Speech and Theology: Language and the Logic of Incarnation

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
and have become cherished friends for us. Our Friday nights together with the
“Magnificent Seven” kept me – and Deanna – sane and grounded.
My family, my parents and in-laws, have all been a part of this process and project
for a number of years. And I couldn’t have done it without them. The book is
dedicated to my mother, to whom I owe so much, especially a confidence born of her
praise and encouragement. But those who have borne the heaviest load throughout
this project have been my own family: my wife, Deanna, and the kids, Grayson,
Coleson, Madison, and Jackson. Now that I have finished this project, which has too
often stolen their father’s attention, I am most happy for them. And I am most
grateful for their patience and forgiveness – models that I can follow.
This book grapples with the question of how words can do justice to that which
cannot be said. In thanking Deanna, I meet this very problem: What can be said?
My debt to Deanna, her support and encouragement, exceeds words. But the very
project of this book is to also affirm that we can say something. Thank you.
Some of this research has appeared in a nascent form in several articles. My thanks to
the editors and publishers for their permission to include this material here: Chapter
2 includes material from “Respect and Donation: A Critique of Marion’s Critique of
Husserl,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 71 (1997), pp. 523–38 and is included
with the permission of Robert Wood, Editor. A version of the first sections of
Chapter 3 was originally published as “Taking Husserl At His Word: Towards a
New Phenomenology With the Young Heidegger,” Symposium: Journal of the Canadian
Society for Hermeneutics and Postmodern Thought 4 (2000), pp. 89–115, and is reprinted
here with the permission of the editor. The final section of the chapter includes
material from “Liberating Religion From Theology: Marion and Heidegger on the
Possibility of a Phenomenology of Religion,” International Journal for Philosophy of
Religion 46 (1999), pp. 17–33 and is included with the permission of Kluwer
Academic Publishers. A version of the first half of Chapter 4 was published as
“Between Predication and Silence: Augustine on How (Not) To Speak of God,”
Heythrop Journal 41 (2000), pp. 66–86 and is reprinted with the permission of
Blackwell Publishers. The second part of the chapter first appeared as “How (Not)
To Tell a Secret: Interiority and the Strategy of ‘Confession’ in Augustine” in a
special issue of the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 74 (2000), pp. 135–51
devoted to the work of Saint Augustine. It is reprinted with permission.
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