Avant-propos - Studia Moralia

218 JOSEPH CHAPEL
sciousness, as a fact of spiritual being.” 29 Consciousness of God’s
existence, placed within the essence of man is, “nothing other
than language, understood in the depth of its essence…, the spiritual
fact of ‘having the word...’” 30
In the word man has knowledge of God, but with the Fall,
consciousness of God’s existence darkened again. The “human”
word created by man begins here, and with it, his history: “This
‘human’ word is not the same, though presupposing it, as the
word through which the spiritual life in man, the I in its relation
to the Thou, is created. The human word testifies to that word
which..., since it constitutes all history, has no kind of history itself.”
31 The divine, originating Word became historical; the divine
Word meets the human word in human history, in the Incarnation
of Jesus Christ: “And the Word was made Flesh and
dwelt among us.” 32
The I exists in relation to the Thou, and the word is the spiritual
essence of language which takes place between the I and the
Thou. In Ebner’s view, the fact that language happens at all is always
a miracle, for in order to be myself I have need of the other,
and the other likewise has need of me, yet neither of us can
ever create the conditions of communication: “We remain
locked in mutual need. Nevertheless, language and communication
happens. I do not create this language, but receive it as a
gift. In this sense language has a transcendent origin.” 33
Language is a miracle whose origin is beyond the I or the
thou, yet language is the vehicle between the I and the thou; we
should be astonished at the fact that language exists. In its deepest
ontological sense, Ebner considers language to be the gift of
being, for it is through language that being reveals itself, in conversation
and in temporal events. Thus, in Ebner’s very particular
use of the terms, the origin of language is word.
Ebner distinguishes between the Word, which is divine, and
29
EBNER, Zum Problem der Sprache und Des Wortes, in Schriften, 1:654.
30
GREEN, 24; WR, Schriften 1:97.
31
GREEN, 20-21; WR, Schriften 1:96.
32
JOHN 1:14.
33
JOHN O’DONNELL, “The Trinity as Divine Community,” Gregorianum 69,
1 (1988), 12.