Men seek for vocabularies that are reflections of reality. To this end, they must develop vocabularies that are selections of reality. And any selection of reality must, in certain circumstances, function as a deflection of reality.

You persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea, identifying your ways with his

Man is/the symbol-using (symbol making, symbol-misusing) animal/inventor of the negative (or moralized by the negative)/separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making/goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (or moved by the sense of order)/and rotten with perfection.

Words are like planets, each with its own gravitational pull.

Our purpose is simply to ask how theological principles can be shown to have usable secular analogues that throw light upon the nature of language.

The most characteristic concern of rhetoric [is] the manipulation of men's beliefs for political ends....the basic function of rhetoric [is] the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents.

Creation implies authority in the sense of originator. The possibility of a 'Fall' is implied in a Covenant insofar as the idea of a Covenant implies the possibility of its being violated.