Linguistic communication deeply reflects God's own nature. Through speech God created the universe. Before the creation, God the Son is identified as "the Word". In the diversity of creation, God created human beings in His image, endowing them with the gift of symbolic language and enabling them to communicate with Him and with each other with meaning and power about God and His creation. Our communication has become corrupted through the Fall.Languages, and the meaning-systems beneath their vocabularies, may obscure or obstruct the clear communication of God's truth. The gift of language may also be used to mislead, through ignorance or malice. One of God's purposes in redemption is to redeem our use of language,xv that we might reflect God in this aspect of our lives. We are told by the apostle Paul to let the word of Christ dwell in us richly. Therefore we affirm that our language is able to communicate truth, bring healing, build up the Church of Christ and give honour to God. Despite contemporary critical theory, and while recognising the enormous power of language in shaping human understanding and culture, we deny that it forms reality. Language has to function within the boundaries of the creation. We also deny that language is inherently indeterminate or incapable of conveying meaning and truth. The linguistic conventions in a culture ensure that words have a substantially common meaning, which adequately corresponds to reality, whether of God or of the created order, therefore effective communication can take place with language. Yet we also believe that there is no automatic or fixed correspondence between the words that we use and the things to which they refer. Because of our finiteness, sinfulness, and our creativity our verbal communication is never exhaustive and not always exact. Even in the context of obstacles to communication (e.g., animosity, experience, or vast differences in time and culture) real and meaningful communication can take place, but this requires us to be humble, creative, patient, attentive and loving towards each other. Scriptural language teaches us that God is a personal being who told us to address Him as "Abba, Father". God has revealed Himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We are not at liberty to change these names or the Trinitarian formulation to suit the linguistic sensibilities of our time. Scripture is rich in figurative language about God, including both masculine and feminine metaphors, similes and images, to help us know God truly and worship Him rightly. Scripture is also clear that male language about God is not intended to communicate that God is a sexual being. He created and transcends human sexuality. Moses warned against making images of God "either male or female" and as male and female are created equally in His image, neither men nor women image or reflect God more accurately than the other.