The Senior Common Room was occupied by three people and an increasingly problematic copy of Genesis.
Mr Blottisham closed the book.
“I think I see what you're doing now.”
Professor Quillibrace looked up.
“Do you?”
“You're turning God into language.”
“No.”
“Into the language-user, then.”
“No.”
“A metaphor for humanity.”
“Also no.”
Blottisham looked irritated.
“You've rejected all my explanations.”
“They were all wrong.”
Miss Stray glanced at the book.
“Perhaps the difficulty is that we keep asking what God represents.”
Quillibrace nodded.
“The more interesting question is what position God occupies in the narrative.”
Blottisham waited.
“He speaks.”
“Yes.”
“And what does He speak?”
“The world.”
“Exactly.”
“So He is the source of the construal.”
Blottisham frowned.
“That's a very peculiar way of describing God.”
“It is a very peculiar narrative.”
Miss Stray said, “Notice that God is not introduced as one thing among other things.”
Blottisham looked at the page.
“No.”
“He speaks the things into differentiation.”
“Yes.”
“So perhaps the important distinction isn't between God and some other object.”
“But between the speaker and what is spoken.”
Quillibrace nodded.
“The position from which a world becomes available as meaning.”
Blottisham was silent for a moment.
“You really are trying to make God into a grammatical position.”
“No.”
“Then what is He?”
“A figure through which that position can be construed.”
Blottisham looked dissatisfied.
“That sounds suspiciously like the same thing.”
“It isn't.”
Miss Stray smiled.
“A myth needs figures. Philosophy can dispense with them.”
Blottisham considered this.
“So Genesis gives the source of linguistic construal a person.”
“Among other things.”
“And then creates human beings.”
“Yes.”
“Who can speak.”
“Yes.”
“So the people God creates eventually acquire the very capacity by which God has been creating.”
Quillibrace looked at him.
“Exactly.”
Blottisham stared at the book.
“That is rather clever.”
“It is.”
“And slightly unsettling.”
“Also.”
Miss Stray said, “The human being enters a world that has already been differentiated through saying.”
“And then proceeds to differentiate it further.”
“Exactly.”
Blottisham looked thoughtful.
“So God speaks first, and then humanity speaks.”
“Yes.”
“Which means that when humanity speaks, it is doing something God has already done.”
Quillibrace nodded.
“The distinction between creator and creature begins to look rather less absolute.”
Blottisham stiffened.
“Careful.”
Quillibrace smiled.
“I said begins to look.”
Blottisham pointed at him.
“That is how theological trouble begins.”
Miss Stray laughed.
“And perhaps how mythology thinks.”
There was a silence.
Blottisham slowly reopened Genesis.
“So the speaker becomes us.”
Quillibrace paused.
“Not quite.”
Blottisham looked relieved.
“Good.”
“The position becomes us.”
Blottisham closed the book again.
“I preferred it when you said ‘not quite.’”
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