It is time to ask whether God could speak. Not whether God does speak; we'll get to that later. But whether God could do such things as make assertions, issue commands, and make promises.

We'll have to presuppose certain things in our discussion or we'll never get to the issues that immediately concern us. The proposition that God speaks entails that God exists; so if it couldn't be that God exists, then it couldn't be that God speaks. Here is not the place to consider that issue. And if God were merely some abstract factor in reality – the ground of being, say – rather than personal, then God could not speak. But here is also not the place to consider that issue.

Let us suppose that in their use of the word “God,” the Hebrew and Christian scriptures (in their English translations!) were referring to something that really exists. And let us assume that among the things those scriptures got right about that being, is their presumption that God is personal: a center of consciousness who forms and acts on intentions and has knowledge of entities other than Godself. Can that being do what's necessary for speaking? Can that being function as a participant in the community of discoursers; in particular, can that being be active in that community, as itself a discourser? The writers of these scriptures repetitively applied the language of speaking to God.