In the Beginning Was the Word: Language, A God-Centered Approach

"Poythress presents a compelling, textured biblical theology of human and divine communication. By looking through the right end of the telescope, starting with God rather than human understanding, Poythress plumbs the depths of God’s role as guarantor and sustainer and as the locus within which meaning and interaction have their being. His treatment analyzes multitudinous facets of God’s role in language and how this role affects how we should understand and practice communication"

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"Poythress takes the reader on a theological adventure into the depths of language, showing that God’s gift of language reveals impor- tant things about humankind and about God himself. The complexities and sophistication of human discourse reflect the inherently communicative nature of God, in whose image people are created. The gifts of language and Scripture are testimonies to God’s love and are tools for sharing that love in every language and culture of the earth"

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"Poythress’s detailed knowledge of both the Bible and linguistics, his creative ability to see connections, his determination to be true to God, and his engaging personal manner all come through in this book. I came away with a fresh appreciation for our creaturely dependence on the triune God, and renewed thankfulness to God for his remarkable gift of language"

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"This insightful book is the product of a lifetime of profound thinking about the amazing complexity of language as created by God to reflect his own character and give him glory. Poythress’s multiple perspectives on language will enable readers to understand the Bible more deeply and also to avoid the mistakes of various non-Christian theories of language"

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"Poythress does not merely claim that the discipline of linguistics allows a place for God, or that a theistic worldview provides useful context, or that engagement in such studies is somehow useful to Christians. Rather, he comes right in your face with the claims of Christ: God is not merely a possibility, not merely a conclusion, but the starting point for any understanding at all. The present book on language shows that the foundation of human speech is the speech between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, so that without God meaningful language would be impossible. This book is essential for anyone who would pursue an understanding of language. It is also a great help to those troubled by contemporary challenges to the very possibility of meaningful communication"

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"This book represents a lifetime of theological thinking about the significance of language: about God’s involvement with language, the nature of language itself from phonemes to literary genres, and the diverse ways humans interact with one another, and with God, through language. Here one finds not only a biblical but a systematic theology of language built on the insight that human language reflects the triune God, sometimes in surprising ways. And Poythress includes significant appendices analyzing language in postmodernism, translation theory, speech acts, deconstruction, and more"

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