was not, is not, nor will be but simply remains within the words and
exchanges of/in conversations. If Being is understood, it is language;
whatever is not understood presents one with “an endless task of fi nding
the right word” ( RB , 84; cf. TM , 417). Conversation presents itself as
providing an opportunity, a clearing in which “ something ... comes to
language” ( RB , 85). Zabala claims that the “something” is Being, or
Being’s remains.
As remains, Being “never really is but sends itself, is on the way, trans-
mits itself” ( RB , 95). Its sending is its announcement, its disseminat-
ing of a message. 30 Because it announces a message and brings tidings,
Being’s remains require hermeneutics since hermeneutics is “in itself a
response to a message, an articulated response to its own belonging,
tradition, and history from which it arises” ( RB , 98). More than this,
though, hermeneutics generates Being through interpretation. Recall
Gadamer’s analysis of aesthetic experience and the being of a work of
art: interpretations of works of art—whether literature, sculpture, or
music—both belong to the being of the original and expand or enlarge
that being. Similarly, interpretations of tradition participate in Being as
a result of its “gratuity” and “happening” while perpetuating its exis-
tence as remains ( RB , 101). Being is not simply there once and for all
available to anyone and everyone; instead “it occurs as announcement
and grows into the interpretations that listen and correspond” to it. 31
One’s response to Being—not one’s knowledge of it—is the crucial ele-
ment in these encounters ( RB , 111–12). One does not search for Being
but listens to it attempting to fi nd an appropriate way of conducting
oneself in its path ( RB , 23).
As with Gadamer’s “language,” so with Zabala’s remains of Being: one
receives Being, or is placed in its way, its happening, “without ... request,
decision, or control” ( RB , 112). This is refl ective of Heidegger’s doctrine
of Geworfenheit : one is thrown into the world without consent or con-
sultation and given precious little in terms of guiding assistance. Being
thrown thus is unnerving leading to despair. However, in the Christian
tradition, there are resources for understanding thrownness not as an
indeterminate factical element of existence but as providential appoint-
ment. 32 Leaving aside specifi c details of divine providence, below I sketch
the contours of Trinitarian linguistic fellowship whose discursive fullness
and excess serves as the space and time into which one is not thrown but
providentially placed.
38 C.C. EMERICK