Our topic, in this chapter and the preceding, is whether it's possible for God to speak – given the understanding of speaking developed in Chapter 5. Is God like what God would have to be like, and can God do what God would have to do, if God were to speak? In the preceding chapter we considered whether God could have and acquire the rights and obligations necessary for God to speak. In this chapter we will consider whether God could bring about the events generative of God's speaking.

Must God cause events if God is to speak?

First, though, we'd better assure ourselves that God does indeed have to bring about certain events if God is to speak. Couldn't it be that we human beings bring about the events which count as God speaking – the events generative of divine discourse?

How could that be? Isn't it obvious that to perform a speech action one has to bring something about causally? That one can't just sit back passively? That one has to bestir oneself?

Well, we saw in Chapter 3 that, when words are the instruments of one's discourse, one needn't oneself have produced tokens of those words. One may instead take tokens produced by someone else and authorize them as the instruments of one's own speech – whereby they become that.