The voice of God and hearing ourselves speak
Stephen Curkpatrick

We hear our world before we speak it. The language that gives us a world into which we eventually speak and nominate the value of many things is primarily vocative. We are addressed by others and therefore called into relationship. Our identity is given in hearing and responding to the vocative overture of others. Our most profound experiences of life occur in being addressed by another.

Just so, God of the biblical tradition of time and interaction with human life encounters human beings in the vocative register of human experience—“Adam, where are you?” remains a primary address to humanity. The call of Abram from a polytheistic existence parallels the call of creation from radical chaos. The vocative word calls into being.

Scripture is permeated with vocative address, whether to a person or to a community, as the summons to “you”—to respond. The response may be to listen, often to decide, invariably to believe and ultimately to love. Jesus’ address to Simon Peter, “Do you love me?” is a supreme example; the vocative “Mary”—a single word and a most poignant moment of recognition.

This is the language of call, response, decision, responsibility and hospitality; it is apostolic to the core, after Isaiah: “Whom shall I send?” and the desired response, “Here am I, send me.” Identity, transformation and vocation are summoned by vocative address. It is also the language of invocation—of prayer and worship.

This vocative texture in biblical language is carried forward into Christology as the Word in the beginning who became flesh. In Jesus Christ, God comes to every “you” of humanity as a definitive voice of love and summons to faith.

v

The language of Scripture carries a vocative word that is also a word otherwise than all the words that humans use to describe, manipulate and possess their world. It is a word that speaks into our existence, beyond our initiative and adjudication—a word that is otherwise than the sum of our possibilities in the very midst of these possibilities.

In biblical testimony, the word as a word otherwise, comes as a word of limit and good news. The first, in regard to human limits, is heard as a word of negation—consequently, the pervasive reference to judgment on seeking the source of existence in finite resources, whether human or material. The second, in regard to good news, the word of grace is an affirmation of human possibility within God’s love.

The Old Testament exhibits many diverse voices. Interpreting life can be as variegated as human experience itself—human voices as diverse claimants on hearing diverse antecedent voices feature throughout. Merely as a human phenomenon, the diversity of voices in Old Testament tradition provides endless possibilities for interpretation. This is human existence in quest of its ultimate terms of reference; life is as diverse and multi-voiced as this. Yet within the election of Israel, the Old Testament is also a choir of antiphonic voices—of praise and lament, prophetic dispute and aspiring tones of wisdom—lifted up in the mystery of being called, uniquely, to give testimony to the LORD’s faithfulness and mercy, which is the other and central story that interfaces with human life.

The voices of biblical testimony are gathered toward an effect within the theological focus of love—Emmanuel, God with us, which the New Testament writers interpret messianically. From a Christian perspective, the Old Testament has its ultimate vocative response in the New as it makes explicit every previous and implicit movement of disclosure that God is for us in love.

The many voices of human search, folly and faithfulness are gathered in desire and testimony toward a time that is always coming. The true and unequivocal voice is finally focused in God becoming human in demonstrative expression of the eternal Word. In the New Testament, the vocative word is personified in the Word who became flesh, calling to all humanity in impassioned address. This address is both inscribed on the body and encountered as a word otherwise than our perceptions of existence, as it also informs the meaning and integral activities of our existence.

The authorial voice of biblical testimony is infinitely rich yet focused in Christology, even as Christ the definitive word of God for human life is given this primacy and illumined for humans by the Spirit.

To extol the diversity of voices as a primary point of reference for theological engagement is to miss the Christological possibility for resolving perennial conflict over competing voices. In the desire to hear their own voices—because in hearing ourselves speak we affirm our existence—humans also have a propensity to scatter human focus in endless futile directions.

Humans do not know the scope of their existence or how to frame the essential questions of their humanity. In assuming that they are wise in informing and ordering their existence, humans become fools and dissipate, even destroy their capacity for integral humanity. This is central to the claim that the vocative voice of Scripture is ultimately Christological in calling humans to their integral humanity in Christ.

Christian perspective suggests that humans, for all their voices, are always less than the Word that addresses humans in the illusions of their hubris and only vaguely aware of life’s possibilities as to their essential existence. Only before the humanity of Christ the word of God can humans truly frame essential questions of their humanity.

In their testimony to hearing the voice that is like the fluid and ceaseless sound of many waters, the biblical writings remain vocative rather than encyclopaedic in eavesdropping on many others hearing the voice of summons to grace. Everywhere in biblical testimony, there is an imperative to listen—whoever has ears to hear, hear. Throughout these writings too, appropriate human response occurs—“Speak, for your servant is listening.” The voice of God’s call becomes focused in the incarnate Word as the voice, not only of God but of one who truly listened to God.

v

If the vocative—to be addressed by another—is the most important reality we experience from birth to death, then volition or decision, followed by vocation as particular responsibilities amid social relationships are our most integral expressions of life.

As vocative, humans respond to one another as particular and unique. Relationships go beyond generic descriptions and categories. To be addressed by another is to be invoked as personal in an overture that exceeds the nomination of material aspects of any life. Information about humans too, is subservient to the unique and personal called forth in the vocative expressions of relationship.

As unique, our integral humanity is not determined by natural cause and effect. Humans have freedom—the capacity to create new possibilities that did not previously exist. In their freedom, humans are responsible, for they can create new possibilities for evil too. Volition or the capacity for decision between possible options is therefore ethical. As ethical, volition relates to the personal and as personal to the vocative—I am accountable before another and others and this accountability is relational.

As the ultimate source of vocative and personal relationship, God calls us to decision and responsibility in freedom. This is also a call to vocation as responsibility in a particular context of relationships and decisions. These have their quintessential focus in Christ as the definitive word or voice of God who has also demonstrated our integral human response—a response that exceeds the insatiable desire to hear ourselves speak.

 

Method sources: Barth CD 1.1 & 2 The Word of God; Derrida Positions; Jüngel God as the Mystery of the World; Levinas Otherwise than Being; Kasper The God of Jesus Christ.