Language is Freedom: Ephraim the Syrian and the Maturity of Reason

"For the Deity gave us Speech that is free like Itself, in order that free Speech might serve our independent Freewill. And by Speech, too, we are the likeness of the Giver of it, [Ov. p. 22.] inasmuch as by means of it we have impulse and thought for good things; and not only for good things, but we learn also of God, the fountain of good things, by means of Speech (which is) a gift from Him. For by means of this (faculty) which is like God we are clothed with the likeness of God. For divine teaching is the seal of minds, by means of which men who learn are sealed that they may be an image for Him Who knows all. For if by Freewill Adam was the image of God, it is a most praiseworthy thing when, by true knowledge, and by true conduct, a man becomes the image of God. For that independence exists in these also. For animals cannot form in themselves pure thoughts about God, because they have, not Speech, that which forms in us the image of the Truth. We have received the gift of Speech that we may not be as speechless animals in our conduct, but that we may in our actions resemble God, the giver of Speech. How great is Speech, a gift which came to make those who receive it like its Giver ! And because animals have not Speech they cannot be the likeness of our minds. But because the mind has Speech, it is a great disgrace to it when it is not clothed with the likeness of God ; it is a still more grievous shame when animals resemble men, and men do not resemble God. But threefold is the torture doubled when this intermediate (party between God and animals) forsakes the Good above him and degrades himself from his natural rank to put on the likeness of animals in his conduct." -Ephraim the Syrian First Discourse to Hypatius

Human beings are unique among creatures because they have language. While animals have levels of perception and intelligence, they do not have rationality. Animals can communicate signs through sensory data, whether noises, scents, or motions. But these actions are nothing but data transfer. This is why AI seems to be fundamentally stuck (and I think always will be) because computers lack the capacity for language. Computers can, when programmed with the right algorithms, problem solve. But gorillas can do the same thing, learning to match certain visible symbols to accomplish the task (yet one that requires reward/punishment based conditioning). But gorillas never learn any language. I am not sure about the Chomskian "language device", but I do think that language is what fundamentally make humans unique.

The rationality of language is not simply in data swaps (as if language was a crude suitcase for information). Language is discursive, meaning it invites (and requires) a multitude. It is public, as it is the means of sharing experiences. Without language, we would lapse into solipsistic insanity or animal grunts. But it requires a fundamental dialectical approach to reality as well. Such does not necessarily mean conflict. But language is how contradictions are addressed. Language is how creation has distinction, and not simply exists as indistinguishable whole. To be a man is to fulfill man's original vocation: to name the animals. Without language, man would be unable to commune with God in any priestly way, but simply subsist as the animals, tree, and rocks do. They too receive their blessings, but they do not rule. Contrary to pagan cosmology, humankind is a race of royal priests, to mediate the entirety of creation. Man does not simply rule over man, but over flora and fauna, eventually even over spirits (1 Corinthians 6:3).

Language is the means to engage in this rule. It is the process of Law, of knowing this from that, to discriminate and judge according to what things are. And knowledge of things can only be gained through dialogue, the critical awareness of the gap between mind and world. It is in this movement, of stooping down and lifting up, that mankind fulfills his priestly task. It is in this process that man has a free-will. History is not deterministic, as if everything happens according to dominoes falling one after another. Rather, history is dialogic, in both the confrontation of contradictions and the peaceable conversation between friends. Spiritual warfare is acknowledging both an original good and a present evil. It is to recognize both nature's night and nature's rebirth. Man is often the slave of the greater forces around and above him, as well as the works of his hands. But this corrupts the original vocation, one that carries into the Christian life. The dominion mandate has not ceased, but transfigured in light of sin and redemption. Reigning from the tree, so to speak, Christians offer judgements, they name the animals, they spread garden. But the work of sacrifice, of making holy, is cruciform. It is a life of dying, of laying down your life for your friends. It redeems the shattered dust of the earth to yearn for the revelation of the Sons of God. Christ conquers the world through His cross, not otherwise. Those who either embrace or reject the dominion mandate often fail to see the logic of the cross in God's task of reigning and ruling. The cross becomes a means to an end (either present now or deferred until later), rather than at the foundation of the world. Eve's birth from Adam's side and the Church's birth from Christ's side reflect the similar logic, though under different circumstances. The Christian is to conquer the world, with Christ, through martyrdom, a bearing witness to the truth.


As the above quote from Ephraim the Syrian highlights, the Christian's matyrial existence is manifest through language. The hackneyed Francis of Assissi quote ("preach the gospel always, use words if necessary") is deployed for satanic inversion: language is denigrated for action, even as action has no rational basis without language to frame it. Man has dignity and freedom because men and women can speak. They can reason together, judge together, and uplift/praise together. Freedom is possible only through this way. Without reason and language, man would simply be a ball knocked about by other balls. But in language, mankind may see alternative paths, may be able to make course corrections according to the logic of the engagement between man and the world and man and man. Free will isn't a naked decision in the abstract, it is a decision made in media res. Freedom is ultimately responsive, neither unfettered nor reactive. It is the ability to say "Yes" or "No" to a given set of affairs. It is the ability to come to know alternatives through a description of one's surroundings, one's problems, and one's hopes.

Theology is ultimate language. Experiences of God may be difficult to explain, but they require language to be real. Despite superficial analyses, it's what separates St. John's apocalypse from many mystic visions. The former paints a colorful truth through the highly charged symbolic language that Scripture uses. The mystic's vision is often a poorly contrived synthesis of folk symbols and whatever other material the mystic happens to come across. The more well-traveled the mystic, the more complex the vision's symbolic registry. However, the registry does not mean coherence or intelligence, only opacity. Even St. Paul's reluctance to speak of his own vision depends upon a Jewish cosmological reference; he knew what he saw even as he would not speak it. From the Christian view, the more esoteric and cryptic the vision, the less likely it is to be true or authoritative. Many contemporaries may find the visions of Ezekiel or St. John difficult to comprehend, but that is from ignorance of the language. Difficulty is not the same as opacity. The baroque grandeur of biblical visions does not mean it is confusing, only we lack the mind to seek out the meaning. God likes to talk in these riddles, to both reveal man's prejudices and offer a way towards the truth.

It's sad that many Christians embrace emotivism, fideism, quietism, and irrationalism. They simply believe the world is unintelligibly complex (besides a given revelation whose veracity must magically be assumed). Pascal reflects this paradigm, which superficially seems profound. Of course, one may press Pascal as to why one ought to believe Roman Catholicism (specifically its Jansenist strain), and not some other form of Christianity (or any other faith). All he would have is the radical Augustinian fideism about election: some people see the truth and others don't. Yet how would one ever know if one was on that path? Experience perhaps, but it's precisely the point of how Scripture articulates experience. It only comes in the form of language, in rich symbols potent with meaning and communicable to others. Dialogue is what creates intelligibility, even as interlocutors play the accuser or skeptic. Nevertheless, there is but a child's faith. Such is not bad in itself, but God calls mankind to eat meat and not simply drink milk. The mature seek wisdom without crippling doubt or throbbing confusion. God speaks to man (in the various forms He does) so man may mature. Language is the means man becomes rational, possessing a rational nature, physis Logikon, a "Wordly" nature. And this rationality is to become God-like.

Sadly, this ability is bent in all sorts of directions. Man uses his faculties to become animalistic. He describes the words that are fundamentally unintelligible through babbling. Additionally, in engaging in false descriptions and lies, man also snaps the connection between language and rationality. Sadly, such is the current condition of "post-modernism", which is better described as anti-modernism. The modern was very much an effort to advance in wisdom, an awareness of past and future to uplift the present in creativity. The antimodern calls the entire rational project into question. It used crude forms of the modern (material empiricists, positivists, Cartesian rationalists) to create an antihuman whiplash. Nietzsche is not about saving humanity, but destroying humanity. His project is to save men from themselves, and degenerate mankind to apehood. Language becomes utilitarian to constructing myths to live valiantly like the most noble, and predatory, beasts. The crude modernists lapsed into a kind of human idolatry, where they did not speak but commanded. It was a twisted mutation of Adam's command. But the result of antimodernism was to drive mankind into a kind of animalistic existence. Truth and lie were relative, confusion was normative. It's no wonder why the CIA spent time translating Fouccault and Gramsci. There is no truth, all is power games, and the world reflects the winner. To believe in this darkness not only breeds apathy, but the cruelest operators imaginable. They abuse God's gifts into fiendish engines of war and rapine.

The glory of the resurrection is present in the man who learns to rightly reason and speak, to see the world's redemption in the blood of the lamb. There is freedom in understanding. There is praise in judgement.