Thesis
The full coincidence of internal and external truth—the unity of Spirit-felicity and ontological adequacy—is eschatological, realized when divine authorization and divine reality coincide in the unveiled participation of creation in God.
Explicatio
“Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
— 1 Corinthians 13:12
Theology lives between revelation and consummation, between what is spoken in the Spirit and what is yet to be fully manifest. In this in-between, truth appears in two modes: internally, as felicity, and externally, as adequacy. Felicity is the Spirit’s authorization of theological language here and now; adequacy is the perfect conformity of that language to divine being. The two coincide in Christ but are separated in time by the world’s incompletion.
Eschatology is therefore not merely a temporal doctrine but a semantic and ontological horizon: the consummation of all felicity into unveiled truth. What theology now utters felicitously, it will one day see as ontologically fulfilled. The distinction between authorization and realization will vanish when the Spirit’s internal act and the world’s external order coincide.
In that final manifestation, theological language becomes transparent to divine being. No longer mediated by hiddenness or model, it becomes the very event of communion. The verbum fidei spoken in history becomes the verbum gloriae of eternal participation. Thus, the eschaton is not an interruption of theological meaning but its semantic completion.
Objectiones
Obiectio I. If truth’s fullness is eschatological, theology in history can claim no truth at all; all utterance remains provisional.
Obiectio II. To project fulfillment into the future risks a Kantian regulative ideal, where truth never becomes actual.
Obiectio III. If divine reality is fully manifest at the end, faith’s distinct mode of knowledge is dissolved; the believer’s trust is replaced by sight.
Obiectio IV. Eschatological manifestation appears static, reducing the dynamic relation between God and creation to a timeless identity.
Responsiones
- Ad I. Theology’s provisionality does not negate its truth but qualifies its mode. Felicity is genuine truth in via: real participation under conditions of concealment. Eschatological manifestation does not replace this truth but completes it. The same Spirit who now authorizes language will then perfect its adequacy.
- Ad II. The eschaton is not a regulative ideal but a causally guaranteed telos. The Spirit’s causal work in history secures the final coincidence of felicity and adequacy. What appears deferred temporally is assured ontologically: the end is present in its cause.
- Ad III. Faith does not perish but is transfigured. In vision, faith’s structure of trust remains as gratitude and delight—the same act now fulfilled. The knowledge of sight is not alien to faith but its flowering.
- Ad IV. Manifestation is not static identity but ever-living communion. The fullness of truth is dynamic participation: eternal movement within the divine life. The final coincidence is not cessation of relation but the perfected reciprocity of knowing and being known.
Nota
The doctrine of eschatological manifestation binds together theology’s logical, ontological, and spiritual dimensions. Logically, it confirms that the partiality of present models is not error but anticipation. Ontologically, it grounds hope in the Spirit’s causal continuity from creation to consummation. Spirit-felicity is the seed; adequacy is the harvest.
In Christ, this horizon is already inaugurated. His resurrection is the first occurrence of perfect adequacy—the Word spoken felicitously in time now manifest as eternal truth. The Church, as His body, lives in the interval between participation and manifestation: she speaks truly because she speaks in the One whose truth is already revealed.
This eschatological structure also illuminates theology’s epistemic humility. To speak in the Spirit is to acknowledge that one’s words participate in a truth not yet complete. Theology’s task is therefore not to possess truth but to speak ahead of it, to utter words whose meaning God will finally disclose.
Determinatio
From the foregoing it is determined that:
The distinction between internal truth (felicity) and external truth (adequacy) is temporal and teleological, not absolute.
Eschatological manifestation is the ontological completion of this relation: the Spirit’s authorization of language and the reality it names coincide without remainder.
Theology in the present age participates truly but partially; its models are provisional yet Spirit-grounded.
The Spirit’s causal continuity guarantees that what is now true in fide will one day be true in visione.
Christ is both the pledge and realization of this truth: the Word whose felicity and adequacy are perfectly one.
The eschaton is thus the semantic consummation of theology—the point at which the model becomes the reality it models.
In that consummation, human language will no longer signify beyond itself; it will be the direct expression of divine communion.
Hence, the ultimate truth of theology is not propositional but participatory: the union of Spirit-felicity and divine being in the eternal act of God’s self-communication. Theology’s final word is not theory but doxology—speech so fully authorized that it becomes indistinguishable from the truth it praises.
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