Abstract

Chapter 1 begins with the paradox of the origin of speech. He asks: “Does the tight mutual embrace of call and response, through which what responds calls and what calls responds, imply a vicious circle, or does it reveal that there is no difference between affirming speech to spring from being called and affirming that every first utterance is really a response[?]”. In defending the latter position he draws on the Platonic and Neoplatonic tradition of understanding beauty as a call. The second part of chapter 1 focuses on St. Paul’s utterance in Romans 4:17 that God “calls into being what is not.”