# Silence

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/diarmaid-macculloch/silence/9780241952320

![Silence](https://quivercdn.com/covers/penguin/diarmaid-macculloch/silence_978-02-4195-232-0.jpg?v=2026-04-25%2013%3A23%3A19)

- Book: [Silence](https://www.bookquiver.com/diarmaid-macculloch/silence) ([Silence.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/diarmaid-macculloch/silence.md))
- Authors: [Diarmaid MacCulloch](https://www.bookquiver.com/diarmaid-macculloch)
- Publisher: Penguin
- ISBN: 978-02-4195-232-0
- Pages: 352
- Published: 2014-04-10
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

This book unravels a polyphony of silences from the history of Christianity and beyond. MacCulloch considers Judaeo-Christian borrowings from Greek explorations of the divine, and the silences which were a feature of Jesus's brief ministry. Besides prayer and contemplation, there are shame and evasion; careless and purposeful forgetting. Many deliberate silences are revealed: the forgetting of histories inconvenient to later Church authorities, and Christianity's problems in dealing honestly with sexuality. Behind all this is the silence of God. In a deeply personal conclusion, MacCulloch brings a message of optimism for those still seeking God beyond the clamour of over-confident certainties.