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that the revelation of God is his name. When Saint Paul wants to explain to the Colossians the economy of divine revelation, he writes: "...
to fulfill the word of God, even the mystery which hath been hid from
ages and from generations, but is now made manifest to his saints"
(Col.I, 26-27). In these lines, "the mystery" is in apposition to "the word
of God" (6 AOYOC; 'toO eEOU). The mystery that was hidden and is now
revealed does not concern this or that natural or supernatural event,
but simply the word of God.
So if the theological tradition has always understood revelation as
something human reason cannot know on its own, this means only that
the content ofrevelation is not a truth that can be expressed in the form
of linguistic propositions regarding that which exists (even if a supreme being), but is rather a truth that concerns language itself: the
very fact that language (and hence knowledge) exists. The meaning of
revelation is that man can reveal what exists through language, but
cannot reveal language itself. In other words, man sees the world
through language, but does not see language. This invisibility ofthe revealing in what it reveals is the word of God, it is revelation.
Therefore theologians say that the revelation of God is at the same
time his concealment or, further, that in the word God is revealed in his
very incomprehensibility. It is not simply a matter ofa negative determination or of a lack ofknowledge, but of an essential determination of
divine revelation, which a theologian has expressed in these terms: "supreme visibility in the deepest obscurity" and "revelation ofsomething
unknowable." Once again, this simply means, what is here revealed is
not an object about which there would be much to be known, but that
cannot be known for lack of adequate instruments ofknowledge. What
is revealed here is the unveiling itself, the very fact that knowledge
and the opening of a world exist.
In this horizon, the construction of trinitarian theology seems to be
the most rigorous and coherent attempt to conceive the paradox ofthat
primordial statute ofthe word that the prologue ofthe Gospel according
to John expresses by saying: EV pxn ~v 6 AOYOc;, In the beginning
was the Word. The unitrinitarian movement of God that has become
familiar to us through the Nicaean symbol (Credo in unum Dominum
Iesum Christum [ilium dei unigenitum et ex patre natum ante omnia
saecula, Deum de Deo, lumen de lumine ... genitum non factum, consubstantialem Patri ...") says nothing about worldly reality, has no
ontic content, but takes into account the new experience of the word
which Christianity has brought to the world. To use Wittgenstein's
terms, the symbol says nothing about how the world is, but reveals that
the world is, that there is language. The word, which is absolutely in
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the beginning, which is therefore the absolute presupposition, only presupposes itself, it has no precursor that can explain it or reveal it in
turn (there is no word for the word!); and the trinitarian structure ofthe
'word is only the word's self-revelation. Now this revelation ofthe word,
this presupposing nothing-which is the only presupposition-is God:
"and the word was ... God."
The real meaning ofrevelation, therefore, is to show that every word
and every human cognition have roots and a foundation in an opening
that transcends them infinitely; yet at the same time, this aperture
'concerns only language itself, the possibility and existence oflanguage.
As the great Jewish theologian and leader of the neo-Kantian school,
Hermann Cohen, said: the meaning of revelation is that God is not revealed in something, but to something, and that, therefore, his revelation is simply die Schpfung der Vernunft, the creation of reason. Revelation does not mean this or that statement about the world, nor what
can be said through language, but that there is the world, that there is
language.
There is language - what can such a statement mean?
It is from this point ofview that we must take a look at the locus classicus wherein the problem of the relationship between revelation and
reason has been debated: namely, the ontological argument of Anselm.
For, as many promptly pointed out to hirn, it is not true that the mere
uttering ofthe name God, of quid maius cogitari nequit, necessarily implies the existence of God. Yet a being whose mere linguistic naming
implies existence does exist, and this being is language. The fact that I
speak and someone listens does not imply the existence of anything except of language. Language is that which must necessarily presuppose itself. What the ontological argument proves, therefore, is that if
men speak, ifthere are reasoning animals, then there is a divine word.
Which means simply that the signifying function always pre-exists.
(Provided that God is the name of the pre-existence of language, of its
dwelling in the arche - then, and only then, does the ontological argument prove the existence of God.) But this pre-existence, contrary to
what Anselm thought, does not belong to the realm of significant
speech; it is not a proposition endowed with meaning, but a pure event
of language before or beyond all particular meaning. In this light, it is
useful to reread the objection that a great but little-known logician of
the eleventh century, Gaunilo, opposes to Anselm's argument. When
Anselm declared that the uttering of the word God necessarily implies
for the person who understands it the existence ofGod, Guanilo posited,
in objection, the experience of an ignoramus (an idiot, as he says) or a
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The perception no more of a mere sound but not yet of a meaning, this
"thought of the voice alone" (cogitatio secundum vocem solam, as
Gaunilo calls it) opens up a primevallogical dimension that, denoting
the pure "taking place" of language, without any specific event of
meaning, shows that there is still a possibility of thought beyond signifying propositions. The most original logical dimension that is involved in revelation is not, therefore, that of the signifying word, but
that of a voice which, without signifying anything, signifies significance itself. (This is the sense of theories like that of Roscellinus, of
whom it was said that he had discovered "the meaning ofthe voice" and
had affirmed that the universal essences were only flatus vocis. Here
flatus vocis is not the simple sound, but in the sense explained above,
the voice as a pure indication of an event of language. And this voice
coincides with the most universal dimension of meaning, with being.)
This endowment of a voice for language is God; is the divine word. The
name of God, that is, the name that names language, is he~ce (as the
mystical tradition has never tired of repeating) a meaningless word.
In the terms of contemporary logic, we could then say that revelation
means that, if such a thing as a metalanguage exists, it is not a signifying statement, but a pure non-signifying voice. That there is language
is equally certain and incomprehensible, and this incomprehensibility
and this certainty constitute faith and revelation.
The chief difficulty inherent in philosophical exposition involves this
same order of problems. In fact philosophy is not concerned only with
what is revealed through language, but also with the revelation oflanguage itself. A philosophical exposition is, in other words, one that,
whatever it speaks of, must take into account the fact that it is speaking of it; a philosophical statement is one that, in everything that it
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says, says above aillanguage itself. (Hence the proximity, but also the
separation, between philosophy and theology, a link at least as old as
the Aristotelian definition of first philosophy as eEOAOYlK~, theological.)
All of this could also be expressed by saying that philosophy is not a
view of the world, but a view of language, and, in fact, contemporary
thought has followed this path with all too much enthusiasm. However,
a difficulty arises here from the fact that (as is implicit in Gaunilo's definition ofvoice) a philosophical exposition cannot be simply a discourse
that has language as its subject, a metalanguage that speaks of language. The voice says nothing, but shows itself precisely as logical
form, according to Wittgenstein, and therefore cannot become the subject of discourse. Philosophy can lead thought only to the boundaries of
the voice: it cannot say the voice (or at least, so it seems).
Contemporary thought is resolutely aware of the fact that an ultimate and absolute metalanguage does not exist and that any construction of a metalanguage remains trapped in a regression to infinity. All the same, the paradox ofphilosophy's intention is precisely that
of an utterance that would speak oflanguage and show its limits without having a metalanguage at its disposal. In this way, philosophy
comes up against what is represented as the essential content ofrevelation (and, perhaps, also ofpoetry): logos en arche, the word is absolutely
in the beginning, it is the absolute premise, or, as Mallarme once wrote,
"the word is the beginning developed through the negation of every beginning." And it is against this dwelling of the word in the beginning
that a logic and a philosophy (as weIl as a poetry) aware oftheir tasks
must always again be measured.
Ifthere is a point on which contemporary philosophies seem to agree,
it is precisely the acknowledgement ofthis premise. And so hermeneutics assurnes the irreducible priority of the signifying function, affirming (according to the declaration of Schleiermacher that stands as a
motto to Wahrheit und Methode) that "in hermeneutics there is only
one presupposition: language"; or else by understanding, as Apel does,
the concept ofWittgenstein's "language game" as a transcendental condition of all knowledge. This apriori is, for hermeneutics, the absolute
premise which can be reconstructed and be made self-conscious, but
cannot be overcome. Coherently with these premises, hermeneutics can
set itself up only as the horizon of an infinite tradition and interpretation whose ultimate meaning and foundation must necessarily remain
unsaid. It can question itself about how comprehension occurs, but the .
fact that there is comprehension is what, remaining unthought, makes
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No true human community can, in fact, rise on the basis of a presupposition - whether it be that of a nation or a tongue or even the apriori
of communication of which hermeneutics speaks. What unifies men is
not a nature or a divine voice or the common imprisonment in signify. ing language, but the vision oflanguage itself- and, therefore, the experience ofits boundaries, ofits end. The only true community is a community without presupposition. Pure philosophical exposition therefore cannot be the exposition of one's own ideas on language or on the
world, but an exposition of the idea of language.
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