The Silent God?

The problem of revelation remains vital for our time. Indeed, whether God has let himself be known and, if so, how, is a decisive question of human life. A simple negative answer is given by all forms of atheism, for which the question itself is meaningless. There are, however, also those who are not atheists for whom the basic question is whether God has in fact revealed himself. For the person who has outgrown his childhood faith of more naïve times and has experienced profound changes in himself and the world, the question is existentially important. The simple faith of childhood cannot stand up under the critical attitudes he has assumed towards life and its increasingly complex problems. Questions arise concerning the reality of the formerly assumed love and righteousness of God in the face of the things which God “allows” to be suffered in the world. This does not mean that he has given up faith in God. It does mean that the God of his faith is surrounded by more and more question marks. Meanwhile, uncertainty and unrest swell up within the heart. The voices that taunted Old Testament poets echo more strongly around this perplexed modern, asking: Where is your God?

The challenge of the voices is the challenge of the silent God. It would seem to be a contradiction even to speak of a silent God. To speak of God at all, even of a silent God, assumes that in some way he has not kept silent. The silence of a God can be eloquent.

This may seem to be empty logic. Yet, men will often say something of God from out of a tradition of dogmatics, and then conclude that this God is a silent God. There are many voices which resound through life, but His voice is still. He is the silent, the hidden God. In the silence of heaven, the deep desperation of the voices of history becomes more acute, the tired searchings of man are endless and wearying unto death. If there were suddenly a manifestation of His divine presence, such as occurred in former times; if he should stand before us unavoidably and his voice should sound as the unmistakable Vox Dei; then would men believe. Then would men follow his leading with new courage. But it does not happen.

There is no voice from above, no revelation breaking through the doubts, not even an angel of light coming with a message from heaven. There is no breakthrough in the everlasting round of things, there are no miracles as in the once-upon-a-time. There is only a perpetual sweeping up of men into the maelstrom of ordinary and brute events. There is a world in distress with men in distress and anger and a constant state of shock; but there is no heavenly voice. Is there an answer—can we take courage from the very silence of God?

Protestantism is sometimes taunted by Roman Catholicism that, in decisive moments, it knows only the silent God. A prominent Roman Catholic once wrote: “The Protestant can believe that Christ has redeemed him, but he has no visible sign to hold to in hours of doubt and dread; he stands alone before a silent God.” The Roman Catholic, in contrast, has a God who speaks infallibly today. The Catholic has an audible voice of absolution in the priest.

We may set aside the fact that this audible voice, too, must be believed to be the voice of God. The point is that the problem of the silent God cannot be resolved in this way. I think of the situation of fear and despair in the Philippian jail, when the jailer was on the verge of suicide because he saw no way out. In that situation, Paul set before him the way out, the radical way out of his despair. It was the way of the Gospel of the speaking God.

Men do not want to deceive themselves in the dark despair and deep dread of the world. They want to hear a real voice, a voice which can remove all doubt and offer an unshakable foundation. The darkness of the world is not broken by a divine theophany or an angel of light. Doubt is not removed this way. In the Old Testament such things sometimes happened. But not always. Critics asked: Where is your God? And God did not break through. He allowed his chosen people to waste in exile, not merely for weeks but for long, long years.

Answering The Complaint

What should we answer when the complaint grows against the silence of God? Can we perhaps answer by saying that it is proven from nature that all things must have a cause, that there must be a First Cause that gives all things meaning? Does it, then, answer the complaint when we conclude that there must be One who has set an End or Purpose for everything? This is the scholastic answer. But it is clear that it will not set the modern heart at rest. The problem of the silent God is not answered by a First Cause. Man’s anxiety is not eased by proof of the purposefulness of all things. This is, in fact, his difficulty; he discovers precious little of this purposefulness in the world or in his own life. To deduce purpose for life from an idea of a First Cause will not satisfy, because modern man sees little purpose with his own eyes. God cannot be the crowning copestone of the magnificent vault of our thinking. Even in Roman Catholic circles it has become apparent that the significance of such neat systems of proofs for the existence of God is being questioned. In Rome, too, there are those who have no ready answer for modern man with his desperate questions and deep doubt.

In the biblical revelation, the possibility is presented that God might hide himself in certain circumstances. Israel had to reckon with the fact that God might hide his face in wrath (Isa. 54:8). The thought of divine self-withholding is terrifying: “For thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities” (Isa. 64:7). But it is evident that this wrathful hiding away is something other than the perplexing silence of God. This turning away is his holy answer to the sin of his people. When the people turned back to him, God always spoke again, came out of his holy hiding place, and turned again to them in mercy. The same thought is reflected in one of the Church’s confessions: whenever believers, fallen away, turn again in earnest repentance, the paternal face of God shines anew. The divine hiding is not a game in which he leaves us temporarily in confusion and uncertainty. It is part of the paternal earnestness of his effort to establish fellowship with us and embrace us in his love.

God’S Silence As Response To Sin

For this reason, we must not speak abstractly about the hidden and silent God. Most of the time, the phrase “silent God” is meant as a criticism. It is intended as a jibe, that we walk in the wastelands because God keeps silence. The Bible shows that God keeps silent when we choose the wastelands rather than his fold. His silence is divine in response to sin. Perhaps, in our modern situation, the complaint against the silence of God arises out of a prior estrangement from his service. It could be that we are no longer in a position to hear his voice. It could be that we do not see him because we have closed our eyes. Paul talks about the god of this world blinding the eyes of those who do not believe, lest the light of the Gospel of Christ who is the image of God should shine through to them (2 Cor. 4:4). It is possible that men speak so much about the silence of God because they do not listen to him.

In the biblical milieu things are different. The message of the risen Christ is given to the apostles: Go, proclaim it to the world. The Gospel spreads like a flame. It does not seek to prove that God exists. It is not a treatise to be commended to pure reason. It is not an appeal to the mature mind; it is for children. But the Word of God sounded as a powerful witness and cut as a two-edged sword through every culture and tradition. It went as a Word that refused to be empty, that did what God intended it to do. In the light of this, every complaint about the silence of God must be actually a refusal to listen. As long as Israel understood this, the wonder of life hung pleasant over them. They knew they had not been delivered over to dark powers and fearful destiny. They knew that God was always near unto them who drew near unto him.

Hence, there is one answer to the complaint against the silent God. It is the witness of the Church. It is not the answer deduced from a rational proof. It is a call to walk in God’s way, the way of prayer and expectation. Only in this way will the complaint be silenced, even when we are forced into a consciousness that God’s ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts other than our thoughts. This can be bitter and unfathomable, as it was for Israel when she complained: My way is hid from the Lord (Isa. 40:27). But we know the divine answer: “Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?… He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength” (Isa. 40:28, 29).

We do not live in a world sealed off from divine mercy and left alone in the silence of God. We live in a world resounding with His summons to leave the silence of the wastelands and come to his gracious voice, to walk out of darkness into his wonderful light. And if there are many who are lost in what seems to them a valley of divine silence, we ought not to look down upon them from the highlands. We should remember the words of Zechariah: “Thus said the Lord of Hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you” (Zech. 8:23).

The greater the distress and uncertainty of the world, the more urgent becomes the challenge of the Church. As the Church responds to the challenge, it will become more and more evident that not the silence but the speech of God arouses the most complaints. But where the voice is received, there men will learn to perceive that God can indeed keep silence. Yet, it will not be a silence that arouses complaint. It will be the silence that Zephaniah witnessed to: “He will be silent in his love.”

G. C. Berkouwer is professor of dogmatics and the history of dogma at the Free University of Amsterdam. He is the author of many volumes in the field of theology, including Divine Election and The Image of God.

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