The next stage of the investigation is to discover whether there is any precedent in the Bible for “God uses” language in relation to people. There was very little evidence provided for this in the literature review. Dictionary Work In order to provide a thorough examination of the Biblical material a two pronged approach was […]
It is clear from this analysis that the word “use” and its cognates are relatively rare in the Bible. However, this is not the case in contemporary English. In order to investigate the dimensions of meanings, and the frequency of these meanings, it was decided to analyse its occurrences in a set of newspapers in […]
Having demonstrated that “God uses” language has little Biblical precedent, and that the idea of a person being used does have negative connotations in secular use, we now turn to its wider implications. This part of the discussion begins with the foundational work of exploring who God is, and the teasing out of certain principles […]
Having explored who God is, we now turn to an exploration of human self. Storied-Self Martin and Barresi (2006) provide a pen sketch of the development of concepts of selfhood. They trace the idea of the true self, as an individual that characterises who we really are, to Cicero. (p.30) In Plotinus is seen the […]
Having discovered that relationship is at the heart of who God is, and of who we are, we now turn to a consideration of the impact of “God uses” language is on our understanding of relationships. As we have seen, the way that we talk about God is formative, and therefore it is important that […]