Religious bodies are prone to rest their case
with verbal formulas, sometimes intentionally ambiguous in meaning, and resist any efforts to carry through to valid interpretations and application of them.
Moreover, we must exchange our feelings with one another, and in doing so we have to speak, and to use general and
abstract verbal formulas.
In every community and in every
age verbal formulas need to be critically examined and reinterpreted, through dialogue and fresh experience, in order that their power as bearers of meaning, and hence as creators of authentic human existence, may be assured.
By discerning the principle that underlies the speech clause, Arkes responds, and that, of course, is far wiser than proceeding by slogans or
verbal formulas applied mechanically.
Theirs is the «pipeline» theory of communication: when the Christian message is reduced to a set of
unvarying verbal formulas, the only question is how to build a bigger and better «pipe» through which to deliver the unvarying message to the recipient.
In other words, if we put a statue in the ground and we expect our home to sell just because of some action or
mandatory verbal formula, that's superstition.
Even the deus ex machina sleight - of - hand that spirits Paris from the field before Menelaos can finish him off is handled like the dazzling stage effect it is, rather than
a verbal formula.
Distinctive language and
verbal formulae are the raw materials by which judges help establish their reputation as intellectual thought leaders...