The Throne Room Vision

Why God's Mystery Demands Both Silence and Speech

How do we speak about a God who is beyond all speech? This meditation on Revelation 4's throne room vision explores the delicate balance between saying too much and too little about the Trinity, revealing how St John's mysterious imagery points us toward our ultimate destiny: participation in the divine life itself. A journey through biblical symbolism, patristic wisdom, and the meaning of our baptismal calling.

Holy, Holy, Holy: Not just holy, but thrice holy; so holy that mortals fear to draw close, fear even to look at God lest they should die.

Wise preachers approach the feast of the Holy Trinity with some trepidation. Even talking about God has its dangers. Two of them: the danger of saying too much, and the danger of saying too little.

It's dangerous to say too much, because there is so much in the Bible that points to God's threeness and oneness—too much to cram into a single lifetime, let alone a single sermon. The nature of God exhausts all the possibilities of human speech. Saying too much risks us slipping into heresy, and if you want to know the dangers of that, examine the Athanasian Creed, with its careful distinctions and stern warnings.

But there is a danger in saying too little, as well, because it is all too easy just to say that the Trinity is "too hard," an incomprehensible mystery, a strange bit of celestial mathematical trickery, and leave it at that.

Between Silence and Speech

We need to steer the middle path on this dangerous ocean—to avoid being sucked into the whirlpool of cheerful ignorance on one side, or crashing on the noisy rocks of loose and verbose speculation about God on the other. We have to think, and we think in words, but those words need to be tempered with a certain silent awe.

This was the method a certain 6th-century monk in Syria who took on the identity of St Paul's follower, Dionysius, followed when he said this: if God were simply "one," we could understand; if God were "three," we could understand; but the fact that God reveals Himself as both one and three shows that He is beyond our understanding. St Augustine put it even more succinctly: if you understand something, then it is not God. God is beyond our understanding, and so, beyond our explanation.

But doesn't this leave us sucked into the whirlpool of silence, unable to say anything about God at all? No. Because, as St Dionysius would go on, God has revealed Himself to us through all the signs and symbols (he calls them "Divine Names") in the Bible. Yes, there is a depth to the divine nature which is totally beyond anything we can say, or even imagine. But there is also an aspect of God that He has made known to us. We may not be able to understand, but God can make Himself understood, because for Him, nothing is impossible.

We could trace this through Scripture: from Day One at the beginning of Genesis, where God speaks His Word and breathes His Spirit to create everything; through St John's declaration that this Word was made flesh in Jesus Christ; through St Paul's application of the divine title LORD to both Father and Son; all the way to the Nicene Creed, celebrating its 1700th anniversary this year.

The Vision of the Throne Room

But I want to focus on Revelation 4, because I think it reveals that balance between saying too much and too little of God.

Revelation is a vision of heaven given to St John in a similar vein to the visions of Old Testament prophets, especially Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel. In these visions, these prophets and mystics enter into the Holy of Holies in heaven, the heart of heaven, as it were, where God is enthroned. The earthly Tabernacle and Temple contained their own Holy of Holies, which only the High Priests could enter (at certain times of year and having fulfilled very specific ritual obligations) to meet God. These were meant to be earthly copies of the heavenly blueprint, places where mortals could ascend to be in the presence of God. But to most people, the door to that throne room — the door to God's presence — was closed.

See how St John starts: "Behold, a door was opened in heaven." What was closed is now open. The Evangelist walks in, and he hears a voice, "as it were of a trumpet," like the trumpet calls Moses heard as he went up Sinai, inviting him to "come up hither." Whose voice is not specified, but it is surely consistent with the voice of the one who descended in order to ascend, and invite us to go up with Him, Christ, the living Word of God. "And immediately," St John continues, he "was in the Spirit." He is invited up by the Word, but it is the Spirit which opens his eyes to see into the Holy of Holies: "Behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne."

One sat on the throne. That much is clear; that much is said. But so much is unsaid. Ezekiel said more: the Lord was "as the appearance of a man." Daniel goes into even greater detail, describing the "Ancient of Days ... whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool." But not John. To his eyes, the One who sat on the throne was "like a jasper and a sardine stone," that is, like a diamond of blue and red, the colours of water and fire, like the blue and red-dyed skins of the Holy of Holies in the Israelites' Tabernacle. All St John gives us is these colours, surrounded by a rainbow, that symbol of God's promise to Noah to hold back the chaotic floods.

St John is using highly symbolic language, not literalistic, very indirect. God is painted in colours of red and blue, fire and water, and there is lightning flaming out from his throne, and a crystal sea in front of it. But things get more concrete around the base of the throne. We have numbers: four singing beasts around the throne, seven lamps of fire, and twenty-four white-robed, crowned elders seated around.

This is all in the throne room of God, the place where He rules. So think about what these images mean. God is One, says St John, but first, He Himself appears in two shifting colours, and second, He is not alone.

The four beasts, which make up part of the throne, are chief among the angels. The number four represents the four directions of the compass, and the four seasons of the year, showing that through them, God has dominion over space and time. Their four faces—lion, man, bull, eagle—also came to represent the four Evangelists.

Seven is the number of perfection, with the seventh day representing Creation at perfect rest, peace and harmony under God's rule. The seven lamps connect to the ancient Jewish tradition of seven chief angels who did God's will, represented by the seven-headed candlestick, the Menorah, in the Tabernacle and the Temple.

Where We Belong

With the twenty-four elders, we humans start to get involved. These represent the belief in certain parts of ancient Judaism—the parts that continued in Christianity—that fallen angels would be replaced by human saints. That is what Our Lord means when He says that the blessed dead are "equal to the angels." These twenty-four elders, dressed in angelic white, are human replacements for the angels. Their number carries multiple meanings: twenty-four is two twelves, representing the twelve patriarchs of Israel and the twelve Apostles, showing the continuity of ancient Israel in the new Church; and in the Jewish Sanhedrin, there were 24 priestly elders who sat judgement. We have here an image of chosen and redeemed humans, judging the nations in the place of the angels, exercising a priestly ministry in the Holy of Holies, and crowned as kings in the divine throne room.

And that is where we belong. Christ Himself is the door into God's inner sanctum. His Incarnation, death, Resurrection and Ascension are the pathway into the Holy of Holies. There we find the One who is beyond all speech and vision, and yet who reveals Himself in the threeness of Father, Son and Spirit, and in the multiplicity of saints and angels who participate in His communal unity. God became human so that we might become gods, reigning under Him, higher than the angels.

Our route is through the crystal sea of baptism, the fire of the anointing spirit, and through the feast to which He invites us at the altar, our Holy of Holies, where heaven and earth commune, and the many are made one in bread and wine.

And there, as St John saw in his vision, we will join the angels in their endless hymn of praise: for in the end, praise is the only language truly fitting to God.