of current topics, including same-sex marriage, abortion, evolution, women in church leadership, and social justice matters — topics, he says, that tend to produce much more heat than light.
Lest he be thought proud of his own accomplishments in this area, Logan begins the book by confessing his own sin with respect to the Ninth Commandment and discusses the cost of that sin.
Have You ever heard or read something like this:
“XXX teaches a false gospel”? [XXX is named and is currently a minister in the PCA.]
Or this, “YYY’s book is heretical”? [YYY is named and is currently a minister in the OPC.]
Or this, “ZZZ teaches damnable heresy”? [ZZZ is named and is currently a leader of The Gospel Coalition.]
These are actual statements made in public forums by professing Christians, but none of those named has ever been “named” in any official disciplinary proceeding in the church of which he is a minister. To quote Scripture, “My brothers and sisters, this should not be!”
Words are extremely powerful. They can build up, and they can destroy. And we who claim to be Christians must be exceedingly careful how we use those words. Especially when we believe that we are defending the truths of Scripture, we must be careful not to disobey Scripture.
I will cite two primary reasons for this.
First, “the Bible tells us so.” The Apostle Paul gives this infallible instruction in 2 Timothy 2:24-25: “The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth.” [Emphasis added]
And under the leading of the Holy Spirit, James issues these two warnings:
“Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless” (James 1:26).“The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison” (James 3:6-8).
Not even the direct quotation of Scripture guarantees that the words spoken will “build up” others appropriately. After all, Satan himself quoted Psalm 91 in his second temptation of Jesus and received this response, “Away from me, Satan!” (Matthew 4:10).
Our Speaking God Created a Speaking Humanity
Our starting point must be the starting point of God’s revelation of Himself: “In the beginning,” God created all that exists, and, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we are given in Genesis 1:3-5 a bit of explanation of how God did this: “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light ‘day,’ and the darkness he called ‘night.’ And there was evening, and there was morning — the first day.”
This emphasis continues in Genesis 1:26. After creating the light and the dark and the dry land and the waters and the birds of the sky and the fish of the sea and the beasts of the earth, God paused. And then He said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
Human beings, male and female, were made in the image of God. Nothing else was. Image means representative likeness — which tells us at once that we should be reflecting, at our creaturely level, what Genesis 1 shows God is and does.
And what was the very first activity in which man was to “image” his Creator? Genesis 2:18-20 tells us: “Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So, the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals. But for Adam, no suitable helper was found.”
God gave to Adam the task of naming. Implied in what God directs Adam to do is the creation of language, of words. Before Adam, no creature is said to have been in the image of God, and no other creature is given the task of “naming.” Language itself, therefore, seems to be an essential aspect of the “image” of God in which Adam and Eve were created.
Language itself, therefore, seems to be an essential aspect of the “image” of God in which Adam and Eve were created. Our “speaking” God created a “speaking” humanity.
Our “speaking” God created a “speaking” humanity. Both finitude, the fact that our knowledge is limited in space and time, and sin, the fact that our knowledge has been corrupted by our disobedience to God’s law, affect our speaking. But neither destroys the basic biblical fact that, in our speaking, we are, in some ways, “imaging” our Creator. Therefore, we must be sure that our speaking does not become an “anti-god.”
The Power of Human Words
Both testaments contain innumerable examples of what human words can accomplish, all of them mere shadows of the divine reality but with significant effects nonetheless. One of the most fascinating occurs in Numbers, Chapter 20: “The Lord said to Moses, “Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink” (Numbers 20:7-8).
There is normally no water in rocks. But God authorized Moses to speak words that would, in effect, create water where there had been none. In this particular case, Moses disobeyed God and was punished for his disobedience. Nevertheless, what God told Moses affirms that, in specific circumstances, human language can, in a very faint way, “image” God’s creative power.
There are hints in this passage of the kind of speaking that Jesus did over and over again in the miracles He performed. Of course, no human words have the same intrinsic power that divine words have, a fact that some preachers and teachers seem to forget. But to deny completely any similarity between the two is to call into question the Bible’s teaching that man is made in God’s image.
As an ordained minister, I have had the privilege of performing a number of marriages, and so long as all of the conditions are met, when I say the words, “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” a status is recognized which was not recognized before I spoke those words. Of course, this is not “creating” in exactly the same way as God created in Genesis 1. But we do act in a way that confirms the power of those seven words of marital pronouncement.
Further, the power of the Word of God does not cease at the end of Genesis 1 or even at the end of Revelation 22:21. Scripture makes abundantly clear the sustaining power of that Word: “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by His powerful word” (Hebrews 1:3, emphasis added).
And, as some human language might “image” the creative power of divine language, so some human language might be seen to “image” God’s sustaining power.
Hear again, for example, these words from missionary Jim Elliot’s journal for Oct. 28, 1949: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”
Or these words of pastor Tony Campolo as the title of a Good Friday sermon: “It’s Friday, But Sunday’s Coming!”
Or these words from Martin Luther King Jr. on Aug. 28, 1963: “I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”
Words are extremely powerful. They can build up and they can destroy. And we who claim to be Christians must be exceedingly careful how we use those words. Especially when we believe that we are defending the truths of Scripture, we must be careful not to disobey Scripture.
Protect and Defend the Good Name of our Christian Neighbors
The Ninth Commandment (Exodus 20:16) provides a general guideline about how we are to speak about others, and the Westminster Larger Catechism cites a total of 105 biblical passages in support of its interpretation of the commandment. One of the most instructive elements in that Catechism’s understanding of the teaching of Scripture on this subject is the emphasis placed on the Christian’s duty to protect and defend “the good name” of our Christian neighbor.
And the Westminster Larger Catechism is not alone in finding “the good name” of our Christian neighbor to be extremely important in terms of biblical teaching. Here are a few other Christian catechisms which do the same: The Baptist Catechism (1689), The Catechism of the Methodist Episcopal Church (1835), To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism (2014), The Baltimore Catechism (1941) of the Roman Catholic Church, and Catechism of St. Philaret (1823) of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
I suggest that the quotations cited above about XXX, YYY, and ZZZ may fail to “protect and defend” the names of the individuals mentioned and therefore may be in violation of the full teaching of the Ninth Commandment.
Words are extremely powerful. They can build up, and they can destroy. And we who claim to be Christians must be exceedingly careful how we use those words.
All of this constitutes the first main reason why we who claim to be Christians must be exceedingly careful how we use words about other professing Christians.
The second reason arises out of the history of Christ’s church.
Here are just a couple of examples.
First, most evangelical and Reformed Christians today recognize the danger which a man named Arius represented to the cause of Christ in the fourth century. In simple terms, Arius, a professing Christian, argued that Jesus was not equal to the Father, and that He, Jesus, was brought into existence by the Father and remains subordinate to the Father. The early church (correctly!) rejected this teaching, most notably at the Nicene Council in 325.
The problem was not with the rejection of his teaching. The problem was the way in which some Christians spoke both about him and his teaching. Here are some of the labels which those Christians used of Arius: “heretic,” “plunderer,” “sorcerer,” and “traitor.” The teaching of Arius and his followers should have been rejected. But the words used in that rejection were unnecessarily nasty, and the result was significant damage to the Christian church as a whole.
A contemporary historian, Ammianus, in his influential history of the Roman Empire, gave this explanation of the reason that the Emperor Julian was able to reintroduce pagan worship to the Empire:
“Although Julian from the earliest days of his childhood had been more inclined towards the worship of the pagan gods, and as he gradually grew up burned with longing to practice it, yet because of his many reasons for anxiety he observed certain of its rites with the greatest possible secrecy. But when his fears were ended, and he saw that the time had come when he could do as he wished, he revealed the secrets of his heart and by plain and formal decrees ordered the temples to be opened, victims brought to the altars, and the worship of the gods restored. And in order to add to the effectiveness of these ordinances, he summoned to the palace the bishops of the Christians, who were of conflicting opinions, and the people, who were also at variance, and politely advised them to lay aside their differences, and each fearlessly and without opposition to observe his own beliefs. On this he took a firm stand, to the end that, as this freedom increased their dissension, he might afterwards have no fear of a united populace, knowing as he did from experience that no wild beasts are such enemies to mankind as are most of the Christians in their deadly hatred of one another” (emphasis added).
Many similar examples of such disastrous realities could be provided, including several from the period of the Reformation, both on the continent of Europe and in England and Scotland. But we can also see the same sad story right here in the early years of America.
The Great Awakening was one of the most important events in our nation’s history. From about 1734 until about 1745, evangelical (and Reformed) preachers, led by such men as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield traveled from Maine to Georgia preaching the gospel and seeing extraordinary results. Some historians argue that this was the first truly “national” event in America’s history.
But the fervor and the blessings ended almost as quickly as they had begun, and an important question is, “Why?” What led to the abrupt termination of this amazing widespread revival?
The most likely answer focuses on a sermon preached by revival leader Gilbert Tennent on March 8, 1740. Toward the end of the 1730s, some of the more traditional ministers, especially in New England, began to protest what seemed to them the excessive emotionalism associated with the Awakening. To respond to those kinds of objections, Tennent mounted his pulpit in Nottingham, Pennsylvania, and announced his subject as “The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry.”
The points Tennent made in his sermon in answer to the criticisms of the Awakening were, in my opinion, largely valid. But the way in which he made those points was as disastrous as were the denunciations of Arius. By labelling any who opposed the Awakening as “unconverted,” “Pharisee teachers,” “conceited,” “stone-blind,” and “stone-dead,” Tennent either created or encouraged a tendency to demonize those professing Christians with whom he disagreed. He therefore violated the Ninth Commandment, at least as that Commandment is interpreted by the Westminster Larger Catechism and the other catechisms mentioned above.
This is not just my interpretation of the words of Tennent. Jonathan Edwards himself, when reflecting on the errors made by supporters of the Awakening, says this: “And here the first thing I would take notice of is censuring professing Christians of good standing in the visible church as unconverted. I need not repeat what I have elsewhere said to show this to be against the plain, frequent, and strict prohibitions of the word of God. It is the worst disease that has attended this work, most contrary to the spirit and rules of Christianity and of the worst consequences” (emphasis by Edwards).
Of course, it was not just Tennent’s one sermon that ended the Awakening. But the way in which Tennent spoke in that sermon provoked, as one might expect, responses in kind. Those responses produced more Tennent-like sermons, etc., etc. The spectacle of two groups of professing Christians talking about one another as Tennent did (and as Charles Chauncey did in response) basically, at least according to Edwards, brought about the end of the Awakening.
Are there “suggestions of Arianism” in the contemporary evangelical and Reformed church? Some contemporary Christian leaders seem to believe that, in the doctrine of “the eternal subordination of the Son,” there are. Are there “suggestions of excessive emotionalism” in the contemporary evangelical and Reformed church? Some contemporary Christian leaders seem to believe that, in many of our nation’s megachurches, there are.
And both sets of contemporary Christian leaders may be right. There may be dangerous tendencies in some churches which must be opposed. “The defense of the faith” continues to be an extraordinarily important task of any who believe that the Bible is true. The question is whether that “defense” be expressed in ways which conform to the clear teaching of that same Bible, especially as that teaching is explained by what the Westminster Larger Catechism says about the Ninth Commandment.
The answer, of course, is yes!
Defend Scripture, Honor Christ’s Name
It is not always easy. It requires careful thought and, occasionally, lots of extra time and effort. It is always easier and quicker just to “blast away” at what are perceived to be (and often are) genuine errors. Especially in today’s “social media” environment, condemnation of people and/or their views can be shared instantly and globally. This is one of the reasons why the cover of the Aug. 29, 2016, issue of Time magazine featured these words, “Why We’re Losing the Internet to the Culture of Hate.”
It may not be easy, but it is possible to defend Scripture biblically, and doing so brings honor to “the good name” of Jesus Christ.
As we often sing, “There’s Something About That Name” which warrants our continued diligence whenever we speak either about Him or about those who, with us, share the name “Christian.” And we know that, someday, “At the name of Jesus, every knee will bow.” May God help us all to speak in ways that hasten that glorious day.
Samuel T. Logan, Jr., has been international director of the World Reformed Fellowship since 2005. He served at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 1979-2007, and is now president emeritus. He is a minister of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Logan’s publications include “The Preacher and Preaching,” “Sermons That Shaped America,” and “Confronting Kingdom Challenges.”