“ontodology,” makes use of modern idealism while purging it of what is invalid. Since a gift, in order to be given, must be received, if every being is a gift of itself to itself, then it can only exist as reflectively giving itself to itself. This means that consciously spiritual beings are the first and primordial created beings. There cannot be a cosmos without spirit, as indeed Aquinas like the Fathers taught, and equally every non-spiritual creature must exhibit this spirituality in some lesser, analogical degree. I find here a fascinating implication both that some kind of vitalism might be embraced by Christian metaphysics and that a genuine vitalism must derive from transcendence and not immanence, as Bergson and others have supposed.
If even God is receptive, then, conversely, even pure created recipients must be active: gratuitously generous on their own account to others and seeking the end of reciprocal union with others and with God.
It then follows not just that every being qua being is a gift and that God is eminent generosity, but also that every being is internally and externally involved in a gift-exchange of initiation, reception, and counter-giving that in God is Trinitarian relation—though Fr. López strenuously avoids any simplistic identification of the three divine persons with these three exchangist moments. Deploying great subtlety and suppleness of argument, he then associates this transcendental reciprocity with the “real difference” of being and essence in Aquinas’s ontology; with the relation of Christ’s divine being and his secondary and dependent created being; with the “nuptial” circulation between the historical/critical Jesus in his unity with the Christ of faith; and finally with the need for the third person in the Trinity.
Here the Son is indeed identified as the first Paternal gift, but were he not also the Logos who needed to be “remembered” and interpreted as word by the Holy Spirit, then he would not really be gift at all, since this requires a reception, and the Filial reception is identical to the Paternal outpouring. A closed mutuality of Father and Son would collapse into an impersonal, substantive egotism, were it not for their combined will to share the experience of being infinitely loved with Richard of St. Victor’s Condilectus.
In this way, the Holy Spirit turns out to be at once supremely gift, reflexive spirit, the principle of life, and the ground of the unity of being. In order that the divine essence be not elevated over the persons or identified with the Father, it must be personally expressed as the Holy Spirit.
Thereby Fr. López caps his profound and yet most engaging reflections with the thesis that we cannot conceive of the metaphysical unity of being adequately as monistic act, but must conceive of it as the unity both emergent with and yet presumed by gift-exchange, in the sense of an exchange always already begun. This process only has a “beginning” in the infinite, which is properly speaking never begun at all.
The suggestion would seem to be that it is the revelation of the Trinity through the divine economy of times that alone allows us to complete our obscure philosophical intuitions as to the priority of gift for both being and human social existence.
I find all this thoroughly compelling in the way that the simple and manifest truth is self-evident as radiating forth. Reading this book confirmed me in the sense that the current Catholic intellectual project is by far the most coherent one available in the world today and actually the one that manages to make most sense of the best specifically contemporary intuitions and realizations. It gives me profound hope that in the current century this project will be able to recover and rethink the Western tradition in a way that could even (in the face of increasing global catastrophe) prove universally persuasive.
Abbreviations
| Giussani’s Works | |
| AC | L’autocoscienza del cosmo |
| AVS | Un avvenimento di vita cioè una storia |
| GTSM | Generare tracce nella storia del mondo |
| IPO | L’io, il potere, le opere |
| JTE | The Journey to Truth Is an Experience |
| MO | Il miracolo dell’ospitalità |
| NFT | Se non fossi tuo |
| PLW | Is It Possible to Live This Way? (3 vols.) |
| ROE | The Risk of Education |
| RS | The Religious Sense |
| RVU | Alla ricerca del volto umano |
| SPVVC | Si può vivere (veramente?!) così? |
| TT | Il tempo e il tempio |
| “Tu” | “Tu” (o dell’amicizia) |
| USD | L’uomo e il suo destino |
| VNC | Vivendo nella carne |
| WTC | Why the Church? |
| Other Works: | |
| AAS | Acta Apostolicae Sedis |
| An. post. | Posterior Analytics, Aristotle |
| C. Ar. | Orationes contra Arianos, Athanasius |
| Cat. | Categories, Aristotle |
| CCSG | Corpus Christianorum, Series Graeca |
| CCSL | Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina |
| Civ. | De civitate Dei, Augustine |
| DS | Denzinger-Schönmetzer |
| EE | L’être et l’esprit, Bruaire |
| Encyclopedia | Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, Hegel |
| ET | Explorations in Theology (4 vols.), Balthasar |
| GA | Gesamtausgabe, Heidegger |
| GD | The Gift of Death, Derrida |
| GL | The Glory of the Lord (7 vols.), Balthasar |
| GT | Given Time, Derrida |
| Haer. | Adversus haereses, Irenaeus |
| In Ioa. | In Evangelium Ioannis tractatus, Augustine |
| Metaph. | Metaphysics, Aristotle |
| In Metaph. | In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis expositio, Aquinas |
| In Nic. Eth. | In decem libros Ethicorum expositio, Aquinas |
| Or. | Orationes, Gregory of Nazianzus |
| OTB | On Time and Being, Heidegger |
| PG | Patrologiae cursus completus. Accurante Jacques-Paul Migne. Series Graeca (Paris) |
| In Physic. | Commentaria in octo libros Physicorum, Aquinas |
| PL | Patrologiae cursus completus. Accurante Jacques-Paul Migne. Series Latina (Paris) |
| De pot. Dei | Quaestiones disputatae de potentia Dei, Aquinas |
| PS | Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel |
| SCG | Summa contra gentiles, Aquinas |
| I Sent. / IV Sent. | Scriptum super libros Sententiarum magistri Petri Lombardi episcopi Parisiensis, Aquinas |
| ST | Summa theologiae, Aquinas |
| TB | The Texture of Being, Schmitz |
| TD | Theo-drama (5 vols.), Balthasar |
| TDNT | Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Kittel |
| TL | Theo-logic (3 vols.), Balthasar |
| Trin. | De Trinitate, Augustine |
| De ver. | Quaestiones disputatae de veritate, Aquinas |
| VPR | Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion (Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion; 3 vols.), Hegel |
| WL | Wissenschaft der Logik (The Science of Logic), Hegel |
Introduction
The mystery of birth fills our existence with joy, hope, and wonder, but it does more than this as well: it calls us to ponder the mystery of the positivity of being. There are several layers of meaning to the mystery of being born, and these layers, though intrinsically and circularly related, are distinct but not independent. The first meaning, perhaps the most obvious but not the least important, is the biological. Life, the fruit of the loving union between a father and a mother, is given to us with and through a corporeal, organic existence. Our very body continually refers us back to our birth insofar as our bodily being is truly ours—to be born is to be given to oneself. Simultaneously, the body reminds us at birth that our life is a life that is received. This reception has to do with both the moment of conception and also with the entirety of our historical existence. Just as we cannot give birth to ourselves or completely manipulate this bodiliness at will, so we cannot exist without receiving the light, the warmth, and the language that enable us to see, create, and speak.
Our corporeality reflects in its particular mode the second, ontological meaning of the mystery of birth. We come into existence from a dual, nuptial union and,
