richness, tradition lays claim to validity “in such a way that it [through a
text] has something to say [to us]” ( TM , 361). 8
Tradition expresses itself in and through texts, in language, and since
writing is “self-alienation,” a text wants to speak again in the livingness of
dialogical language. 9 The verbal signs in written texts yearn to be “trans-
formed back into speech and meaning” ( TM , 393). “Since writing refers
not to a thing but to speech, a work of language ... ceaselessly strives after
speech.” 10 While containing a trace of authorial presence, texts remain
closed off from living reality until they are read, interpreted, and under-
stood—and understanding involves interpretation, application, and re-
presentation as speech. Texts’ words house an uncontainable fullness, 11
yielding a surplus unanticipated by authors: “Not just occasionally but
always, the meaning of a text goes beyond its author” ( TM , 296). 12
Words, by which language performs its operations of manifesting tradi-
tion, have a kenotic quality: “A sign ... is not something that insists on its
own content” ( TM , 413). 13 Linguistic signs defer their own content for
the sake of that to which they refer. They do not exist for themselves but
for the other. A copy, however, is just the opposite of the sign: a copy is
assessed by its ability to “make present in itself what is not present” ( TM ,
413). Words are both signs and copies, both self-emptying entities for the
other, and the site in which the other is present. In these ways, a word has
a “mysterious connection with what it ‘images’; it belongs to its being”
( TM , 416). 14 Though it may perform a sign-function of deferring mean-
ing, the word possesses the capacity to allow “those networks of meaning
beyond the sign (i.e., the withheld) to fl ow back into the sign and to body
it forth so that it can also function as a symbol of the beyond (the with-
held).” 15 This is the speculative structure of language enabling tradition
simultaneously to manifest in and transcend the word.
This speculative structure means instability accompanies human under-
standing. Language is both restricted and boundless, limited to particular
utterances and containing all that could ever be said: it is the medium
of human life sustained by and in discursive exchange and negotiation.
Language, as the coming to expression of human culture and achieve-
ment, is that in which all participate beyond control and manipulation;
participants are being directed by language, passively being moved toward
an accomplishment not merely their own. “We do not merely speak the
language—we speak by way of it ... But—does language itself speak? How
is it supposed to perform such a feat when obviously it is not equipped with
organs of speech? Yet language speaks. Language fi rst of all and inherently
CONVERSATION, BEING, AND TRINITY: TOWARD A TRINITARIAN... 35