On Speech Act Theory and Slander

Tim Keller, commenting on the recent “Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel“, said,

You can’t just analyze words by what they say, you also have to analyze words by what they do. . . . When I go through [the Statement]—if you go really, really strictly—I think just about anybody would take about eighty percent of it. . . . But in the end what concerns me most about it is not so much what it’s saying but what it’s trying to do. . . . It’s trying to marginalize people who are talking about race and justice. It’s trying to say, “You’re really not biblical.” And it’s not fair in that sense…Even if I could agree with most of it, I don’t like it. It’s what it’s doing that I don’t like.

He approaches the statement from the perspective of speech act theory: the idea that language is not just about the content of words, but how the words are used. Keller is not saying that the arguments of the statement are unimportant, but the effect, what the statement is doing, matters as much in evaluating it.

John MacArthur was active in creating the statement, and over at his ministry Grace to You, the response has been harsh:…