In the Beginning was Information

was accompanied by a biblical quotation. At that moment thelandowner travelled past and saw the fight. He stopped and sent hisservant to investigate. The servant ran to the combatants, watchedthem for a while, and then walked back at a leisurely pace. Hereported that nothing much was the matter, they were only explainingHoly Scriptures to each other.Example 2: A blind septuagenarian African woman had a FrenchBible which she loved very much. She took it to the local missionaryrequesting him to highlight John 3:16 in red. This he did, withoutknowing her purpose. The blind woman then sat at the schoolgate and asked the emerging pupils whether any of them knewFrench. Being proud of their knowledge of the language, theyanswered in the affirmative. The woman then showed them theunderlined verse, requesting them to read it for her. They compliedeagerly. But when she asked them whether they understood thesewords, the answer was “no”. The woman then explained the meaningof this central biblical assertion: “For God so loved the worldthat He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Himshall not perish but have eternal life.” It is known that 24 menbecame evangelists through the ministry of this woman [J2].5. Apobetics: From the point of view of the sender a process ofinformation transfer has only been successful when the purposeintended for the recipient has been achieved. All aspects of informationare inextricably interlinked. It is thus insufficient wheneverything runs smoothly up to a certain level, but the final level –the purpose – is not attained. Strictly speaking, any informationlevel is only a stepping stone to the next higher level: Language issolely a means for achieving the semantics purpose. In its turn,semantics leads to the pragmatics level, and in the last instancepragmatics is only a preparatory stage for the apobetics. In Chapter4 this purposefulness of information is described as the mostimportant aspect. This is especially true of God’s message in theBible. He has certain objectives with the Bible, of which we mentionsome special ones:a) Perception: Who is God? Without the Bible we would haveknown very little about God. We could deduce his existence andhis power from his works of creation (Romans 1:20), but nothing147