The title of this short reflection is one of the most famous sentences in twentieth-century philosophy. Ludwig Wittgenstein placed it at the end of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and it sounds, at first hearing, like a counsel of restraint: if you cannot explain something clearly, perhaps it is better not to talk about it at all. But, for a Christian, Wittgenstein’s words raise a rather intriguing question: what if the things that matter most are precisely those things about which we cannot speak adequately? We can speak about a sunset, but words cannot quite capture its beauty. We can describe love, but description is not the same as experiencing it. We can explain grief, but explanation does not convey what it is like to lose someone we love. There are realities which language can approach but never completely contain. Surely, this is especially true of God.

Christian faith is full of words. We preach sermons, recite creeds, read scripture, say prayers and sing hymns. We use words such as God, grace, salvation, love, resurrection and eternal life. But, as we use these words, we know that none of them is God. There is always a danger that we confuse our words about God with God himself. We can become so confident in our explanations that we leave no room for mystery. We can imagine that because we have a doctrine for something, we have therefore mastered it, but God cannot be mastered. The mystery of God is not a problem waiting for us to solve. Christianity does not claim that we  have explained God; it claims that God has revealed himself to us. That is an important distinction.

The Bible itself is remarkably comfortable with mystery. Job discovers that God’s purposes are greater than human understanding. Isaiah hears that God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts. St Paul speaks of God’s wisdom as something which surpasses human comprehension. And, when St Paul reaches the end of his great argument about God’s purposes, he does not produce a neat conclusion, instead he breaks into worship: O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God. Sometimes the most faithful response to mystery is not another explanation but wonder.

There is another reason Wittgenstein’s statement has something important to say to people of faith. We live in an age in which everyone seems expected to have an opinion about everything. We comment, analyse, speculate and pronounce. Silence can appear to be a sign of ignorance, while certainty is often mistaken for wisdom. The Church is not immune from this temptation. There are occasions when Christians have spoken far too confidently about things which belong to the mystery of God. We have sometimes claimed to know why suffering happens, why a particular tragedy has occurred, or precisely what God is doing in someone’s life. But, sometimes the most pastoral thing we can say is, “I do not know.” This is not a failure of faith. When someone is grieving, telling them that their loved one’s death was ‘part of God’s plan’ may be intended as comfort, but it can sound terribly hollow. When someone is suffering, offering an easy explanation of why God has allowed it can add a burden to an already heavy load.

There are moments when words become an intrusion. There are moments when love sits quietly beside another person and says nothing at all. Silence is not the absence of faith, indeed, Christianity has always understood the spiritual importance of silence. The contemplative tradition speaks of the silence of God. Monastic communities have built their lives around periods of silence. The Psalms repeatedly encourage us to be still. Jesus himself withdraws from the crowds to pray in silence.

Silence is not necessarily emptiness. Sometimes a silence is where we become aware of a presence which words have obscured. Think of the moments in worship when nobody speaks: the silence after receiving communion; the silence before a funeral begins; the silence following a reading from scripture; the silence of a church building when the congregation has gone home. These silences can speak. Indeed, there are occasions when silence communicates more truthfully than words.

There is, of course, a danger in taking Wittgenstein’s statement too literally as a Christian principle. Christianity cannot simply remain silent. The gospel is, after all, a proclamation. The Church exists because Christians believe there is something which must be spoken. Christ is risen is not merely an experience to be contemplated in silence, it is news to be proclaimed. The incarnation itself tells us that God has chosen to speak: The Word became flesh and lived among us. The Christian claim is extraordinary – the God whom we cannot comprehend has made himself known in Jesus Christ. Thus, the Christian life holds two things together which might initially seem contradictory: we must speak – and we must known when to be silent.

We speak because the gospel is good news; we are silent because God is greater than our words. We proclaim Christ, whilst recognizing that our proclamation can never exhaust the mystery of Christ. We talk about prayer, whilst recognizing that sometimes prayer consists simply of sitting quietly in God’s presence. We speak of heaven, whilst acknowledging that we do not know what heaven is like. We speak of resurrection, whilst knowing that the resurrection is not something we can explain in the same way that we explain an ordinary event. Faith is not certainty about every detail. Faith is trust in the One whom we cannot completely understand.

Perhaps the best way to understand this is through love. Imagine trying to explain to someone who has never experienced love exactly what it feels like to love another person. You could write books about it; you could give lecture; you could provide definitions. But, eventually, words would run out. The answer would not be to conclude that love does not exist. Instead, you would recognize that love is something which must be experienced as well as described. Christianity makes a similar claim about God. We can talk about God; we can study theology; we can argue about doctrine; we can read scripture. But, ultimately, the purpose of all this is not simply to accumulate information about God, it is to know God – and knowing God changes the way we live. Perhaps that is why Jesus does not simply give his disciples a philosophy. Instead he calls them to follow him. The Christian faith is not merely something to be explained, it is something to be lived.

There is wisdom, therefore, in Wittgenstein’s final sentence – but perhaps not quite in the way he intended it. There are things about which we should remain silent because we do not know. There are things about which we should remain silent because another person’s pain deserves our presence rather than our explanation. There are thing about which we should remain silent because mystery deserves reverence. 

But, there are also thing about which we should speak. We must speak of hope when despair seems to have the last word. We must speak of forgiveness when resentment has become normal. We must speak of justice when people are being treated unjustly. We must speak of love when hatred is fashionable. And, above all, Christians are called to speak of Christ, not because we understand everything about him, but because we have encountered in him the love of God. Perhaps the mature Christian life is learning the difference between the two. Knowing when our words are necessary; knowing when they are inadequate; knowing when to proclaim; knowing when to listen; and, knowing when, faced with the mystery of God, the most faithful thing we can do is simply to fall silent. Sometimes silence is not the opposite of faith; sometimes it is faith’s deepest expression.