Things Which No Tongue Has Yet Spoken

Have you ever paused to consider what language we will speak in Heaven? There will be, after all, souls and creatures beyond count with which we will engage in conversation and friendship: how is it that we will communicate? If you’re anything like me, doubtless you think of Heaven and believers’ future existence there in terms of what you are already familiar with—that is, your current language, your present culture, and the heritage you most closely identify with. Indeed, these cultural roots—of which language and cuisine and geography and history are but a part—run ever so deep, far deeper than many of us realize.

By way of a somewhat entertaining example, when I was a child there was a brief stretch of time where I was thoroughly convinced that God spoke only Serbian (though, I don’t think I truly held to this belief because, even at its zenith, my grasp of the Serbian language remains mostly infantile). This humorous misunderstanding on my part was owing to the fact that most of my childhood was informed by, and seen through the lens of, Serbian culture: my family, my cousins and friends, the church I grew up in, all the way down to nearly every meal I ate, all of it was painted in some way by the culture of my parents, my father’s side of the family in particular.

In many respects, I do not think this way of thinking about Heaven—one influenced so heavily by culture—to be a bad thing necessarily so long as we recognize we are dealing with echoes and shadows in even the very best of circumstances. I am of the mind that there exists, deep within the heart of most every culture and heritage, some semblance of that which God intended from the very beginning. That mankind, had the Fall never occurred, would have still diverged into a plethora of cultures and ethnicities, each glorifying God in their intricate diversity as they took dominion across the face of the Earth.

By simply surveying the world around you, it immediately becomes clear that our God is a God of immense variety and diversity; a diversity He intended for from the outset. One human race, yet a vast diversity of culture within that one race. Each individual soul made in His glorious image, yet each soul and culture reflecting the infinite bounds of His goodness, creativity, and beauty in a unique way. In the New Heavens and the New Earth, this is doubtless the reality that will take place as redeemed humanity fulfills God’s dominion mandate finally and fully:

“And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it” (Revelation 21:23-24).

In the final chapters of Revelation, the picture presented to us of the New Heavens and the New Earth is one of unexpected humanness: redeemed humanity in all its cultural diversity exercising dominion across the freshly cleansed cosmos. The glory of the nations is, in no small part, owing to their redeemed diversity. Not the fickle nonsense passing for diversity in our day; but true, God-glorifying variety that exists to put the many facets of His infinite beauty on display. Spreading like an aroma of Christ’s matchless glory throughout the universe, we as His ransomed image-bearers will at long last step into that role for which He created us from the beginning, fulfilling the weighty mandate given to our first parents, Adam and Eve.

And yet, we must return to our earlier question: in the New Heavens and the New Earth, what language will we speak? I am of the mind that human language—from human cultures, with human words and dialects and mannerisms and quirks—will be preserved, perfected, and elevated in the age to come. Far too much of an individual is tied to their culture, of which language serves a significant part, for it to simply be done away with. It is a New creation, yes, but a creation that still bears the name of Heaven and Earth: there will be a redeemed recognizability to our future home. For remember, it is not simply a new creation that we will step into, as though the old were scrapped entirely, but a redeemed creation:

“For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God... in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now” (Romans 8:19-22).

What we now behold in creation, beautiful as it may be, is as a mere seed of the glory it will blossom into once the restraints of sin and corruption have been lifted by Christ. For indeed, “But, as it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him’” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

And yet, even as human culture and language is preserved and redeemed, there will be a profound newness amid the familiarity. As we have just read, no thought dimly approaching the glorious reality that shall be has ever, not for a moment, entered even our wildest imaginations. With respect to language, however, I am of the mind, as C.S. Lewis was, that there will be a sort of ‘universal language’ in Heaven in addition to the redeemed speech of human cultures. A sort of ancient tongue that was from the beginning—the deep, yet presently unutterable speech of angels and Divine Persons—which no human ear has heard, composed of syllables which no tongue has yet spoken.

In the concluding novel of his Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis proposes that there was once a common, ancient language that all creatures both knew and spoke. This language is called Old Solar, or “the Great Tongue.” This is the speech with which angels, demons, and creatures of old conversed—and, interestingly enough, men of myth such as the wizard Merlin from Arthurian legend. It is the tongue spoken by God Himself, whom the characters in the novel know as Maleldil. When Jane, one of the novel’s protagonists, first hears an old man named Dimble speak words in Old Solar, this is how her experience is described:

“... and great syllables of words that sounded like castles came out of his mouth. Jane felt her heart leap and quiver at them... The voice did not sound like Dimble’s own: it was as if the words spoke themselves through him from some strong place at a distance—or as if they were not words at all but present operations of God, the planets, and the Pendragon. For this was the language spoken before the Fall and beyond the Moon and the meanings were not given to the syllables by chance, skill, or long tradition, but truly inherent in them as the shape of the great Sun is inherent in the little waterdrop. This was Language herself, as she first sprang at Maleldil’s bidding out of the molten quicksilver of the star called Mercury on Earth.”

If there is such a language as Old Solar in that age to come, or its more perfect and beautiful counterpart, then we have great cause to rejoice. For we shall then after all our many deep sighs and speechless nights finally have those words with which to accurately express ourselves. Utterance will then truly be given and never taken away from those wellsprings of thought that presently lay bound up in our souls, waiting to pour upwards and outwards without end.

As I suspect will be the case for all of redeemed creation in the New Heavens and the New Earth, language being a chief element, there will be at once a splendid newness to the glory and a deep familiarity. We will then see—and hear and speak—that which we always longed for most. It will be much like coming home after a long, cold journey to the comfort of a woodburning fireplace—the warmth of which we felt now and again throughout our lives, as though through the eyes of some distant remembrance, which there we will both see and enjoy the reality of, never again to be parted. And best of all, we will then with perfectly renewed minds and renewed tongues finally have those words to properly praise and thank Him who made our salvation of such infinite importance by dying for us that we may forever live with Him in this glorious world to come.

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Photo by Annie Spratt, Unsplash

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