Navigating Your Perfect Storm by Wenz Bob;

Author:Wenz, Bob; [Wenz, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: InterVarsity Press

LINGUISTIC DECONSTRUCTIONISTS

The second subtle attack on the truth of God’s Word comes from the penchant of postmoderns to deconstruct language and render all propositional statements impotent—much like Baruch Spinoza who was “doing things with words.” The postmodernists suggest that words have no objective referent, so the only meaning of a message is that assigned by the reader or listener. Michel Foucault argued that communication was always an attempt by the communicator to oppress the hearer or reader. To rectify that, the listener deconstructs the message and assigns a subjective meaning. What the author intended is irrelevant.24 It comes as little surprise that Nietzsche—a taproot of postmodernism and a pioneer in the deconstruction of language—argued, “I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.”25

There is an objective nature to the Word of God. “Thus says the Lord” is repeated more than 750 times in the Bible for a reason. Our God is a communicative God, and in the fullness of time the Word became flesh—the ultimate objectification of God’s word to us. So our diligence concerning language is critical, lest we surrender to the subtle popularizations of Lewis Carroll—another precursor to deconstructionism—and his Wonderland characters. There, words have no conventional meaning and mean whatever the speaker deems them to mean.26

There is an urgent need today to reaffirm the sanctity of God’s Word because its authority is under renewed attack, even from within the general confines of the church. The uncritical acceptance within mainstream evangelicalism of postmodernism, which deconstructs and reconstructs either language or propositional truth, serves as a further warning that the perceived integrity of God’s Word and its careful use are at risk. (Read my article on the intentional fallacy, “Standing for the Truth on Two Hills,” in Appendix 2.)

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