speech

We Speak Our Goodbyes into Existence

"Is God knowable?" Six feet apart at the park, a question asked by a friend. Possibly unfair to ask, he says. And yet it is perhaps the only question.

In what sense do we have knowledge of God. Directly? I lean on the apophatic tradition.

Apophasis. Etymologically: "away from speech," or "saying away," (app, "from" or "away from"; phasis, "assertion," from phemi, "assert" or "say"). An apophatic discourse, then, "consists in words that negate themselves in order to evoke what is beyond words—and indeed beyond the limits of language all together." [^1]

God exists beyond this limit, I think. And it is the limit every serious religious, literary, poetic, mathematical, and philosophical tradition eventually runs up against, it is the ultimate barrier of ultra-reality—the existence of non-existence. That from which the existence of all things springs.

Hebraically, the formless void and darkness over the deep.[^2] Christianly, the silence implied by the Word which was God and which was with God and which was God.[^3] Mystically, urging toward "deeper," "greater," "other," "experience of the divine."[^4] Contemplatively, to enter into prolonged silence—silence as the presence of God. Mathematically, the concept of zero as possibility for everything else, the integer devisable by all other integers.

God is not knowable. And yet without discourse we cannot unsay what has been said. One must say in order to unsay. Silence requires a word.[^5] So we fumble, haltingly, step-by-step, grasping beyond our reach. We sketch around the edges of what cannot be known.

We describe the door by the frame.

Christianly we make a stand existentially, claiming that God is like Jesus—is Jesus. God's nature and the nature of the universe is defined by Christ. Creation is sustained by grace, mercy, forgiveness, sacrifice. A seed germinates because the universe was spoken into existence—spoken out of silence by the Word, by Christ. One moment follows the next driven by love. We ask, if reality is ultimately like this, then how shall we live? God is not knowable, yet we stake our lives on this.

I answer. We nod at each other. We enjoy the sunshine on the grass and bask in each other's company. We bump elbows and speak our goodbyes into existence.