of how the concrete singular, permanently given to itself, participates in the original gift of self not only by further giving but through its very ontological constitution. Given our cultural context, marked as it is by the atheistic claim that fragmentation is more primordial than unity, to fail to give an account of the relationship between esse and essence, between God and the world, and between men in terms of gift would collapse the act of giving into either a technological interpretation of causality and human making or a philosophical hypostatization of human giving. Gift, instead, brings all its richness to bear on the question when it is first thought of as a principle, rather than a “present” that is offered to someone. In other words, to root ethics in ontology allows us to perceive the real newness that an act of giving represents with regard to the ontological gift-structure of the concrete singular.
In these pages, therefore, gift is considered primal. The term “primal” has a twofold meaning: arche, the “permanent principle of origination and ordering,” and the temporal aspect of being “first” in time. Gift, on the one hand, is a permanent source of originating, ordering, and restless rest. Reading the second connotation in light of the first we can say that gift is, on the other hand, an ever-new beginning—and not simply the commencement of being. Although this perception of gift and of the nature of the unity of being in terms of gift is radical and comprehensive, it does not propose a system built on a concept (gift). As the Hegelian project demonstrates, the attempt to elevate a concept as adequate to the whole is liable to end up on the shores of nihilism despite the best of intentions. The following reflections wish to offer, then, rather than a system, a synthesis of the type of unity that is proper to man, being, God, and the relations among them. The term “gift” reveals the sense in which God and the concrete singular are placed together (syn-thesis).
Three methodological criteria specified by the subject itself deserve mention. First, the present work attempts to keep the integral mode of being of the concrete singular and of God, as well as their analogical relation, clearly at the forefront. The opening remarks on the meaning of birth, which will come up again later, were not a rhetorical overture. The concrete singular requires its interlocutor to approach it in its entire, multifaceted wholeness. It is the concrete singular that “is,” and not the principles that account for its being. Esse and essence, matter and form, act and potency, are principles of the singular being whose physical or spiritual self-standingness (substance) carries the ontological memory of its belonging to the whole. The constant temptation in the attempt to examine the positivity of the unity of being is the desire to possess the object of thought and to make a definitive pronouncement about the logos of the object and its existence. The haste to give an account for things can lead to overlooking the inexhaustible wealth of the concrete singular and to simply eliminating various aspects that do not fit easily into a given schema. It is tempting to take the concrete singular as either the starting point or the conclusion of a reflection. Yet to lose sight of the concrete singular during the process of thinking turns thinking itself into a unilateral exercise. To consider the unity of being requires the poverty of acknowledging that one does not possess the measure of being, and of never wearying of seeking and receiving the wealth of being that has been communicated, however inchoately. The claim to have a firm grasp on the wealth of being at the beginning, and its twin, the claim to take and give the measure of being (which views the beginning as a sheer undetermined void), both lead to an abyss of contradiction. When the integral mode of being takes on only a minor or supporting role, the claim seems to emerge that the real essence of donation is contradiction (for example, matter-form, act-potency, body-soul, parents-children, etc.) and that dialectics is its anointed method. Gift is understood in either univocal or equivocal terms and precludes reflection on either the distinction or the unity between the giver, the gift, and the receiver. The integral mode of being always leads back to the mysterious wholeness of the singular: both in its permanent being given and in its being gift.
The concrete singular in its integral mode of being brings us to the second methodological criterion. The point where anthropology, metaphysics, and theology meet in all their distinction to shed light on each other offers the privileged place for contemplating the gifted unity of being. Anthropology provides an entryway to being in one sense because the human person recapitulates in himself the cosmos and has the task of uniting it to the ultimate source. In another sense, being is most perfect at the level of the person, not at the level of substance. At the same time, metaphysical reflection grounds the anthropological approach and dispels the specters both of an ever-present romantic, neopelagian understanding of morality (which identifies the person with a self-determining freedom blind to its own having been given to itself) and of the psychological reductions of the person. Mutually illuminating as they are, anthropology and metaphysics remain incapable on their own of accounting for the positivity of being that is constantly brought forward by human experience and the mystery of birth. By becoming flesh, the eternal Logos of the Father not only pronounces himself within the parameters of the concrete singular. He, the concrete universal, to speak with Cusanus, also reveals the ultimate meaning of God, the world, and man as gift. The hypostatic union of the two natures in the person of the Logos, who intends the radical offering of himself to the Father on the Cross, is not an instance of philosophical gift-giving, but rather represents the archetype of gift. Christ’s “eventful” existence confirms the positivity of being that is suggested by human experience by bringing it to a new, unforeseeable depth. As John Paul II wrote in Fides et ratio, philosophy and theology must not be isolated in self-enclosed castles; they must rather encounter each other and acknowledge the enriching circularity that unites and distinguishes them.1 This circularity is possible precisely because man’s reasoning is open to and constantly seeks the divine mystery that unforeseeably took flesh in Mary. Two simultaneous poles guard against collapsing theology into philosophy or reducing philosophy to a stepping-stone toward theology: (1) the unity of being and gift revealed in the person of Jesus Christ (1 John 4:8 and 16), in which all are called to participate (John 17:22), has its speculative measurement in the ontological difference between esse and essence; and (2) the revealed theological insight regarding the coextensiveness of being and love is the ultimate ground of the ontological structure of the concrete singular. The ontological is open to the theological order and finds therein the fulfillment that renews it. In light of this, the “place” from which to examine the mystery of being and its gifted unity has in a sense a twofold center. It is first the human being himself, as he is engaged with all of his own self, with all of reality, and with the triune God who is the center of both. Yet the center is also Christ, in whom all things consist and who holds everything in being.
The twofold center from which to examine the unity of being as gift helps clarify a third methodological aspect. The circularities touched upon so far (the ontological structure of the singular and its action, metaphysics and theology, unity and gift) are more than the regular swing of a pendulum or unconscious redundancies. Circularity here means a reciprocal, perichoretic illumination and a continual deepening into the subject matter. These circularities grant a vision of what is new by permitting it to flourish at a new level, not by opposing one element to another. Novelty, in this sense, is a re-acquaintance with the whole. Newness, recapitulating what preceded it, discloses more fully the mystery of being. To express this fullness, thought finds its greatest ally in paradox. Paradoxes, rather than contradictions, allow us to see the complex unity of the whole without letting go of its inexhaustibility. If we turn to look again at the three circularities already mentioned, we see first that the gift-ness of the ontological structure is reflected at the level of human reciprocation of the original gift. The human being can give gifts or give himself because his very being shares in its having been given. This reception and reciprocation, however, rather than the payment of a debt, represent the coming into being of something new: the receiver is himself by being one with and in the giver, without ceasing to be himself. Second, the relation between being and action reflects at its own level the incomprehensible mystery of the divine act. As we shall see, God is one in being a triune communion of persons and vice versa. The unity of the gift is not just a matter of piecing elements together; it is a whole that is present from the beginning and that, as a whole, is something other than its parts. Lastly, the relation between Christology and anthropology allows us to understand who the human person is and leads to a reflection of
