If man be created in the image of God, and if man be placed over the work of His hands, we should expect that he would possess a nature above that of the brute creation: in other words, that he would be a rational being. This we know to be the case: whereas
animals act merely under the power of instinct, man acts under the influence of reason. The first recorded act of man is found in Gen. ii. 19:--
“And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.”
Those who deny the inspiration of Scripture, and look upon Genesis as a collection of myths and legends, have to account for the scientific accuracy of its most incidental details. What is it that we find in the forefront of any text book on logic? The necessity of names:--
“If we attempt to . . . . . analyze . . . . . the import of propositions we find forced upon us, as a subject of previous consideration, the import of name” (J.S.M.*).
Thus Adam is exhibited in Gen. ii. acting as a rational being, giving names to all the lower creation that passed before him as a necessary first step to fuller and clearer understanding.
Hobbes, in his Computation of Logic, says:--
“A name is a word taken at pleasure to serve for a mark which may raise in our mind a thought like to some thought we had before, and which being pronounced to others, may be to them a sign of what thought the speaker had before in his mind.”
This is the simplest definition of a name. Names may stand for more than this; in Scripture, for instance, names are often prophetic, but in the simplest analysis names are marks, and it is of the utmost importance that when two or more people converse, they should agree that certain marks or names stand for certain ideas or things, otherwise confusion must follow. And here the accuracy of the history of Babel is seen. As soon as certain groups of men began to call ideas and things by names different from those employed by other groups, confusion followed, and “they left off to build”.
When God would mark a crisis in the life of the Patriarch, he changed his name from Abram to Abraham.
Names must be distinguished the one from the other according to their significations, of which there are the following classifications:--
(1) GENERAL and SINGULAR names.
(2) CONCRETE and ABSTRACT names.
(3) CONNOTATIVE and NON-CONNOTATIVE names.
(4) POSITIVE and NEGATIVE names.
(5) RELATIVE and ABSOLUTE names.
(6) UNIVOCAL and EQUIVOCAL names.
“All names are names of something, real or imaginary; but all things have not names appropriated to them individually.”
While persons, remarkable places and events have their distinguishing or singular names, there is a multitude of common objects or ideas to which we give a general name. For example, “book” is a general name; but if I wish to designate a particular book I must either put together several names, as “This book”, or “This red book”, etc., or use a singular name as “The Bible”, “The Berean Expositor”, etc.
“A general name is familiarly defined, a name which is capable of being truly affirmed, in the same sense, of each of an indefinite number of things. An individual or singular name is a name which is only capable of being truly affirmed, in the same sense, of one thing.”
“In the same sense.”—How needful it is before we attempt to teach the truth of God’s Word that we discover the “sense” of its words, names or ideas, and then adhere closely to it. What havoc has been caused by a failure to define beforehand, and to adhere afterwards, to such terms as “divine”, “sin”, “faith”, “all”, etc.
The second division of names is into those which are concrete and those which are abstract:--
“A concrete name is a name that stands for a thing: an abstract name is a name which stands for an attribute of a thing.”
Thus “Scripture” is concrete, while “holy”, being an attribute, is abstract. We will not spend time over this obvious division of names, particularly as the next one demands more care and attention, viz., connotative and non-connotative names:--
“The word ‘connote’ comes from notare, ‘to mark’; connotare ‘to mark along with; to mark one thing with or in addition to another’.”
“A connotative term is one which denotes a subject and implies an attribute. Thus John, or London, or England, are names which signify a subject only. Whiteness, length, virtue, signify an attribute only. None of these names, therefore, is connotative. But, white, long, virtuous, are connotative, for they denote a subject and imply an attribute.”
Concrete and general names are connotative. Take for instance the word “man”. It may denote the Editor of this magazine, the reader, or a number of individuals that form a definite class:--
“It is applied to them because they possess, and to signify that they possess, certain attributes. These seem to be corporeity, animal life, rationality, and a certain external form which for distinction we call the human. Every existing thing which possessed all these attributes, would be called a man.”
There is a great deal more to be learned regarding this division of names that perhaps will be better appreciated when we can apply ourselves to the Scriptures, and as we are not attempting to teach logic, we pass on to the remaining subdivision.
The fourth division of names is into those which are positive and those which are negative. It must be remembered that some names which are positive in form are negative in reality, and vice versa. The word “unpleasant” is negative in form, but positive in meaning, for it signifies positive painfulness. The word “idle” is positive in form, but negative in meaning. We must be careful to distinguish negative names from positive names. True negatives are expressed by the word “not”. A privative name supposes the one-time possession of an attribute now lost. For example, the word “blind” is not a negative of “seeing”, for it suggests that, by reason of his class, the sufferer whom the word describes did have, or should have, the faculty of sight.
Relative and absolute names are the next division. Such names as “father” and “son” are relative, not absolute. Much of the evil teaching that denies the deity of Christ is due to failure to realize that the titles “Father” and “Son” are relative. As a father a man is only as old as his eldest child, although as a man he may be thirty years older. This is true wherever applied, if true at all, and God Himself could not bear the name of “Father” until He had a Son. Men continually attempt to disprove the deity of Christ by emphasizing the subordinate relations of Son to Father, but such reasoning is false:--
“A name is relative, when, being the name of one thing, is signification cannot be explained but by mentioning another.”
God is self-existent, and, in His essence and absoluteness, independent of creation or time. It will be discovered that all we know of God is relative, and our reasoning must, accordingly, be governed by this limitation. As in the case of the titles “Father” and “Son”, so “Jehovah”, “Elohim”, “Shaddai” are all relative, and do not comprehend absolute deity, of which we know nothing.
The last division of names is that of univocal and equivocal:--
“A name is univocal, or applied univocally, with respect to all things of which it can be predicated in the same sense; it is equivocal, or applied equivocally, as respects those things of which it is predicated in different senses.”
“File”, meaning a steel instrument, and ‘file’, meaning a line of soldiers, have no more
title to be considered one word, because written alike, than ‘grease’ and ‘Greece’ have,
because pronounced alike. They are one sound, appropriated to form two different
words.”
Some of our readers will be aware that while the fact of the existence of “two seeds” is maintained as a scriptural doctrine, it is fatal to the doctrine of universal reconciliation, whatever differences there may be as to what constitutes these “seeds”. It is, therefore, clear that the advocates of universal reconciliation must offer some explanation to account for the “Giants”, the “Rephaim”, and other like beings mentioned in Scripture.
This has now been done, and the process comes under the heading of equivocal names. Because the Hebrew word Rephaim contains the same root letters as the Hebrew word for “Healer”, a whole nation, together with its pedigree, is blotted out. According to this teaching the “Giants” cease to exist, they are but “healers”. If the reader will imagine some person of foreign extraction endeavouring to reason about the name “Ham”, and thereby disposing of a whole section of the human race because that same “word” has, in spelling, an equivocal affinity with “bacon”, he will be able to appreciate this treatment of the subject at its true value!
Sometimes a word is used metaphorically, “as when we speak of a brilliant light, and a brilliant achievement”:--
“One of the commonest forms of fallacious reasoning arising from ambiguity is that of arguing from a metaphorical expression as if it were literal.”
One of the most awful examples of this false reasoning is, of course, the use made by the Church of Rome of the Saviour’s words, “This is My body”: the metaphor is taken as being a literal statement.
We trust enough has been said to cause the reader to exercise care in the use of doctrinal terms, and those who have the time and inclination would be well repaid if they collected lists of terms from the Scriptures for each of the divisions suggested in this article.
[NOTE * - In this series the initials J.S.M. stand for John Stuart Mill, and all
paragraphs in quotation marks without name or initial must be understood as
quotations from this author’s book, entitled A System of Logic.]
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(From The Berean Expositor, vol. 22, page 200).
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(From The Berean Expositor, vol. 22, page 200).
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