Hearing God

Abstract This essay attempts to address a simple question: what does it mean to hear God? So much hangs upon learning something about hearing God: revelation, salvation, formation, vocation and mission, for example. What is the relationship then between hearing and knowing God? Before examining two particular passages from the Scriptures in which hearing and knowing coincide (the calling of Samuel and God the Father speaking to Jesus the Son), I offer a sketch of a phenomenology of hearing; a phenomenological reduction of sound or, more specifically, voice. As an event, sound summons through and across several biological systems. So, it is an anthropology of reception and response which is paramount here. Having, then, examined the two Scriptural passages in the light of this phenomenology, I draw attention to an underlying mimetic irony that is ineradicable with respect to hearing God in the Scriptures: the play of the vocal within the written, aurality/orality and textuality. I conclude that, while this mimetic irony is a key characteristic of a sacred text, recognising persona as ‘sounding through’ we can appreciate Scripture's role in salvation as a participation in the Persona Christi.