What is the Word of God? Understanding Divine Communication through a Relevance-Theoretic Model of Communication

Abstract

What is the word of God? The question is a provocative one, no doubt. Or perhaps it is one which a person may be tempted to shrug off for being so patently obvious. To be sure, a fruitful answer to this question is accessible to all those with Spirit-given faith. But an answer that comes even close to grasping its depths—that is accessible to no human being. Should that give us cause for concern? This paper seeks to explore as deeply as possible what the word of God is by exploring what a “word,” “communication,” and “meaning” are. To that end, it evaluates the concept of the Bible as divine communication given through human means in line with the ever-advancing field of human models of communication. The conclusion will serve to say as much as can be said about our understanding of what the word of God is, and to offer the comfort we have that the level to which we can understand the word of God, however limited, is enough.