The diminished capacity of language

 Reading theologians and pastors of previous centuries, it is rare to find a bare reference to 'Jesus' or to 'the Trinity'.  It is always 'the Lord Jesus'; it is always 'the Holy Trinity' or 'the Blessed Trinity'.  These are not just decorative adjectives.  They are, it seems to me, part of a whole way of using language to express reverence.

Problem: if I use language like that, I just sound pompous.

I think it's clear that linguistic usage has shifted, in the direction of more casual language, more off-hand use of words.  I imagine that follows our culture in general, which has become much more casual - and presumably it circles around to reinforce that tendency.  The question is: can we be reverent when our language no longer has the capacity to carry the weight of reverence?

I think the same probably applies to the use of (what seems to us) extravagant language of love to the Lord Jesus.  Our cynical culture struggles to take this seriously; I find myself that reading Owen or Bernard on the Song of Songs is difficult.  Our language doesn't seem to possess any longer the capacity for this sort of expression.

Resolved: in a casual, throw-away culture, in which language has become thin and diminished, to wrestle to use words with care, in order to preserve and perhaps restore their capacity to express and encourage great thoughts and emotions.

How imagery doesn't work

Jesus Christ is the Head of his Body. His Body is the Church.

That pair of images is used to bring out a number of truths in the New Testament.  For example, the truth that Christ directs his church as the head directs the body, and the truth that Christ is intimately connected to his church.  Or within the church itself, the truth that each person is intimately related to each other person as different parts of the same body, and the truth that each has a particular role within the organic whole. The images work because they appeal to something which we understand and of which have experience.  The images speak to us far more deeply and clearly than bare language (in so far as there is such a thing) ever could.

But the danger is that we let the image control the idea. We might conclude, for example, that because a head is as dependent on a body as a body is on a head, that Christ and his church stand in a reciprocal relationship of dependency. That won't do. Or we might construe the link between Christ and the church organically, as somehow natural, because this suits the image. We might then imagine that the church is in some way a continuation of the incarnation - after all, a head is only present with (and perhaps through) a body, so maybe Christ is present only in and through the church.

The image is illuminating in its original connection, in its right place in the argument. It is not therefore legitimate to develop it any which way, or to deploy it in wholly different contexts and arguments. Then it may well be only deceptive.

The image lives from the reality, and not vice versa.