Beyond Silence: Toward an Eschatology of Praise

Abstract

AbstractIn this article, I identify and attempt to resolve a tension running through the Christian tradition concerning the eschatological fate of language, a tension between “eschatologies of silence” and “eschatologies of praise.” Drawing on the apophatic tradition, “eschatologies of silence” argue that language cannot persist into beatitude without introducing absence or lack and will pass away into silent union. Meanwhile, “eschatologies of praise” depict the heavenly liturgy as doxology, the maximal profusion of speech. This tension between the persistence and abolition of speech raises a pressing theological problem, exacerbated by the postmodern linguistic turn. For postmodernity highlights language’s constitutive, and thus unsurpassable, role in the human condition, yet problematizes language’s compatibility with eschatological presence due to its susceptibility to endless deferral. I resolve the tension in favor of an “eschatology of praise” by showing that the logic of doxological speech is compatible with union with divine infinity, especially when epektasis is incorporated into eschatology. Against “eschatologies of silence” like those of Paul Griffiths and Denys Turner, I argue that eschatological suppression of language is equivalent to the rejection of creaturely finitude. Language is never abolished but plays a constitutive role in an eschatological encounter without any shadow of lack.