R.C. Sproul

Just a house cat.

So for him, when he hears the word cat, he associates it with his gray house pet, you know, short-haired domestic, so on.

Somebody else's experience with cats may be connected with the Siamese or some other kind of cat, or I may say cat, and you're thinking big cat.

You're thinking tiger.

You're thinking an ocelot or something like that.

So that your understanding of that word cat is in your own mind conditioned to some degree by

your experience?

How you learned a word?

What's the framework in which that word appears in your vocabulary and your understanding?

This may seem ridiculous to talk about that, but even though my idea of cat is not exactly the same as your idea of cat, when you say to me, there's a cat running loose in the church,

I don't stop and say to you, Bill, is it a minx?

Is it an angora?

Is it a tiger?

You know, I'll just take whatever image I have of a cat and start looking for this little thing that's running around the church because our experience of cats is similar enough that even though they're not precisely exact, we still can communicate.

We can still have meaningful discourse and discussion even though we come from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences and so on.

All I'm saying is that no two people's vocabulary meets each other's in terms of their precise, complete understanding on a one-to-one basis.

But in any case, it's important for us to understand that when we speak about God, we are speaking about God because God has spoken to us and revealed Himself to us in our language.

And He'll talk about Himself as if He had a body.

We'll hear of the right hand of the Lord.

We'll hear about His eye that sees all things.