9
but also to Grenz and Franke's appeal to communication by the Holy Spirit as He speaks now to
the churches. For if Christians (or anyone else, for that matter) are indeed on the inside of
language and cannot get outside to an extra-linguistic realm, it seems that the prospects for
divine revelation are rather dismal. The alternative scenario fares no better. If God cannot get
outside of language, then clearly Christians must make God, not according to their own image,
but according to how they use their language.
Now certainly this conclusion will be unacceptable to them since it entails that Christians
would be idolaters. That result would be disastrous for their linguistic, theological method, since
it leads to an internal contradiction of scripture, which is supposed to be the grammar, or
"yardstick," by which Christians are to judge if a given use of language is appropriate. So Grenz
and Franke might reply that they do not mean that God is a construct made by Christians'
language use. That is to say, that is not how they talk in their linguistic community. Instead,
they likely will say that God has broken through and given special revelation, and thus they do
not presuppose that God is internal to their language. Going further, they could charge that I
have been bewitched by the influences of foundationalism to think that I can know things as they
truly are, independently of linguistic use, and that I am thereby creating theological confusion.
But if they maintain their insistence on (a) the local, discrete character of communities that
construct their own worlds by how they use their language, and (b) that we simply do not inhabit
(nor can we know) the world-in-itself, then their counter-claim that God is not internal to
language is just that: a claim made from within their own nominal, discrete, linguistic
community, whichever one that is. This conclusion leads to a second kind of issue, which we
will now address.
The Discreteness of All Theological Claims