The Way from Babel: The Role of Language in Advancing God’s Mission in the World Paul K. Kimbi: Consultant for Bible Translation Programs, WGA Introduction The account of creation closes in Genesis chapter one with the creation of man: “So, God ​ created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them” and gave them a charge: “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue ​ ​ it” (Genesis 1:26, 27). So many views have been put forward to explain what the image of God in ​ mankind means. Ware (2002:21) discusses some of these views (ranging from structural, relational to functional views) and concludes that “we are created to reflect his own nature so that we may represent him in our dealings with others and over the world he has made.” We are in the image of God so that we can participate with him in his mission. Ware highlights the relational view and says “God's image is reflected in our relation to one another and to God” (2002:21). Clines (1968) talks about the psychosomatic nature of humankind-our bodies are not just a mere dwelling place for the soul nor a prison house for it but both body and soul form a unit. God made us in this way so that we perform our responsibilities towards him and towards one another and the environment. The theology of “embodied presence” (Harmelink 2019) highlights human ability to communicate in general and in particular to do Bible translation and argues that our “knowledge depends on our being in a world that is inseparable from our bodies, our language and our social history-in short, from our embodiment…. The very ability to use language is a gift from the one who created us” (2019:3). From these discussions, we can say communication is a core component of the image of God in mankind. “We communicate because he communicates” (Harmelink 2019:3) and communication helps us to galvanize ourselves to respond to the responsibilities we have towards God, towards one another and towards the environment. Communication helps us to respond to God’s charge for us individually and collectively. “The God of Israel, whose declared mission was to make himself known to the nations ​ through Israel” (Wright 2006:124) invites us to participate in his mission. To do that we need to communicate and to make sure our message is understood. In this article I argue that God uses language as a key instrument to advance his mission in the world and that we use language to respond to God’s invitation to participate in his mission. Three passages of Scripture permit us to see how God uses language in a strategic way viz. Genesis 11:1-7, Acts 2:1-13 and Revelations 7:9-10. God used languages to disempower and scatter a disobedient people who would not heed to his instruction to fill the earth (Genesis 11:1-7). He symbolized the coming of the Holy Spirit and the empowerment of the disciples (Acts 1:8) ipso facto by making them speak in various languages (Acts 2:1-13). Language serves like a centrifugal medium in God’s mission for the outward movement of people and Revelation 7:9-10 presents a mirror reflection of an inward movement, “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb”. God commissions us in the unfolding plan of his mission When God gave the world he had created to humankind he commissioned human beings to “be fruitful ​ and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:26, 27). This charge was programmatic, in ​ other words, it was intended to accompany the unfolding plan of God making himself known amongst the nations. “The God of Israel, whose declared mission was to make himself known to the nations ​ through Israel” (Wright 2006:124) now invites us to participate in that mission. After the fall in Genesis 3 and the consequent destruction of the world in Genesis 6, God was refashioning the world through Noah and his family and again charged Noah and his sons: “And God blessed Noah and his sons and ​ said to them, “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Genesis 9:1). God later chose Abraham ​ (Genesis 12) and repeated this charge to him. In Genesis 17, he said to Abraham: “Behold, my covenant ​ is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you” (Genesis ​ 17:4-6). God is “totally covenantal and eternally committed to the mission of blessing the nations through the agency of the people of Abraham” (Wright 2006:63) and invites us to make him known amongst the nations (Psalm 2:8). It will be important to note that nation is a “community of humans ​ formed on the basis of a common language… (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) and that the Greek ​ ​ work “ethne” translated as nations is almost synonymous to ethnic or ethnic groups. I therefore ​ ​ submit here that when God talks about nations, he sees different language communities. God considerably empowers us for his mission through languages When people began to multiply, they came up with the idea to build a city and a tower in order to make a name for themselves. Their mission was in opposition to God’s mission. Rather than make God known, they wanted to make themselves known. This was facilitated by the use of a single language (Genesis 11:1). The single language they spoke served as leverage to resist the command to fill the earth. But God equally used languages to disempower a rebellious people. “And the Lord said, ​ “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech” (Genesis 11:6-7). One ​ way we can read “confuse their language” would be “disempower them by differentiating the languages they speak”. The multiplication of languages at Babel disempowered the people against their resistance to fill the earth but at the same time, it also acted like a centrifugal force causing them to spread out. God initially used languages to cause the people to move out to different parts of the world. In this way, God empowered the minority groups by giving them their own languages. Languages of the world are a tool for propagating God’s word but language also conveys culture. “When [some of] the missionaries came to Africa, they did not simply bring the gospel message, they also brought western culture” (Prill 2018:161) and this nuanced the gospel. Prill (2018) recounts a story about a Christian parachurch organization in South Africa and observes that their leaders were both expatriates and nationals but that during meetings, the nationals tended to stay quiet. Their silence was interpreted sometimes as ignorance but this was not the case. They simply felt inferior using the English language. “By using English language the way they did, the missionaries not only exercised power over their indigenous co-leaders but also sent out a message of communicative superiority. This message was emphasized even more by the missionaries’ refusal to learn the local language” (2018:169). Language use can be an exercise of power. God empowers us sometimes with language for effective missions and when we underestimate the role of language in the ministry, that can sometimes lead to very negative repercussions or counterproductivity. Language axis could be a potential tower of disenfranchisement One question we have been asked in many communities in Cameroon during mobilization for Bible translation is why the Bible should be translated in the local language when almost every member of the community understands English (and or French) with multiple versions of the Bible. This often leads us to think about Babel, the place where people, united by one language decided to build a tower to make a name for themselves. “It was man’s first initiative at globalization….and the globalists are speaking the same language as they spoke then: let us make a name for ourselves” (Tofibam 2020:4). Language axis has a potential to lure people into an insidious form of Babel. Greed (2016:4) affirms that “one language is a language of domination” and “by scattering the people in Genesis 11 God was affirming minority identity and opposing imperial identity.” Major languages have been used for centralization and for building a culture around a common language. Over-centralization can lead to marginalization of minority languages. From antiquity, history shows us powers such as the Greeks and the Romans that sought to centralize the world and enforce the use of language and culture to make a name for themselves (Tofibam 2020). The Francophonie and the Commonwealth of Nations are examples of language axis. The Francophonie (54-member states) developed from “a cultural and linguistic association mainly aimed at the maintenance of the position of French in the world to a political entity active in promoting the defense of language and cultural diversity in a global world” (Veronique 2013).