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.

Language does our thinking for us.

The universe would appear to be something like a piece of cheese; it can be sliced in an infinite number of ways- and when one has chosen his own pattern of slicing, he finds that other men's cuts fall at the wrong places.

Rhetoric is rooted in an essential function of language itself, a function that is wholly realistic and continually born anew: the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols.

Man is rotten with perfection.

Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric, and wherever there is rhetoric, there is meaning.

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.