The God of the Word and the 'Divinity' of Speech

Abstract

In contrast to the apophatic tradition which emphasizes the importance of "unsaying" and the role of silence in the encounter with the sacred, this paper explores the tradition and significance of speech as a sacred act, and God as a speaking power. Drawing upon Hegel's critique of faith as the absolute other of reason, the paper draws out the dangers of a theology of absolute alterity before exploring what I consider to be more plausible accounts of the relationship between the sacred and speech in the works of J.G. Hamann and Franz Rosenzweig and the speech thing tradition.