On Truth Through the Logos
Quaeritur
Utrum veritas theologica consistat in relatione satisfactionis inter propositionem et mundum, an potius in actu interpretativo Logi, per quem mundus et significatio simul constituuntur.
Whether theological truth consists in a relation of satisfaction between proposition and world, or rather in the interpretive act of the Logos, through which both world and meaning are jointly constituted.
Thesis
Truth in theology is not exhausted by the model-theoretic relation M ⊨ T, but is grounded in the constitutive act of the divine Word, denoted Λ ⊨* Tₜ, by which the Logos brings being and meaning into coincidence. Theological truth is thus truth through the Logos.*
Locus Classicus
Πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν ὃ γέγονεν.
“All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” — Ioannes 1:3
ἐν αὐτῷ ἐκτίσθη τὰ πάντα ... τὰ πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν ἔκτισται· καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων, καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν.
“For in him all things were created ... all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” — Colossenses 1:16–17
Verbum quod loquitur Pater, non sonus est caducus, sed ipsa Veritas gignens intellegentiam. — Augustinus, De Trinitate XV.11.20
“The Word which the Father speaks is not a transient sound, but the very Truth begetting understanding.”
Explicatio
Formal Background. In classical model theory, M ⊨ T states that the formula T holds in the model M = ⟨D, I⟩, where D is a domain of discourse and I an interpretation function. The structure of meaning is therefore parasitic upon a prior ontology. The world-as-model is presupposed.
Theological Critique. Theological assertions, however, subvert this presupposition. They claim that the world itself—the domain D and its intelligible structure I—arises from the Logos. Theology cannot therefore merely use a model, but it must rather account for the ontological act by which any model becomes possible. The satisfaction relation becomes reflexive: truth depends on the act that grants both being and meaning.
Constitutive Satisfaction. To mark this difference, we introduce a higher-order satisfaction relation:
where Λ (the Logos) is not a model but a principium interpretationis. The truth of Tₜ lies not in correspondence with a world but in participation in the act through which the world and its intelligibility are conjoined. Accordingly, the Logos does not describe reality, but rather donates it.
Ontological Implication. Theological truth is thus a communion of act and meaning: adaequatio per donationem, not per representationem. The created intellect is invited into this divine self-interpretation, so that knowing becomes a form of being-known. Here the traditional formula veritas est adaequatio intellectus et rei unfolds into its deeper ground: veritas est adaequatio intellectus et Verbi.
Objectiones
Obj. 1 If truth depends upon divine interpretation, theology collapses into voluntarism or fideism: what is true becomes true only by divine decree.
Obj. II. To say “the Logos makes propositions true” seems circular, since the truth of “Logos” itself depends upon the very act being defined.
Obj. III. Classical model theory already includes interpretation functions; why invoke an additional divine interpreter?
Responsiones
Ad I. The theological claim is not that propositions are true because God declares them, but that there could be propositions and truth at all only because God gives being and meaning together. This is not fideism but a participatory metaphysical realism intensified: divine act is the ontological root of correspondence itself.
Ad II. The circularity is transcendental, not vicious. Every finite act of understanding presupposes the light by which it sees. To name the Logos as source of intelligibility is not to argue in a circle but to acknowledge the ontological reflexivity of reason: in ipso vita erat, et vita erat lux hominum (John 1:4).
Ad III. Model theory presupposes a stable domain and interpretive mapping; it does not explain their being. The theological turn to Λ names the meta-ontological ground of this stability. The Logos is not an extra semantic function but the act that makes semantics possible.
Nota
The movement from M ⊨ T to Λ ⊨* Tₜ marks theology’s crossing from formal logic to metaphysical participation. While in logical satisfaction the world precedes the word, in constitutive satisfaction the Word precedes the world. Herein lies the theological reversal: esse is the effect of dicere, being is the echo of divine speech.
Determinatio
The Logos as Transcendental Interpreter. All truth presupposes the Logos as the ontological condition of intelligibility.
From Correspondence to Communion. Theological truth is not mere adequation but participation in the act of divine signification.
Model Theory as Theological Grammar. Formal semantics retains analytic utility only when transposed into this participatory horizon.
Truth Through the Logos. The theological analogue of model-theoretic satisfaction is the creative utterance by which being and meaning are given together.
Transitus ad Disputatio XLVIIIa
If truth is grounded in the constitutive act of the Logos—if being and meaning are given together through the divine Word—then truth cannot remain an abstract relation between proposition and world. It must manifest as a differentiation within intelligibility itself. The Logos does not merely make statements true; He orders the very ways in which reality can be intelligible.
Yet intelligibility is not monolithic. The same Logos through whom all things are made gives reality under distinct modes of grounding: one ordered by necessity and closure, the other by gift and openness. These modes are not products of human reflection, conscience, or linguistic convention. They precede all subjectivity and make possible the very experience of obligation, failure, promise, and freedom.
The classical Lutheran distinction between Law and Gospel must therefore be reconsidered at this deeper level. If truth is through the Logos, then Law and Gospel are not merely words spoken about reality or to the conscience, but structures by which reality itself is intelligible. Law names intelligibility grounded in itself; Gospel names intelligibility grounded in another. Their distinction is ontological before it is existential, and theological before it is psychological.
Accordingly, we must now ask whether Law and Gospel belong to the very fabric of intelligibility itself, and whether their unity is found not in the subject but in the Logos who holds necessity and contingency together without confusion.
Thus we proceed to Disputatio XLVIIIa: De Lege et Evangelio ut Structuris Intelligibilitatis, wherein it shall be shown that Law and Gospel are not strategies of discourse nor states of consciousness, but real structures of intelligibility grounded in the Logos and enacted through the Spirit.
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