Authorial Note on the Proceeding Disputations

Over the past two months I have posted 64 disputations. They must seem to many to be difficult or just odd, for I use Latin titles and deal with some rather technical issues. What am I trying to accomplish by posting these in rapid fire order? 

Actually, these disputationes were composed over the course of many years, often in the margins of administrative work, teaching, and the founding of an institution devoted to theological truth. They reflect not only the content of my research but the shape of my vocation. The scholastic form became for me not a historical curiosity but a discipline that ordered my own thinking when the theological landscape around me seemed increasingly fragmented.

I posted these dispuations in the spirit of theological transparency. While they are not yet in final form, they are ready to take off the desk and circulate to friends and colleagues. I do care about any responses anybody might have to these, and will likely modify the posts in response to feedback. My hope is to speak clearly, and sometimes this is a difficult task for the theologian. These revised disputations will ultimately constitute a new book, Disputationes Theologicae: Sixty-Four Exercises in Theological Reason, that I hope to bring out in 2026. 

The questions addressed here emerged from two lifelong commitments: first, to the reality of God’s action in the world; and second, to the conviction that theology must speak truthfully about that action. Much of modern theology has relinquished metaphysics, often on the assumption that metaphysical claims are speculative or oppressive. But I found, in study and in prayer, that theology without metaphysics cannot speak coherently of divine presence, incarnation, sacrament, Spirit, or resurrection. These disputationes are therefore an attempt to recover, without nostalgia, the ontological depth that the Christian tradition presupposed.

They are also marked by the life of the Institute of Lutheran Theology, where theology is lived before it is written. The work of building an institution taught me that theology is not merely conceptual but performative—that truth animates communities as well as texts. Many of these disputationes were written in the quiet hours after long days of work, when the only thing that could be done was to write toward clarity.

I offer them to the reader with gratitude. If they serve to strengthen theological intelligence, deepen participation in Christ, or clarify the hope that sustains the Church, then their purpose will have been fulfilled.

D. B.

Advent II
Sioux Falls, SD

Disputatio LXIV: De Spe et Resurrectione

On Hope and Resurrection

Quaeritur

Utrum spes Christiana fundamentum habeat in ipsa structura participationis, ita ut resurrectio non sit extrinseca recompensatio sed consummatio participationis in vita Dei; et quomodo Spiritus identitatem personalem per mortem servet et restituat, ita ut resurrectio sit opus remembrance divinae potius quam naturae humanae.

Whether Christian hope finds its foundation in the very structure of participation, such that resurrection is not an extrinsic reward but the consummation of participation in the life of God; and how the Spirit preserves and reconstitutes personal identity through death, so that resurrection is an act of divine remembrance rather than a natural extension of creaturely being.

Thesis

Resurrection is the eschatological manifestation of participation. What is now hidden—participation in the crucified and risen Christ—will then be revealed as the definitive form of life. Hope is therefore not the anticipation of a future possibility but the confident trust that the Spirit who has begun participation will bring it to completion. The believer’s identity is preserved through death not by the persistence of a metaphysical substrate but by the fidelity of divine remembrance. Resurrection is God’s act of reconstituting the person in the fullness of life by the same power that raised Christ from the dead.

Thus the Christian does not hope for escape from finitude but for the transfiguration of finitude into glory.

Locus Classicus

1 Corinthians 15:20–22
νυνὶ δὲ Χριστὸς ἐγήγερται ἐκ νεκρῶν… ὥσπερ γὰρ ἐν Ἀδὰμ πάντες ἀποθνήσκουσιν, οὕτως καὶ ἐν τῷ Χριστῷ πάντες ζωοποιηθήσονται.
“Christ has been raised from the dead… for as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.”

Romans 8:11
ὁ ἐγείρας Ἰησοῦν ἐκ νεκρῶν ζωοποιήσει καὶ τὰ θνητὰ σώματα ὑμῶν διὰ τοῦ ἐνοικοῦντος πνεύματος.
“He who raised Jesus will give life also to your mortal bodies through His indwelling Spirit.”

Luther, WA 10 I, 1, 45
Resurrectio est opus purum Dei, qui nos de nihilo iterum creat.
“Resurrection is the pure work of God, who creates us again out of nothing.”

Explicatio

1. Participation is the seed of resurrection

Participation is not merely moral renewal or spiritual elevation. It is the ontological union of the believer with the crucified and risen Christ through the Spirit. This participation is incomplete and hidden under the conditions of mortal life, but it bears within itself the form of its fulfillment. Resurrection is the revelation of what participation already is: life sustained by the Spirit, grounded in Christ, embraced by the Father.

Thus hope is not conjecture. It is the anticipation of what participation necessarily entails.

2. Death as the boundary at which creaturely agency ceases

Death is not merely the cessation of biological functions. It is the interruption of creaturely self-articulation. The creature can no longer enact its identity. All natural continuity fails. If the person is to persist, it must be through a form of identity not grounded in creaturely endurance but grounded in divine fidelity.

This is why hope is theological, for the creature cannot secure its own future. Only God can remember and reconstitute the creature.

3. Divine remembrance as the ground of personal identity

Identity is not an inert substance but a pattern of intelligibility sustained by the Spirit. In life, the Spirit shapes the believer into conformity with Christ. In death, the Spirit retains this pattern in divine remembrance. In resurrection, the Spirit reconstitutes the believer according to this remembered form.

Thus the believer’s identity does not persist by nature. It persists because the Spirit is faithful.

This is Luther’s insight: God remembers the person into being.

4. Resurrection as the consummation of cruciform participation

Because participation is cruciform—shaped by the humility and majesty of the crucified Christ—resurrection must be the revelation of this form in glory. Glory is not a reversal of the cross but its fulfillment. The wounds of Christ are not erased; they become radiant. In resurrection, creaturely life is purified of distortion but not stripped of finitude. The creature remains creature, yet its life is transfigured by union with the Logos.

5. Eschatological hope is grounded in the Spirit’s constitutive causality

Hope is not grounded in the autonomy of the soul but in the Spirit’s power to give life. Romans 8:11 is decisive: resurrection occurs διὰ τοῦ ἐνοικοῦντος πνεύματος—through the indwelling Spirit.

Thus:

• Christ is the form of resurrection,

• the Spirit is the cause of resurrection,

• the Father is the source of resurrection.

Participation is therefore Trinitarian in its origin, structure, and consummation.

6. Resurrection is not the natural immortality of the soul

Natural immortality cannot sustain the theological hope of resurrection. It reduces eschatology to anthropology and empties the cross of its metaphysical significance. The Christian does not hope for the survival of a separable essence. The Christian hopes for the recreation of the person by the God who raises the dead. Thus Luther reminding us that God makes something out of nothing. Clearly, resurrection is precisely this nothing-from-something again.

Objectiones

Ob I. If identity depends on divine remembrance, does this not destroy continuity of person?

Ob II. If resurrection is pure divine act, how can the believer’s moral history matter?

Ob III. Does this not reduce eschatology to determinism?

Ob IV. How can the risen body be both continuous with the mortal body and glorified?

Ob V. Does the hope of resurrection undermine the seriousness of death?

Responsiones

Ad I. Divine remembrance is not recollection but constitutive fidelity. The person remains the same because God preserves the pattern of intelligibility that defines the person. Continuity is secured at the highest possible level.

Ad II. Moral history matters because God remembers the person as the person has been shaped in Christ. Resurrection does not erase moral history; it redeems and completes it.

Ad III. Resurrection is certain, but it is not deterministic. It is the consequence of divine promise, not metaphysical compulsion. Hope rests on fidelity, not necessity.

Ad IV. Continuity lies in identity; transformation lies in glory. The mortal body is raised immortal because the Spirit reconstitutes it according to its true form in Christ.

Ad V. The seriousness of death is intensified, not diminished. Death destroys every creaturely ground of hope so that hope may rest entirely in God.

Nota

Resurrection is the final act of the participatory ontology developed throughout these disputations. It is the Spirit’s definitive articulation of the believer in conformity to Christ. It is not the resumption of interrupted life but the gift of new life. Hope is therefore the posture of those who know that their future lies not in their own endurance but in the God who raises the dead.

Determinatio

We determine that resurrection is the eschatological fulfillment of participation in the life of God. Death cannot sever the believer from Christ because the Spirit preserves personal identity through divine remembrance. Resurrection is God’s reconstitution of the creature in glory, revealing the cruciform form of divine life in perfected clarity. Hope rests not in natural immortality but in divine fidelity. The final word of theology is therefore not abstraction but promise: the love that made us will remake us.

Finis

Epilogus: De Fine Theologiae et Forma Vitae

The sixty-four disputationes have traced a path across the full horizon of theological reason. We began with logic, not because theology is reducible to logical form, but because theology must speak intelligibly of what it confesses. We proceeded to ontology, not because metaphysics precedes revelation, but because divine revelation presses thought to articulate what it has seen. We turned to Christology, where intelligibility and being converge in the Logos who is both the form of God and the form of the servant. We explored the Spirit’s illumination, creaturely participation, providence, history, cruciformity, and finally the hope of resurrection.

Through all of these movements a single conviction has guided the work: theology speaks truly only because God acts. Theological speech is not the construction of a conceptual system, nor the refinement of human religious insight, nor the self-expression of a community. It is the response of reason awakened by divine presence. Theology is an act of participation: the mind caught up into what it cannot generate but can only receive.

Thus each disputatio—however analytic in method or metaphysical in structure—has aimed to keep before the reader the living center of theological truth: the God who gives Himself to be known. The Logos renders divine life intelligible. The Spirit renders this intelligibility accessible. The Father is the eternal source of both. Without this triune economy of self-giving, the work of theology collapses either into rationalization or despair.

The communicatio idiomatum stands at the heart of this vision, for in Christ God shows not only who He is but how He acts. The hypostatic union is not an isolated miracle but the grammar of all divine–human communion. It grounds the real presence in sacrament, the efficacy of the Word, the transformation of the believer, and the final hope of resurrection. What Christ is personally, believers become participatively. This is the shape of grace.

The cross reveals the form of this grace. Divine majesty appears in humility, not by contradiction but by nature of divine love. In the crucified Christ the character of God is made manifest: power exercised as mercy, glory revealed in self-offering. All genuine theological understanding must therefore pass through the cruciform horizon. Outside the cross, divine majesty becomes a metaphysical abstraction or an instrument of human pride. In the cross, majesty becomes the world’s redemption.

This is why the final disputatio turns to hope. Resurrection is not the compensation for suffering nor the restoration of natural capacities but the consummation of participation. What the Spirit has begun in the believer—conformity to the form of the Son—He completes in the act of divine remembrance. The Christian does not place hope in the durability of the soul but in the fidelity of God. To be remembered by the God who raises the dead is to live forever.

If these disputationes have any unity, it lies here: theology is the mind’s participation in God’s self-giving act. It proceeds from revelation, through illumination, into understanding, and finally to praise. Its method is disciplined, its language careful, its categories precise, but its end is doxological. Theology thinks because God speaks; theology understands because God gives; theology hopes because God remembers.

The disputationes end where theology always ends; they end in the confession that the love that made us will remake us and that the last word spoken over all creaturely life is not death but the Word Himself.

Soli Deo Gloria

Disputatio LXIII: De Maiestate Crucis et de Forma Humilitatis Divinae

 On the Majesty of the Cross and the Form of Divine Humility

Quaeritur

Utrum crux Christi manifestet non solum humiliationem Filii sed ipsam maiestatem divinam in forma humilitatis, ita ut crux sit locus in quo genus maiestaticum et genus tapeinoticum maxima intensitate convergunt; et quomodo haec paradoxica unitas revelet formam participationis qua creaturae per Spiritum transformantur.

Whether the cross of Christ manifests not only the Son’s humiliation but also divine majesty in the form of humility, such that the cross becomes the locus where the genus maiestaticum and the genus tapeinoticum converge in maximal intensity; and how this paradoxical unity reveals the form of participation by which creatures are transformed through the Spirit.

Thesis

The cross is the supreme manifestation of divine majesty. It is not merely the site of Christ’s suffering but the revelation of the divine form as self-giving love. Humiliation is not the concealment of majesty but its mode of appearing to the fallen world. In the crucified Logos, the genus tapeinoticum becomes the visible form of the genus maiestaticum. Divine glory assumes the shape of weakness so that the creature may be drawn into communion without annihilation.

Thus the cross is not a negation of divine power but the definitive expression of divine action. Participation in God is necessarily cruciform: the Spirit conforms believers to the form of the Son precisely in His self-emptying, wherein divine majesty radiates as mercy.

Locus Classicus

Philippians 2:6–8
ὃς ἐν μορφῇ Θεοῦ ὑπάρχων… ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν μορφὴν δούλου λαβών… γενόμενος ὑπήκοος μέχρι θανάτου, θανάτου δὲ σταυροῦ.
“Who, being in the form of God… emptied himself, taking the form of a servant… becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross.”

Isaiah 53:2–3 (Vulgate)
non est species ei neque decor… et quasi absconditus vultus eius.
“He has no form or beauty… his face is hidden.”

Luther, WA 5, 162
Crux sola est nostra theologia.
“The cross alone is our theology.”

Explicatio

1. The form of God as the form of servanthood

Paul’s language of morphē Theou and morphē doulou does not describe two disconnected states. The latter is the revelation of the former. The divine form—ungrasping, self-giving—is disclosed precisely in the assumption of servanthood. Humiliation is the visibility of divine majesty.

This reverses all metaphysical expectations grounded in natural reason. One expects glory to appear in splendor; it appears in dereliction. One expects divine power to manifest in domination; it manifests in self-offering. The cross therefore reveals the true form of divine action: love that gives itself for the other.

2. The genus tapeinoticum as revelatory, not merely economic

The tapeinoticum is not simply the narrative reality that Christ suffers as man. It is the metaphysical reality that the divine person bears suffering as His own. This is why the Fathers insisted: unus ex Trinitate passus est.

Humiliation is not external; it is hypostatic.The Logos does not appear lowly. The Logos becomes lowly.
Yet this lowliness is itself the expression of divine majesty. Here the genus tapeinoticum is not the negation of the maiestaticum but its visibility.

3. The majesty of God hidden in weakness

Luther’s theology of the cross is not a theological preference but a metaphysical insight. Divine glory is hidden under its opposite not by accident but by nature of divine love. If glory appeared directly as power, humanity would be destroyed. If power appears as weakness, humanity is redeemed.

This is the ontological core of Luther's sub contrario: God is most present where He seems most absent. God is most powerful where He seems most weak. God is most glorious where He seems most forsaken. The cross is therefore the form of God.

4. The cross as the integration of the genera

Here the genera meet:

• Genus idiomaticum: The one who dies is God.

• Genus tapeinoticum: The divine person bears human lowliness.

• Genus maiestaticum: The divine life is present in the very act of dying.

• Genus apotelesmaticum: The work of redemption is accomplished by the united action of one divine–human agent.

No nominalist grammar can sustain this. Only an ontological communicatio—real, hypostatic, participatory—can bear the weight. The cross is therefore the maximal expression of Christological ontology.

5. Participation as conformity to cruciform majesty

If the cross reveals the form of God, and if believers participate in divine life, then participation is necessarily cruciform. The Spirit conforms believers not to abstract majesty but to majesty revealed in humility. Recall Romans 8:29: συμμόρφους τῆς εἰκόνος τοῦ Υἱοῦ (“Conformed to the form of the Son.”)

This conformity is not psychological alone. It is metaphysical: a shaping of the believer’s agency by the Logos through the Spirit. Participation is suffering-formed and resurrection-bound. For Luther, the cross is not one stage among others. It is the shape of Christian life and the intelligibility of divine action.

Objectiones

Ob I. If the cross is divine majesty, does this not negate the very meaning of majesty?

Ob II. How can divine impassibility be preserved if the Logos suffers?

Ob III. Does cruciformity impose suffering as a metaphysical necessity upon the believer?

Ob IV. Does this not reduce divine power to moral influence?

Ob V. If glory is hidden, how can it be recognized without contradiction?

Responsiones

Ad I. Majesty is not domination but self-giving. The cross does not negate majesty but expresses its deepest character.

Ad II. The impassible divine nature does not suffer; the divine person suffers in the human nature. This is the communicatio idiomatum. Impassibility and passion coexist hypostatically without confusion.

Ad III. Cruciform participation does not mean perpetual suffering but conformity of will to divine self-giving. Suffering is not the goal; love is. Suffering is its historical mode.

Ad IV. Divine power is not diminished but intensified in the cross. It accomplishes what no coercion can: the reconciliation of the world.

Ad V. Glory is recognized through illumination. The Spirit reveals the hidden majesty of the crucified Christ. Without illumination, the cross appears as folly.

Nota

The cross stands at the heart of theological ontology. It reveals the structure of divine action and the mode of participation. The metaphysics of humility is the metaphysics of glory. What nominalism cannot grasp—because it denies real communication—Luther perceives: God’s majesty is not compromised by humiliation; it is unveiled in it. The cross is the radiant depth of divine being.

Determinatio

We determine that the cross is the definitive revelation of divine majesty, not its negation. The genus tapeinoticum and genus maiestaticum converge in the crucified Logos, revealing divine glory in the form of humility. This cruciform majesty is the basis of all participation: the Spirit conforms believers to the form of the Son so that they may share His life. The cross is the metaphysical center of divine self-giving and the existential form of participation in God.

Transitus ad Disputationem LXIV

Having shown that divine majesty is revealed in the crucified form, we now turn to the final horizon where this form is perfected: resurrection and hope. Participation reaches its eschatological fulfillment when the Spirit reconstitutes the believer’s identity through divine remembrance.

We therefore proceed to Disputatio LXIV: De Spe et Resurrectione.

Disputatio LXII: De Communicatione Idiomatum et Ontologia Participationis

 On the Communication of Idioms and the Ontology of Participation

Quaeritur

Utrum doctrina communicationis idiomatum non solum ad Christologiam sed etiam ad ontologiam participationis fundamentum praebeat, ita ut unio personalis in Christo revelet modum quo divina vita creaturis communicari possit; et quomodo haec communicatio realis distinguatur ab interpretationibus nominalisticis quae communicationem ad sanctionem regulorum linguarum redigunt.

Whether the doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum provides not only a Christological but also an ontological foundation for participation, such that the personal union in Christ reveals the mode by which divine life can be communicated to creatures; and how this real communication differs from nominalist interpretations which reduce it to the sanctioning of linguistic rules.

Thesis

The communicatio idiomatum is not merely a set of grammatical permissions governing Christological predication. It is the ontological disclosure of how divine and human natures are united personally in the Logos. Each of the classical genera expresses a mode of participation:

• the genus idiomaticum reveals the unity of personal subject;
• the genus maiestaticum discloses real communication of divine life to the human nature;
• the genus apotelesmaticum exhibits unity of action in a single personal agent;
• the genus tapeinoticum manifests the humility of the divine form in finite flesh.

Thus the communicatio is the metaphysical grammar of participation itself: a real communication, not a linguistic artifact. Nominalist construals, such as Graham White’s, collapse this communication into rule-sanctioned predication and thereby render the entire Christological mystery unintelligible. The communicatio is grounded not in language but in the Logos.

Locus Classicus

John 1:14
ὁ Λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο.
“The Word became flesh.”

The communicatio arises because the Word truly assumes human nature.

Colossians 2:9
ἐν αὐτῷ κατοικεῖ πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα τῆς θεότητος σωματικῶς.
“In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.”

This is the maiestaticum in its purest form.

Luther, WA 26, 127
Communicatio idiomatum est ex ipsa personalitate Christi.
“The communication of attributes arises from the very personhood of Christ.”

Explicatio

1. The genus idiomaticum: unity of the personal subject

The genus idiomaticum asserts that predicates belonging properly to one nature may be predicated of the person. This is not a grammatical convenience but a metaphysical necessity. The person is the hypostatic locus of unity. Because there is one person, predicates of either nature may be applied to the same subject.

Thus “God suffers” is not a metaphor. It is a description of the suffering of the person who is God. Here participation begins: divine and human predicates converge in one personal identity.

2. The genus maiestaticum: real communication of divine life

The maiestaticum affirms that the divine majesty is communicated to the human nature. The human nature of Christ does not become divine, but it participates in divine life through the person of the Logos. This is the genus most violently incompatible with nominalism.

White claims Luther’s nova lingua is a matter of rule-sanctioning: a new permission to speak of Christ in ways not allowed by Aristotelian grammar. But the maiestaticum cannot be reduced to linguistic regulation. It asserts real ontological participation. The human nature truly receives divine power and presence. Divine majesty is not asserted but communicated.

Luther’s own texts in WA 39 II, WA 42, and WA 49 show that communication is ontological, not grammatical. Divine life enters human flesh. New meaning arises because new reality exists.

White’s reading cannot sustain this. His Luther cannot speak maiestatically because he has no ontology through which majesty can be communicated.

3. The genus apotelesmaticum: unity of action in one personal agent

The apotelesmaticum teaches that all Christ’s works—divine and human—are performed by the one person. This reveals participation in the order of action: divine and human energies converge without competition.

Miracles are not divided acts. The same person acts according to both natures.

This is the ontological template for our broader system: creaturely action participates in divine intention without competitive causality. In Christ this unity is perfect; in believers it is participatory and derivative.

4. The genus tapeinoticum (genus humiliationis): humility of the divine form

The tapeinoticum expresses the opposite motion of the maiestaticum. Whereas the latter reveals exaltation, the former reveals divine humility: the Logos bears the form of a servant, even to death. Recall Philippians 2:7: ἑαυτὸν ἐκένωσεν μορφὴν δούλου λαβών (“He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.”)

This humiliation is real, not figurative. The divine person assumes the conditions of finite weakness. This genus grounds the entire cruciform structure of revelation: divine majesty shows itself in lowliness. Participation in God therefore requires conformity to this form.

This cannot be sustained by nominalism, for humiliation becomes then only a mode of speaking, not a mode of being borne by the Logos.

5. The communicatio as the grammar of all participation

What Christ is in himself—God and man in unity—becomes the pattern for all creaturely participation. Believers do not share the hypostatic union, but they participate in the mystery it reveals: union without confusion, distinction without separation, exaltation without autonomy, humility without negation. Christology is ontology, and the communicatio is the key.

Objectiones

Ob I. If divine attributes are communicated to human nature, does this not violate immutability?

Ob II. If predicates cross between natures, does this not collapse distinction?

Ob III. If communication is real, not grammatical, does this not imply divinization of the human?

Ob IV. If White is wrong, why does Luther use such striking linguistic language about the nova lingua?

Ob V. If divine and human acts are unified, is Christ truly free as man?

Responsiones

Ad I. Communication affects the human nature, not the divine. The divine is not altered; the human is exalted. The Logos remains immutable; communication is asymmetrical.

Ad II. Predicates cross at the level of person, not nature. Natures remain intact; predication reflects hypostatic unity.

Ad III. The human nature participates without being dissolved. Participation is deifying only in the sense of sharing divine life by grace, not by essence.

Ad IV. Luther speaks of nova lingua because divine reality forces new linguistic forms. It is semantic transfiguration, not rule-sanctioning. White mistakes effect for cause.

Ad V. Christ’s human freedom is perfected, not overridden, by divine intention. Unity of action strengthens freedom rather than diminishes it.

Nota

The communicatio idiomatum is the metaphysical center of Lutheran theology. It reveals the pattern by which divine life can be present in the finite without confusion or division. It destroys nominalist construals that reduce theology to the regulation of speech. Divine action creates new reality, and language is stretched to name it. Ontology grounds grammar, not vice versa.

In Christ, participation is full and hypostatic. In believers, participation is real and pneumatic. In both, the Logos is the ground.

Determinatio

We therefore determine:

The communicatio idiomatum is an ontological mystery grounded in the personal union of the Logos, not a linguistic convention. The genus idiomaticum reveals unity of personal predication; the genus maiestaticum reveals real communication of divine life; the genus apotelesmaticum reveals unity of action; and the genus tapeinoticum reveals the humility of divine form. Nominalist construals, such as that of Graham White, cannot sustain these genera and therefore cannot sustain Luther’s Christology. Participation in divine life is grounded in the communicatio: what is revealed in Christ is extended to believers through the Spirit.

Transitus ad Disputationem LXIII

Having established that the communicatio idiomatum is the form of divine–human unity and the grammar of participation, we now turn to its deepest manifestation: the cross. For in the crucified Logos, majesty and humility converge, revealing the form in which divine glory becomes present to the world.

We therefore proceed to Disputatio LXIII: De Maiestate Crucis et de Forma Humilitatis Divinae.

Disputatio LXI: De Providentia Speciali et Revelatione in Eventibus Particularibus

 On Special Providence and Revelation in Particular Events

Quaeritur

Utrum providentia specialis designet modum quo voluntas divina manifestatur in eventibus particularibus, ita ut eventus isti non sint merae contingentiae temporales sed loci in quibus Logos intentionaliter agit; et quomodo haec particularis manifestatio non confundat causam divinam et creatam nec redigat revelationem ad interpretationem humanam.

Whether special providence designates the mode by which the divine will manifests itself in particular events, such that these events are not mere temporal contingencies but loci where the Logos intentionally acts; and how such particular manifestation neither confuses divine and creaturely causality nor reduces revelation to human interpretation.

Thesis

Special providence is the enactment of divine intention within determinate historical events. It is not an intrusion upon natural processes nor an alternative causal chain. It is the Logos’ intentional ordering of specific occurrences so that they bear the form of divine act. Such events become revelatory when the Spirit illumines them as manifestations of divine purpose.

Special providence does not violate creaturely freedom, for it operates at the level of constitutive intelligibility, not at the level of coercive determination. Nor does it collapse into general providence, for it concerns the particular specification of divine agency within concrete history. Thus special providence is the personal articulation of divine intention within the temporal order.

Locus Classicus

Genesis 50:20
Vos cogitastis de me malum, Deus autem cogitavit in bonum.
“You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.”

A single event bears two intentions without competition.

Acts 17:26–27
ἐποίησέν τε ἐξ ἑνὸς πᾶν ἔθνος ἀνθρώπων κατοικεῖν ἐπὶ παντὸς προσώπου τῆς γῆς,
ὁρίσας προστεταγμένους καιροὺς καὶ τὰς ὁροθεσίας τῆς κατοικίας αὐτῶν,
ζητεῖν τὸν Θεόν, εἰ ἄρα γε ψηλαφήσειαν αὐτὸν καὶ εὕροιεν,
καί γε οὐ μακρὰν ἀπὸ ἑνὸς ἑκάστου ἡμῶν ὑπάρχοντα. 

"He made from one every nation of humankind to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they would seek God."

Luther, WA 10 III, 35
Deus gubernat omnia non solum in universali, sed in particulari.
“God governs all things not only in general but in particular.”

Explicatio

1. Special providence is not a narrower form of general providence

General providence concerns the constitutive order of all things: the intelligibility of history and the sustaining power of the Logos. Special providence concerns the specific articulation of divine intention within determinate events. To use an image: general providence is the grammar of history; special providence is the sentence God speaks within it. Thus, special providence is not a separate kind of causation but a more determinate mode of divine intentionality operating within the field general providence provides.

2. A particular event becomes revelatory when illumined

Every event possesses its own creaturely causal history. Special providence does not abolish this but brings it into relation with divine intentionality. An event becomes revelatory not because a different kind of cause appears but because the Spirit grants the event to be perceived according to its deeper meaning in the Logos. Thus revelation is not a doubling of events but an unveiling of the intention that grounds them. Accordingly, the Red Sea crossing, the call of Abraham, the Damascus road encounter: each is a historical occurrence whose revelatory character derives from divine intentionality perceived under illumination.

3. Special providence does not negate creaturely agency

A single event can bear both divine and creaturely intentions without contradiction because:

• divine intention grounds the event’s being and meaning,

• creaturely intention grounds its moral and temporal content.

Joseph’s brothers intend evil. God intends good. These intentions coexist because divine intentionality does not operate on the same causal register as creaturely intention. God does not coerce their act; he situates its meaning within the broader narrative of salvation.This is neither compatibilism nor libertarianism, but enjoins a participatory causality.

4. Special providence is intelligible only within a participatory ontology

If divine and creaturely causes occupy the same plane, special providence becomes indistinguishable from determinism or interventionism. But when the Logos is understood as the intelligible ground of all finite processes, special providence becomes the specification of divine intention within a concrete finite form. Thus natural and divine causes do not compete. Divine action sustains natural causality even as it uses it. Luther’s language of God working “in and under” events reflects this metaphysical layering.

5. Revelation arises from divine act, not human interpretation

Special providence does not depend on human judgment. An event is revelatory because God acts, not because humans discern divine action. Illumination grants recognition but does not constitute the divine act. Thus the subjectivism of purely hermeneutical or postliberal models is avoided. What God does is real even before it is recognized. Interpretation follows illumination; illumination follows divine intention; and divine intention grounds the event.

Objectiones

Ob I. If special providence identifies divine intention in particular events, how can one distinguish revelation from coincidence?

Ob II. If God intends specific events, does this not collapse creaturely freedom?

Ob III. If revelation arises from illumination, is it not subjective

Ob IV. If God orders particular events, is God then responsible for evil?

Ob V. Special providence seems indistinguishable from miracle. Are they the same?

Responsiones

Ad I. Coincidence is a name for events lacking perceived intelligibility. Special providence is the intentional grounding of events by the Logos. Recognition requires illumination, but the reality does not depend on recognition.

Ad II. Divine intention provides the possibility and meaning of the event, not the moral content of the creaturely act. Freedom determines intention; providence establishes context. One does not negate the other.

Ad III. Illumination grants the truth of revelation to be known. It does not create the truth. Revelation is objective in divine act and participatory in creaturely apprehension.

Ad IV. God sustains the event as event but does not intend the creature’s evil. Providence orders evil toward good without causing the evil itself. The defect arises from the creature; the ordering arises from God.

Ad V. Miracle suspends ordinary natural processes. Special providence works through them. Both reveal God; they differ in mode, not in reality of divine action.

Nota

Special providence is the concrete specification of divine intentionality in history. It is not occasionalism, for it preserves creaturely agency; nor is it deism, for it recognizes divine presence in every event. It reveals God as the one whose eternal will becomes manifest in time without violence to freedom or nature.

This is theological realism: God acts, and events bear the form of that act.

Determinatio

We determine:

Special providence is the particular manifestation of divine intention in concrete historical events.
It does not abolish creaturely causality but situates it within divine purpose. Revelation in specific events arises from the Logos’ ordering and the Spirit’s illumination. Thus special providence is neither determinism nor hermeneutic projection. It is divine action in the concrete.

Transitus ad Disputationem LXII

Having shown that divine intention becomes manifest in particular events, we now turn to the event in which divine intention and creaturely nature are united in the most intimate form: the incarnation. For Christ is not merely a revelatory event but the ontological union of God and man.

We therefore proceed to Disputatio LXII: De Communicatione Idiomatum et Ontologia Participationis.

Disputatio LX: De Providentia et Libertate

 On Providence and Freedom

Quaeritur

Utrum providentia divina possit ordinare historiam sine cohibitione vel dissolutione libertatis humanae, ita ut actus creaturae sint vere proprii et tamen intelligantur intra ordinem intentionalem Logi; et quomodo haec coexistentia voluntatis divinae et libertatis creaturae non resolvatur in determinismum aut in dualismum causarum.

Whether divine providence can order history without constraining or dissolving human freedom, such that creaturely acts are genuinely their own and yet intelligible within the intentional order of the Logos; and how this coexistence of divine will and creaturely freedom does not collapse into determinism or a dualism of causes.

Thesis

Providence is the eternal intention of God, articulated in the Logos, whereby history receives its intelligible order. Freedom is the creature’s finite participation in this order according to its own mode of agency. Divine and human agency do not compete because their modes of causality differ: the divine is constitutive, the human participatory. The act of God grounds the possibility of creaturely act but does not determine its content. Human freedom is therefore neither negated nor autonomous. It arises within the Logos-shaped field where providence provides the conditions of intelligibility for action.

Thus providence orders history without coercion, and freedom flourishes within providence without separation.

Locus Classicus

Psalm 139:16
In libro tuo scripti erant omnes dies.
“All the days ordained for me were written in your book.”

Providence frames the horizon of creaturely life.

Philippians 2:13
Deus est qui operatur in vobis et velle et perficere.
“God is the one who works in you both to will and to act.”

Divine causality does not negate creaturely willing but grounds it.

Luther, WA 18, 636 (De servo arbitrio)
Deus est in omnibus operans, non ut violenter trahat, sed ut sustentet.
“God works in all things, not by drawing violently, but by sustaining.”

Providence is constitutive, not coercive.

Explicatio

1. Providence is constitutive, not competitive, causality

Providence is not a secondary cause among causes. It is the intelligible ground of all finite acts. To say that God governs history is to say that every temporal event receives its possibility, its field of intelligible relations, and its metaphysical coherence from the Logos. Thus, providence does not intervene from without, nor does it supersede creaturely action. It is the deep structure within which creaturely causes operate as causes.

If two painters work upon one canvas, their strokes compete. If God and a creature act, their modes of causation do not inhabit the same plane. This is the error of competitive metaphysics. But Providence is not a rival to freedom. It is the condition for its existence.

2. Freedom as finite participation in divine intentionality

Freedom is not spontaneity detached from order. It is the creature’s capacity to enact meaning within the Logos-shaped horizon of possibility. A free act is an act that arises from the creature’s own powers. However, those powers themselves arise from divine act. Thus freedom is not independence from God but the creature’s participation in the meaningful field God sustains.

For Luther, bondage of the will concerns the incapacity to enact righteousness, not the absence of agency. Creatures choose, deliberate, and act. Their acts are genuine because their agency is real. But agency is always grounded in providence.

3. Providence and freedom do not divide the act

A single human act is not partially divine and partially human. Rather, it is wholly divine as to its being and possibility, and wholly human as to its moral quality and intention. This avoids the metaphysical mistake of partitioning causality. God does not cause the moral defect of actions and creatures do not sustain their own agency. Providence sustains the act as act and freedom shapes the act’s determination. Thus both modes of agency coexist in the same event without competition.

4. History is the ordered field of freedom

Because providence shapes history as meaningful order, creaturely freedom always occurs within a web of givens:

• a body,
• a culture,
• a time,
• a vocation, 
• and a moral horizon. '

These are not constraints but the very conditions under which freedom becomes intelligible. History is not a prison, but an arena of meaning. Freedom is not exemption from history, but a participation in its intelligible unfolding.

5. Rejection of determinism and dualism

Determinism arises when divine causality is construed as competitive. Dualism arises when creaturely causality is viewed as self-sufficient. Both follow from misunderstanding the metaphysical difference between Creator and creature. Providence is the sustaining intelligibility of the Logos and freedom is the creature’s participation in this intelligibility. Thus neither absorbs the other. Freedom without providence is chaos and Providence without freedom is fatalism. Luther affirms neither.

Objectiones

Ob I. If God ordains all things, human choices are predetermined.

Ob II. If creatures are genuinely free, divine providence cannot be exhaustive

Ob III. Providence sustaining every act implies that God is the cause of evil.

Ob IV. If freedom is participation, is it genuine freedom or derived necessity?

Ob V. Scripture sometimes depicts God changing his mind. Does this not imply contingency in providence?

Responsiones

Ad I. Providence ordains the horizon of action, not its specific moral content. God gives possibility; creatures fill it with intention. Possibility is not predetermination.

Ad II. Freedom is not a domain exempt from God but a mode of agency grounded in God. The fullness of divine providence does not require the emptiness of human agency.

Ad III. God sustains the act as act. The defect belongs to the creature’s intention. Sustaining is not identical with approving. Ontological support is not moral endorsement.

Ad IV. Participation does not negate autonomy but establishes it. A creature becomes itself through participation in divine act. Freedom is not diminished by derivation but constituted by it.

Ad V. Scriptural anthropomorphisms display the relational quality of divine action, not its contingency. Providence is eternal; its temporal enactment is relationally responsive without metaphysical change.

Nota

Providence and freedom coexist because their causal orders differ. Providence is the condition of agency. Freedom is agency exercised. The Logos provides intelligibility. The Spirit grants illumination. History becomes the field where divine and creaturely acts unfold without competition. This is theological realism: divine act grounds creaturely act without eliminating it.

Determinatio

We determine:

1. Providence is the constitutive grounding of all finite action.
2. Freedom is finite participation in the intelligible order that providence supplies.
3. Divine and human causality are not competitive but layered.
4. History is the arena where providence and freedom converge.
5. This view avoids determinism by preserving creaturely intention, and avoids dualism by preserving divine transcendence.

Thus providence orders without coercing, and freedom flourishes without severing.

Transitus ad Disputatio LXI

Having established providence as the structuring horizon of creaturely freedom, we now inquire how particular events may reveal divine intention in concrete form. If providence is the eternal order, special providence is the temporal manifestation.

We therefore proceed to Disputatio LXI: De Providentia Speciali et Revelatione in Eventibus Particularibus.

Disputatio LIX: De Historia Ut Loco Revelationis

 On History as the Locus of Revelation

Quaeritur

Utrum historia ipsa possit esse locus revelationis divinae, ita ut eventus historici non solum referant ad voluntatem Dei sed manifestent ipsam actionem eius; et quomodo haec revelatio historica non redigatur ad immanentem causalitatem neque confundatur cum nudis factis temporalibus.

Whether history itself can be a locus of divine revelation, such that historical events do not merely refer to the will of God but manifest the divine act itself; and how such historical revelation neither collapses divine action into immanence nor becomes indistinguishable from ordinary temporal events.

Thesis

History becomes a locus of revelation because the Logos, who is the intelligible articulation of divine act, shapes the order of created temporality as the field in which divine action is enacted. History is therefore not a neutral sequence of temporal occurrences. It is the sphere in which divine intelligibility enters time under forms suitable for human encounter.

The Spirit illumines historical events so that their Logos-shaped form becomes perceptible to the creature. Illumination does not alter history, but renders history transparent to divine intention.

Thus historical revelation is not merely a symbolic interpretation of past occurrences, but is rather the manifestation of divine action within the temporal order, an action grasped through the form constituted by the Logos and opened by the Spirit.

Locus Classicus

Galatians 4:4
ὅτε δὲ ἦλθεν τὸ πλήρωμα τοῦ χρόνου…
“When the fullness of time had come…”

Time is not homogeneous. It receives fullness when divine act enters it.

Acts 2:11
ἀκούομεν λαλούντων… τὰ μεγαλεῖα τοῦ Θεοῦ.
“We hear them declaring the mighty acts of God.”

The apostles interpret concrete historical events as divine acts, not merely as human occurrences.

Luther, WA 40 II, 90
Opera Dei sunt historiae.
“The works of God are histories.”

The divine act becomes narrative because it enters temporality.

Explicatio

History is not autonomous from divine intention. Modern historiography treats history as a closed temporal sequence governed by immanent causation. But revelation becomes, on this view, either a theological overlay or an interpretive projection. Accordingly, this view presupposes that history is self-sufficient and that divine action must be added to it from without. On the contrary, theological truth requires a different premise. History is the created field ordered by the Logos as the arena in which divine acts may occur. It is therefore intrinsically open to revelation.

Divine action in history is not an intrusion but fulfillment. To say that God acts in history is not to say that divine agency violates the temporal order. Rather, it is to say that the temporal order is constituted for participation in divine action. The incarnation shows this with the greatest clarity. Time does not resist the Logos but receives him. Similarly, redemption is not an exception to history but its completion. Thus, divine acts are not supernatural intrusions into an otherwise closed system. They are the realization of history’s deepest intelligibility.

Illumination makes historical acts revelatory.  History becomes revelation when the Spirit grants creatures to perceive its Logos-shaped form. Without this illumination, history is only asequence of events that bears no apparent reference to divine intention. However, with illumination, the same events manifest the structure of divine agency. This is not an interpretation imposed from without, but a recognition of the form given from within. Thus, revelation is not epistemic projection but an ontological disclosure.

There is a distinction between the event and revelation. A historical event may be the medium of divine action without yet being revelation for a creature. Revelation requires that the event be seen as the act it is. Although this seeing does not alter the event itself, it does alter the creature’s participation in its intelligibility. Therefore, revelation is not a second act added to history but the same act perceived in its divine depth through illumination.

We must thus reject reductive historicism.  While some theologies identify revelation wholly with historical process, divine action is not exhausted by such historical causation. Revelation is present in history because divine agency shapes history, not because divine agency is reducible to historical movement. While historicism collapses transcendence, theological realism insists that history becomes revelatory because God acts in it, not because history itself is divine.

Objectiones

Ob I. If history is a locus of revelation, does this not subject divine action to temporal limitation?

Ob II. If revelation requires illumination, how can historical events be objectively revelatory?

Ob III. If God acts in history, is this not indistinguishable from special providence?

Ob IV. If revelation depends on the Logos-shaped form of events, does this merely reduce history to a symbolic structure?

Ob V. If the Spirit grants perception of revelation, does this not make revelation dependent on subjective experience?

Responsiones

Ad I. Divine action is not limited by time because the Logos shapes time. The temporal manifestation of divine act does not restrict its eternal identity.

Ad II. Objective revelatory status arises from divine action, not from human perception. Illumination grants awareness of what is already true. Revelation is objective in its occurrence and subjective in its reception.

Ad III. Special providence describes divine governance of events. Revelation describes divine manifestation within events. These are distinct modes of divine relation to history, not identical functions.

Ad IV. Historical events are not symbols. They are the real media of divine action. Their form is intelligible because the Logos constitutes their order, not because they are figurative constructs.

Ad V. Revelation is not dependent on experience. It is dependent on divine agency. Experience becomes awareness of revelation only when illumined by the Spirit.

Nota

History is not merely the record of human deeds. It is the temporal field ordered by the Logos as the site of divine self-manifestation. The Spirit grants creatures to perceive this manifestation as revelation rather than as mere occurrence.

Thus revelation is neither outside history nor reducible to history. It is divine action in history, apprehended through illumination.

Determinatio

We therefore determine:

1. History becomes a locus of revelation because it is shaped by the Logos as the arena of divine action.
2. Divine acts in history are not interruptions but fulfillments of temporal order.
3. Illumination grants creatures to perceive historical events in their divine intelligibility.
4. Revelation is objective in occurrence and participatory in reception.
5. Historical revelation requires theological realism, for only if divine action is real can history mediate it.

Time thus becomes the sphere in which creatures encounter the intelligible form of God’s act.

Transitus ad Disputationem LX

Having established history as the locus of revelation, we now turn to the question of divine providence and human freedom. For if history becomes revelatory through divine action, one must ask how creaturely agency participates in or resists this action. 

We proceed therefore to Disputatio LX: De Providentia et Libertate, where we examine how divine intention orders history without dissolving the freedom and responsibility of human agents.

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Disputatio LVIII: De Signo Theologico et de Forma Illuminationis

 On the Theological Sign and the Form of Illumination

Quaeritur

Utrum signum theologicum sit locus in quo intelligibilitas Logi efficitur praesens creaturis sub forma signi, ita ut revelatio non sit mera significatio sed manifestatio; et quomodo Spiritus efficit ut ista manifestatio fiat participabilis sine reductione signi ad nudam immanentiam.

Whether the theological sign is the locus in which the intelligibility of the Logos becomes present to creatures under the form of a sign, such that revelation is not mere signification but manifestation; and how the Spirit ensures that this manifestation is participable without reducing the sign to a merely immanent function.

Thesis

A theological sign is not a symbol that points beyond itself to a distant referent. It is a created form through which the Logos-constituted intelligibility of divine action becomes manifest in the finite. The sign is therefore not extrinsic to revelation but intrinsic to its economy.

The Spirit illumines the sign so that it becomes transparent to the divine act it mediates. Without the Spirit, the sign remains opaque, but with the Spirit, the sign becomes the medium of participation in the Logos’ intelligible presence.

Thus, theological signs do not merely convey information. They are the formal structures by which divine act becomes encounterable within creaturely horizons.

Locus Classicus

John 1:14
ὁ Λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο.
“The Word became flesh.”

The incarnation is the archetype of all theological signs whereby a finite form makes the locus of divine manifestation.

Romans 10:17
ἡ πίστις ἐξ ἀκοῆς.
“Faith comes from hearing.”

The word heard is not a bare sound but a Spirit-illumined sign that mediates divine action.

Luther, WA 30 II, 552
Verbum Dei est signum et donum simul.
“The Word of God is both sign and gift.”

Theological signs participate in and deliver the reality they signify.

Explicatio

There is an insufficiency of semiotic models when detached from ontology. Modern accounts of signs often conceive signification as a relation between finite items: a signifier and a signified linked through convention or structure. While such accounts illuminate language, they cannot account for revelation. They lack a metaphysics of divine act and therefore reduce theological signs to linguistic functions. But revelation requires more than reference. It requires manifestation: the presence of divine intelligibility in a created medium. Thus the theological sign is not a semiotic function but a metaphysical participation.

The Logos is the form of every theological sign. Every divine act is intelligible because its form subsists in the Logos. Therefore every sign that mediates divine action must be a form shaped by the Logos. The sign does not merely refer to divine act but bears its intelligibility. Accordingly, the sign’s structure reflects the Logos’ form. Its content is not autonomous from divine initiative and its intelligibility is never self-standing but derivative upon the divine act. The incarnation is the paradigmatic case of this. But Scripture, sacrament, and promise share the same logic: each is a finite form bearing the intelligible presence of the Logos.

Illumination makes the sign participable. Without illumination, the sign remains closed. It does not disclose God, but merely displays creaturely form. Illumination opens the sign to become the medium of divine manifestation. This opening is not an epistemic alteration but an ontological donation. The Spirit grants creatures to encounter the divine act in and through the sign’s form. Knowledge arises because the sign becomes transparent to the Logos. Thus, illumination does not add meaning to the sign. It grants participation in the meaning the sign already bears.

The sign is an event rather than a static object. Theological signs are not static entities awaiting interpretation, but are rather events in which divine action becomes present. A sacrament is not an object but an enacted sign; Scripture is not merely text but living word; proclamation is not a speech-act alone but a site of divine address. The sign is therefore not exhausted by its linguistic or material properties. It is a finite locus of manifestation, rendered such by the Spirit who actualizes the Logos’ intelligibility within it.

The we must reject purely linguistic or immanent models. Postliberal theology sometimes construes revelation as emerging from within the grammar of the community. But the sign’s power does not lie in communal usage. It lies rather in divine action. The sign becomes revelation not when it is interpreted but when it is illumined. In this way, grammar orders discourse, while illumination grants reality. Thus, theological signs are not cultural artifacts whose meaning is negotiated, but are divine gifts that disclose.

Objectiones

Ob I. If signs mediate divine action, do we not reintroduce a created intermediary between God and creatures?

Ob II. If the Logos is the form of the sign and the Spirit the illuminator, is revelation split between form and access?

Ob III. If signs manifest divine act, does this collapse transcendence into immanence?

Ob IV. If illumination is necessary, how can signs retain objective meaning independent of subjective experience?

Ob V. If signs are events, does this undermine their stability or repeatability?

Responsiones

Ad I. Signs are not intermediaries but media. They do not stand between God and creatures but are the places where God acts. Their existence does not obscure God but reveal him.

Ad II. Revelation is not divided but ordered. The Logos shapes the sign’s intelligibility; the Spirit grants communion with this intelligibility. This expresses personal distinction, not division.

Ad III. Manifestation is not collapse. The finite does not contain the infinite. It is the locus where the infinite acts. Signs render God present without confining him.

Ad IV. Objective meaning arises from divine action, not from human consciousness. Illumination concerns reception, not constitution. The sign’s meaning is objective because its form is Logos-shaped.

Ad V. The sign’s repeatability arises from the constancy of divine intention. Its event-character does not eliminate stability but secures it: the same divine agent acts in each instantiation.

Nota

The theological sign is the place where divine intelligibility enters the finite economy under a form appropriate to creaturely reception. Its meaning lies neither in human interpretation nor in semiotic structures but in the Logos-shaped intelligibility that the Spirit illumines.

Thus theological signs cannot be reduced to texts, symbols, or practices. They are the finite forms through which God gives himself to be known.

Determinatio

We therefore determine:

1. Theological signs are finite forms made the loci of divine manifestation.
2. Their intelligibility is constituted in the Logos.
3. Their participability is granted by the Spirit.
4. Illumination does not alter the sign but opens it.
5. The sign mediates divine action not as representation but as presence.

Revelation is thus the event in which God’s intelligible act becomes manifest through a sign illumined by the Spirit.

Transitus ad Disputationem LIX

Having shown that theological signs mediate divine intelligibility through Spirit-illumined manifestation, we now turn to the economy of divine presence as it unfolds in history. For signs do not appear in abstraction but in a temporal order shaped by divine intention.

We proceed therefore to Disputatio LIX: De Historia Ut Loco Revelationis, where we consider how historical events become theological loci when illumined by the Spirit and formed by the Logos.

________

Quaestiones Analyticae Post Determinationem II

Q1. If a theological sign is a locus of manifestation rather than a semiotic relation, how does this relate to classical truth-conditional semantics?

Responsio

Truth-conditional semantics presumes propositional form. But theological signs precede propositional articulation. They provide the ontological ground upon which propositions can later be formed. The sign is not true or false; it is the site where divine action becomes manifest. Propositions about the sign acquire truth conditions only by referencing this manifestation.

Q2. Can theological signs be modeled within a hyperintensional semantics?

Responsio

Only analogically. Hyperintensionality captures distinctions finer than necessary equivalence, which is appropriate for theological signs whose meaning depends on participation, not extension. Yet signs exceed hyperintensional analysis because their identity lies not in conceptual structure but in divine act. Hyperintensional models can represent distinctions between interpretations but cannot constitute the reality they signify.

Q3. How does illumination relate to felicity conditions in theological discourse?

Responsio

Felicity pertains to the internal grammar of theological assertion. Illumination pertains to the external truth of what is asserted. A statement is felicitous when it accords with the grammar of faith; it is true when it corresponds to the Logos-constituted reality that the sign manifests. Illumination bridges the two by granting access to the reality that grounds felicity.

Q4. Do sacramental signs require a unique model-theoretic treatment?

Responsio

Yes. Sacramental signs are not merely designators but enactments. They cannot be captured by classical satisfaction (M ⊨ T). They require constitutive satisfaction (Λ ⊨* Tₜ), in which the divine act grounds both the sign and its efficacy. The model is not interpretive only; it is participatory.

Q5. If signs are events, does this eliminate the possibility of stable theological models?

Responsio

No. Events are stable insofar as the agent who performs them is stable. The constancy of divine intention grounds the repeatability of sacramental and scriptural signs. Stability in theology arises not from static forms but from the fidelity of the acting God.

Nota Finalis

This analytic section clarifies that theological signs occupy a space where ontology, semiotics, and logic converge. They resist reduction to any one of these domains. Their meaning is grounded in divine action, their form in the Logos, and their reception in the Spirit. This provides the conceptual foundation for the next disputation, where historical events become loci of revelation.