language on Adaptability

One of [Lamin] Sanneh's key arguments is that while the spread of Islam has drawn ever-increasing numbers to the globalizing influence of Arabic, the spread of Christianity binds ever-increasing n...

As a language-user, I’m bound to all the audacious capacities and frustrating limits of words. We label, we name, we frame all of our experiences, past, present, and future. We give words to our inner...

Ancient Context What’s the historical context? The Tower of Babel The story of the Tower of Babel comes after many chapters relating the story of Noah, the flood, and the covenant with Noah and...

Jesus is understood in the light of the assumptions which control our culture.  When “reason” is invoked as a parallel or supplementary authority to “Scripture” and “tradition,” what is happening is t...

One of the most critically acclaimed fantasy films in recent years was a piece of science fiction called Arrival . It is the story of beings from outer space who arrive on earth, igniting a wildfire ...

Across all barriers of land and language, wealth and poverty, knowledge and ignorance, we are one, created from the same dust, subject to the same laws, and destined for the same end. With this compas...

The limits of my language means the limits of my world.

Rather than translating the culture, then, we need to try to enter the culture. When people want to study the Bible seriously, one of the steps they take is to learn the language. As I teach language ...

One of the fastest ways to learn a language is by immersion . This term can mean a few different things, but the basic idea in all of them is that you are exposed to that language in your social inte...

To frame is to put a language boundary around our experience. It is to name what happens in particular ways, to say how we see the world, and to see the world how we say it is. Framing includes tellin...

Summary of the Text Ancient Context What’s the historical context? The Tower of Babel The story of the Tower of Babel comes after many chapters relating the story of Noah, the flood, and the ...

The eyes have one language everywhere.

One development of the exile was an additional language for the Jewish people. The Babylonians and Persians spoke Aramaic, and out of necessity the Jews learned it. Some even became more conversant in...

Clothed with Power I have a daughter who cannot acquire enough clothes. Every birthday, Christmas, or special occasion is an opportunity to shop online for something new. Fashionable rags give her a ...

Preaching Commentary Clothed with Power I have a daughter who cannot acquire enough clothes. Every birthday, Christmas, or special occasion is an opportunity to shop online for something new. Fashi...

God is gracious beyond the power of language to describe.

Any fool can write learned language. The vernacular is the real test. If you can't turn your faith into it, then you either don't understand it or you don't believe it.

“Learning how to read, has been shown to “powerfully shape adult neuropsychological systems. Brain scans have also revealed that people whose written language uses logographic symbols, like the Chines...

Language is not speech, it is a full circle from word to sound to perception to understanding to feeling, to memorizing, to acting and back to the word about the act thus achieved. And before the list...

Language is power, life and the instrument of culture, the instrument of domination and liberation.

Recently I (Stu) was watching a lecture on Old English (yes, the nerd levels are extremely high here), which looks almost nothing like the English we speak today. It is essentially the result of Germa...

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

Imagine a remote village in Africa. No modern Westerner has ever set foot there. The natives live off the land, using the same ancient methods and tools as their forefathers used for the last thousand...

War is what happens when language fails.

It is well known that Pentecost reverses Babel. The people who built the tower of Babel sought to make a name, and a unity, for themselves. At Pentecost, God builds his temple, uniting people in Chris...

In her book Keeping Place: Reflections on the Meaning of Home , Jen Pollock Michel reflects on the nature of home in a transient age. In this short excerpt, Michel focuses on the language associate...

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

The Bible ceased to be a foreign book in a foreign tongue, and became naturalized, and hence far more clear and dear to the common people. Hereafter the Reformation depended no longer on the works of ...

Language is primarily a means of revelation, both for God and for us. Using words, God reveals himself to us. Using words, we reveal ourselves to God and to one another. By means of language, the enti...

The living human community that language creates involves living human bodies. We need to talk together, speaker and hearer here, now. We know that. We feel it. We feel the absence of it. Speech conne...