The Space Between Speech: Silence and the Function of Faith-language in Rowan Williams, Stephen Mulhall, and Ignace D’hert OP.

This paper compares the dialectical relationship between speech and silence in the writings of three thinkers. The first, Ignace D’hert OP, was a student of Cornelius Ernst OP in the 1970s, himself a student of Wittgenstein. D’hert’s dissertation develops Ernst’s ideas into a Wittgensteinian ontology, concluding that the function of faith-language is the production of pregnant silence. Similarly, Rowan Williams’ Gifford Lectures, inspired by Ernst’s writings, begin with a Cavellian account of language and culminate in a theology of silence. The following year, Stephen Mulhall delivered his Stanton Lectures on ‘Grammatical Thomism’ that develop the thought of Herbert McCabe OP, Ernst’s Dominican contemporary. Also attending to the failures of language, Mulhall presents his own account of the function of theological language, which he compares and contrasts with Williams’ in a subsequent article. Despite significant convergence between these three accounts, it is well worth examining just where and when they diverge.