out for the interpretation of others.” As the embodying of divine speech,
creation both “communicates and conceals the vocality and vital content
of the original discourse” ( CG , 105). The concealment occurs within the
communication, for the divine is communicated within the fi nite struc-
tures and media of the world-text.
The divine deposit of presence in created reality is intensifi ed in intersub-
jective speech encounters with human others, says Davies, further establish-
ing God’s presence as a covenantal presence-with. 46 There are three stages
of God’s vocal intensifi cation: (1) the announcement of blessing following
the initial creative utterance, (2) God’s self-naming to Moses in Exodus
3.1–15 and 33.12–23, and (3) supremely in the incarnation of the Word in
Jesus Christ ( CG , 76–94). The deepening of the divine locutions shows that
God’s presence is “not exercised from outside language, by some sovereign
and independent agent, but is rather enfolded within language” ( CG , 83).
Divine discourse moves along a path from external creative word (“speak-
ing forth”) to internal covenantal and relational word (“speaking with”)
to redemptive consuming word (“speaking from within”). The incarnation
especially provides a glimpse (or better: an echo) of “inner-Trinitarian dis-
course” comprehended as “total transparency, communication and surren-
der.” Hence, whereas in the Old Testament God’s speech with his servants
shaped and molded history as a redemptive drama, “in the New Testament
history itself is taken up into the redemptive drama of divine speech, in
and through Father, Son and Spirit” ( CG , 85, italics original). Within the
Trinity, specifi cally the Spirit “is the possibility of” the communication pass-
ing between Father and Son “and the point of access for the church into
the divine conversation”; the Spirit’s special mission involves extending the
“trinitarian indwelling of voice into the created world.” 47
Trinitarian speech “precedes us” as language, “as an ‘element’ in which
we come to our own linguistic self-realisation” ( CG , 92). Divine speech
is an open speech, opening spaces and times for others to respond and
speak. It involves a certain descent, “a kenotic self-emptying” permitting
the “co-positing of creator and created within the same fi eld or domain of
language” ( CG , 93). This means that God’s speech is God’s compassion,
his covenantal desire and decision to be present-with in (the) Word and in
words. Trinity, then, manifests itself in and through the created order from
within it. Consequently, as at once immanent in the world as the vocal
reverberations of all things and transcendent over it as the silent source
and possibility of all response, divine transcendence manifests itself from
within —not above or outside. 48
CONVERSATION, BEING, AND TRINITY: TOWARD A TRINITARIAN... 41