Editorial Preface
This post consolidates a line of argument developed across several recent Disputationes essays. It brings into focus a Trinitarian account of intelligibility in which divine love grounds differentiated possibility, the Logos articulates this possibility into teleo-spaces without closure, and the Spirit orders participation normatively without coercion. The aim is not to conclude a system, but to mark a point of clarity that will serve as a foundation for subsequent systematic theological work.
1. The Pressure for Clarification
Philosophical clarification is rarely achieved by stipulation. More often it is forced upon us when a distinction that has done real work begins to reveal a pressure it cannot itself resolve. The present inquiry arises from precisely such a situation.
Much of my recent work has turned on the distinction between the determinable and the determinate. The distinction is familiar, but its metaphysical reach is often misunderstood. Determinables are not indeterminate determinates, nor are they abstractions from completed forms. They are conditions of intelligibility: that in virtue of which determinate articulation is possible without being necessitated. Within the domain of intelligibility, the distinction is exhaustive. Whatever can be meaningfully articulated is either determinable or determinate.
Yet that very exhaustiveness gives rise to a further question that cannot be deferred. If determinables and determinates exhaust what can be articulated as intelligible, what is it that intelligibility takes up? What must be given if there are to be determinables at all rather than a single undifferentiated possibility? Intelligibility, if it is real, cannot be self-grounding. It must have something to take up that is not already intelligible as such.
This question is not semantic, epistemological, or psychological. It is ontological. It cannot be answered by appeal to subjects, language, cultural practices, or interpretive communities without reversing the order of explanation. Nor can it be answered by positing universals or bare particulars without either collapsing particularity into abstraction or halting explanation at brute numerical difference. If intelligibility is irreducible, then the conditions under which it has something to take up must themselves be real and non-brute.
2. Teleo-Spaces and the Limits of Intelligibility
The pressure becomes acute once we attend carefully to the status of teleo-spaces. Teleo-spaces are not objects among objects, nor are they formal structures imposed by cognition. They are not subjective projections, nor are they hidden mechanisms within nature. They name the Logos-grounded openness of the real to intelligible articulation without closure. They are fields of determinability within which orientation, normativity, and judgment are possible.
But precisely for this reason, teleo-spaces cannot be the first ontological given. A teleo-space is already a space of intelligibility. To posit teleo-spaces as created as such is therefore to smuggle intelligibility into creation without explanation. Intelligibility cannot take itself up; nor can it be the product of its own exercise.
If the Logos articulates teleo-spaces rather than inventing them, then something must be given prior to that articulation—something that is not yet intelligible, but that can become intelligible without loss or remainder. The task, then, is to identify what can be ontologically prior to intelligibility without either becoming brute or collapsing into conceptual form.
3. The Question Forced Upon Us
What, then, does God create if teleo-spaces are intelligible only through the Logos? What must be given if intelligibility is to have something to take up rather than floating free as a self-sufficient structure? How can there be plurality without universals, individuation without matter, and differentiation without determination?
These questions are not optional. They arise from the very success of the determinable/determinate distinction and from the refusal to allow intelligibility to become either subjective or self-grounding. Following them where they lead forces a clarification that is metaphysical in scope but transcendental in method. It also forces us to reconsider the role of divine love—not as a devotional overlay, but as a candidate for ontological explanation.
The claim I will develop is that what God creates is not individuals prior to intelligibility, nor determinables awaiting specification, but differentiated possibility: addressable particularity that is not yet articulable. Teleo-space names the Logos-grounded intelligible openness of what is first given to be loved. Love, on this account, is not subsequent to intelligibility but its condition. It grounds particularity without determination, plurality without abstraction, and addressability prior to articulation.
This clarification does not introduce a new metaphysical posit. It names what must already be presupposed if intelligibility is to be real rather than illusory. As with Kant’s reflecting judgment, the claim is not that we have theoretical knowledge of such grounding, but that we are rationally compelled to think it if we are to make sense of what we already do. Philosophy here does not legislate. It acknowledges what sustained reflection has made unavoidable.
4. Individuation Without Determination
The clarification now required turns on a classical problem, though it arises here in a distinctive form: the problem of individuation. If what God creates is not teleo-space as such, nor determinables awaiting specification, then whatever is created prior to Logos-grounded intelligibility must nevertheless be differentiated. Intelligibility does not merely require something to take up; it requires more than one. A single undifferentiated possibility would be indistinguishable from none at all.
Yet this differentiation cannot be explained by appeal to any of the familiar metaphysical strategies. Matter cannot individuate, since what is at issue is prior to all material determination. Universals cannot individuate, since the very motivation for the present account is the rejection of strong realism about universals as explanatorily adequate. Structural relations cannot individuate, since relations presuppose relata already given as distinct. And bare particulars, whatever their heuristic appeal, halt explanation precisely where explanation is demanded: numerical difference becomes brute.
The difficulty can be stated sharply. We require an account of plurality without properties, difference without determination, and individuation without matter or form. Whatever grounds such differentiation must do so without rendering what is differentiated intelligible as such, for intelligibility is precisely what is still at stake. The differentiated items must be distinct enough to be addressable, yet not so structured as to count already as determinables.
This is why it is a mistake to construe the present proposal as introducing a third category alongside the determinable and the determinate. The distinction between determinable and determinate remains exhaustive within intelligibility. What is now in view is ontologically prior to that distinction. The differentiated possibilities at issue are not vague determinables, proto-properties, or incomplete concepts. They are not “thin” beings awaiting enrichment. They are not items within the space of reasons at all.
What, then, keeps these differentiated possibilities from collapsing into one another? What accounts for their non-interchangeability if not properties, relations, or forms? To answer this question by appeal to divine fiat would be to accept brute difference ate the deepest level of explanation, precisely where metaphysics ought to resist it most.
The only viable alternative is that differentiation at this level is grounded not in what these possibilities are, but in how they are addressed. Addressability, unlike describability, does not presuppose intelligible content. One can be addressed without yet being articulable. To be singled out for address is not yet to be brought under a concept, but it is to be distinguished from others in a way that is neither arbitrary nor structural.
This is the point at which the metaphysical inquiry forces a theological answer. Differentiation without determination requires a ground that is neither conceptual nor mechanical, neither abstract nor formal. It requires a ground that can particularize without specifying, that can distinguish without predicating. Only love meets these conditions. Love is inherently particularizing. It does not rest in generalities, nor does it operate through shared properties. Love addresses this rather than that, and in doing so establishes non-interchangeability without appeal to form.
If God is love, then the creation of differentiated possibility is not an opaque metaphysical puzzle but the natural expression of divine agency. God creates not abstractions to be later specified, but addressees to be loved. These addressees are given enough ontological particularity to be non-substitutable, yet not enough structure to count as intelligible. They are neither determinables nor determinates, but the ontological condition under which determinability itself can arise.
In this way, individuation is secured without brute fact and without conceptual anticipation. Love grounds plurality prior to intelligibility. The Logos does not invent what it articulates; it renders intelligible what has already been given to be loved.
5. Differentiated Possibility and the Logos
Once individuation without determination has been secured, the role of the Logos can be stated with greater precision. The Logos does not create what the Father creates, nor does the Logos add intelligible content to an otherwise complete ontological item. The Logos articulates what has already been given as addressable particularity. This articulation does not enrich a deficient being; it renders what is already differentiated intelligible without exhausting it.
This distinction is crucial. If the Logos were to introduce differentiation, then intelligibility would be responsible for individuation, and the earlier problem would simply reappear in a new form. Intelligibility would again be doing work it cannot do without collapsing into brute fact or conceptual imposition. Conversely, if the Logos merely revealed what was already intelligible, then teleo-spaces would be epiphenomenal, and the entire account would reduce to a realism about pre-formed structures. Neither option is acceptable.
The Logos instead grounds teleo-spaces: intelligible fields of determinability within which what has been given to be loved can be articulated without closure. A teleo-space is not a thing, nor a property, nor a relation. It is a mode of intelligible openness—a structured availability to determination that does not itself determine. In this sense, teleo-spaces are constitutively Logos-grounded. They exist only as acts of articulation, yet they do not invent their content.
This allows us to say something precise about the relationship between possibility and intelligibility. The differentiated possibilities created by the Father are not possibilities within intelligibility. They are not modal alternatives waiting to be selected. They are ontological loci that can be taken up into intelligibility but are not yet so taken up. Teleo-space names the transition from addressability to articulability, from what can be loved to what can be understood.
The Logos thus performs a non-competitive constitutive act. Nothing is added to the created order, and nothing is displaced. What changes is not what is, but how what is can count as intelligible. The Logos makes determination possible by grounding the space within which determinables can appear as such. Yet this grounding never necessitates determination. Articulation opens; it does not compel.
This point bears directly on Christology. If the Logos articulates rather than universalizes, then the incarnation does not operate by assuming a general human nature whose properties are then redistributed. It operates by articulating a particular locus of differentiated possibility into maximal intelligibility. What is assumed is not a universal, but a concrete addressable particular. Salvation, on this account, is not participation in an abstract nature but alignment with an articulated life.
Here the inadequacy of strong realism about universals becomes evident. Without universals, it may seem unclear how the work of Christ can reach beyond Christ himself. But that difficulty arises only if one assumes that intelligibility must be mediated through generality. If intelligibility is instead grounded in articulation of particularity, then what Christ accomplishes is not the elevation of a universal, but the opening of teleo-spaces within which other particular lives can be articulated, ordered, and drawn into alignment.
The Logos, then, is not the source of particularity but its intelligible availability. What the Father creates to be loved, the Logos renders articulable. The distinction between pre-determinable possibility and determinable intelligibility is preserved, and with it the integrity of both creation and reason.
6. The Spirit and Normative Weighting within Teleo-Spaces
If the Father grounds differentiated possibility through love, and the Logos articulates that possibility into teleo-spaces as fields of intelligible determinability, then a further question presses with equal force: how are determinations oriented within those fields without being necessitated? Articulation alone does not account for normativity. A teleo-space may render multiple determinations intelligible, yet intelligibility by itself does not explain why some possibilities appear as better, fitting, or worthy of alignment than others.
This is the point at which the role of the Holy Spirit must be clarified—not as an afterthought, and not as a merely subjective supplement, but as a constitutive causal agent operating in a distinct mode. The Spirit does not introduce new intelligible content, nor does the Spirit determine outcomes. Rather, the Spirit weights possibilities within teleo-spaces, ordering them normatively without coercion.
The distinction required here is that between event/event causality and agent/act causality. Teleo-spaces, as Logos-grounded, belong to the former register insofar as they are real features of the created order. They structure what can intelligibly occur. The Spirit’s work, by contrast, is not the production of events but the orientation of agents. The Spirit acts not by causing one determination to occur rather than another, but by rendering certain determinations salient as worthy of pursuit.
This weighting must not be misconstrued as probabilistic pressure or causal bias. The Spirit does not function as a hidden variable in a deterministic process. Nor does the Spirit operate by inserting new information into the teleo-space. Weighting is normative, not mechanical. It concerns how possibilities present themselves to subjective spirits as demanding response, not how events unfold independently of agency.
Here it is helpful—though only analogically—to speak of prehension. Subjective spirits do not invent the normative order of teleo-spaces, but they are capable of taking up that order, feeling its pull, resisting it, or aligning with it. The Spirit communicates not propositions but orientation. What is communicated is not content, but direction: how one might live, act, or speak in faithfulness to the intelligible order already articulated by the Logos.
This preserves a crucial asymmetry. The Spirit’s work is deeply interior to subjectivity, yet not grounded in subjectivity. The Spirit thinks through us without being reducible to our thinking. Normative orientation is experienced personally, but it is not generated personally. Subjects participate in the Spirit’s weighting, but they do not constitute it. This avoids both enthusiasm and moralism. The Spirit neither bypasses reason nor replaces it; the Spirit orders reason from within its own intelligible field.
Equally important, this account preserves freedom. Because weighting is non-necessitating, alignment remains an act rather than an effect. Subjects can refuse the pull of the Spirit without thereby rendering that pull illusory. Indeed, refusal itself presupposes the reality of the normative orientation it resists. Faith, on this account, is not assent to a proposition but alignment with a weighted possibility. It is a lived responsiveness to a teleo-space ordered by the Spirit toward God’s will.
Seen in this light, the Trinitarian structure of the account comes fully into view. The Father creates differentiated possibility to be loved. The Logos renders what is loved intelligible without closure. The Spirit orders intelligible possibility normatively without coercion. No person of the Trinity performs a function that excludes the others, yet no function collapses into another. There is one divine act, irreducibly triune in its modes.
This clarification also allows a final distinction to be maintained with precision. The Spirit does not ground truth; that belongs to the Logos. Nor does the Spirit donate being; that belongs to the Father. The Spirit authorizes, orders, and draws—making alignment possible without making it inevitable. Where this ordering is acknowledged, theological language can be spoken faithfully. Where it is resisted, intelligibility remains, but communion is fractured.
At this point, nothing essential has been left unaccounted for. Intelligibility is grounded without being made brute. Particularity is secured without universals. Normativity is real without determinism. Freedom is preserved without voluntarism. What remains is not a gap in the account, but its horizon: the lived enactment of faith within teleo-spaces weighted by the Spirit and articulated by the Logos, all grounded in the Father’s love for the particular.
6.5. Preliminary Formalization: Ontological Donation and Trinitarian Articulation
The account developed thus far has been intentionally conceptual rather than formal. That choice reflects a methodological judgment: formalization can clarify structure, but it cannot generate ontology or secure intelligibility. Nevertheless, because the present proposal will serve as a foundation for later systematic work, it is appropriate to indicate—at least schematically—how its core distinctions admit of disciplined formal expression.
What follows is therefore not a calculus, nor a completed formal system. It is a typed scaffold designed to make explicit the commitments already in play and to guard against category mistakes as the account is extended.
We begin with a minimal ontological typing.
Let 𝔏 denote the class of pre-determinable loci of possibility. Elements of 𝔏 are not determinables, not determinate entities, not universals, and not semantic contents. They are addressable particulars: numerically distinct loci grounded in divine love and given prior to intelligibility.
Let 𝕋 denote the class of teleo-spaces. Elements of 𝕋 are not objects but intelligible fields of determinability. A teleo-space is that within which determinables can appear as such without being necessitated.
Let 𝔇 denote the class of determinables, and 𝔡 the class of determinates. The determinable/determinate distinction is exhaustive within intelligibility, and only within intelligibility.
The first constitutive relation is that of creative love. This is not a causal function in the event–event sense, but a grounding relation:
Love grounds non-interchangeability without determination. No predicates, properties, or relations among elements of 𝔏 are presupposed. Numerical distinction is real, but it is grounded personally rather than formally.
The second constitutive relation is Logos-articulation. This may be represented schematically as a partial articulation mapping:
This notation is intentionally non-functional. The Logos does not map loci to determinate contents, nor does it exhaust what is articulated. Rather, Λ names the act by which addressable particularity is rendered intelligibly open—that is, taken up into teleo-space. No element of 𝔏 thereby becomes a determinable; instead, it becomes articulable within a space of determinability.
Within a given teleo-space , there exists a field of determinables , together with an ordering relation that is teleological rather than algorithmic. This ordering is incomplete, non-total, and non-necessitating.
The third constitutive relation concerns the Holy Spirit’s work of normative weighting. This may be represented as a weighting relation:
Weighting orders possibilities within teleo-spaces without causing their realization. It is normative rather than mechanical, orienting agents rather than producing events. No weighting function entails determination; all agentive alignment remains genuinely responsive.
Several prohibitions must be stated explicitly to preserve the integrity of the account. There is no mapping from 𝔏 to 𝔇. There is no closure principle governing teleo-spaces. There is no subject-constitutive relation grounding either teleo-spaces or determinables. And there is no universal instantiation relation doing soteriological work.
Formalization, thus understood, serves a negative as well as a positive role. It marks where explanation must stop if brute fact is to be avoided, and it enforces the Trinitarian distribution of explanatory labor: ontology belongs to the Father, intelligibility to the Logos, and normative authorization to the Spirit. Any later formal development that violates this order will thereby reveal its own category mistake.
In this way, preliminary formalization does not replace metaphysical argument but protects it. It makes visible the logical shape of the account without pretending to capture its ontological depth. As the systematic project develops, this scaffold may be refined, expanded, or partially revised. What it must not do is obscure the fundamental insight that has driven the entire inquiry: intelligibility presupposes addressable particularity, and addressable particularity is grounded in divine love.
7. Trinitarian Unity and the Metaphysical Shape of Faith
The clarification reached in the preceding sections allows the overall shape of the account to come into view. What began as a pressure internal to the determinable/determinate distinction has led, step by step, to a Trinitarian metaphysics in which creation, intelligibility, and normativity are ordered without being partitioned. At no point has an additional metaphysical layer been introduced for its own sake. Each distinction has been forced by the refusal to allow intelligibility to become either self-grounding or subjectively constituted.
The guiding insight can now be stated succinctly. Intelligibility presupposes addressable particularity. Teleo-spaces, as Logos-grounded fields of determinability, are real and irreducible, but they are not ontologically first. They require something to take up—something that is neither a universal nor a determinate, neither a conceptual content nor a brute particular. That requirement cannot be met by formal structure, material individuation, or abstract necessity. It can be met only if creation itself includes differentiated possibility grounded in divine love.
This grounding does not fragment divine agency. On the contrary, it displays its unity. The Father creates by loving into being addressable particularity. The Son articulates what is loved into intelligible openness without closure. The Spirit orders intelligible possibility normatively, drawing agents toward alignment without coercion. These are not separable acts, nor are they successive interventions. They are distinct modes of one divine act, irreducibly triune in its structure.
Seen in this light, faith assumes a metaphysical shape that resists both abstraction and reduction. Faith is not assent to a universal proposition, nor participation in an abstract nature. It is alignment with a particular life articulated within a teleo-space and weighted by the Spirit. Its path is necessarily particular because its ground is particular. God’s preferential option for the that over the what does not bypass reason; it makes reason possible as lived orientation rather than detached description.
This has direct consequences for systematic theology. The collapse of strong realism about universals does not entail the collapse of soteriology or Christology. On the contrary, it forces their re-articulation at the level of particularity. The incarnation is not the elevation of a universal human nature but the maximal articulation of a loved particular into perfect intelligibility and obedience. Redemption, correspondingly, proceeds not by instantiation but by address, articulation, and alignment. What Christ accomplishes is not distributed through a shared essence but made available through teleo-spaces opened by the Logos and ordered by the Spirit.
Methodologically, the argument remains transcendental rather than dogmatic. As with Kant’s reflecting judgment, the claim is not that we possess theoretical knowledge of divine grounding as an object. It is that we are rationally compelled to think such grounding if we are to make sense of intelligibility, normativity, and faith as they are actually lived. The alternative is not a different metaphysics but the quiet abandonment of metaphysical responsibility in favor of either reduction or silence.
This post therefore marks neither a conclusion nor a completed system. It marks a point of clarity—a place where sustained reflection has made certain moves unavoidable. The formal scaffolding sketched above is provisional, but the insight it protects is not. Any future systematic development that hopes to take intelligibility, faith, and particularity seriously will have to reckon with the claim advanced here: that divine love is not merely compatible with metaphysics, but is its deepest explanatory ground.
What remains is to develop this account further—Christologically, pneumatologically, and ecclesially—without surrendering the hard-won distinctions that have brought us this far. That work lies ahead. But the path is now visible.
Find this article at academia.edu: https://ilt.academia.edu/DennisBielfeldt/Foundations%20of%20Theological%20Reasoning%20(2025-26)
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