Name it and Claim it

It is quite common to ridicule the Word of Faith movement by labeling its theology “name it and claim it” or “blab it and grab it” and truth be told I think these titles are appropriate.  I also think it appropriate to ridicule the ridiculous.  But these descriptors while meant to mock actually sum up the theology quite nicely.  It is not uncommon to find a handful of verses torn from their context and twisted beyond recognition by some of today’s favorite Word of Faith teachers (e.g., Joyce Meyer, Paula White, Kenneth Copeland, et. al.).  The two major witnesses are:

• Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof. (Pro. 18:21)
• (As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were. (Rom. 4:17)

Being created in God’s image (Gen. 1:26-27) is taken to mean that we are of the same species as God (cf. Jo. 10:34-35) and can therefore “speak our blessing/reality into existence” just as God spoke the creation into existence (Gen. 1).  The belief in “positive confession” moves beyond a mere motivational tactic and words are given some sort of metaphysical force, having the ability to create ex nihilo in some instances. 

I would argue that words do have power, but not the power to create reality — rather they have the power to identify it.  Rather than seeing ourselves as “little gods” in the way that Word of Faith teachers do, I think it safer to see us as beings exactly like Adam, created in the image and likeness of God as the scriptures plainly state.  Does this involve the ability to create through words?  I don’t think so.  We’ll notice from the narrative in Genesis 2 that God created all things and then presented them to Adam to name (Gen. 2:19-20).  Whatever Adam called them is what they were.  He didn’t give them their reality, their form, or their function, he merely identified them in distinction from everything else. 

Paul says plainly in Romans 4:17 that it is God who calls into existence the things that do not exist — he does not say this of us!  What of Proverbs 18:21?  Does this proverb tell us that positive and negative confession affects our reality?  Well, yes, but I’d argue in a way much different than Word of Faith teachers claim.  This proverb has nothing to do with speaking a blessing or curse into existence, but rather with identifying our reality.  Jesus said:

Whoever, then, acknowledges me before people, I will acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever denies me before people, I will deny him also before my Father in heaven. (Mat. 10:32-33, cf. 2Tim. 2:12)

Confessing faith in Christ is an acknowledgment that we have eternal life, as Romans 10:10 says, “with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”  It is to identify ourselves as being in Christ and therefore alive.  Likewise, to deny Christ is to confess that we are dead in sin, still separated from the life that exists only in Christ.  So in the end we can name it and claim it, as long as “it” is Christ, but there’s no metaphysical power intrinsic to the grunts and moans we call words. 

B”H