What do Christians mean when they refer to “the Word of God,” or even just “the word”? What do they mean when they someone has offered a “good word”? This way of speaking is incredibly common within particular Christian communities, but may be mystifying to people who aren’t familiar with those communities or didn’t grow up in them. In this episode, Dan discusses the layers of meaning behind these seemingly simple phrases and decodes some of the ways they work within these Christian communities.
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Axis Mundi You're listening to an irreverent podcast.
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Hello and welcome to It's in the Code, a part of the podcast Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Dan Miller, Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
As always, glad to be with all of you in this virtual format.
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And as always, love to hear from you, love to hear the ideas for episodes, love to hear feedback on episodes that we do.
You can reach me, Daniel Miller Swag, danielmillerswaj at gmail.com.
And as always, the apologies that I just can't respond to as many emails as I should.
I respond to as many as I can, but I do read them and value them and you keep this series going.
With that in mind, I want to pick up kind of where the previous episode didn't really leave off, but it's related to the previous episode.
And so if you haven't listened to that, it's the idea of having a word from the heart or a word on the heart or sharing a word from the heart.
Maybe give that a listen or listen to it after this episode, but it's a related theme and it's a topic that I heard from other people about just sort of leading up to that.
But I also heard from some folks after the last episode and it really kind of, you know, made me realize that, yeah, we should say more about this.
And so I think I said in that episode that the whole idea of the Word is itself a topic to consider, of having a Word, of receiving a Word, of sharing a Word, this use of the word Word and what that means.
And like so many of the things we talk about, if you grew up in or have significant experience with a certain kind of Christian subculture, you will be familiar with this language.
But if you don't and you've heard it, you've encountered it, there's somebody in your life who talks this way.
Maybe you go to a church for the first time in a long time and they say this.
Maybe it's a relative or a friend who converts and starts talking this way.
Maybe it's your in-laws.
Maybe you're traveling to a different part of the country and you hear this way of speaking and you're like, what does that mean?
I don't understand.
Of course you have a word, that's how we communicate.
What does that mean?
So I wanted to take sort of a dive into this, and I think it's an interesting concept in popular Christian expression because it's both incredibly common And it has a multitude of meanings.
It has lots of meanings, many of which are often kind of operative at the same time, right?
And I think the fact that it's used so commonly, again, within a certain kind of religious context, you're not as likely to hear this kind of phrase the way we're going to discuss it in a Catholic context.
You're not as likely to hear it in maybe a liberal Protestant or mainline Protestant context, but you would hear it in a white evangelical church.
You would hear it probably in a majority African-American church.
You would certainly hear it in a lot of sort of popular contexts.
The fact that the phrase is so common kind of masks the layers of meaning to it, and And I think it also, if we begin to sort of unmask that, to decode that, it begins to highlight why appeals to the word evoke such a diverse array of responses.
And again, I'm also kind of thinking of those people who talk to me who say, you know, when I hear somebody say this, it just gets under my skin.
It rubs me the wrong way.
And I'm not even sure exactly why.
I think I can help answer that, right?
So if we're going to sort of crack the code, if we're going to decode this appeal to the word, let's start maybe with the big obvious stuff and work our way down.
Or if we're talking about layers of meaning, we'll talk with sort of the highest layer, the biggest, most obvious, significant layer of meaning and bring our way down.
And at the most fundamental theological level, the English word word, it's a translation of the Greek word logos.
And in the New Testament, and that Greek word Logos has a long sort of philosophical and literary history in Classical Greek and what's called Koine Greek, which is the Greek that the Christian New Testament is written in, in the broader thought world of the Hellenistic and Greco-Roman world and so forth, okay?
In the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth is referred to as the Logos of God, right?
The obvious translation is He is referred to as the Word of God.
Clearest example of this idea is in the first chapter of the Gospel of John, which opens with a number of verses, but it says, In the beginning was the word, that's the word Logos, was the Logos, and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God, and then it goes on to say He was in the world, and the world came into being through Him, right?
The word Word, the word we translate as Word, is Logos.
And throughout, there are these references to Jesus of Nazareth.
He came into the world, and so you get this claim that Jesus is both related to God and is a part of God, helps in the creative order and so forth, and comes into the world in the person Jesus of Nazareth.
So that word Logos, it refers to word, the way we might think of it, also refers to speech or a kind of inner principle.
And when it says he was the Logos of God, it's a sense that he is both, we could say, a communication from God, but a communication of the very essence of God.
And so what all of that means for Christians, and this will be familiar to a lot of people, and again, this is like the kind of big theological point of this term, Is it is meant that the man Jesus of Nazareth was the embodiment of the word or principle of God.
And this is one of the Bible passages that has led Christians to conceive of Jesus as divine, as the means of human salvation.
That's described more in this passage and so forth.
So at the most basic fundamental level, when Christians have spoken of the word or the word of God, and you usually see the word capitalized there, the word capital W of God, they're speaking about Jesus of Nazareth as a divine figure.
And that would bring us into a complex discussion of the Trinity, the nature of divinity as Christians understand it.
Jesus is both divine and human and so forth, right?
That's not where we're going.
This is not a theology podcast.
But very generally, that broad conception of the Word, that's what we're likely to encounter in any kind of Christian context among Christians of any theological tradition.
There is no Christian theological tradition I'm aware of that would not affirm this notion of Jesus as Word of God.
Okay?
So far, so good.
But we don't actually stop there because when most Christians talk about having a word or speaking, you know, the word of God or the word from God, they're not actually talking about that sense of the word.
Oftentimes, they're talking about the Bible as God's word.
So this is like our next level of meaning.
Okay?
If there's one thing that all of these different senses of the word have in common, it's that they all carry the idea of a kind of communication from God.
And in the critical sense, yes, Jesus has been understood as the ultimate communication from God.
For Christians, most Christians over time, the Bible has also been understood as a divine communication.
In other words, how do we know about Jesus?
How do we know other things about God?
The idea is that God has communicated this in this set of scriptures that we call the Bible, right?
So the Bible came to be understood as the Word of God.
And over time, especially among conservative Protestants, this emphasis on the Bible as the Word of God, it becomes more extreme.
It evolves into the view that the Bible is, they will call it, they will say it is inerrant or infallible, that it is a text without any kinds of errors of any kind.
And so, for example, it's true not only when it talks about religious issues or the nature of God, but it's also historically accurate and scientifically accurate and so forth.
And we've talked about this before.
This is what we mean, this is what I mean, when we can describe this kind of Christian as a Biblicist Christian, this understanding of the Bible.
And we've talked about that in prior episodes.
Go and check those out.
Within this, then, if Jesus is the ultimate Word of God, it's the Bible that is the communication from God that kind of lets us know about this Word.
And within Biblicist traditions, these traditions that say that everything should be about the Bible because it is infallible and it tells us everything about being a Christian, everything in the Christian faith is supposed to be shaped by reference to the Bible because it is the Word of God.
So this notion of the Bible is a word that's also pretty universal in the Christian tradition, but it's especially pronounced within conservative Protestant Christianity, and it brings all of that weight with it.
When they refer to the Word or preaching from the Word or preaching the Word, they're talking about the Bible, and their references to the Bible are built within this whole framework or worldview where the Bible is like the text that tells us everything about being a Christian and how we should live and so forth.
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I've gotten to see the country, and meet some really interesting people, and hopefully do some good along the way.
You can find my story on Amazon, Audible, or iTunes.
Just look for American Prophet by Jeff Fulmer.
That's American Prophet by Jeff Fulmer.
So when an evangelical pastor, say, is standing in the pulpit, refers to the Word of God in a sermon, or says that he preaches from the Word, or somebody says, you know, we had a great message from the Word on Sunday, or says that they are living, you know, somebody in your life says they are living according to the Word, this is almost certainly what somebody in your life says they are living according to the Word, What they mean is the Bible.
And when evangelical Protestants refer to the Word of God, they are virtually always They're not typically making that big theological point about Jesus.
They probably believe that, and that's in the background.
But they're talking about the Bible, and they're talking about the Bible as a whole, not just the parts that explicitly talk about Jesus of Nazareth.
When conservative Protestants refer to having received a communication or a word from God, they're also often referring to something found in the Bible.
Maybe it's somebody who was just reading their Bible on their own and something really stuck to them from it or stood out to them and they will say, you know, I was in the word today, meaning I was reading the Bible and I found this or that or the other.
This is a basic decoding of the phrase.
It's one, again, that if you grow up in these churches, this kind of church, you will have heard this like literally weekly, maybe multiple times weekly.
You may speak this way and talk about needing to be in the Word, needing to spend time in the Word, meaning needing to spend time reading the Bible and so forth.
It'll be absolutely familiar to you.
If you didn't grow up in that context and you encounter people who do talk that way, it can be completely mystifying.
And this is what they mean.
They mean the Bible.
And they carry with it, again, that whole sense of how the Bible operates for them.
And again, I invite you to go back, listen to the episode on, say, Bible church or being biblical, and you can check that out.
Okay?
But that's not it.
So we've got the big meaning, Word of God is Jesus, kind of lower level meaning, the Bible as the Word of God.
But there are also other references to getting a word or a message or a communication from God.
And this brings us closer to the stuff we looked at last episode.
The person who says that they have a word from God, they're still making a claim to a communication from God.
But in a kind of broader sense of how God communicates.
So, let's talk about preaching, okay?
Imagine that you go to a church and you're in one of these churches that speaks this way, right?
The pastor will say they are preaching from the Word, meaning the Bible, but somebody might say in response to the pastor, they say, man, that was a good word this Sunday.
The pastor gave us a good word.
What do they mean?
They're talking about the message itself.
Now, they're saying that the message itself was a kind of communication from God, right?
Not limited to the Bible, but what the pastor said.
Now, that's typically not a claim that the pastor is a prophet or divine or something like that.
There are Christian traditions that come close to that, but not most.
What it usually is, is a claim that the pastor has served as a means of God's ongoing communication.
That as the pastor engaged the Word of God, meaning the Bible, And prayed and different things like that.
They discerned this message from God that is contemporary and aimed at the people.
And it reflects another Christian doctrine that this other thing called the Holy Spirit is kind of moving, that the Spirit of God continues to speak to God's people through God's servants, and that the pastor is doing that.
Okay?
So somebody will say, a pastor will deliver a sermon, and somebody afterward, when they shake the pastor's hand, they might say something like, man, that was a good word.
You gave us a good word today.
Really common language.
Or, as we talked about in the previous episode, it could be someone else in somebody's life who feels that they have a word from God for us.
And again, this is the idea that God has communicated something to them that they are supposed to share with somebody else.
And that's what we talked about last episode, and that's the one that can get really, really, really slippery.
Things always arise.
As to how even a well-meaning person can be sure they're really hearing from God.
Well-meaning Christians will say, how do I know if what I'm feeling is from God?
If I'm getting a word from God, or if I'm being tempted by the devil, or if it's just my own ego, or whatever.
And the typical answer that these kinds of Christians will give is that whatever they're communicating has to be consistent with the Word of God understood both as the Bible and as Jesus of Nazareth.
Makes sense, but it works better in theory than in practice.
And this is where, in my view, when we're really digging in, when we're really decoding, when we're really kind of lifting up the hood to see what goes on here, this is where we really encounter what happens when these Christians appeal to the Word.
It sounds well and good to say that Jesus, or maybe even the Bible, are the Word or message from God.
And that has traditionally been used as a basis for Christian authority.
That probably makes sense to most of us.
But like any other word or message, we've all sent an email or a text where we meant one thing, and as soon as we sent it, we get a response we didn't expect, or somebody gets really upset with us or something, and they received or interpreted that message in a way that we just didn't anticipate or expect.
That's what communication does.
It's a built-in part of communication.
It's no different with the Bible.
It's no different if we're talking about God.
No matter what, that pastor who stands up, he may say that everything he's saying is guided by the Bible and so forth, but at the end of the day, it's his interpretation of the Bible, or it's the interpretation of his tradition, or his tradition is picking up on interpretations that have gone on for a very long time.
There are no agreed-upon readings of the Bible.
There have always been different interpretations.
And those divergent communities that have different understandings of what the Bible is, or what Jesus is, or what the Word of God refers to, they all appeal to the same Holy Spirit, or the same movement of God, to argue that their interpretations are the correct interpretations.
So, even in these cases where it should be relatively settled, that the Word of God means Jesus, it means the Bible, You just got to look at the history of Christianity or the very different messages preached by two different churches on a given Sunday to see that it sounds fine to say that this is somehow grounded or objective or something because it comes from outside of us.
But at the end of the day, people are still claiming authority, claiming divine authority for their own interpretations of who or what God is or what they tell us about God.
And this is even more pronounced when you start getting, not to say the Bible itself, but what a pastor does with it on a Sunday.
Or not just what the Bible might say, but what, referring to last week's episode again, what that person in your life might mean when they say, you know what, I've got a word on my heart for you.
Because in every case, whether we're talking about Jesus, whether we're talking about the Bible, whether we're talking about the pastor's sermon, whether we're talking about that person in your life, a claim to have received a divine communication is a claim of authority.
And given that the church is explicitly, often, especially high-control religion churches, that the church is explicitly concerned with correcting your behavior, with controlling your behavior, with telling us what we ought to think or believe or feel, with making ethical evaluations about us and so forth, those appeals to God's words are ripe for abuse.
This is especially true the further down that level of meanings we drift to just the individual in your life who says they have a word from God.
All of this is complicated.
It sprawls.
We need to wind this up.
Let's kind of tie this together.
When you hear Christians, a certain kind of Christian, appeal to the Word of God, There are different kinds of appeals, different things that they might mean.
Especially within conservative Christian circles that emphasize the Bible and the moving of the Spirit, you're going to hear this language more.
Every appeal to have received a word, to have a word from God, to share a word from God, they are all appeals to some kind of communication from God.
And as such, and this is the really key part, this is the part that I think is often masked, they are implicitly and often explicitly claims to authority.
And what does that mean?
It means they are claims that are not intended to be challenged.
If I come to you and say, God has communicated something to me He wants me to share with you, and I share it, and you push back against it, or you tell me that I'm wrong, or that you disagree, you are claiming to disagree with God.
You're not challenging my authority, you're challenging divine authority.
It puts you in a position immediately of needing to acquiesce to that position and not ask too many questions or push back.
And that, I think, is one of the reasons why appeals to the word rub people the wrong way, so to speak, provoke really negative responses and reactions and feelings.
I think that's part of what's going on.
We talked about that last episode.
We could say more about that.
And the final point about this is, because there's no way to remove the human element from such claims, As long as we humans are the ones who are claiming to have a divine communication, there's no way to take that interpretive element out of it.
It means that such claims are always open to the possibility of power and coercion and abuse, which is why, in my view, we should be on guard when we hear that language.
If we are Christians, if people identify in that way, I would recommend Watching your language, not talking that way, not claiming divine authority, and so forth.
Okay?
So say we need to wind this up.
If you've got questions about that, other ideas about that, things related to this episode, as always, please let me know.
Daniel Miller Swedge, DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com.
Again, always looking for new ideas for this kind of ongoing series.
Want to keep that going, please let me know those as well.
Always enjoy hearing from you.
Always value it so much.
As always, please be well until we meet again in this strange virtual context, and thank you so much for listening.
