Well speaking of blogoi (logoi, Greek for words), I have always been fascinated by languages & words. I have had the privilege of studying five languages, dabbling in another two and if you include reading music and some odd computer languages, I can add a few more notches to my belt.

Well with all this talk of language, I was recently thinking about synonyms … Why are there synonyms in language? Surely language would be simpler and more functional without synonyms.

In fact, George Orwell created such a language, albeit fictional, in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The language was called, “Newspeak” and in the novel, it is described as being “the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak). One of the distinctives of Newspeak was the removal of all synonyms to create a purely functional language.

But language is more than just the encoding of information by one person to be decoded by another person. That definition is awfully technical, sci-fi and spy-like, but language is about relationship. It is about the communication not only of functional truths, but relational truths. Language is about expressiveness, creativity and deep relationship. It is about intimacy, communion and intercourse. It is the ability to express desires, wishes, longings, experiences and worship.

Maybe the reason we have so many synonyms, is because God can’t be described adequately by just one functional word. God is so big, and so glorious and so indescribable that the variety of synonyms with which he has revealed himself in Scripture can only glimpse at His greatness! The names by which He has revealed Himself are just the early aroma of the scrumptious feast that hints at God’s magnificent character. Psalm 34:8 invites us to “Taste and see that the LORD is good.”

It is interesting that the word with the most synonyms in the Oxford English Thesaurus is the word good. There are some 380 synonyms! God is indeed good, but there are so many way to express that – wonderful, awesome, beautiful, superior, majestic, full of splendour, holy, righteous, …

Rev 7:9-10: After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”

In Genesis 11 in the account of Babel, God knew that people would use language to unite in their sinfulness against him and so he confused & diversified our languages. In Christ, God has united our hearts once again, but this time to use the diversity of language and the richness of expressive synonyms to somehow give wings to the worship and praise of our hearts and to somehow begin to capture the marvellous facets of God’s eternal attributes! May all our thoughts be taken captive for Christ (2 Cor 10:5) and may all our words be used in worship of Christ!