the meaning of the singular being’s existence if the difference from the original giver were not preserved, or if this difference were reduced to a simple separation. The singular being would be a “fragment” that never belonged to any totality. It would not even be possible to talk about its “whatness,” or, if attempted, it would simply come down to indulging in linguistic games. Time, reflecting the non-subsistence of finite beings, separates finite beings from God. Yet it does so not by denying God, but by imaging him. Because the giver remains present in the gift without losing his transcendence, time, as finite gift’s mode of being, images eternity, the eternal giver’s mode of being. Plato famously states in the Timaeus that since “it is not possible to bestow eternity fully upon anything that is begotten . . . [the Father] began to think of making a moving image of eternity, moving according to number, of eternity remaining in unity.”77 Time images eternity precisely in its continuous movement. Of course, for Plato the moving image meant above all circular movement. Yet, as Gregory of Nyssa explains, it is possible to think of the image’s movement (time) as a continuous becoming like the source as a result of the relation with that source. Time is coming into existence from and returning to the source while growing ever more like it, but without relinquishing the gift’s finite nature. The passage of time, because already sharing in the source, promises a unity with the source in which the finite gift is confirmed in the gift of being. From this point of view, the passage of time is a turning in desire towards the source, which, infinite itself, cannot but fulfill man’s desire without ever satiating it.78 Eternity does not simply lie before the beginning of time or wait at its end. It is, to speak with Bulgakov, “the noumenon (eternity) within the phenomenon (time).”79 Eternity is the truth of time that, in manifesting itself through time, distinguishes itself from time.
Third, the singular gift is totally given to itself in its own distinct unity; it is a “self.” Since it is irreducibly a “self,” even though its being and essence are not coextensive, the gift, from the point of view of the giver, cannot be taken back. It is crucial not to lose sight of the totality of the gift; otherwise we would think that gift relies only upon the power to give. The potentiality to give, however—or “gift,” considered as a verb—is only one aspect. “Gift” is also a noun and, as such, describes the nature of the concrete singular. In addition to the inseparability of these two aspects of the word “gift,” there also exists a proper taxis between them. The singular’s capacity to give or to be given rests in its being given completely to itself. It is true that the gift is to grow in the truth of its being, yet this is a growth into what has already been given: participation in being. The totality proper to the singular being, therefore, also contains a promise of more, that is, of being confirmed in being and of participating in a being with others that knows no end. The promise is not made, however, because the beginning of the singular’s existence is an empty void waiting to be filled. The promise of more is, rather, an increase of what has already been given. This promise is not a movement from sheer potency to actuality, but an indwelling of the latter. An inquiry into the meaning of substance in what follows will explore in what sense the connotations of gift’s actuality and potentiality are not dialectically related, and why the need to grow in the gift does not threaten the concrete singular’s being. It suffices here to note that to think of time without relation to eternity is to give potentiality priority over actuality. Taking as primordial the verbal sense of gift as potency grounds the claim that history is all-encompassing.80 This claim, however, looks at the concrete singular from its historical end (death) rather than from its inception, and holds up the future rather than the present as time’s fundamental category. The human being is indeed oriented towards the future, but this is because the fullness of the present opens him to it. How is the “present” then to be understood?
Heidegger, who attempted to think of “being (Sein) without regard to metaphysics” and, in order to do so, had “to leave metaphysics to itself,” said in his famous lecture Time and Being that “from the dawn of Western-European thinking until today, Being (Sein) means the same as presencing (Anwesen). Presencing, presence (Anwesenheit) speaks of the present. . . . Being is determined as presence by time.”81 There is a sense in which this Heideggerian affirmation is correct. We mentioned earlier that originary experience invites us to account for being in terms of a presence (being as gift and logos) that imposes itself. Presence, we saw, presupposes a threefold movement of the concrete singular: its coming from another to call the human being through beauty to freely let himself and the sign (the concrete singular) be united with God, the sourcing giver and telos of both, in the historical return of both to him. This coming to, being with, and going towards is also time—although not identical with it.82 Time is therefore not the receptacle in which the being of gift is given or contained. The question will be whether what we described as presence is what Heidegger intended.
The methodology adopted here—the anthropological starting point that moves from the human being to being in general and the divine giver—enables us to see that there is a reciprocity between being’s presence (gift-logos; sign) and the human being. In a deceivingly similar way, Heidegger writes that the human being is “standing within the approach of presence, but in such a way that he receives as a gift the presencing that It gives by perceiving what appears in letting-presence.”83 Presence, according to him, means “the constant abiding that approaches man, reaches him, is extended to him.”84 As is well known, Heidegger calls Ereignis the belonging together of what gives itself and the one it claims in giving itself to it. Of course there can be no pretense of attempting to give here a full explanation of what Heidegger means by this complex term. It will be helpful for our purposes, though, to indicate first the main differences in the sense of “presence” and hence “time,” and second, how dialogue with Heidegger helps us understand time’s threefold dimension of past, present, and future.
Ereignis (event) is neither a historical occurrence nor a phenomenon presupposing a god to give a gift of a finite being to the human being and the latter to the former. Ereignis is a reciprocal belonging that “is a giving as destiny, giving as an opening up which reaches out. Both belong together, inasmuch as the former, destiny, lies in the latter, extending opening up.”85 This opening of the open takes place on the basis of a concealment, not because the giving (Es gibt) is the action of a god who remains hidden, but because the withdrawal proper to giving—which determines the modes of giving as sending and extending—belongs to what is proper to Ereignis.86 Contrary to Heidegger, the belonging together of presence and the human being, however, must also keep in view the fact that, as originary experience discloses, both finite beings and the human being come from another. To eliminate this third in the totality of being and time by hypostasizing the event, as Heidegger seems to do (the event events, Das Ereignis ereignet), is tantamount to making human finitude the prime analogate for the whole.87 This metaphysical decision, however, overlooks the constant discovery of experience that one is still being made and held in existence. The wonder that being’s presence elicits in the human being precludes any burning of the bridges between metaphysics and the experience of time. It is true that the present, as Heidegger says, cannot be a simple “now,” understood as the instant measurable by the clock. But beyond what he grants here, the present includes the presence that bears both the continual reminder of the passage from nothingness to being given, and the ongoing movement towards the ultimate source of being.
If the present is a gift in which the source gives itself in distinction from the gift while remaining its innermost, as the originary experience of being in the world and of childhood discloses,
