On Divine Causality and Theological Speech
Quaeritur
Utrum causalitas divina non sit externa actio super mundum, sed interna ratio tam essendi quam loquendi; cum Spiritus Sanctus, qui est amor subsistens, causet non solum esse rerum sed etiam recte loqui de Deo, ita ut omnis loquela theologica sit ipsa participatio in causatione divina.
Whether divine causality is not an external action imposed upon the world but the inner reason both for being and for speaking; since the Holy Spirit, who is subsistent love, causes not only the existence of things but also the right speaking of them, such that every theological utterance is itself a participation in divine causality.
Thesis
The Spirit’s causality extends from being to language. The God who causes things to exist also causes them to be spoken truly. Hence, theological language is not merely a human representation of divine acts but itself a divinely caused act of participation in those same realities.
Locus Classicus
ὁ θεὸς γάρ ἐστιν ὁ ἐνεργῶν ἐν ὑμῖν καὶ τὸ θέλειν καὶ τὸ ἐνεργεῖν ὑπὲρ τῆς εὐδοκίας.
“For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” — Philippians 2:13
Paul here reveals the deepest structure of divine causality: God does not merely command from without, but operates within the interior act of willing itself. Human volition and action are not autonomous productions but participations in the divine operation, through which freedom is fulfilled rather than diminished. The same principle governs theological speech: the Word that we utter in faith is itself moved and sustained by the Word that speaks within us.
“Non enim per solam gratiam fit ut faciamus, sed etiam ut velimus.”
“For it is not by grace alone that we are enabled to act, but even to will.” — Augustinus, De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio, 17.33
Augustine thus interprets Paul’s claim as a metaphysical union of divine and human agency: grace is not external assistance but interior transformation. The divine will does not replace ours; it quickens it, bringing to actuality the very freedom it grounds.
“La grâce ne supprime pas la liberté, elle la fonde.”
“Grace does not suppress freedom; it grounds it.” — Henri de Lubac, Le mystère du surnaturel (1946)
In the modern renewal of participatory theology, de Lubac recovers the insight that grace is not superadded to nature as a second cause, but is the sustaining depth of creaturely being itself—the divine communication that makes human freedom truly possible.
From Paul through Augustine to de Lubac, a single line of testimony unfolds: God’s causality is not competitive with human activity but constitutive of it. The divine act does not constrain the creature; it gives rise to the creature’s own act from within. Thus in every willing, doing, and speaking that accords with grace, the Spirit is the inward agent. God works in us et velle et operari—to will, to act, and indeed to speak—for His good pleasure.
Explicatio
In the preceding Disputationes, we established that theological speech T is syntactically ordered, Spirit-authorized, and rendered true through its correspondence with divine reality. Yet this correspondence itself presupposes a causal link: the reality that theology names exists only because God brings it into being, and the speech that names it exists only because God causes it to be spoken.
Divine causality therefore operates on two planes:
Ontological causality whereby God gives being to creatures.
Linguistic causality whereby God gives utterance to truth-bearing speech.
Both forms of causation are united in the Holy Spirit, the divine causa principalissima: the first and inner cause through whom all other causes act.
To express this relation in our earlier symbolism:
Let D_G represent a property belonging properly to God (for example, divine wisdom).
Let D represent the creature’s participated share in that property (human wisdom given by grace).
When theology speaks of “wisdom,” its words participate in the same causal current by which divine wisdom communicates itself to creatures. Thus, the correspondence D_G → D (read: “from God’s wisdom to creaturely wisdom”) does not indicate a metaphor but a causal transmission: the Spirit’s act of sharing divine properties across the Creator–creature divide.
Accordingly, theology’s language is not neutral description but theophysical communication—a speech that exists because God causes it to exist as part of His ongoing self-disclosure.
Objectiones
Ob I. According to Aristotelian naturalism, divine causality, operates only through the natural order as its first cause. Human speech, being a voluntary act of rational creatures, belongs to the realm of secondary causes. To make God the cause of theological language would collapse creaturely agency and render human discourse a mere divine puppet show.
Ob II. According to late medieval nominalist voluntarism, God’s will alone determines what is true, but human language cannot share in that causality. The words of theology are human signs that express obedience, not divine acts themselves. To attribute causal efficacy to them confuses sign with thing and diminishes God’s absolute freedom.
Ob III. If God directly causes every act as in occasionalism, then human beings contribute nothing real to theological speech. But if humans truly speak, then divine causality cannot determine their words without destroying their freedom. The doctrine of divine causation in theological discourse thus faces an insoluble dilemma: either language is divine and not human, or human and not divine.
Ob IV. Contemporary analytic philosophy of language regards meaning as determined by social-linguistic conventions and intentions, not metaphysical causes. “Causality” has no place in semantic explanation. To describe divine causality in theological speech is therefore a category mistake, a misuse of causal vocabulary in the domain of meaning.
Responsiones
Ad I. Aristotle’s distinction between primary and secondary causes provides the very structure theology must preserve. The Holy Spirit acts as the primary cause of theological language, not by replacing human agency but by enabling it. Just as God moves creatures to act according to their own natures, so the Spirit moves theologians to speak according to their own intellects and tongues. Divine causality grounds, rather than negates, the freedom of theological speech.
Ad II. Nominalism rightly guards divine sovereignty, yet by confining causality to decree it denies God’s intimate presence in creation. The Spirit’s causality in theological language is not competitive but participatory: divine agency establishes the very possibility that human words can signify God. Theological language is not deified but divinely grounded—the Spirit makes creaturely signs transparent to divine reality without abolishing their created nature.
Ad III. The dilemma between occasionalism and autonomy arises only when divine and human causality are conceived as rival forces within the same ontological plane. In theology, however, divine causality is in esse—it grounds the creature’s act without competing with it. The human theologian truly speaks, yet that speech is what it is by virtue of the Spirit’s enabling presence. Divine causality does not override secondary causes but constitutes their being and efficacy.
Ad IV. Analytic semantics rightly locates meaning within communal use, but this use itself presupposes a deeper ontological ground. In theology, the relation between word and referent is not purely conventional but pneumatic: the Spirit causes words to bear determinate reference to divine reality. Theological meaning therefore involves both human convention and divine causation—the Spirit as the transcendent condition of linguistic signification in the domain of revelation.
Nota
The connection between causality and language clarifies theology’s realism. If “to be is to have causal powers,” as philosophers often say, then to speak truly of God requires that theological terms participate in divine causal power. The Spirit ensures this participation by joining word and world in a single act of communication.
We might say that felicity is the form of divine causality in speech. When the Spirit authorizes an utterance within T, He does more than declare it permissible; He makes it effective as a bearer of divine power. The felicitous word, therefore, is not merely correct but causal—it accomplishes what it signifies because it lives in the Spirit’s energy.
This understanding also guards against theological irrealism. A theology that speaks of God without causal reference—without affirming that God’s acts truly bring about what is said—would empty divine predicates of power. The Spirit, as cause of both being and saying, guarantees that theological truth is not detached commentary but participation in divine action.
Determinatio
From the foregoing it is determined that:
Divine causality operates not only in the order of being but also in the order of speaking.
The Holy Spirit is the principal cause of all felicitous and truthful theological utterance.
To speak truly of God is to participate causally in God’s own self-communication; theology is therefore a theophysical act.
Felicity represents the formal aspect of divine causality in language, while truth represents its ontological fulfillment.
The Spirit thus binds ontology and discourse in a single causal order: the God who causes being to exist also causes His praise to be spoken.
Transitus ad Disputationem VII: De Participatione et Ontologia Theoseos
In the sixth disputation, divine causality was considered not as an external intervention upon the world but as the inner reason both for being and for speaking. There it was shown that the Holy Spirit, who is subsistent love, causes not only the existence of things but also the rightness of theological utterance, so that human speech itself becomes participation in divine causality.
Yet if divine causality is the very act in which being and meaning are continuously given, it follows that creation itself lives by participation in that act. To speak truly of God is already to exist within the radiance of His being; and to be is itself to be spoken by God. The causal act of the Spirit thus opens into the participatory ontology of theosis, wherein the creature’s being is not autonomous but communicative: the reflection of divine act in finite form.
The next step, therefore, is to inquire into the mode and measure of this participation. How does the creature share in divine life without confusion of essences? How does the Spirit, who causes both being and speaking, sustain the real communion of the human and the divine?
Hence we advance to Disputationem VII: De Participatione et Ontologia Theoseos, in which it will be asked how the creature’s existence is constituted by participation in the divine, and how the Holy Spirit effects the real, ontological union between God and humanity without dissolving either into the other.
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