Disputatio III: De Spiritu Sancto et Finitudine Felicitatis

On the Holy Spirit and the Boundary of Felicity

Quaeritur

Utrum Spiritus Sanctus sit ille divinus actus, qui verbum et esse in vita credentis coniungit, ita ut veritas theologica, quae per systemata modelorum ut correspondentia constituitur, perficiatur per participationem et communionem, et sic ipsa finita intelligentia fiat locus felicitatis divinae.

Whether the Holy Spirit is that divine act which unites word and being within the life of the believer, such that theological truth, which is constituted through systems of models as correspondence, is brought to completion through participation and communion, and finite understanding thereby becomes the very site of divine blessedness.

Thesis

The Holy Spirit is both the formal and causal condition for theological felicity. It is the divine source by which expressions are included or excluded from the language of faith. The Spirit’s presence sets both the possibility and the limit of theological discourse. It authorizes what can be said rightly, and by that very act, defines what cannot.

Locus Classicus

Ὁ Θεὸς ἀληθής ἐστιν· πᾶν δὲ ἄνθρωπος ψεύστης.

— Ψαλμοί 115(116):11, LXX

“God is true, but every man a liar.” — Psalm 116:11 (LXX/ESV)

Here truth is first predicated of God Himself. The divine truth is not propositional but ontological: God is truth because He is the self-identical fullness of being. All human speech and knowledge participate in this truth analogically, finding their measure not in linguistic coherence alone, but in the divine reality that grounds both intellect and world.

Ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ὁδὸς καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια καὶ ἡ ζωή· οὐδεὶς ἔρχεται πρὸς τὸν Πατέρα εἰ μὴ δι’ ἐμοῦ.

— Ἰωάννης 14:6

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.” — John 14:6

Christ here does not possess truth but is truth. In Him, the eternal correspondence between intellect and being is made personal and incarnate. The adaequation of mind and reality becomes the hypostatic union of the divine and human: truth, once abstract, is now flesh.

Ἀλήθεια γάρ ἐστιν ἡ τοῦ ὄντος ἔξοδος πρὸς γνῶσιν.

— Μέτα τα Φυσικά II.993b20, Ἀριστοτέλης

“For truth is the manifestation of being to knowledge.” — Aristotle, Metaphysics II.993b20

Aristotle’s definition already anticipates a participatory conception: truth occurs where being comes forth into knowability. To know truly is to let being show itself as it is; falsehood arises when intellect withholds or distorts this self-disclosure.

“Veritas est adaequatio rei et intellectus.”

— Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate q.1, a.1

“Truth is the conformity of thing and intellect.” — Thomas Aquinas, On Truth 1.1

For Aquinas, this adaequation is not a symmetry of equals but a relation of participation: the created intellect is true when it conforms to the divine idea that constitutes the thing. In God alone are truth and being absolutely one—ipsa veritas subsistens.

“Ἀλήθεια Θεοῦ ἐστιν ἡ ἐνέργεια τῆς σοφίας αὐτοῦ.”

— Γρηγόριος Νύσσης, Contra Eunomium II.

“The truth of God is the operation of His wisdom.” — Gregory of Nyssa, Against Eunomius II

Gregory deepens the metaphysical sense, for divine truth is not static identity but the active energy of wisdom whereby God makes Himself known. Truth is thus neither abstract nor inert, but the luminous self-communication of divine being.

Across these witnesses—a Psalm, the Gospel, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Gregory—the same insight reverberates: Veritas est theophania entis. Truth is the manifestation of being, and being itself is grounded in the eternal Word. What philosophy described as correspondence, theology discerns as participation: the human intellect mirrors divine intelligence precisely by being drawn into the Logos, in whom the adequation of being and knowing is perfect.

To speak truth, then, is not merely to describe reality but to dwell within it rightly; it is to let the Word who is Truth shape both thought and world. Theological modeling, when faithful, becomes the analogical repetition of that primal correspondence: the act wherein the divine intellect makes itself known through creaturely speech.

Explicatio

In the previous Disputationes, theology was described first as a language T and then as interpreted through models that connect it to being. But not only does every language require grammar and meaning, it requires authorization as well, for someone must say when speech is fit to be uttered.

In theology, that authorizing agent is not the Church alone, nor is it human reason. It is the Spiritus Sanctus, the Holy Spirit, who determines which expressions belong within T, the Church’s living language of faith.

When we speak of felicity, we mean the condition under which a statement can be rightly spoken in the Spirit. In formal terms, we call these the felicity conditions of T, written FT. These include internal order (logical consistency, coherence, and entailment) and external authorization (the Spirit’s activity discerned through Scripture, confession, and ecclesial life).

The Spirit thus functions as the boundary condition of theology. Like a grammatical rule that both permits and prohibits, the Spirit allows speech that participates in divine life and excludes speech that contradicts it.

To say that theology has a finitude of felicity is to acknowledge that its authorized speech, though real and truthful, nonetheless remains partial. No expression in T exhausts divine truth, for the Spirit never ceases to exceed the words He inspires.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Karl Barth and other revelation theologians maintain that the act of divine self-disclosure is infinite in origin and scope. To speak of a finite felicity of the Spirit’s operation is to divide the one act of revelation into infinite and finite parts, reducing divine grace to creaturely measure. If the Spirit is truly God, then His activity cannot be characterized as finite without denying His divinity.

Obiectio II. Immanuel Kant would argue that felicity, insofar as it implies union with the divine, cannot be an object of theoretical knowledge. Human reason is bounded by phenomena; divine reality remains noumenal and inaccessible. “Theological felicity” can therefore be at most a moral or regulative idea, guiding action but not describing an ontological state wrought by the Spirit.

Obiectio III. Following Ludwig Wittgenstein, felicity pertains to the successful performance of language within a given form of life. To call a theological utterance “felicitous” means that it fits the grammar of the believing community. Finitude and infinitude are grammatical categories, not metaphysical ones. The Spirit adds nothing beyond the community’s own rule-governed practices of meaning.

Obiectio IV. From a Hegelian standpoint, Spirit (Geist) is infinite self-consciousness realizing itself through the overcoming of finitude. If the Holy Spirit is truly Spirit, then its work in human life must sublate finitude rather than affirm it. To insist on the “finitude of felicity” is to arrest the dialectical movement of Spirit toward the Absolute, leaving theology mired in limitation and incompleteness.

Responsiones

Ad I. The Spirit’s operation is infinite in essence but finite in mode. The same act that is infinite in God becomes finite in the creature through the very generosity of divine condescension. Finitude here does not denote defect but form, the determinate condition under which the infinite communicates itself. The Spirit’s work is not measured by human limits but expressed through them. The finitude of felicity is the medium by which divine reality becomes communicable and effective within history.

Ad II. Kant’s critique of speculative reason rightly identifies the limits of human cognition, yet theology does not seek theoretical knowledge of God but participation in divine communication. Felicity is not a concept but an event: the Spirit’s act of rendering finite speech and understanding proportionate to divine truth. Within this act, finitude becomes the very space of grace. The theological subject remains bounded, but those bounds are filled with divine presence; the finite becomes transparent to the infinite.

Ad III. Wittgenstein correctly locates felicity within the use of language, but he omits its ontological ground. The Church’s grammar is not self-originating; it is constituted and sustained by the Spirit’s act. The felicity of theological language is thus not merely communal correctness but pneumatological authorization. A sentence is felicitous not because the Church says so but because the Spirit speaks through it. Finitude here names not the limit of meaning but the site where divine meaning takes flesh in human words.

Ad IV. Hegel’s dialectic perceives rightly that Spirit and finitude are related, but wrongly that their relation can be expressed as sublation. The Holy Spirit does not abolish finitude but indwells it. The infinite does not return into itself through the finite; it abides with the finite as love. The finitude of felicity thus expresses the perfection proper to creaturely participation—the creature remains itself yet becomes radiant with divine life. Spirit’s infinity is shown not by transcending finitude but by transforming it into communion.

Nota

The distinction between inclusion and exclusion in T may be described symbolically as T_in and T_out.

• T_in designates those expressions that the Spirit renders felicitous, language consistent with Scripture, creed, and the ongoing life of the Church.

• T_out refers to expressions that fail these tests, either through contradiction, incoherence, or lack of spiritual authorization.

This symbolic division simply formalizes what theologians have always practiced in discernment. The Spirit is both the “grammar” and the “breath” of theology: grammar, because He gives order; breath, because He gives life.

To put it differently, the Spirit is the condition of theological intelligibility. Without Him, theology would become a dead syntax,  correct perhaps in structure but devoid of life. With Him, speech about God becomes participation in the very life it names.

Thus, the finitude of felicity marks theology’s humility. It confesses that human language, even when sanctified, cannot contain the infinite. The Spirit authorizes theology’s words and simultaneously guards them from presumption.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. The Holy Spirit is the divine ground of theological felicity; He is the One who renders certain expressions speakable within faith.

2. The Spirit’s authorization has both internal criteria (coherence, consistency, right entailment) and external criteria (Scriptural consonance, ecclesial reception, discernible fruits).

3. The boundary of felicity is not a limitation imposed from without but the inner grace by which human speech remains ordered to God.

4. To say that theology is finite in felicity is to acknowledge that its language, though true, is never exhaustive of divine mystery.

5. The Spirit’s dual act of including and excluding establishes theology’s form as a living language: finite in utterance, infinite in source.

Transitus ad Disputationem IV: De Veritate Theologiae Duplex

In the third disputation, truth was considered as fulfilled in the act of the Spirit, who unites divine word and creaturely being within the life of the believer. There theology ceased to be merely structural or referential and became participatory: truth not only stated but lived, not merely modeled but enacted in communion.

Yet such a pneumatic conception of truth raises a deeper question concerning its nature and division. If the Spirit renders truth participatory, does theology thereby forfeit its claim to objective validity? Or must we now distinguish between two orders of truth: one interior and existential, the other exterior and propositional? The first pertains to the felicity of communion, truth in actu Spiritus; the second to the coherence of doctrine, truth in ratione verbi.

Theology must therefore learn to speak of truth doubly without dividing it: as inwardly possessed and outwardly confessed, as realized in participation and articulated in discourse. The Spirit internalizes what the Word declares, and the Church bears witness to both. Accordingly, there is both the inward veracity of grace and the outward truth of confession.

We thus proceed to Disputatio IV: De Veritate Theologiae Duplex, wherein it will be asked how theological truth can be both lived and spoken, internal and external, pneumatic and logical, and how these two modes of truth converge without confusion in the one Logos who is both the reality and the form of all theology.