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"It is applied to them because they possess, and to signify that they possess, certain
attributes. These seem to be corporeity, animal life, rationality, and a certain external
form which for distinction we call the human. Every existing thing which possessed all
these attributes, would be called a man."
There is a great deal more to be learned regarding this division of names that perhaps
will be better appreciated when we can apply ourselves to the Scriptures, and as we are
not attempting to teach logic, we pass on to the remaining subdivision.
The fourth division of names is into those which are positive and those which are
negative. It must be remembered that some names which are positive in form are
negative in reality, and vice versa. The word "unpleasant" is negative in form, but
positive in meaning, for it signifies positive painfulness. The word "idle" is positive in
form, but negative in meaning. We must be careful to distinguish negative names from
positive names. True negatives are expressed by the word "not". A privative name
supposes the one-time possession of an attribute now lost. For example, the word "blind"
is not a negative of "seeing", for it suggests that, by reason of his class, the sufferer
whom the word describes did have, or should have, the faculty of sight.
Relative and absolute names are the next division. Such names as "father" and "son"
are relative, not absolute. Much of the evil teaching that denies the deity of Christ is due
to failure to realize that the titles "Father" and "Son" are relative. As a father a man is
only as old as his eldest child, although as a man he may be thirty years older. This is
true wherever applied, if true at all, and God Himself could not bear the name of "Father"
until He had a Son. Men continually attempt to disprove the deity of Christ by
emphasizing the subordinate relations of Son to Father, but such reasoning is false:--
"A name is relative, when, being the name of one thing, is signification cannot be
explained but by mentioning another."
God is self-existent, and, in His essence and absoluteness, independent of creation or
time. It will be discovered that all we know of God is relative, and our reasoning must,
accordingly, be governed by this limitation. As in the case of the titles "Father" and
"Son", so "Jehovah", "Elohim", "Shaddai" are all relative, and do not comprehend
absolute deity, of which we know nothing.
The last division of names is that of univocal and equivocal:--
"A name is univocal, or applied univocally, with respect to all things of which it can
be predicated in the same sense; it is equivocal, or applied equivocally, as respects those
things of which it is predicated in different senses."
"File", meaning a steel instrument, and `file', meaning a line of soldiers, have no more
title to be considered one word, because written alike, than `grease' and `Greece' have,
because pronounced alike. They are one sound, appropriated to form two different
words."