“We have been reflecting on the capacity of silence to generate a word, a sound, an act. Once it has done so, the silence and the sound are in relationship with each other. The act testifies to, and therefore proves the quality of the silence. This relationship translates into that between our wordlessness and our words for God. The God of Judeo-Christian tradition is inconceivable and indescribable, and must be approached in silence and darkness — the early Christian writers called this apophasis. Yet it has been given to humans to say something, to him and about him, which they called kataphasis. The great mystical theologian Dionysius the Areopagite (probably from the sixth century) has explored this paradox thoroughly, speaking of God as ‘nameless, and yet having the names of everything that exists.’ Dionysius asserts that God, who is beyond being, is found within the ‘dazzling darkness of a hidden silence.’ Yet he notes the paradox that, given the way we are created, we must ultimately say something about God — so long as it is in the full cognizance of God’s radical otherness and ineffability. The affirmations (words) about God must bear the character of the negations (silences). ‘Every affirmation . . . has the force of a negation pointing toward transcendence.’ The purpose of silence is to generate a right word, a right sound. There is not the one without the other: no silence without sound, and no sound that does not begin or end with, or somehow embody, silence.
“We are back to the paradoxes of the ‘sound of sheer silence,’ the absence/presence of God, and our intoning hymns about remaining wordless. We find these same kinds of oxymorons repeatedly in the language employed by the Church in praise of her saints.
In one particularly striking example, we have St John the Theologian. He is the evangelist of the Word (John 1:1–14), who is regularly called ‘the son of thunder’ in the poetic praise about him. Yet traditional iconography often portrays him with his hand gently placed over his mouth.
“That gesture suggests many things, one of them being that for John to pronounce his life-bearing words, he must first be silent. As Job had said, on his encounter with God, ‘Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer thee? I lay my hand on my mouth’ (Job 40:3). This icon is frequently referred to as ‘St John in Silence.’ But note that the configuration of his fingers form the four letters ‘ICXC,’ an abbreviation for ‘Jesus Christ,’ a frequent iconographic sign, and the gesture used in every Orthodox liturgy by the clergy giving blessings. The hand both draws attention to a mouth that speaks, but also diverts attention to something greater, which is the Word, Christ himself. The image portrays the evangelist as silent but for his testimony to the Word.
“The Church sings about John the Theologian in terms of both storm and silence:
With your tongue resounding as thunder,
you declare the hidden Word of the Wisdom of God!
Beloved of God, you open your mouth to cry:
‘In the beginning was the Word!’
Illumining all mankind with the knowledge of God.
“Only one other saint in the Orthodox church has been accorded the title, ‘the Theologian,’ the fourth-century Gregory of Nazianzus. The hymn sung in his praise resembles that to the gospel-writer:
Your mind was not overwhelmed,
while you searched the depths of the abyss of God
to draw out the pearl, most noble Gregory.
You devoted your silence to the Master, as much as your words.
“Without that silence devoted to God, there would be no words. But without the words, what would the silence be for? Because quietude, we will recall, can be either sterile or full of potentiality.”