Acknowledgment. (1) - by Charles H. Welch

#1. The Place of Acknowledgment in Experimental Truth.

       Salvation is a finished work. Nothing that man can do can make salvation more secure than it is, for it rests solely upon the once-offered sacrifice of Christ. It is a salvation that is by grace. Yet, it is equally the testimony of the Scriptures that salvation is also “by faith”, and though it be a work already accomplished on behalf of sinful man, no man is “saved” apart from faith in the Son of God. Man is a moral being and in this lies his separateness from the rest of the visible world. No one has ever seen a stone “refuse” to fall to the ground when released, nor the sun hesitate on his course. Like man, sun and stones, stars and trees, are creatures but, unlike man, they are not moral. It is of the essence of the moral sphere that obedience be freely rendered. The very idea of an enforced holiness is intolerable either to reason or to revelation. The man who is  “saved by grace” is a man who has also felt his need and has been “saved by faith”. 

    Now a word that recurs in the spiritual history of man as recorded in the Word, and that forms the bridge over which man as a moral creature passes into salvation and its accompanying blessings, is the word “acknowledge”. Let us turn to some passages of Scripture that reveal the important place “acknowledgment” has in the mind and will of God for His people.

     “Only acknowledge thine iniquity” was the one proviso needful for restoration in the Lord’s call to Israel by Jeremiah: 

       “Go and proclaim these words toward the north, and say, Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the Lord; and I will not cause Mine anger to fall upon you: for I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not keep anger for ever. Only acknowledge thine iniquity, that thou hast transgressed against the Lord thy God, and hast scattered thy ways to the strangers under every green tree, and ye have not obeyed My voice, saith the Lord. Turn, O backsliding children, saith the Lord; for I am married unto you” (Jer. iii. 12-14).

     Acknowledgement is here seen as one phase of repentance. “Return”, “acknowledge”, “turn” and the like truth is also found in the New Testament. Much to the same effect is the testimony of Prov. xxviii. 13: 

       “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.” 

     This passage makes us think of that great example of true acknowledgment, David, whose repentance has given us those two wonderful Psalms, xxxii. & li. Psalm xxxii. opens with the blessedness of the man whose transgression is forgiven, but before this blessedness could be experienced by David, he had to acknowledge his sin. While he kept silence his misery was great, and the hand of the Lord was heavy upon him. 

       “I acknowledged my sin unto Thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin” (Psa. xxxii. 5). 

         Parallel with this is the experience of Psalm li.: 

              “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of Thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight” (Psa. li. 1-4). 

         

When we turn to the epistles that speak of the grace of God to the church, we shall find that in some places where the Authorized Version reads “knowledge”, the true meaning is “acknowledge”. In the first epistles of John, where experimental truth, associated with walking in the light, is the theme, “confession” is used in much the same way as “acknowledgment” is used elsewhere.

          “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (I John i. 9).

     Before the prodigal son “came to the father”, he “came to himself” (Luke xv. 17, 20). Before he experienced reconciliation and wore the best robe, he had said: 

              “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son” (Luke xv. 18, 19).

        The moment that salvation becomes our realized possession the Lord is pledged to lead us out and on. We have but to read the book of Exodus to see this plainly set forth. From the moment the blood of the Passover had been shed and the hour of deliverance had come, Israel never lacked a leader. Moses may go the way of all flesh, but Joshua is there to take his place, and over and above all human agency, we find the pillar of cloud and fire that never left the people throughout their pilgrimage. Let us therefore turn our attention to the experience of being led by the Lord. 

               “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths” (Prov. iii. 5, 6).

     From these words it is evident that the acknowledging of the Lord is fairly comprehensive. It is impossible to acknowledge the Lord unless our trust in Him is with “all our heart” and in “all our ways”. Very often no other “leading” is necessary than to stand at the parting of the ways, look ahead, and see whether following the one or the other would involve some denial of the Lord. If this is seen to be so, the matter is settled, and prayer for guidance at such times may too much resemble the attitude of Balaam (Numb. xxii. 13, 19). 

       This acknowledgment of the Lord in all our ways is very finely brought out in the story of Abraham’s servant, who said: 

             “I, being in the way, the LORD led me” (Gen. xxiv. 27).

       Returning to our text (Prov. iii. 5, 6) we further observe that there is a correspondence instituted between “trust” and “lean”; and between “with all thine heart” and “in all thy ways”. The “heart” deals with the life and motive force within, the “ways” deal with the outgoings of this hidden power in active and practical service. It is important to keep the divine order. Mere outward conformity, “ways”, without inward reality, “hearts”, is a self-blinding form of hypocrisy. 

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(From The Berean Expositor, vol. 36, page 7).

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Time and Place. (4)

The Scriptural association of chronology and topography with doctrine and purpose.
by Charles H. Welch

#4. The Seven Days of Gen. i. 1, 2 - ii. 2.


It is impossible to speak of the present creation without referring to time. It is often spoken of as “The six days’ creation” to distinguish it from the primal creation of
Gen. i. 1 and the new creation of Rev. xxi. 

In this connection of time we must first consider theword “day”. It is conceded at the outset that yom, “day”, may mean an indefinite period of time, and that it is so used in Gen. ii. 4, “In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens”, where “day” covers the whole of the six days’ creation. Gen. i. 3 to ii. 3 however is a unit in which the “day” occurs fourteen times, and an examination of its usage will leave little room for doubt but that a literal day of twenty-four hours is intended.

At the creation of light the Lord divided the light from the darkness, calling the light “day” and the darkness “night”. This division of time has remained ever since and, just as we find Noah receiving parallel commands to “replenish the earth” and with reference also to the subduing of the animal creation and the honouring of the image of God in man (Gen. ix. 1, 2, 6), so, as in Gen. i., this is preceded by a covenant which promised that “while the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, the day and night shall not cease” (viii. 22). Again, Gen. i. 5 adds, “And the evening and the morning were the firstday”.

If, as some have said, these are geological days, involving an “evening”, that might have lasted millions ofyears, can anyone explain what kept alive the grass, the herb, and the fruit tree during its icy and inkydarkness, or how the fowl of the air or creeping things managed to exist? for every day’s work is summed up with the formula: “The evening and the morning were the . . . . . day.” Yet if we interpret Gen. i. 1, 2 as the creation of the heaven and the earth which was created during the six days of the subsequent revelation, we shall be compelled to teach that these “days” are geological ages. The rocks evidence their age-long growth, the very fuel we burn witnesses that long ages must have passed in the process of turning forests into coal. But if we interpret i. 1, 2 as we have done, that is, seeing a primal creation in the beginning followed by an overthrow, we can place our geological ages in between verses 1 and 2 and look upon the present creation as occupying literally just six days, for it was largely a reconstruction, the word “create” only occurring in the record for two acts, (1) the creation of the inhabitants of the sea (verse 21), for in the primal creation, as in the new earth, there was, and there will, “no sea”, and (2) the creation of man (verse 27). 

The summary of the six days’ work is given in Gen. ii. 3: “All His work which God created and made.”

Because, to express the facts, we should have had to use a clumsy circumlocution, we have said in the earlier part of this article, “and the creation of light”. But the word “create” is not used of light; the statement is “Light be, and light was.” Similarly, “Let there be a firmament”, “Let the waters be gathered”, Let the dry land appear”, “Let the earth bring forth”, and so on. 

The present creation was constructed to form a platform upon which the drama of the ages should be enacted, after which it is destined to pass away so that the goal of the ages might be enjoyed in a new heaven and earth, which are to be the glorious complement of the heaven and earth created as a “beginning”. 

A legitimate question to raise in connection with the six days’ creation is, Why should the Lord have taken six days and not five or ten or any other number? Further, Why should the Lord have “rested” on theseventh? We are assured that “The Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary” (Isa. xl. 28). We are certain that the six days of creation and the seventh day rest are not mentioned without purpose and, seeing that the very “beginning” of Genesis anticipated its glorious “end”, we return once more to the consideration of “time” in relation to the doctrine of Scripture, with the assurance that if we “seek” we shall “find”. 

“Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which Hehad made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it He had rested from all His work which God had created and made” (Gen. ii. 1-3). 

In other studies we have drawn attention to the way in which Noah stands as a sort of “second man and last Adam”, and in connection with this use of the number seven, we find that shebu “seventh”, occurs nowhere else in Genesis except in chapter viii. 4, where we read that “the ark rested in the seventh month”. Not only Noah but his father Lamech emphasize this, for Lamech, the father of Noah, was 777 years old when he

died. 

In Gen. xxvi. 33 we read: “And he called it shebah (that is an oath)”, and it is a feature not to be lightlypassed over that the same Hebrew root that supplies us with the number seven gives us the word for “oath” and “to swear”. The words shaba and shebuah, “to swear”, occur in Genesis twenty-one times, or three times seven. 

We have seen that the opening sentence of the Bible (Gen. i. 1) anticipates, as a kind of firstfruits, the end,and it may be well to remind the reader that the Hebrew of that verse contains 7 words, 14 syllables and 21 letters. We now see that in the choice of this number “seven” God has, in type, sworn that His purpose shall be accomplished. In the epistle to the Hebrews the Apostle quotes Gen. ii. 2, and from an examination of other scriptures, concludes that “There remaineth therefore a rest (sabbatismos) to the people of God” (Heb. iv. 9). 

To keep this hope alive in the hearts of His people, the Lord placed the observance of the Sabbath day prominently in the tables of the covenant. To impress us still further with the extreme importance of this symbolic number, the Lord has multiplied these sabbatic observances. The word that is translated “rest” in Gen. ii. 2 and 3 is shabath. The law of Moses contains a series of feasts, or holy days, that carry on a progression of sevens. We have the seventh DAY (Lev. xxiii. 3); seven DAYS (Lev. xxiii. 6); seven

WEEKS (Lev. xxiii. 15); the seventh MONTH (Lev. xxiii. 24); the seventh YEAR (Lev. xxv. 4); seven times seven YEARS (Lev. xxv. 8) and seventy times seven YEARS (Dan. ix. 24). 

Here we have design and purpose. The glorious Jubilee, when every debt was cancelled, every man set free, every inheritance entered and enjoyed; the annual Feast of Tabernacles in the seventh month when every man sat, as it were, under his own vine and fig tree and none made him afraid; the prophetic period of Dan. ix. after which Israel’s restoration should be complete, all speak of the same thing, and pledge the attainment of the same goal. 

From our three studies in the time factor of Gen. i. 1 - ii. 3 it is abundantly evident 

that a knowledge of this feature is by no means of mere academic interest, but that it 

enters into the very fabric of revealed truth, and is no mean factor in its interpretation.

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(From The Berean Expositor, vol. 34, page 174).

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The Interpretation of the Scriptures. (2)

by Charles H. Welch

No.2. The History of Interpretation. 

Having seen that the only safe approach to Scripture is that of the literal, with due consideration being given to symbols, figures of speech and types, it may be helpful to give an outline of interpretation in the past, because this will show up wrong conceptions which have led to the misunderstanding of God’s Word, and so will help to guard us against similar errors. To trace past interpretation in detail from Ezra’s day right down to the present time would be an enormous task and not possible within the limits of The Berean Expositor. To those who wish to do so, we recommend Dean Farrar’s History of Interpretation, which, in spite of hisliberalism, is an outstanding work on this subject. Other volumes which may be consulted with profit are the Bible in the Church by R. M. Grant; Prophecy and Authority by K. Fullerton; The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages by B. Smalley. 

The Greek School of Allegorism.

Inasmuch as the Greek allegorical method was adopted both by Jew and Christian at the beginning, it is necessary to commence here. The Greeks had a religious heritage in Homer and Hesiod. To question or doubt them was considered an irreligious or atheistic act. Yet the stories of the gods were often fanciful, absurd, or immoral, which was an offence to the philosophical mind. How was this tension to be resolved? The answer is, by allegorizing. The stories were not to be taken literally, but a secret underlying meaning was to be sought. The important thing to notice is that this Greek allegorical method spread to Alexandria, where there was a large Jewish population and eventually a Christian population of considerable size. The Alexandrian Jew was bound to face up to Greek philosophical tradition which held sway there, especially that of Plato, and for him the problem was to reconcile this with his own national Scriptures (the Old Testament). His solution was identical with the Greek. Dean Farrar writes: 

“The Alexandrian Jews were not, however, driven to invent the allegorical method for themselves. They found it ready to their hands” (History of Interpretation, p. 134). 

 He continues on page 135:

“By a singular concurrence of circumstances, the Homeric studies of pagan philosophers suggested first to the Jews and then through them to the Christians, a method of interpretation before unheard of, which remained unshaken for more than fifteen hundred years.” 

Apparently the first writer in this Jewish allegorical way was Aristobulus (B.C.160). He asserted that Greek philosophy borrowed from the Old Testament and that, by using the allegorical method, the teachings of Greek philosophy could be found in Moses and the prophets. The outstanding Jewish allegorist was Philo (about B.C.20-54A.D.). He had strong leanings toward the philosophy of Plato and Pythagoras. By an elaborate system of allegorizing, he reconciled his loyalty to his Hebrew faith and his regard for Greek philosophy. Philo did not regard the literal meaning of Scripture to be useless, but rather an immature level of understanding. He likened the literal sense of Scripture to its “body”, and the allegorical to its “soul”, the literal being for the immature and the allegorical for the mature. He had around twenty rules which indicated that a passage of Scripture was to be treated allegorically. A few of these were sound, but most of them led to interpretation that was fantastic and erroneous. Philo’s conceptions are a good example of what happens when the grammatico-historical method of interpretation is abandoned. Spiritualizing becomes a slippery slope down which it is well nigh impossible to stop. 

The Allegorism of the Fathers.

This system, which sprang from the pagan Greeks and was copied by the Alexandrian Jews, was thenadopted by the professing church and largely dominated the interpretation of the Scriptures until the Reformation, with the exception of the school at Antioch and the Victorines of the Middle Ages. The apostolic Fathers had as their Bible the Septuagint, i.e. the Greek translation of the Old Testament. They saw that the Old Testament prefigured Christ in type and symbol, and that the New Testament was full of direct and indirect references to the Old Testament. In other words, they perceived that the Old Testament could never be fully understood apart from the New Testament. This they sought to emphasize by allegory and spiritualization. The motive was right, but the method wrong. What they apparently did not realize was that the New Testament is the commentary par excellence on the Old Testament and does not need any propping up by such methods, which only throw the door wide open to personal fancies and excesses. 

There was a lack of historical sense in their method of exposition; they usually ignored the setting and background of a passage of Scripture. They considered the Scriptures to be full of enigmas and riddles which could only be satisfactorily explained by allegorisation. They confused the allegorical with the typical and thus blurred the correct interpretation of the Old Testament. They professed to see Greek philosophy inthe Old Testament, and claimed that it was the allegorical method that discovered it. The pity of all this was that it obscured the true meaning of the Word of God. K. Fullerton writes: 

“When the historical sense of a passage is once abandoned there is wanting any sound regulative principle to govern exegesis . . . . . The mystical (allegorical) method of exegesis is an unscientific and arbitrary method, reduces the Bible to obscure enigmas, undermines the authority of allinterpretation, and therefore, when taken by itself, fails to meet the apologetic necessities of the time” (Prophecy and Authority). 

No wonder the Gnostics of the second century found this method so handy to propagate their falsedoctrine! 

Roman Catholic Allegorism. 

It is true to say that, for the most part, Scriptural interpretation of the Middle Ages was allegorical. The Roman Catholic Church has maintained the validity of the allegorical method, though there is evidence that later on, some of their scholars saw the excesses that resulted from this in Patristic theology, and were prepared to admit the importance of the literal meaning of Scripture. Roman Catholics accept the Latin Vulgate translation of Jerome as the authentic version for public lectures, disputations, sermons andexpositions. 

This church thus puts itself into the awkward position of basing its doctrines on a translation instead of the original languages of Hebrew, Chaldee and Greek. This is a great weakness, for no one translation, however good, can adequately set forth the truth of the original. Moreover the Roman Catholic expositor is forced to accept obediently whatever the church specifically decrees on the authorship of the books of the Bible, andsome twenty verses have been officially interpreted and may not be deviated from. Actually the number is more than this, because many of the official documents require definite interpretations of certain verses. Roman Catholic exegesis became summed up during the Middle Ages in three rules: 

(1) A passage may have an allegorical or mystical meaning. 

(2) It may have an anagogical or eschatological meaning, that is, it may prefigure or anticipate the church in glory. 

(3) It may have a tropological meaning, that is, teach a way of life, or in other words, convey the moral significance of the passage. 

With its often excessive usage of types, the Roman Catholic diverges from the Protestant. Thus the manna in the wilderness, the passover, the bread and wine of Melchizedek are made types of the Eucharist, thus ignoring the controlling guide of New Testament usage. Such exposition can never be accepted by the honest searcher for truth. It is reading into Scripture what is not there, and is the fruit of the allegorical method ofinterpretation, which is used to bolster up this sacramental and sacerdotal approach to the Bible. Further, the Roman Catholic believes that to his church alone has been entrusted the Deposit of Truth in a two-fold form, (1) the oral form (tradition) and (2) the written form (the Scriptures), and this written form, the Bible, is obscure and needs an official interpreter, which must be the Church of Rome, to whom alone, he believes, ithas been given by God. To him the oral tradition is of equal authority with the Word of God because he believes that both have come from God, and are complementary. Furthermore, no passage of Scripture can be interpreted to conflict with Roman Catholic doctrine. It is therefore obvious that the Protestant expositor is always at a disadvantage when disputing on doctrinal matters with a Roman Catholic. Whereas the former will take his stand solely on God’s Word, the latter can always retreat and bring in his oral tradition, which he believes to be as much God’s truth as the Bible. The more one studies the Roman Catholic position, the

more one is thankful for the great liberating effect of the Reformation. Believers today have largely forgotten what they owe to God for this great movement: freedom of conscience, and approach to Him through the Lord Jesus Christ alone, and not through any human sacerdotal system with its inevitable bondage. 

The Jewish Schools. 

When Jerusalem was destroyed and the Jews taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar, they were separated from the Temple and its regulations, and could no longer practice their religion as outlined in the books of Moses. This state of things finally led to Judaism with its synagogues, rabbis and traditions. The vast system of Jewish interpretation that resulted is a separate study in itself, and it is practically impossible to sum it up adequately. Various schools emerged with opposing ideas. The Karaites were the literalists and the Kabbalists the allegorists. The Palestinian Jews of post-captivity days started off well with a literal approach to the Scriptures, but they often failed to put into practice the rules they laid down. In Kabbalism excessive literalism was allied to allegorism with grotesque results. They used gematria to endow words with numericalvalues which became the basis for interpretation that was absurd or pernicious. 

While we believe that certain numbers are used in Scripture with intent, such as 6, 7, 12, 13, 40 and so on, we need to take warning and keep this under control. We have seen some extraordinary interpretations of Scripture result from those with a mathematical inclination who have let their minds run riot along these lines.

The Syrian School of Antioch. 

It has been asserted that the first Protestant school of interpretation commenced at Antioch of Syria, and had it not been crushed by orthodoxy for its supposed heretical connection with the Nestorians, the course of church history might have been very different. It produced such prominent names as Lucian, Dorotheus, Diodorus, Theodore of Mopsuestia and Chrysostom. This school fought the allegorists and maintained theimportance of the literal and historical interpretation of the Word of God. They insisted on the reality of Old Testament events, and accused the allegorists of doing away with the historicity of much of the OldTestament, and leaving behind a shadowy world of symbols. Their approach to the Bible was Christological, and they rightly blended together the historic and Messianic elements of the Scriptures. The result was that they produced some of the finest expository literature of ancient times. R. W. Grant points out that this school had a great influence in the Middle Ages and became the pillar of the Reformation and their method the principal exegetical method of the Christian Church.

Another interesting school was that of the Victorines which came into being at the Abbey of St. Victor in Paris in the medieval period. They likewise stressed the historical and literal approach to the Scriptures. They insisted that the spiritual sense could not be properly known until the Scriptures had been literally interpreted.

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(From The Berean Expositor, vol. 43, page 97).

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“With all thy getting, get understanding” (Prov. iv. 7).(2)

by Charles H. Welch

#2. Names: their place and importance.


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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